Gary Kemp: ‘Spandau Ballet are never getting back together’

"I’m so glad to say it’s over!” says Gary Kemp, confirming the demise of Spandau Ballet with a palpable release of tension. “We have no creative energy together, the lead protagonists have no communication, it’s just a lie. So it’s over. It’s over. We are never going to get back together.”

The 61-year-old songwriter and multi-instrumentalist is about to release his first solo album in 26 years. Entitled INSOLO, it is an intricate, mature and soulful piece of work, which blends his melodic songcraft with luscious arrangements reminiscent of 70s prog rock stylists like Steely Dan and Pink Floyd.

“It’s not all just saxophone solos and suits,” he jokes. “I can’t sing like Tony Hadley, of course I can’t. But you’ve got a direct feed from my brain and heart and soul into your ears. There’s no middleman. No third party.”

But first, Kemp has to lay to rest his original swashbuckling band of New Romantics, who formed in 1979, scored a series of huge hits in the 80s, before turning into something of a soap opera of break-ups, lawsuits and unlikely reformations. In 2017, singer Tony Hadley departed, under disputed circumstances (he resigned, but hints that he was effectively forced out). Spandau Ballet recruited a new singer, the unknown Ross William Wild, for a series of gigs in 2019. But plans for an album petered out, Wild quit, and bassist Martin Kemp (Gary’s younger brother) said Spandau would not return “until Tony comes back.”

For his part, Hadley told me earlier this year there was no chance of that happening, saying, “It was great while it lasted, but certain actions were taken against me, and this is the consequence. The lead singer has left the band.” He also insisted no one had ever told the truth about the break-up.

“Tony was never kicked out of the band,” says Kemp. “But everyone wants to colour it their own way. There’s versions of the truth that are different from both sides, and they’re all the truth, maybe.” He says the band was forced to turn down major concert and recording opportunities because Hadley preferred to focus on his solo career. “A lot of people felt they were left high and dry,” he adds.

And he admits that, after Hadley’s departure, Spandau tried to recruit another famous singer who pulled out just as they were about to go into rehearsals. Kemp declines to reveal who, although there have been rumours it was Seal, which would certainly have been interesting. “Then we ended up with the wrong person. The whole thing was just wrong,” he says.

He also admits he has a tendency to hold on to things too long. “It’s a bit like when my first marriage collapsed, it took me a long time to get over it. But imagine if you walked into an office at the age of 21, and there’s four other blokes in the room, and someone says, ‘Oh, by the way, this is your only job and you’re going to have to spend the rest of your lives together.’ It’s a weird idea. Why would anyone want to be in a band forever?”

Kemp lives in a central London square, in an 18th Century neoclassical house, with his second wife, costume designer Lauren Barber, 42, and three sons, Milo (16), Kit (12) and Rex (9). He also has a son Finlay (29) from his first marriage to actress Sadie Frost (who went on to marry Jude Law). It’s a beautifully decorated space, filled with Victorian antiquities and paintings that Kemp collects, and has a Steinway piano in a front room, where he composes.

He cites family as a principal reason he has not been more musically prolific. “We’re trying to create decent human beings, and you can’t be on tour for that,” he says. But, alongside his parenting duties, he has found time to develop a second career as an actor, particularly focussing on theatre work (Kemp has appeared in three Harold Pinter plays directed by Jamie Lloyd). “It’s the most nerve-wracking thing you can ever do in your life,” he says. “Even the most seasoned actors are s----ing bricks before they go on. It’s like jumping into cold water. But you know you’re going to feel great after you come out.” Plus, he notes “I can walk to the West End and back, and see my children any time.”

Films and TV interest him less, although last year he starred with brother Martin in a mockumentary, The Kemps: All True, as comically exaggerated versions of themselves struggling to record an album. A follow up is in the works. “It was a lot of fun sticking a pin in my pretensions.” And he remains proud of his breakthrough with Martin in 1990 gangster biopic The Krays, though admits he has never watched 2015’s Legend, in which Tom Hardy played both Kray twins to great acclaim. “I’d only get bitter and twisted.”

Plans for the new solo album started to formulate after playing with Saucerful of Secrets, a band formed by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason in 2018 to recreate early Floyd material. It was a chance to show off his instrumental prowess and rekindled his own creative juices.

“There was suddenly just an outpouring,” he says, and one that was not tempered by the obligation to write for Hadley’s voice.

“Every time I’d go to the piano, I’d think here’s a little tune that might work for him. But when you’re writing for someone else, you never want to give them anything too personal. I had the realisation that I don’t need to make anything up, I don’t need to lie. I’ve experienced grief, divorce, ups and downs, bereavement. I found that really unblocking, to realise I could write my own story.”

Among INSOLO’s tracks are two complex, lyrically revealing songs about ageing (I Am The Past, I Remember You) and he confesses he had jitters about turning 60 in October 2019. “It’s a big thing. You suddenly realise there’s more behind you than ahead. My wife’s younger than me, we’ve been together 21 years, but she never knew me when I was my strongest self, the guy who was fleet of foot, who had the power. That was on my mind and this question of ‘What’s my position in the world now, if I’m not that guy anymore?’”

He has a notion that he wrote himself out of a crisis. “It was like sitting down with a therapist. There were revelations as the words came onto a page.”

One song, Waiting For The Band, really “solved something for me.” It is a multi-part epic drawing on his memories of seeing Bowie at the Marquee in 1973 when Kemp was just 14 years old. It is luxuriously arranged, evoking such Seventies heroes as Wings in the harmonies, the complex chords of Todd Rundgren, the daring pop structures of 10CC, with a beat blatantly borrowed from Bowie himself. But it also joins the dots to a time when Spandau Ballet were the band other fans might be waiting to see. “It gave me some relief to think that that young man is still in me, he’s not dead. I’m still full of enthusiasm for music, and this album proves it.”

Gary Kemp’s INSOLO is out now