News

40th Anniversary: Spandau Ballet and The Arista Demos, August, 1980

Tue, October 13, 2020

Negotiations with our suitors, the record companies dragged through August 1980. In a world with no mobile phones, no email, no fax, no Zoom, everything was done by landline phones, physical meetings, and letters. If someone was away on holiday, they were away. And because of the scale of the deal, every time anyone wanted to change their position they had to get the director’s approval etc. But we were, despite this, in a great position.

However, one of our target record companies hadn’t been able to make it to the HMS Belfast. This was Arista, at that time one of the hottest boutique labels in the UK. Bryan Morrison, who desperately wanted to sign our publishing, tipped them off about the band, but their star A&R man, Tarquin Gotch, was away on holiday in the South of France (ironically) at the time of the show.

Nevertheless, Gary and I went to see them at their offices in Mayfair. We went to lunch with Tarquin and he was charming, funny and very bright (he went on to be a very successful record executive, manager, and film producer, working with John Hughes in LA and producing “Home Alone”, amongst other things. We are still friends today,40 years on). We met Charles Levison, the MD /CEO who was also charming and had a great reputation. Simon Potts, another A&R man played us “Funkin For Jamaica“ by Tom Browne, which he had just signed, which we loved. The whole industry agreed they had a very hot promotion department and had done very well breaking new bands recently including Secret Affair and The Beat. Like Chrysalis it wasn’t too big that you could get overlooked. But they hadn’t seen the band. Even with every other record company in London bidding for our services, we wanted the choice of ALL of them. It was very annoying.

We couldn’t put on another event. Martin Kemp was very ill with hepatitis, probably contracted in St.Tropez. Against our better judgment, I invited Tarquin to a rehearsal at Haligans rehearsal room in Holloway Road which Martin could just about manage. It was so anti-septic, dry, and boring by comparison to everything else we had done. Of course, he liked the band but for that size of a deal and having missed all the excitement of the shows and the 20th Century Box broadcast, he asked if we wouldn’t mind demoing? That confirmed to me we had taken the right approach with everyone else resisting this sort thing. But we thought while we were still negotiating with the others, why not do the demos? Besides,the idea of getting in a studio to record the new songs for the first time was quite exciting. So on 31st August 1980 Spandau Ballet went into Pathway Studios in Hackney, a small scruffy studio,best known as the place that Dire Straits recorded “Sultans of Swing“and demoed “To Cut a Long Story Short”, ”The Freeze”, ”Confused“ and “Reformation” with Arista Records picking up the tab and with Steve Norman deputising on bass guitar for the by now, yellow ,Martin Kemp.

***October 2020***