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40th Anniversary: Spandau Ballet in St.Tropez - July, 1980

Fri, July 31, 2020

July 1980 was a hugely important month for Spandau Ballet, a fantastic upside-down loop in the roller coaster we were riding that year.

St.Tropez

The phone had rung in my family council flat in early June 1980, and a man wanted to speak to the manager of Spandau Ballet. He asked if the band would be interested in going to St.Tropez to play in the Papagayo Club for a 2-week residency. By now, I had become quite used to dealing with record companies, TV documentary producers, national newspapers, and even Radio 1 and sounding nonchalant. Spandau had become in 6months the most exiting un-signed band in the UK. But this threw me.

”St.Tropez? You mean you want Spandau Ballet to play in St.Tropez?”

I wanted confirmation he had said it. Yes, that’s right. He had heard all about the band and the manager of the club was a friend of his and they wanted to book the band. I was stunned.

In 1980 St.Tropez was not a place that the English working classes visited or even thought that you could visit. It seemed impossible to reach or gain entry to. Would you be allowed in? Was it even a real place? Did it exist only in films, magazines, and TV shows? Where exactly was it ?

Since the 1950s St.Tropez had been renowned internationally as the haunt of the Jet- Set, the beautiful people, the chic, the glamourous, and the rich. Bridget Bardot rolled naked there on the smooth sand of the Bay of Pamplonne in “And God created Woman” and was wooed there by millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs dropping thousands of roses into her villa from a helicopter.It was not for the likes of us. Until now.

I tried to regain my composure.”It’s a long way, it would cost a lot to get there……”

They would pay our expenses and provide apartments to stay in, and of course, there was the fee.  We could go there AND they would pay us?! The news had exactly the same impact on the band members when I called them.

”St Tropez?How?What!! And they will pay us?.”

We all came from the same backgrounds, and this was a magical upgrade. This really did feel like our lives were starting to change. It also fitted perfectly into the band’s ethos of making all our performances events in exciting places. Going to St.Tropez was like us serving a notice of intent of where the band was going.It was super aspirational and totally unlike anything any dour, contemporary post-punk band would do. We wanted clear blue sea from that lot.

I wanted to make the most of it in terms of publicity, so invited Robert Elms to come with us to cover the trip for the then hugely influential NME of which by now, he was a contributor. We also took Graham Smith with us to take photographs and provide on the spot graphics when needed. Along with Simon Withers to operate our light show and some friends to act as road crew and along with all our equipment, we crammed into a minivan and drove to St.Tropez. It was hideously overloaded, so much so, that we could only get into it by climbing through the windows, but spirits were high despite the uncomfortable conditions. It was like a Blitz/new Romantic version of ‘Summer Holiday’.

The journey took longer than we thought, but despite a dramatic blown tyre incident at 70 miles an hour, with Tony Hadley at the wheel, to the soundtrack of “Ode to Joy”, on a narrow mountain road in Provence, we arrived in good spirits.

St Tropez didn’t disappoint. The only person any of us knew who had actually been there was Neil Spencer, then the editor of the NME. He told Robert Elms it was “like St.Ives ….with money”.I suppose that was right as a rough description, but it couldn’t prepare you for the sheer shock of how the other half lived in jet set 1980. The enormous yachts crammed into the small harbour , the exotic boutiques in the cobbled back streets, and the fabulous louche beach bars and restaurants dotted along the bay of Pampelonne , inhabited by beautiful, glamorous scantily clad people.

We loved it and despite the basic nature of the accommodation provided, we liked the Club. The Papagayo was situated right on the harbour and seemed to be the centre of St.Tropez and had a legendary status going back to the 1960s. It was very chic, and the molded metal wall coverings were dramatic and impressive. It had, like many clubs we were to both perform in and visit in that period been converted to ride the wave of the disco boom of the 70s which was now dramatically stalling. They were all looking for the next big thing to fill their rooms and dance floors.

Spandau Ballet looked great on the small stage, lit from below with their now signature film noir lighting, and, in their London new designer, Blitz chic, they definitely were not a disco band. Their look, age, and the sound were from tomorrow. Everyone involved with the club loved them. They had all been around the block enough times to recognise something cool, new, and exciting.

Our performances started on 1st July 1980, and both the club and the town were pretty quiet to start with, as the French holidays had not started in earnest. Playing every day was fantastic for the band, it was a chance to hone all the new material and tighten up and get used to performing to an audience every night. As the days went by and built towards Bastille Day Holiday, both the town and the club started to fill up. The band went down very well, people dancing, particularly teenagers. We started to create a stir. The local edition of Nice Martin reviewed us favorably and a holidaying record exec from CBS Sweeden came one night, liked what he saw, and said he would report back favorably to his London colleagues. In the second week, our ranks were swelled by our friend and budding photographer Neil Matthews and a friend of his who had driven from London in an epic journey on a motorbike.

We settled into a comfortable routine of performing our 4 half-hour sets in the club from midnight, and then afterward going downstairs to the club’s basement bar, Les Allonges, where a hugely talented mime/dance act from Paris, called Shaker performed. We all became great friends with them. They were definitely of the new sensibility and we were artistically kindred spirits. Then we would walk to the harbour as the light came up to get fresh croissants for breakfast before retiring to our by now somewhat overcrowded apartments to sleep. On waking up we would go to our beach bar of choice “Coco Beach “ to sunbathe and relax. Which was where one day London found us.

The phone rang at the bar and the barman shouted out “Is Steve Daeggeur here? He has a call”.

It was Stewart Slater, head of A+R at Chrysalis Records. He and a colleague had been to ITV to see our as yet to be broadcast documentary on the band. They were very impressed and interested in signing the band. This was good news on 2 fronts. The programme which we hadn’t been shown as we were away, must be good, and we had another very good record company in the hunt. But what really made our whole party laugh and filled us all with electricity was the fact that a record company had taken the trouble to see the documentary AND then track us down to a beach bar in paradise.We really must be hot back in London. But this was only a preview of what was to come.

We finished our run at the Papagayo on July 13th, the same day our documentary was broadcast on LWT. We drove home the next day, a little sad to be leaving our glimpse of the jet-set behind, but excited about the future.

It’s hard to remember a world without mobiles, emails, and social media, but we had no idea what impact the programme had on the long drive back. I was to find out when I arrived home. My mother said, “Steve, a lot of people have called for you in the last couple of days, but I’ve written all their names, and numbers down”.

There on our family telephone note pad was a list of every record company in London. Polydor, CBS, Virgin, Chrysalis, EMI, etc. They had seen the programme, and ALL wanted to sign Spandau Ballet.

The next ‘event’ was HMS Belfast…

***

Steve Dagger - Spandau Ballet, Manager

July, 2020

(Photo credit: Graham Smith)

Previous Features: Spandau Ballet at The Scala - May 13th, 1980 and The Blitz - The First Spandau Ballet Performance