Spandau Ballet was a popular English band in
the 1980s.
Initially inspired by a mixture of funk and synthpop, the genre-defining New
Romantic group eventually mellowed into a mainstream pop act. As with
their rivals Duran Duran they 'broke
America', albeit briefly.
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Contents
- 1 History
- 1.1 Formation
and first successes
- 1.2 International
fame
- 1.3 To
the end
- 2 Discography
- 2.1 Studio
Albums
- 2.2 Singles
- 2.3 Compilations
& Live Albums
- 3 Awards
- 4 Trivia
- 5 See
also
- 6 External
links
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History
Formation and first successes
The bands history began in 1976 with Gary
Kemp (singer/songwriter) and Steve
Norman (guitar, later saxophone and percussion). Gary and
Steve were both attending Dame Alice Owen's School, Islington (which
later moved to Potters Bar), and were close friends. They shared a
similar interest in music and a common desire to form a band. Next came
John
Keeble. John and Steve had met when they both discovered the
drum kit in the school’s music room, and would regularly meet at
lunchtimes to practice. Following John in joining the band was bass
player Michael Ellison. Next to join was Tony
Hadley (singer) who approached Steve
Norman one day in the 6th form common room. After a few
months Richard Miller replaced Michael Ellison on bass, before Martin
Kemp finally took over the role, joining the band a couple of years
later. By this time the band had already played some considerable gigs
and gained live experience which would eventually prove fruitful. Steve
Dagger, a friend of the band was then asked by Steve and Gary to manage
them. He was to be an integral part of the band's initial and
continuing success. The band was called 'The Makers' in the early
years, but changed their name after a friend’s (BBC
London 94.9 DJ Robert Elms) visit to Spandau, a
borough of Berlin,
the inspiration being from graffiti he saw in the lavatory of a club
there. The term Spandau Ballet referred to the spasms of the Nazi war
criminals as they "danced at the end of the rope", when they were
hanged at Spandau Prison. The band began performing and generating a
positive buzz around London. Their music prior to then was very RnB in
the style of early Rolling Stones or The Kinks, but became more
electronic as they started to hang out in clubs such as Billys and Blitz
nightclub, where they would listen to bands like Kraftwerk
and Telex.
The Blitz was regarded as the birthplace of a new 1980s music and
fashion phenomenon called New Romanticism.
The band was involved in a major bidding war. They eventually
signed to Chrysalis Records and released "To
Cut a Long Story Short", produced by the cutting-edge electronic
musician Richard James Burgess.
Released just ten days after the band emerged from the studio in order
to meet the huge demand created by the buzz the band had established,
"To Cut a Long Story Short" was an instant British top 5 hit in 1980.
This was followed by hits with "The Freeze", "Musclebound" and the
well-received and genre-defining Gold certified album Journeys to Glory
(February 1981). The sound of "Journeys to Glory" set the sound for the
nascent New
Romantic movement with chanted vocals, club/dance bottom end, splashy
snare drum sound, lack of guitar solos and strongly rhythmic guitar
parts. The follow up album Diamond (March 1982) also produced by Richard James Burgess
was certified Gold by the BPI and featured the influential
funk-flavoured single "Chant No. 1". The single also featured the first
recorded example of the Burgess co-invention the SDS5 to actually be
played by a drummer (John Keeble) rather than triggered by a sequencer.
The band set the trend once again by having Burgess remix every single
from both albums for inclusion on each single's B-side and for
twelve-inch club releases. These mixes were later released as a boxed
set. However, times were changing - and these were the days of Dollar
and Bucks
Fizz, and the British charts were swinging away from the edgier New
Romantic sound created by the band and Burgess. The second chart single
from Diamond was "Paint Me Down" which broke their run of top 20 hits
by stalling at #30, and the third single, "She Loved Like Diamond",
failed to make the UK Top 40 at all. Trevor
Horn remixed the track "Instinction" which was released as
the fourth single from the album, and which returned the band to the UK
top ten after the poor chart performance of their previous two singles
and of the "Diamond" album in general which had peaked at #15.
International fame
With a slicker, adult contemporary sound the band released
their third album True
(February 1983), produced by Tony Swain and
Steve Jolley - who would go on to enjoy a couple of years as the
"producers du jour" in Britain. The title cut was a
six-minute opus paying tribute to the Motown sound (and in some
respects, Marvin
Gaye). The image changed too — the cossack outfits and makeup of the
New Romantic movement they had helped to establish had been replaced by
smart, 1940s-inspired suits and well-scrubbed faces. The band still
looked vaguely aristocratic, however. It was at this point that Steve
Norman became the band's sax player. The album topped the charts all
around the world, and launched several international hit singles such
as "Gold" and the aforementioned title cut which was #1 in some
countries.
But the follow up, Parade (June 1984),
was critically drubbed for failing to move the band's sound forward.
Nevertheless, the album and its singles were again big successes in the
European charts, Australia and Canada, and the opening song "Only When
You Leave" became their last American hit. At the end of 1984, the band
performed on the Band Aid charity single, with Hadley taking
a prominent lead vocal role; and in 1985, they performed at the Wembley Stadium end of Live Aid.
During this same year, Spandau Ballet achieved platinum status with the
compilation, The Singles Collection, which kept the focus on the band
between two studio albums, and celebrated their five years of success.
In 1986,
Spandau Ballet signed to CBS Records and released Through the
Barricades (October 1986), which saw the band trying to move away from
the pop/soul influences of True and Parade and more towards rock. The
album, the title track and the single "Fight For Ourselves" were big
hits in their native UK, in Europe - particularly in Germany, Italy and
in the Benelux as usual - and in Australia, but unfortunately did
nothing in the United States.
To the end
After a hiatus from recording during which the Kemps
established themselves as credible actors in the gangster film The Krays,
the band released Heart Like a Sky in September 1989. The album was
not widely released (not at all in the US) and was for the most part
disregarded. It did, however, do well in Italy. Afterwards, Spandau
Ballet — from whom Gary Kemp was already feeling estranged — split up
for good.
Martin Kemp went on to land an acting role in the UK soap
opera EastEnders, while
Tony Hadley tried to establish a solo career. Gary Kemp did a little
more acting, appearing in a supporting role in the Kevin
Costner hit The Bodyguard,
and in 1996 released the commercially unsuccessful solo album, Little
Bruises. In the 1990s, Hadley, Norman and Keeble launched a failed
court case against Gary Kemp for a share of Kemp's song writing
royalties. Since then Hadley's profile has been raised by his winning
the ITV reality show Reborn in the USA.
The three non-Kemp members toured as a trio, but as they had
to sell their shares in Spandau Ballet's company to Gary Kemp to pay
off legal debts, and that company owned the rights to the name of
Spandau Ballet, they had to tour under the moniker of 'Hadley, Norman
and Keeble, ex-Spandau Ballet'.
Steve Norman and the Kemps have since managed to put their
differences behind them and a reunion tour has been mentioned.
Recently Martin Kemp has become the face of SCS Sofas stores,
Gary Kemp has been writing songs with Paul Stratham who has previously
written songs for Dido, Steve Norman is now a
member of 'Cloudfish' the band he formed with Shelley
Preston, and Tony Hadley has released a swing album and
landed the lead role in the musical Chicago.
Tony Hadley stated in April 2007 there may be an opportunity
around the 30th anniversary of the band for a full reunion, but other
outstanding issues would need to be remedied first.
Discography
Studio Albums
Singles
| Year |
Song |
Singles Chart |
Hot 100 |
Singles Chart |
Album |
| 1980 |
"To Cut a Long Story Short" |
5 |
- |
15 |
Journeys To
Glory |
| 1981 |
"The Freeze" |
17 |
- |
- |
Journeys
To Glory |
| 1981 |
"Musclebound" |
10 |
- |
- |
Journeys
To Glory |
| 1981 |
"Chant No.1 (I
Don't Need This Pressure On)" |
3 |
- |
30 |
Diamond |
| 1981 |
"Paint Me Down" |
30 |
- |
- |
Diamond |
| 1982 |
"She Loved Like
Diamond" |
49 |
- |
- |
Diamond |
| 1982 |
"Instinction" |
10 |
- |
- |
Diamond |
| 1982 |
"Lifeline" |
17 |
- |
- |
True |
| 1983 |
"Communication" |
12 |
59 |
24 |
True |
| 1983 |
"True" |
1 |
4 |
4 |
True |
| 1983 |
"Gold" |
2 |
29 |
9 |
True |
| 1983 |
"Pleasure" |
- |
- |
- |
True |
| 1984 |
"Only When You
Leave" |
3 |
34 |
12 |
Parade |
| 1984 |
"I'll Fly For
You" |
9 |
- |
38 |
Parade |
| 1984 |
"Highly Strung" |
15 |
- |
83 |
Parade |
| 1985 |
"Round And
Round" |
18 |
- |
16 |
Parade |
| 1986 |
"Fight For
Ourselves" |
15 |
- |
16 |
Through
The Barricades |
| 1986 |
"Through The
Barricades" |
6 |
- |
50 |
Through
The Barricades |
| 1987 |
"How Many Lies" |
34 |
- |
- |
Through
The Barricades |
| 1988 |
"Raw" |
47 |
- |
- |
Heart Like A Sky |
| 1989 |
"Be Free With
Your Love" |
42 |
- |
- |
Heart
Like A Sky |
| 1989 |
"Empty Spaces" |
94 |
- |
- |
Heart
Like A Sky |
| 1990 |
"Crashed Into
Love" |
96 |
- |
- |
Heart
Like A Sky |
Compilations & Live
Albums
Cover of Gold - The Best of Spandau Ballet.
| Year |
Album |
Albums Chart |
Albums Chart |
Albums Chart |
| 1985 |
The
Singles Collection |
3 |
-- |
-- |
| 1986 |
The
Remixes |
15 |
-- |
-- |
| 1991 |
The
Best Of Spandau Ballet |
44 |
-- |
-- |
| 1997 |
The
Collection |
-- |
-- |
-- |
| 1999 |
Original
Gold |
-- |
-- |
-- |
| 2000 |
Gold - The Best Of |
7 |
-- |
-- |
| 2001 |
The
Collection |
7 |
-- |
-- |
| 2002 |
Reformation
- The Anthology |
7 |
-- |
-- |
| 2002 |
The
12" Mixes |
40 |
-- |
-- |
| 2003 |
The
Collection - Volume 2 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
| 2005 |
Ultra
Selection |
-- |
-- |
-- |
| 2005 |
Live
From The N.E.C. |
-- |
-- |
-- |
| 2006 |
Singles, Rarities
& Remixes |
-- |
-- |
-- |
Awards
- 1984 BRIT Awards - The Sony Award For
Technical Excellence
Trivia
- Their song "Gold" was featured in the video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice
City, on Wave
103, in an episode of Black Books and also in the 2006 Australian film Boytown. A cover
of the song, by Zero
7 vocalist Sophie Barker, appeared in the 2004 film Suzie Gold.
- John Darnielle of The
Mountain Goats has done a spoken word piece on his growing appreciation
for them.
- In the movie Blackadder: Back and Forth, when
Baldrick mentions seeing 'Men in very short skirts', Blackadder replies
by saying 'Spandau Ballet'.
- The song 'Gold' is now a football chant at
Portman Road, home of Ipswich Town FC. The chant goes "Always
believe in, Alan Lee GOAL!"
- It also became a chant familiar with Sunderland
AFC fans about Julio Arca. However the words "JULIO! Oh!
Always believe in your...soul," etc.
- The song 'Diamond' plays in the background of
a scene in the movie SLC Punk as a character complains of an
illness he attributes to the music.
- 'Gold' is used as the theme for "That's Gold!"
on The (NRL) Footy Show
in Australia, with Paul 'The Chief' Harragon singing
re-written words.
- Tony Hadley made a brief appearance in the
final minute of the video for PM Dawn's 'Set Adrift on Memory Bliss'.
- The Adam Carolla
Show uses a parody Spandau Ballet's "Gold" in its innovative Gay
Walking game and the song has been a recurrent topic of conversation.
- The name Spandau Ballet comes from the Spandau
Prison in Germany that housed Nazi war criminals. When these Nazi
prisoners would commit suicide by hanging themselves, it was known as
the "Spandau Ballet". (because of the flailing movements made during
suicide by hanging)
- The Age of Love an
american reality television show uses Look
of Love as it's Theme tune.
See also
- List
of best-selling music artists
External links
