Spandau Ballet

Spandau Ballet
Spandau Ballet (2009)
General information
origin	London , England
Genre (s)	New wave
founding	1979, 2009
resolution	1990
Website	www.spandauballet.com
Founding members
singing	Tony Hadley
Drums	John Keeble
guitar	Gary Kemp
bass	Martin Kemp
Saxophone , percussion	Steve Norman

Spandau Ballet is a New Romantic - band . It was founded in the late 1970s and comes from the London borough of Islington . She celebrated her greatest successes between autumn 1980 and spring 1987, including hits like To Cut a Long Story Short , Chant No. 1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On) , True , Gold, and Through the Barricades .

In the middle of 1990 the group broke up after a very unsuccessful LP. Almost 20 years later, the original line-up returned in autumn 2009 with a new album and live performances.

Band history

Beginnings

The band formed in 1976 and initially called themselves The Roots, with Gary Kemp and Steve Norman on guitar. Norman later took over the saxophone and percussion. School friends Kemp and Norman attended Dame Alice Owen's School in Islington, London. They shared an interest in music and wanted to start a band. They were later joined by classmate John Keeble, who had met Norman when he was storing his drums in the school's music room. The three met regularly for rehearsals during lunch breaks. After Keeble, bassist Michael Ellison joined the band. Tony Hadley , a friend of Norman's, took over the vocals and completed the quintet. They mostly played cover versions of the Rolling Stones or the Kinks .

After a few months Michael Ellison was replaced on bass by Richard Miller, until Gary Kemp's brother Martin joined the band a few years later and took over the role of bassist. At that time the group had already had some live experience. Steve Dagger, a mutual friend of the band members, has been asked by Gary Kemp and Norman to take over management. Dagger quickly became an integral part of the beginning and enduring success. The band renamed themselves first The Makers, later The Cut and then The Gentry.

Success as Spandau Ballet

In 1979 they finally changed the name to Spandau Ballet. The journalist Robert Elms, who was friends with the band and wrote for the British fashion magazine The Face , saw this name on the wall of a toilet in a Berlin nightclub in connection with the Spandau war crimes prison in Berlin-Spandau . Another explanation for the name is the adoption of a sarcastic military term from WWI. Allied soldiers called the movements of corpses that were hit by German Spandau machine guns hanging in the barbed wire of the trench systems "Spandau Ballet". The renaming did not conceal a political approach, on the contrary, the group was emphatically apolitical at the beginning of its career. The style of music switched to electronic when the band members frequently visited the London club scene around “Sally's” and “Blitz”, where they came into contact with the music of Kraftwerk and Telex . In the "Blitz", the fashion movement of the New Romantics was born, who initially called themselves Blitz-Kids.

Spandau Ballet was one of the first bands in this music and fashion movement. The band, which was able to perform there at the beginning of their career thanks to the contacts with the hip clubs, quickly gained a large local fan base. The band's first appearances were targeted by word of mouth in clubs, without inviting the music press or interested record companies and to anger the "rockists", such as the appearance at the Scala Kino in March 1980. Dagger also did not send any demo tapes of the band and influenced the reviews the music press through targeted information. So he sent Robert Elms with a review for the NME and Barry Cain for the Record Mirror . After the half-hour documentary 20th Century Box was broadcast for the private channel London Weekend, several major record labels tried to get a contract after only eight appearances by the band. For Spandau Ballet, only CBS and Chrysalis were shortlisted. Chrysalis offered a stake of 14% instead of the usual 8% and won the bid.

With the signing of the record deal in April 1980 the success came very quickly. The first single To Cut a Long Story Short made it into the UK charts just two weeks after its release in November 1980 and reached number 5, as did their first LP Journeys to Glory (1981), which was released just ten days after the studio recordings . The albums Journeys to Glory and Diamond (1982) were produced by electronics tinkerer Richard James Burgess , who was also involved in the sound of the band Visage , who are also part of the New Romantics. Burgess also coined the term "New Romantics".

With the album True, produced in the spring of 1983 by Tony Swain and Steve Jolley, and the single of the same name, which both reached the top of the charts in Great Britain, the long-awaited success across the Atlantic and in Asia set in. Swain and Jolley changed the band's sound from the synthesizers that are obligatory for new romantic bands to soulful pop, which was dominated by Hadley's voice. The top 10 albums Parade (1984) and Through the Barricades (1986) followed. In Great Britain alone they were able to get ten singles into the top ten of the charts, in addition to the aforementioned also Musclebound / Glow , Chant No. 1 (Don't Need This Pressure On) , Instinction , Lifeline , Gold , Only When You Leave , I'll Fly for You and Through the Barricades .

At the end of 1984 the band was involved in the recording of the band-aid single Do They Know It's Christmas? and took part in Bob Geldof's Live Aid project in 1985. They performed there at London's Wembley Stadium .

With the release of the record Heart Like a Sky in the late summer of 1989, the success began to crumble. It flopped by its standards. After internal disagreements, some of which were also carried out in court, they went their separate ways the following year.

Separate ways and reunion

Tony Hadley released his first solo record in the spring of 1992, and the Kemp brothers dedicated themselves to their acting careers. In 1991 they received very good reviews for their participation in the film The Krays .

Gary Kemp played a supporting role in the 1992 film Bodyguard , and Martin Kemp appeared in the British soap opera EastEnders .

By the late 1980s, when the New Romantic wave had ebbed, Gary Kemp remembered his childhood in London's East End and the working class he came from. He took part in the “Red Wedge” project, which was launched by Paul Weller and aimed to encourage young people to become interested in and get involved in (social democratic) politics.

In March 2009, the original line-up of Spandau Ballet announced their comeback and on October 13th, 2009 in Dublin for the first time on stage together again after almost 20 years . For the album Once More , which was released in autumn 2009 , many old hits were recorded with a new arrangement. The world tour also took the band to Munich, Berlin and Düsseldorf in March 2010.

On July 31, 2014, the band announced on their website that they were working on a new album with British music producer Trevor Horn .

In July 2017, Hadley announced his exit from the band on Twitter.

Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)				Remarks
		DE	CH	UK	US
1981	Journeys to Glory	-	-	UK5 gold (29 weeks)UK	-	First published: March 6, 1981
1982	Diamond	-	-	UK15th gold (17 weeks)UK	-	First published: March 5, 1982
1983	True	DE8th gold (42 weeks)DE	-	UK1 platinum (90 weeks)UK	US21 (4 weeks) US	First published: March 4, 1983
1984	parade	DE7 (19 weeks) DE	CH9 (9 weeks) CH	UK2 platinum (39 weeks)UK	US50 (16 weeks) US	First published: May 25, 1984
1986	Through the Barricades	DE9 (23 weeks) DE	CH25 (1 week) CH	UK7th platinum (19 weeks)UK	-	First published: November 21, 1986
1989	Heart Like a Sky	DE29 (11 weeks) DE	-	UK31 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: September 23, 1989
2009	Once more	DE30 (3 weeks) DE	-	UK7th silver (5 weeks)UK	-	First published: October 19, 2009

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

Live albums

• 2005: Live from the NEC (2 CDs)

Compilations

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)				Remarks
		DE	CH	UK	US
1985	The Singles Collection	-	-	UK3 × 2 Double platinum (54 weeks)UK	-	First published: November 4, 1985
1991	The best of Spandau Ballet	-	-	UK44 silver (3 weeks)UK	-	First published: September 16, 1991
2000	Gold - The Best of Spandau Ballet	-	-	UK7th platinum (30 weeks)UK	-	First published: September 4, 2000
2014	The Story - The Very Best of Spandau Ballet	-	-	UK8th gold (14 weeks)UK	-	First published: October 10, 2014

More compilations

• 1986: The Twelve Inch Mixes
• 1989: The Best Of
• 1994: Greatest Hits
• 1996: The Best of Spandau Ballet
• 1997: The Collection
• 2002: Reformation
• 2003: The Collection II
• 2005: The Essential
• 2012: The Albums 1980–84 (box with 4 CDs)

Singles

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)				Remarks
		DE	CH	UK	US
1980	To Cut a Long Story Short Journeys to Glory	-	-	UK5 silver (11 weeks)UK	-	First published: November 3, 1980
1981	The Freeze Journeys to Glory	-	-	UK17 (8 weeks) UK	-	First published: January 12, 1981
	Musclebound Journeys to Glory	-	-	UK10 (10 weeks) UK	-	First published: March 23, 1981
	Chant No. 1 (I Don't Need This Pressure On) Diamond	-	-	UK3 silver (11 weeks)UK	-	First published: July 6, 1981
	Paint Me Down Diamond	-	-	UK30 (5 weeks) UK	-	First published: November 2, 1981
1982	She Loved Like Diamond Diamond	-	-	UK49 (4 weeks) UK	-	First published: January 11, 1982
	Instinction Diamond	-	-	UK10 (10 weeks) UK	-	First published: March 29, 1982
	Lifeline True	-	-	UK7 (9 weeks) UK	-	First published: September 20, 1982
1983	Communication True	-	-	UK12 (10 weeks) UK	US59 (7 weeks) US	First published: January 31, 1983
	True True	DE9 (17 weeks) DE	CH5 (7 weeks) CH	UK1 gold (15 weeks)UK	US4 (18 weeks) US	First published: April 11, 1983
	Gold True	DE16 (16 weeks) DE	-	UK2 gold (9 weeks)UK	US29 (12 weeks) US	First published: August 1, 1983
	Pleasure True	DE61 (6 weeks) DE	-	-	-	First published: November 1983
1984	Only When You Leave Parade	DE26 (12 weeks) DE	CH20 (7 weeks) CH	UK3 (13 weeks) UK	US34 (12 weeks) US	First published: May 18, 1984
	I'll Fly for You Parade	-	-	UK9 (12 weeks) UK	-	First published: August 13, 1984
	Highly Strung Parade	-	-	UK15 (8 weeks) UK	-	First published: October 8, 1984
	Round and Round Parade	-	-	UK18 (8 weeks) UK	-	First published: November 26, 1984
1986	Fight for Ourselves Through the Barricades	DE32 (10 weeks) DE	CH23 (5 weeks) CH	UK15 (7 weeks) UK	-	First published: July 14, 1986
	Through the Barricades, Through the Barricades	DE14 (13 weeks) DE	-	UK6 (10 weeks) UK	-	First published: October 27, 1986
1987	How Many Lies? Through the Barricades	-	-	UK34 (4 weeks) UK	-	First published: February 2, 1987
1988	Raw Heart Like a Sky	-	-	UK47 (3 weeks) UK	-	First published: August 22, 1988
1989	Be Free with Your Love Heart Like a Sky	DE52 (13 weeks) DE	-	UK42 (4 weeks) UK	-	First published: August 14, 1989
	Empty Spaces Heart Like a Sky	-	-	UK94 (2 weeks) UK	-	First published: November 13, 1989
1990	Crashed into Love Heart Like a Sky	-	-	UK96 (2 weeks) UK	-	First published: February 12, 1990
2009	Once more, once more	-	-	UK82 (1 week) UK	-	First published: October 19, 2009

More singles

• 1985: The Smash Hits Interview ( Flexi )
• 1987: To Cut a Long Story Short
• 2000: Gold (The Sun Mixes)
• 2014: This Is the Love (release: October 3rd)
• 2015: Gold (Live 1983)

Video albums

• 1981: The Video Collection
• 1987: Over Britain - Live in London!
• 1990: Live
• 1991: The Best of Spandau Ballet
• 2004: Live from the NEC
• 2009: The Reformation Tour 2009: Live at the O2 (UK:gold)
• 2014: Soul Boys of the Western World

Awards for music sales

Golden record

•  Canada
  • 1983: for the single True
•  Netherlands
  • 1986: for the album Through the Barricades
•  Spain
  • 1983: for the album True
  • 1987: for the album Through the Barricades
  • 1990: for the album Heart Like a Sky
  • 2001: for the album Gold - The Best of Spandau Ballet

Platinum record

•  Canada
  • 1983: for the album Spandau Ballet
•  Netherlands
  • 1983: for the album True
  • 1984: for the album Parade

Note: Awards in countries from the chart tables or chart boxes can be found in these.

Country / Region	silver	gold	platinum	Sales	swell
Awards for music sales (country / region, awards, sales, sources)
Germany (BVMI)	-	gold1	-	250,000	musikindustrie.de
Canada (MC)	-	gold1	platinum1	150,000	musiccanada.com
Netherlands (NVPI)	-	gold1	2 × platinum2	250,000	nvpi.nl
Spain (Promusicae)	-	4 × gold4th	-	200,000	Sólo éxitos: año año, 1959-2002
United Kingdom (BPI)	4 × silver4th	6 × gold6th	6 × platinum6th	3,695,000	bpi.co.uk
All in all	4 × silver4th	13 × gold13	9 × platinum9

literature

• Martin Kemp: True - The Autobiography of Martin Kemp . Orion, London 2000, ISBN 0-7528-3769-9 .
• Tony Hadley: To Cut a Long Story Short - An Autobiography . Sigdwick & Jackson, London 2004, ISBN 0-283-07386-1 .
• Gary Kemp: I Know This Much; From Soho to Spandau . Forth Estate, London 2009, ISBN 0-00-732330-1 .

swell

1. ↑ http://www.boredteenagers.co.uk/MAKERS.htm
2. ^ Warlord Games (2016). Bolt Action: Armies of Germany: 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury. p. 33. ISBN 147281780X .
3. ↑ Spandau Ballet, the Blitz kids and the birth of the New Romantics. In: www.guardian.co.uk. October 4, 2009, accessed October 1, 2010 . 
4. ^ FASHION / The British supermarket of style. In: www.independent.co.uk. Retrieved October 1, 2010 . 
5. ↑ https://www.rollingstone.de/heul-tony-hadley-verlaesst-spandau-ballet-1275035/
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Chart sources: DE CH UK US

Web links

• Official website
• Spandau Ballet at Allmusic (English)
• Spandau Ballet at Discogs (English)
• Spandau Ballet at laut.de