Tony Hadley talks about Spandau Ballet’s early days

Tony Hadley is telling me about a teenage girl who asked for his autograph backstage at a festival last year.

“I said, ‘Sure, for your mum?’ She replied, ‘No, for my grandmother’.”

The big man, just shy of 6ft 4, laughs heartily. Now in his fifth decade of fame, “The Voice of Spandau Ballet” acknowledges “That’s going to happen a lot more.”

The New Romantic pin-up is an Old Romantic now.

Unlike most pop stars, affable Hadley, 62, has never done drugs, doesn’t mind being the butt of a joke and is proud to be known as “Tory Tone” – even though his printworker family were hardcore militants.

“My uncle was such a staunch Communist he wanted to live in Moscow,” Tony recalls. “When I was 14, I attended Communist Party rallies. But I fell out of love with it. Over the years I met too many champagne socialists. “

“I think of myself as a ‘Conservative Communist’ – I believe everybody’s equal but let’s make a few bob.”

Although when I mention Jeremy Hunt’s tax hikes, he groans and says simply, “Don’t get me started.”

“I said, ‘Sure, for your mum?’ She replied, ‘No, for my grandmother’.”

The big man, just shy of 6ft 4, laughs heartily. Now in his fifth decade of fame, “The Voice of Spandau Ballet” acknowledges “That’s going to happen a lot more.”

The New Romantic pin-up is an Old Romantic now.

Unlike most pop stars, affable Hadley, 62, has never done drugs, doesn’t mind being the butt of a joke and is proud to be known as “Tory Tone” – even though his printworker family were hardcore militants.

“My uncle was such a staunch Communist he wanted to live in Moscow,” Tony recalls.

“When I was 14, I attended Communist Party rallies. But I fell out of love with it. Over the years I met too many champagne socialists.

“I think of myself as a ‘Conservative Communist’ – I believe everybody’s equal but let’s make a few bob.”

Although when I mention Jeremy Hunt’s tax hikes, he groans and says simply, “Don’t get me started.”

Spandau Ballet – five working-class lads from North London, including acting brothers Gary and Martin Kemp – were snapped up by Chrysalis in 1980 after playing just eight gigs.

Their first single, To Cut A Long Story Short, went Top 5. “I remember walking into a pub in Battersea and it was playing on the jukebox. That’s when you know you’ve arrived…”

Nine more Top Ten hits followed, including classics such as True, Gold and Through The Barricades.

Portugal, which had a large new romantic scene, was the first European country to fall under Spandau’s spell, although the band soon realised they weren’t in the Blitz Club anymore.

“Remember in Spinal Tap when they arrive at a theatre and see the bill – Puppet Show and Spinal Tap? That happened for us for real in Oporto,” Tony says with a grin. “The puppet show was the headline act; we were second on the bill.

“Another night there, someone leaned through the skylight and used a spike on the end of a rod to nick food from our rider! We said, ‘Come down! if you’re hungry, we’ll give you food…’”

And when a teenage fan shimmied up a Liverpool Empire drainpipe and tapped on their second-floor window, they let her and her friend in for a cuppa. “I can’t stand bands who haven’t got time for their fans,” he says.

Tony still chuckles about the fictions that circulated about him in the 1980s. “The Italian press claimed I was having an affair with a Contessa’s daughter. I’d never met her! I wasn’t even in the country!

“I thought, oh dear, I’d better phone home…”

Spandau Ballet never cracked the States but they wowed the Big Apple in May 1981. “We took a whole bunch of us over to show New York what we were like, played the Underground Club.”

The 21-strong extravagantly-dressed Blitz kids made the TV news.

“We stopped the traffic! We looked like we’d come from Planet Zog, or at least from Robin Hood Land, but to crack the US you’ve got to tour everywhere and we didn’t.”

True – Gary Kemp’s 1983 love letter to Clare Grogan (and Motown) – did reach number 4 there, however, and went on to become the most-played song in US radio history.

In the States, Tony is billed as “The voice of True” – Spandau Ballet don’t mean a light.

Like the album, the song – Number One in 21 countries – was recorded in the Bahamas, at Compass Point studio, Nassau, for the tax break.

“It changed our lives,” he says simply. “We were selling hundreds of thousand of albums, playing bigger venues and appealing to a new screaming teenage fans…many of whom are now grandmothers.”

The band relocated to Dublin for a while, befriending other tax exiles, Sheffield rockers Def Leppard and Liverpool’s Frankie Goes To Hollywood – “hardcore party animals”.

Tony also gets along well with Madness and Iron Maiden – “a great bunch of lads, I used to play football with Steve Harris from Maiden. Nicko’s a hoot!”

Spandau split acrimoniously after ten glorious years; hostilities peaked in a 1999 High Court royalties battle between the Kemps and the rest. The Kemps won.

The band reformed twice this century, but Hadley quit for good in 2017 to return to his solo career that began with 1992’s debut album The State Of Play.

Frustratingly, lockdown scuppered his recent US momentum. “I was starting to make headway on a three-year visa and then Covid hit. We played casinos, amphitheatres, Vegas, clubs, anywhere that would have us.”

Hadley started performing again at the 2021 Sunshine Festival. “I’d been singing for the NHS and schools for free but this was the first proper gig and I’d never been so nervous. I went to the pub and had a couple of pints then it was like getting back on a bike.”

He’d played tougher shows, for British forces abroad – “the Falklands, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo…it was amazing, entertaining the troops, singing soppy love songs to a bunch of soldiers. But they were into it

“I did a gig for the Red Cross in Belgrade during the Balkans conflict. We couldn’t land because they were trying to shoot planes down. We had to fly to Budapest and drive seven hours on bumpy roads and when we finally got there, a riot was about to kick off.”

Born and raised in Islington, Hadley is very much a child of punk. “It was an incredible moment, very positive. Before Spandau Ballet, we played the Roxy on Neal Street as The Makers, who sounded more like Generation X.”

“Punk had positive anger. It said, you can achieve whatever you want, the sky’s the limit – that’s what our parents instilled in us too.”

Tony has “five beautiful children”, three from his first marriage and two daughters with his second wife Alison who often reminds him they never had a honeymoon.

“She fancies the Maldives, we’ll have to go or she’ll never forgive me.”

A lifelong Arsenal fan he has a photo of Highbury Stadium signed by six former Gunners managers on his office wall at home – a 16^th Century cottage in rural Bucks, just a goal kick from the Chiltern Hills.

Tony’s love affair with music began when his parents bought him Millie Small’s My Boy Lollipop in 1964 – the first Jamaican Ska hit to electrify the UK charts.

“I loved it. I used to jump around the room.”

He started singing at 12. “My mum and dad bought me a tape recorder so I could record myself singing along to Bowie. I entered a Pontins talent contest at 15 and forgot the words. That happened once with Spandau later but the audience filled in the gap.”

Spandau Ballet grew out of bands they formed at Dame Alice Owen’s school. Their first gig was at a rehearsal studio, Halligan’s Band Centre on the Holloway Road, with an invited audience.

They were adopted by the New Romantic scene that flourished at Covent Garden’s Blitz club, whose weekly “Elektro-Diskow” nights were hosted by Steve Strange and Rusty Egan. 

Strange opened a cabaret night built around Spandau “synthesised dance music for the future with vocals akin to Sinatra”.

By coincidence, Tony will be singing Sinatra numbers at Cheltenham Jazz Festival next month where he’ll perform with the Ronnie Scott’s Orchestra 

“It’s a first and I jumped at the chance, I love swing,” he enthuses.

“I did a swing album with Tony Bennet a few years ago – we’ll re-release that.”

“I’ve got lots of festivals lined up and a 2024 Spring tour confirmed. My Passing Strangers album is coming out on vinyl for the first time, hopefully for Christmas, and I will record new music.”

“You have to look ahead,” he says. ‘I could sing Gold and True until the day I die but it’s great to do new material too; it’s really rewarding that my newer songs, like Tonight Belongs To Us and Delirious also go down well.

“I love singing. I’m not qualified for anything else. My brother’s a spark but you wouldn’t want me to change your boiler.”

 *Tony Hadley plays Cheltenham Jazz Festival with the Ronnie Scott’s Orchestra at the end of April.