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| Sunday Express Interview 2 |
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| It was a frightening experience, says Gary Kemp. “I was potentially going to lose everything, not only what I had then but what I would have had in the future. It was disappointing because I had given so much time and energy and love to this thing that I was very proud of. It’s like having your children attacking you. It shouldn’t have happened but I felt confident that I would win. It’s funny how different people have a different version of history and it takes a bewigged gentleman to work out who is right. I’m sure Tony and John were convinced they were right, too.” In the end, the bewigged gentleman came down on the side of the songwriter, but Kemp didn’t rejoice in victory. “I do think every songwriter in the world breathed a sigh of relief, otherwise every drummer in every band who’s ever played on a record would have claimed to have written the song.” The court case was a far cry from the songwriter’s modest beginnings. He was born in 1959 in Islington, north London, and was brought up in a large Victorian house with much of his extended family. “Our family were on the middle floor, my aunt and uncle and cousins on the top floor, another cousin and her children at the bottom. When someone left, my dad would simply invite another member of the family to live with us. We all shared one outside loo and none of us had a bathroom.” His first real contact with music came at the age of 11. “My dad bought me a guitar which was a real cheese-cutter. I picked it up, played two or three chords and wrote a song. Then I wrote another one and rather precociously presented them to school at the end of the year.” Inevitably there is an arrogance about Kemp. But back then, there was also a fledgling songwriter waiting to be discovered. And that role fell to the most unlikely of people. “At the time, Trevor Huddlestone was the Bishop of Stepney. He was visiting the school for the end-of-year performance and heard my songs. Later he came around to my house to give me a cassette recorder – they’d only just come out. My mum and dad couldn’t believe it – a bishop coming in the house. I was sitting there watching Top Of The Pops with Rod Stewart singing Maggie May. The bishop was saying to me: ‘I will give you this cassette recorder if you promise to record everything you write and send it to me.’ My mum said: ‘Don’t watch the telly! Watch the bishop.’ But I had already made the connection that what they were doing on TV was what I was doing.” Kemp’s real inspiration was to better himself. “I didn’t really have an awareness I was talented, just a desire. Seeing David Bowie do Starman on Top Of The Pops - that was a place I wanted to go. It was outrageous, not mundane, not where I was living. But writing songs and music was my drive. I always liked to sit down and write. The second song I ever wrote was called Alone. My mother said: ‘Don’t play that to anyone because they’ll think you are.’ I was maudlin at the age of 11.” Depressed maybe, but already with a clear-sighted ambition. “I wanted to be in a group that sold a lot of records. The career options were not great for me and my brother. Our prospects were to follow our father into printing. I think the middle-class kids always want to be in an arty group, but the working-class ones just want to sell a lot of records.” And so he did – around 25 million at the last count, including the enduring ballad True, which he wrote while still living at home. “I remember I was sitting on my bed when I wrote True. Martin and I were travelling with the band but we didn’t have any cash to buy a flat. We were waiting for the first cheque to come in, even though we’d had two albums out. “I was 22, suffering from unrequited love, and the song just came. If you believe in the song you’re writing then the audience will pick that up. It was the classic ballad played at the school disco, the last slow dance of the evening.” But what every fan wants to know is, will Spandau ever reform? Unlike Hadley, Kemp is surprisingly positive about them getting back together. “Getting all five of us to agree to it at the same time would be an extraordinary event. But there is a sense that it would still be fun to go back on the road to see what it would be like.” And Mr Hadley? “I’d like to hold out the olive branch, but I’m never in contact with him. For me it would be a terrible shame if we didn’t do it. We might beat each other up, but there are only five people who can get together and play the music in the way it’s meant to be played. “It would be fantastic, but I don’t know whether it will ever happen.” |
| Continued |
| Published S2 magazine - Sunday Express 25 Aug 2002 |