Spandau Ballet returns to Dubai

We know this much is true: Spandau Ballet were the poster boys for the 1980s with their flamboyant clothes, big hair and flashy videos that gave them a truck-load of hit records such as True, Gold and Through the Barricades. But by the end of the decade, the band were in crisis as the Kemp brothers – bassist Martin and principle songwriter Gary – decided to leave to pursue their acting careers.

Happily, after 19 years of anguish and recriminations, the band announced they were getting back together – and their glory (and our school!) days will be revisited when they make their second appearance in Dubai at the World Trade Centre on September 17.

‘I love playing in Dubai, and I love playing live,’ says Martin, 53. ‘Our first tour in 2009 was about dipping our toes in the water again, while 2015 is Spandau at its best. Our crowds consist of a fantastic cross section of people. The demographic is so wide it’s a real pleasure to play.’ But the difference now is that the band members are older and wiser. As Martin says: ‘The old days for me were all about the after party, today it’s all about the show.’

It’s been more than 35 years since the five working-class wannabe-stars – Gary and Martin Kemp on guitars, lead singer Tony Hadley, saxophonist Steve Norman and drummer John Keeble – formed the band in Islington, London.

The band began in 1976 as The Cut, with friends Gary Kemp and Steve Norman. John Keeble, who they used to meet often at their practice sessions, joined them soon after. A few months later their numbers grew with the addition of bass player Richard Miller and Tony Hadley, who knew Steve well.

It wasn’t long before Gary’s younger brother, Martin, joined replacing Richard Miller.

They all hung out at London’s hippest clubs and rubbed shoulders with the in-crowd while experimenting with then cutting-edge musical technology. After changing the band’s name a few times, they eventually settled on Spandau Ballet after a friend saw it scrawled across a toilet wall on a visit to Berlin.

At the time, Martin and Gary were regulars at the legendary Blitz club, run by the late Steve Strange of Visage, where the art school crowd mingled with ex-punks and soul boys to thrash out a creative manifesto for the 1980s. It meant that guy-liner and outlandish clobber were right up there next to musical innovation, and Spandau Ballet wanted to pay testament to that in their New Romantic frilly shirts, knickerbockers and buccaneer boots.

Martin says, ‘I think Spandau Ballet spearheaded one of the last great British pop cultures. What followed was a whole decade of great songs that will stand up for ever.’

A prominent feature of the band’s early recordings such as To Cut a Long Story Short and the Freeze was the synthesiser, but as the pop scene was becoming saturated with synthpop acts, the band changed musical direction by reacquainting themselves with their funk-soul roots.

The turnaround was neatly encapsulated by Chant No 1 (I Don’t Need this Pressure on), which they recorded with the blazing horn section of the Light of the World band. It led to a glut of middle-of-the-road soul singles and perhaps their biggest, most enduring song of all, True. There were more massive hits with Gold, Only When you Leave and Through the Barricades plus an invitation to the Band Aid/Live Aid party, followed by more world tours and adulation.

But soon there were mutterings of discontent from Gary, now 55, who was increasingly tired and fed-up with the album-tour ritual. When an offer came along to star with brother Martin as the notorious London gangsters in The Krays (1990), it was a no-brainer… and the beginning of the end for Spandau Ballet.

The film was a huge success but not long afterwards, Martin’s world fell apart when two devastating brain tumours were discovered that almost killed him. He eventually recovered but suffers from epilepsy.

It didn’t stop him auditioning for a part in popular BBC soap opera EastEnders, where he stayed for four years playing Steve Owen. Brother Gary was appearing in a string of B-movies. Meanwhile, the three remaining members of the band John, now 56, Steve and Tony, both 55, brought a court action against Gary, the song writer of the group, to claim hundreds of thousands of pounds in royalties over songs he had written while part of the group.

Disastrously, the three lost the court case, which almost ruined them financially. It was unthinkable at the time that the band would ever patch up their differences. However, Martin says, ‘That is a long time behind us now. We are not the only ones to have had a broken relationship, but we have come back stronger.’

The healing process was complete when Spandau Ballet announced that they would embark on a comeback tour in 2009. The response was overwhelming: tickets for the London show sold out in less than 20 minutes. (They did the same in Dubai at the Rugby Sevens stadium a year later.) The old magic and chemistry had been restored. ‘The music is bigger than the personal differences,’ said Tony. ‘You can’t change the past but you can change the future.’

While they can easily compete with today’s pop stars on stage, they are certainly not trying to compete with them on social media. Hadley, for instance, refuses to tweet, while Gary has made it clear that he’s on a ‘digital diet’ as he believes it destroys family life.

So if you want to hear more from them, it’s best you book tickets now for the Dubai World Trade Centre for their concert on September 17.