Spandau Ballet: inside the messiest break-up in pop history

Tony Hadley’s post-Spandau Ballet career is well-documented on his Twitter feed. He has played regional festivals with nostalgic line-ups, some of which happen to have his own IPA on tap. But on Monday afternoon this chipper flurry of updates was interrupted by a rather more formal post: “I am no longer a member of the band Spandau Ballet & will not be performing with the band in the future”.

While Spandau Ballet haven’t performed since 2015 – an unlikely reunion in itself – and haven’t managed a top 10 hit since 2009 – an even more unthinkable return – this was the clearest sign of the band's demise yet. It’s a remarkable feat in itself, given that the New Romantics, one of the most popular bands of the Eighties with 25 million album sales and 10 Top 10 singles, suffered the most acrimonious split in pop history.

Hadley’s mysterious post summoned another, from his remaining bandmates, Gary Kemp, Steve Norman, John Keeble and Martin Kemp, who had formed the group as schoolmates in the mid-Seventies:

“Much to our frustration, Tony had made it clear in September 2016 that he didn't want to work with the band anymore. This has not changed and 2015 was the last time we were able to perform or work with him. So we have now made the decision to move on as a band.”

As Spandau Ballet’s future hangs in the balance, the group and their fans can’t help but cast their minds back to the late-Nineties, when the band dissolved during weeks of High Court wranglings over which one of them had actually written hits such as True, Gold and Through The Barricades.

This was the bitter climax of nearly two decades when the warring factions in the band: Hadley, Keeble and Norman versus songwriter Gary Kemp – and, by extension, his brother Martin – didn’t speak. Here’s how it unfolded.

‘We had an arrangement between ourselves, and we were schoolmates’

Spandau Ballet’s formation is one that has gone down in pop group lore. The boys, who with the exception of Keeble, had been raised in working class homes in north and east London, came together after Norman and Gary Kemp met at school in Islington.

They gigged under various guises, and genres, during the late Seventies until a record label bidding war resulted in a contract in 1980, and their first hit single, To Cut A Long Story Short.

But their new-found fame didn’t come with paperwork. As Keeble told The Guardian hours after losing his case against Kemp, the band operated on a verbal agreement made during Spandau Ballet’s infancy:

“We had an arrangement between ourselves, and we were schoolmates. We weren't cynical, we just did things on trust. Besides, we were playing in the Hope and Anchor, in small pubs at that time. The idea of sorting out a serious contract didn't cross our minds.”

Hadley, who had grown up in a council flat, had been raised by his parents to “always be a man of his word” – he trusted his school friend enough to never get the agreement in writing.

Somewhere within the ruffled blouses and screaming crowds, memory, fame and avarice entwined and blurred the details of that agreement, which Keeble’s lawyer (who also represented Hadley and Norman), claimed was made before their record contract was signed in 1980.

In 1999, when it became subject of a 23-day trial, Andrew Sutcliffe, who was representing the trio, explained it:

“They all say that Gary Kemp agreed from the early stage of the discussions that it was fair that all the members of the band should have some share of the publishing royalties despite the fact that he wrote the lyrics, music and basic chord structure of all the songs."

According to Sutcliffe, Kemp had told the band that they, along with Steve Dagger, the manager responsible for Spandau’s success, would share half of the publishing royalties. The other 50 per cent would go to the songwriter. Kemp is credited as the songwriter on all of the band’s biggest hits.

Kemp had come to court to reject the claims that he did not write Spandau Ballet’s hits, and that he agreed to part ways with some of his future income. “This is just not true,” he said in a statement before the hearing in January 1999. “I am vigorously defending this claim”.

‘We were quite smug – we thought we could sort it out ourselves’

Kemp had, however, been subsidising the band members’ ways with his songwriting royalties for several years during their heyday. Kemp had his royalties paid into his own company, Reformation, and distributed half of these into Marbelow, a company owned by the band. Until 1987, half of Kemp’s royalties were paid into Marbelow. But then that tap ran dry.

It took Hadley about six years to notice, he told The Guardian. He told the court that he had always been bad at maths: “I would just go ‘Wow, lots of figures’, and sign forms. I was in a desperate financial situation.”

Without really realising, Hadley had become dependent on Kemp’s handouts. Although Spandau Ballet never publicly split, when the band stopped producing music in 1990, Hadley embarked on a doomed solo career. It cost him: by 1993 he had been forced to sell his home to clear a £50,000 overdraft.

Kemp, Dagger attested, had been keeping the band in royalties out of generosity. The man himself told the judge that he felt the flow of cash “would avoid friction with the rest of the group and the money was needed to keep the band going.”

Sutcliffe relied on Keeble’s teenage diaries for evidence, and they clearly show how the band’s youthful sharing became a legal nightmare: they celebrated small successes by buying a synthesiser, before heading out to New Romantic hang-out the Blitz Club. They split their wages among themselves.

Their amicability, even at the peak of fame, was something Spandau were proud of. “We were quite smug we thought we could sort it out ourselves,” Hadley said. “People used to comment that it was rare to find a band that was as genuinely close as we were.”

Through the Barricades

Problems arose when the Kemp brothers started to find the spotlight elsewhere. In May 1988, cardboard cut-outs of Gary and Martin Kemp were propped beneath the balconies of the Grand Hotel in Cannes during the film festival: dressed as Ronnie and Reggie Kray, the pair had landed their first major film role in an anticipated thriller from David Drury. Filming started later that year.  

The Kemps nascent movie careers collided with recording troubles within the band. Spandau Ballet had swapped labels, in 1986, to CBS Records. While the move saw the release of Through the Barricades, a top 10 album which produced their last ever top 10 single – the title track – it also spelled the beginning of the end for their success. The group didn’t release another album until 1989, after releasing a couple of songs which barely scraped the Top 40.

While Heart Like a Sky was almost entirely written by Kemp, the songwriting Midas had lost his touch. The album flopped in the UK, and wasn’t even released in the States. Within months of its release, Martin Kemp had taken a role in EastEnders, and the group quietly disbanded.  

‘Sadly they have comprehensively fallen out now’

It’s not entirely clear when Hadley, Keeble and Norman decided to take their plea for Kemp’s royalties to court, but it was, the trio claim, a last resort.

“We did try to sort out the whole thing amicably many, many times” Hadley said after the verdict had been delivered.

“In my heart of hearts I was hoping that someone would tap me on the shoulder just before the court door opened and say, ‘Come on lads this is stupid; let's go out to the pub, let's have a drink and sort it out.’ But it didn't happen. I don't think anyone can take pleasure in going to court to fight it out with their old best mates.”

If the Kemps had started to build a wall between them and the rest of the group, by the mid-Nineties it was several feet high. In 2009, Keeble told The Financial Times that he hadn’t really seen Gary for 15 years. After growing up and performing in each other’s pockets, Spandau Ballet had finally drifted apart.

They were brought back together in court, the first time some of them had spoken in years, and it was under oath. The first reports about the case came to light at the end of January, 1999, several years after Hadley’s solo career had crumpled. Mr Justice Park delivered his verdict three months later, on April 30: Keeble, Norman and Hadley’s bid had “failed in its entirety".

Evidence was drawn out of the bandmates and others, such as Dagger, in an attempt to establish who held what rights to royalties. Norman, whose main contribution to Spandau Ballet’s songcraft were saxophone solos, would recall, a decade later, how “character-building” the humiliation of having his input discredited at court was.

Martin, for the most part, was kept out of proceedings, although his control over the band was raised as evidence by Kemp. “My brother Martin dominated the way we looked,” he told the court. “There were many, many arguments, particularly towards Tony, feeling that he wasn’t looking right or pulling his weight on that side of things.”

But there was unmistakable kindness from all. Even while Kemp was defending his royalties, knowing the outcome would cost his school friends tens of thousands of pounds, he couldn’t help but credit their artistry: “People made some suggestions for free-form solos, particularly Steve, who was the most instinctive musician among us. But I would come up with a full song. The songs, the melody, the lyrics all came from me,” he told the judge.

Park noticed this, too. “Sadly they have comprehensively fallen out now, but to me a heartening feature of the evidence was how they remained committed admirers and defenders of each other’s artistic qualities,” he said in the verdict. It can barely have softened the blow: Hadley, Keeble and Norman walked away with legal bills of £200,000 a piece – a big price to pay for claimants hoping for a £25,000-a-year salary from royalties to look after their growing families.

‘I never want to go through that again’

After a decade in the media wilderness, Spandau Ballet were making headlines again. They had buried the hatchet, agreed never to mention their court case again and were about to embark on a new album release and accompanying tour.

This wasn’t the first time a reunion had been mooted. Hadley, Keeble and Norman had signed a contract to tour as HNK, an “ex-Spandau Ballet” group which would play their greatest hits, shortly after the failed court case, namely as a means to raise the legal fees. But the Kemps refused to let the trio use the original band’s name, and the arrangement fell by the wayside.

In 2009, though, it was the real deal. Hadley, convinced by his children, had decided to try again. Martin Kemp, who had previously written about the sadness of watching his friends battle his brother in court, had suffered, and recovered from a brain tumour. Gary, who had, bizarrely, experienced the same condition, had been given the silent treatment for nearly two decades. He had begun to wonder if being in Spandau Ballet was merely part of his imagination.

The court case was painted in a fresh light: an essential obstacle to overcome that gave credit where it was due (Norman later said that he felt more respected within the band second time around) and encouraged Kemp to appreciate the need for collaboration in Spandau Ballet. For Hadley, it was a cautionary tale to never be repeated: “I never want to go through that again, I’m getting that churning feeling in my stomach just thinking about it, and it’s a shame it ever got to that point.”

‘Would we ever get back in the years to come?’

Six years later, Spandau Ballet reunited again. But, as the group’s statement yesterday made clear, the honeymoon was not to last: within a year, Hadley would be out again, and this time, of his own volition.

Few details have been shed on what has happened in the Spandau Camp this time around. Their representatives won’t speak of another tour or project, and hours after Hadley posted the statement of his departure, his Twitter feed was back in action, thanking the crowd at Windsor racecourse on Sunday: “What a beautiful day”.

In 2001, Martin Kemp wrote that his sadness over the court case wasn’t merely due to the fall-out of his friends, but because of the “closing the Spandau book”.

“Would there be a Spandau reunion at some point?,” he asked. “Would we ever get back in the years to come and play a couple of shows or even to make the odd record? After this, the answer is definitely no.”

Kemp was proven wrong just seven years after his autobiography was published. Now, without Hadley, his prediction seems more prescient.