True to his word, Spandau Ballet’s Tony Hadley is happy to keep the past alive

It was 1985 when I saw Spandau Ballet play at the Melbourne Entertainment Centre. In the back row, in the days before large screens, I couldn’t see the band at all, but that didn’t matter. I remember the shimmer of sound, the girls screaming around me and the dizzying longing.  My friends and I all had different favourites — some in the Kemp brothers’ camp, me crazy for Tony Hadley and the saxophone player, Steve Norman.

They were like exotic birds in their tartan and frills, eyeliner and coiffed hair; so different from the boys in Australia. I spent an afternoon standing outside their hotel, gazing up and wondering which room they were in, and if I could scale the wall to see them. But in a tragic twist of fate, it was my mum who caught a glimpse of them —as she drove past the hotel on the way somewhere else. She took some photos of the band that I still have — little consolation at the time. The world seemed cruel.

I confess to Tony Hadley that the first concert I attended as a 13-year-old, without a parent, was Spandau Ballet and he laughs. He remembers those wild days when the band were at the peak of their popularity as great fun. “Prior to that we toured Europe, and people now get on a plane, and they go everywhere, and you don’t even think about it,” he says. “But back in 1984, for five young lads from Islington, it was a massive, massive deal.”

For his latest Australian solo tour, Hadley is bringing the Fabulous TH band, which will be doing the “rock stuff” rather than the “swing stuff”, as he puts it. While many musicians tire of performing their big hits night after night, Hadley says it’s never been like that. “People say to me, ‘You’ve sung True, Gold a thousand times. Do you ever get bored of singing those songs?’ And I don’t. Number one, because they’re great songs. Number two, I love singing.”

When I ask his favourite Spandau Ballet song to perform, Hadley has no hesitation. He sees Through the Barricades as a Romeo and Juliet story about love across the Catholic/Protestant divide, set in Northern Ireland. “We live in a very fractious, fragmented world where we’re still bombing, killing each other, and all anybody wants is to live peacefully,” he says. “And yet, we’re still doing terrible things to each other. This is just such a beautiful song about coming together.”

For Hadley, the song has a personal connection too. “I only found out recently from my mum, she’s 93 now, that my granddad came from a Catholic background, my grandmother was Protestant Church of England and none of my grandfather’s family attended the wedding,” he says. “Who cares, for god’s sake? It’s just two people in love getting together; so sad, very sad.”

Hadley met the other members of Spandau Ballet when at secondary school, and they did the pub and club circuit, starting in the mid-1970s as a punk band. As music and fashion morphed from post-punk to new romantic, Spandau Ballet became house band at the legendary Blitz club where Midge Ure and David Bowie would visit. Boy George was the hat check boy at the cloakroom. “There were a lot of very clever people that came out of there: journalists, designers, musicians,” Hadley says. “I think there’s been a little bit of a misconception that it was like the Bloomsbury mob, sitting around talking about Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre and Freud — no, it wasn’t like that at all. It was basically a load of people dressing up and pulling birds, or boys, whatever you wanted.” He grins.

Hadley tells a story in his memoir, To Cut a Long Story Short, about his grandfather refusing to sit next to him on the train because of his outlandish outfit. Was he out for a reaction? “I think we’ve always wanted to stand out,” he says. He reels off punk, hippiedom, glam rock as youth culture rebelling against parents and the establishment. “We wanted those men in suits to go ‘how disgusting’ … I enjoyed the fact I looked ridiculous … we’ve lost a lot of that, we’ve become so conservative and homogenised. It’s ridiculous.”

For Hadley, the most important thing has always been the connection with audiences. He says choosing songs for his shows is difficult, but he wants to give people the oldies they want, while singing songs from his solo career as well. “I’ve seen artists like David Bowie, who are not going to sing the songs they’re popular for.” But Hadley is always happy to do the back catalogue. “I’ve seen bands deny their legacy, and it’s suicidal — people will walk out, go to the bar,” he says. “I never want to do that.”

He always includes a Queen song, too. He remains a massive Queen fan, and “Freddie was a great mate”. In his memoir, he relays a memorable gig in New Zealand where he spent many hours with Mercury before appearing on stage to do a random Elvis number. The details remain blurry at best. “I don’t embroider it too much because me and Freddy were very, very drunk. But we had a great time. It was a brilliant moment.”

In person, Hadley is often disarmingly honest. He laughs easily and is self-deprecating. He says he feels he has always been different in some way. “If they diagnosed ADHD or OCD or whatever 50 years ago, then I would’ve probably qualified for every tick box they had … I think about something and then all of a sudden, I’ve gone off on a tangent, which drives my wife bloody mad,” he says.

Much has been documented about conflict within Spandau Ballet which saw Hadley involved in a High Court legal dispute with Gary Kemp over the ownership and royalties of the band’s songs. While he still enjoys singing Spandau songs and remembers when playing in the band was fun and incredible, “there were times when — have you ever seen the documentary about Metallica? — there’s the bit when James Hetfield is sitting there with his head in hands,” he says. “It came to such a [point] that I went, ‘F--- this, I’m out of here. I can’t do this any more.’ Ego and greed and possession got in the way of making good music.”

Working with his Fabulous TH band — Tim Bye, Tim Sandiford, Phil Williams, Adam Wakeman, Hayley Cramer — everything’s easy. “They’re really incredible musicians and I don’t have to tell them anything, they’re grown-ups,” he says. “We all take responsibility for our own role within the band, and that’s the way it should be. But unfortunately, sometimes, especially within a band like Spandau Ballet, it wasn’t.”

For a moment though, in the 1980s, Tony Hadley was the face, and voice of the New Romantic era, and he still has fond memories of the band’s peak, and their hits. “When you sing True, I can’t tell you how many people I meet that have said, ‘Oh, that was our wedding song’, ‘That was our love song’, ‘That was my first-kiss song.’

“Music’s all about memories. And that’s what it’s designed to do. So I think … if you deny people’s memories, that’s really daft.”

Tony Hadley and the Fabulous TH Band play The Star, Gold Coast, March 10; Fortitude Valley Music Hall, Brisbane, March 11; Enmore Theatre Sydney, March 12; The Palais Theatre on March 14 and Royal Theatre, Castlemaine, March 15. AEC Theatre, Adelaide, March 18; Astor Theatre, Perth, March 20 and 21.