Which Arsenal player has a football chant dedicated to him to the tune of Spandau Ballet’s 1983 hit ‘Gold’?
“Oleksandr Zinchenko.”
GOLD! (CORRECT).
“Unfortunately, he’s not playing as much as he used to, so they’re singing the song less! On my Instagram, I posted footage from Wembley when Arsenal won the Community Sheild and 45,000 fans are singing ‘Gold’, and you can see how chuffed I am. My 15-year-old son, who was with me, buried his head into his hoodie out of embarrassment!”
“I lived with my mum and dad when I wrote ‘Gold’ and the ‘True’ album, ‘cause Martin [Kemp, Spandau bassist and his brother] and I couldn’t afford to move out. I’d write songs in my bedroom and if they were any good, I’d call Martin in. Before we knew it, mum was calling us down to dinner. Steve Strange [Visage frontman and New Romantic pioneer] would come round to tea. Sitting there with his conical hair, my mum would say: ‘You’re going to get split ends if you do that, Steve!’. I thought that was the least of his worries!”
Name your fictional long-lost brother in your music documentary spoofs The Kemps: All True and All Gold?
“His full name is Ross Kemp (Not That One).”
GOLD!
“I love doing those spoofs with [comedian] Rhys Thomas. We have another script that we’re talking about doing together.”
You pull no punches with the jokes. Did you have to call up any of your pop star mates beforehand to warm then?
“If you’re talking about [former Spandau frontman] Tony Hadley, I don’t know if he qualifies as a mate! [Laughs] But the people who get ribbed the most in that are Martin and I, because Martin’s made to look stupid and I’m made to look like the most pretentious twat on earth. There’s elements of truth in that – certainly in me being er, artistically enquiring, shall we say! – but then we pump up all those terrible qualities we have and take the piss out of them.”
“Those sketches are about the paranoia of rock stars and the stupid adversity we find ourselves in. Everybody who’s seen it finds it funny. Admittedly, Tony didn’t. He did an interview where he said that it didn’t even make him chuckle! But I’m taking the piss out of myself mostly in those.”
Martin Kemp, Gary Kemp and fictional brother Ross Kemp (Not That One) Credit: BBC
Which Salford band once went to see Spandau Ballet in Paris in 1985, stole all your booze and trashed your dressing room, before one of their members urinated off the auditorium balcony onto the band below?
“New Order!”
GOLD! According to former New Order bassist Peter Hook, frontman Bernard Sumner was upset by Spandau’s apparel and performed the golden shower.
“I don’t know how true any of that is. I certainly don’t remember anyone urinating on us, but Peter Hook has mentioned it to me. When Spandau first got back together [in 2009], it was reported that we were getting £20 million which was bollocks, and Johnny Marr quipped: ‘Maybe someone should pay them £20 million not to reform!’. And Johnny’s a good mate and we admire each other’s work….secretly! There’s always been competition amongst bands, especially in the ‘80s. Joy Division were a big influence on Spandau’s early work. You weren’t a self-respecting band in the ‘80s unless you had a nemesis or belittled another band. We tried to do that with Duran Duran.”
“I remember walking into Boy George’s squat and him shouting down the stairs: ‘I could sing better than your fucking singer!’. Of course, he was probably right, as we later found out. Or at least as well as Tony.”
Which two artists did Spandau Ballet perform between at Live Aid in 1985?
“This is going to be a guess… Ultravox and Sade?”
WRONG. Close – you were sandwiched between Ultravox and Elvis Costello.
“Damn! Like the rest of the bands, I was in a blind panic about going on and when I left the stage 20 minutes later, I was so euphoric that I didn’t know or care who was on – and I’ve obviously never cared since! [Laughs].”
Looking back at Live Aid, it was surreal hanging backstage with Elton John, Paul McCartney and Freddie Mercury, or seeing Sting handing out the hymn sheets before the group finale of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ like the Head Boy. The flipside is I now feel guilty about how euphoric I was considering the gravity of the cause. We had our smiley faces on, but maybe we should have been more earnest. Nowadays, people know how to present themselves better in charitable situations.”
What is the name of the Spandau Ballet bassist Edward Norton plays in Modern Family?
“It’s Izzy… fucking hell, I can’t remember his second name! I’m failing!”
GOLD! CORRECT-ISH. HALF A POINT. He’s called Izzy LaFontaine, ‘the bass guitarist from Spandau Ballet that’s between Richard Miller and Martin Kemp’.
“That’s brilliant writing because Richard Miller was in our band at school when we were called the Makers, but our manager wanted to get Martin in because he was the best-looking bloke we knew. Poor Richard had to step aside and Martin took over on bass. I phoned up Richard when that episode aired and he got all his family over to watch it.”
You and Martin Kemp portrayed gangland brothers in two films. Famously, one was starring as the titular The Krays in 1990. The other was the 2015 thriller Assassin opposite Danny Dyer. What characters do you play in the latter?
“Absolutely no idea! That wasn’t a great experience!”
WRONG. John and Lee Alberts.
“I’ve tried to erase that from my mind. That film gave me raging tinnitus. It was a kick-bollocks-scramble low-budget gangster film. There’s a scene where I fire a gun. The safety around firing guns is normally extreme, but we were running out of time. I fired a gun without any ear protection in. My ears closed down. It was the final shot of the film and my hearing didn’t recover for quite a while. To the extent that I forgot my character’s name! [Laughs]”
“I once bumped into Quentin Tarantino in LA who told me he sent a VHS of The Krays to everybody who worked on Reservoir Dogs saying ‘I want my movie to be like that’. Actually, I’d been sent the script for Reservoir Dogs earlier, but it didn’t happen for some reason.”
When preparing to portray notorious East End gangster Ronnie Kray, you visited him in Broadmoor. Did you remain in touch afterwards?
“No. I was happy to let that one go. When I met Ronnie in Broadmoor, I had to pay [an inmate] £100 for two non-alcoholic lagers because Ronnie had ‘put a few fags on the bill’. Ronnie was unhappy with the movie. He never saw it, but his brother Charlie told him that his mother swore in the film, and he didn’t like that.”
You also co-starred in The Bodyguard opposite Whitney Houston in 1992 as sleazy PR man Sy Spector….
“It was lovely getting to know Whitney when she was at her healthiest. She was such a nice person and hung out with the crew. She didn’t play the star game or scurry off to her Winnebago. My only regret is that they didn’t put [Spandau’s 1983 chart-topper] ‘True’ on the soundtrack because it made millions! When I was rehearsing with Kevin Costner, he told me that it was he and his wife’s favourite tune.”
“When I saw Whitney again a few months later at the premiere, she was with Bobby [Brown, husband] and it felt completely different as Bobby was overprotective of her.”
“I sat next to my mum at the premiere. Near the end, someone turns to my character and says ‘You asshole!’, and everyone in the theatre cheered. My mum gasped ‘Oh no!’. I had to reassure her: ‘Mum, that’s good!’.”
In 2017, which big-name pop star did you try to recruit as a replacement for Tony Hadley, who had departed Spandau Ballet for the final time?
“Seal.”
GOLD! The ‘Kiss from a Rose’ singer.
“I’ve only just felt able to admit this. Tony didn’t want to continue the tour, but we got the offer of some big shows. He wanted to do his solo stuff. Someone in the group mentioned Seal as a replacement vocalist, and I had a meeting with him. He was up for trying it out, but on the day he was supposed to attend the band rehearsal, he didn’t get on the plane and changed his mind at the last minute.”
“It would have been an interesting cultural coming-together, but I’m pleased it didn’t happen in the end. What I realised from making an absolute failure of recruiting a guy to come and sing with us [Ross William Wild in 2018] is there ain’t no Spandau Ballet without Tony Hadley.”
Will there ever be another Spandau Ballet reunion?
“I can’t say there won’t be. Tony and I aren’t in conversation right now and we’ve always had our issues over the years. We were never friends, more workmates. We never hung out, but we’ve always been nice to each other – apart from when we’ve got lawyers involved! [Laughs]”
“Do I think there will be a Spandau reunion? I hope so, because some of my children have never seen us and I’d like to do it for them. It meant so much to me. We soundtracked people’s lives, and to come together at least another time as the original members to play that music for those fans would be a great thing to do, so I’m open to all conversations.”
Spandau Ballet (Photo by Virginia Turbett/Redferns)
Which three artists did you perform a cover of Curtis Mayfield’s ‘Move On Up’ with at a Red Wedge (an initiative to get young people interested in left-wing politics) gig in Manchester in 1985?
“Paul Weller, Billy Bragg and Johnny Marr.”
GOLD!
“We all wanted a change from the Thatcher government, and I’d made clear that I was a Labour voter, so I got a call from Paul asking me to do it. Though Spandau weren’t necesirly in the same camp as Paul, Billy and Johnny, I was embraced by those guys. During ‘Move On Up’, Paul thought Billy, Johnny and I were playing too loud and came over and yelled ‘TURN IT DOWN!’”
Ironically, Spandau were perceived in some quarters as the acme of Thatcherism…
“Well, Tony Hadley is 100 per cent a Conversative, but we never presented ourselves as that. I spoke about my belief in Labour, and the rest of the band weren’t voting Conservative. What we represented was the aspirational working-class lad. The guy who doesn’t earn much money but spends it all on clothes and holidays. To middle-class writers, that was perceived as Thatcherite. We wanted to get up the noses of those writers, and promote the culture I’d come from, which was working-class people who don’t wear flat caps and fly pigeons but go to Benidorm and wear plastic sandals.”
Did performing at Red Wedge cause any tensions within the band?
“No – though it probably would have caused tension in the band if Tony had played a pro-Thatcher gig! [Laughs]”
What is track eight on your new solo album ‘This Destination’?
“Erm….‘At the Chateau’?
GOLD!
“I should have just picked up the vinyl and looked! ‘This Destination’ is about where I am now. It’s been extremely therapeutic. I was suffering from anxiety when I started this record for the first time in my life, and it was coming out physically and I wasn’t feeling good. I started seeing some therapists and realised I hadn’t grieved my parents dying within four days of each other 16 years ago. Immediately after they did, I’d got back together with Spandau for the first time in 18 years and then my son was born. So all these other things happened and I hadn’t grieved. What I’ve realised is that writing is necessary for me to work through how I’m feeling, so there are personal songs mixed with more humourous ones like ‘At the Chateau’, which is about the absurdity of the art world.”
You recently released an AI-generated video for the single ‘I Know Where I’m Going’. Aren’t you worried about the effect of AI on the music industry?
“Guy Pratt [bassist and his fellow Rockonteurs podcast host] said to me ‘How many people did you put out of work doing the AI video?’. I replied that I gave one person a job that wouldn’t have got one before, because there was no budget to make a video. I wanted to do something new and adventurous, but I don’t worry about AI because people will ultimately make their choices in the marketplace. Do they want to listen to music or read poems written by machines? Of course not! What we want in art is to know that there’s another human out there that feels the same way you do, so you don’t feel so alone. Machines will never replace that.”
What is the Def Leppard track that you provide (uncredited) backing vocals on?
“’Rocket’”
GOLD! Alongside Spandau saxophonist Steve Norman.
“I might have sang on ‘Animal’ too. We visited Def Leppard in the studio a lot in that period in the ‘80s when we were all living in Dublin, so we were ushered in to help sing backing vocals around a microphone. Years later, someone in Def Leppard was telling me ‘I think you came up with the melody’ and their frontman Joe Elliott interjected: ‘Don’t say that – he’ll ask for publishing!’ [Laughs]”
The verdict: 8.5/10
“Well, I did better than my brother when he did this quiz – he barely scraped above a zero!”
‘This Destination’ by Gary Kemp is released January 31 via East West Records and available to pre-order now
See how Gary’s score compares to his sibling Martin Kemp’s when he took NME’s infamous Does Rock ‘N’ Roll Kill Braincells?! brain-teaser in 2020 here
The post Gary Kemp: “Will there be another Spandau Ballet reunion? I hope so” appeared first on NME.
