Gary's 'Standard Sessions' Article
True treat: Spandau Ballet songwriter launches our live Standard sessions
Alistair Foster, Showbusiness Correspondent
Spandau Ballet star Gary Kemp is to play his most intimate gig to date as the first artist to perform at The Standard Sessions, it was announced today.
The Evening Standard is hosting a new series of acoustic concerts in the dramatic setting of County Hall’s former debating chamber.
Eighties star Kemp will perform for just 200 people on June 7. Click here to buy tickets now!
Information on forthcoming performances, to which Evening Standard readers will have exclusive access, will be released later in the year.
As one fifth of Spandau Ballet, Kemp, 51, was a pioneer of the dandyish New Romantic movement, which emerged from the embers of punk in late-Seventies London.
The band, with Kemp as its chief songwriter, dominated the Eighties’ charts with 23 hit singles, including True and Gold, before splitting up at the end of the decade.
Kemp went on to forge a successful acting career with appearances in films such as The Krays and The Bodyguard.
“The debating chamber is a great venue and an incredible interior,” he said. “A bit like a mini House of Lords. I’ll be chatting, playing some music, explaining how some Spandau songs were originally written, playing some clips. It’s not a big rock gig, just something a bit more intimate and hopefully very enjoyable.”
Kemp, born and raised in Islington, has watched youth scenes come and go in London starting with Teddy Boys and mods but he fears today’s London – where teenagers queue around the block for iPads instead of access to the latest fashionable clubs – will never see another subculture like the New Romantics.
“It’s inconceivable that a movement like these could ever happen again,” he said. “It’s really hard for any youth movement to retain any kind of mystique for very long. People look for other ways of expressing themselves, and with social networking and things it’s really difficult to keep anything now.
“Pop culture and youth culture thrived on enigma and that’s difficult now.”
Kemp now lives in a Georgian townhouse in Fitzrovia with his second wife, fashion stylist Lauren Barber, 34, their two young children Milo and Kit, and 20-year-old Fin, his son by first wife Sadie Frost.
Spandau reformed in 2009 following a court battle in 1999 when Kemp was sued unsuccessfully for unpaid royalties by bandmates Steve Norman, John Keeble and singer Tony Hadley. “We all get along great now,” said Kemp. “Tony was round for dinner just the other night.”
Kemp grew up in a two-roomed flat with his parents Eileen and Frank and brother Martin, who would become Spandau’s bassist.
He added: “The early Spandau gigs which were in odd venues and things like the Blitz club, where people weren’t allowed in, built up the mystique. The record companies wanted to sign us in 1979 without hearing a single note because we wouldn’t let anyone have a cassette, because the buzz was so big.
“But now someone just has to hold up a mobile phone, put it on YouTube and say b*****ks and it will be over in a few weeks.”
For tickets to see Gary Kemp at The Standard Sessions, visit the dedicated Digital Stores microsite.
For more information on Gary Kemp visit www.garykemp.com
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