CityLife

Interview: Tony Hadley

Tony Hadley

The Real 80s Summer Party:
Heaton Park - August 14, 2010.

Just a few weeks ago, Tony Hadley celebrated one of those landmarks birthdays: he turned 50. The one-time new romantic is sanguine about becoming an old romantic.

“Fifty is a weird one. It hasn’t really affected me at all,” he says. “I’ve got to the point where it’s just a number. I’m still playing football, whacking a boxing bag and going for a run, still enjoying fine wines and a good real ale.”

Hadley is also still keeping very busy indeed professionally. After that Spandau Ballet reunion tour, he is currently recording his next solo album and doing outdoor summer gigs with Rick Astley, ABC, Go West, Belinda Carlisle and Mica Paris, coming to Heaton Park, Manchester on Saturday August 14.

“People enjoy the atmosphere. They know they’re coming for a great day out, fantastic music and they’re going to see some really good artists,” he says.

“We have a great time backstage because we’ve all known each other for years, so there’s a really good rapport with us. We mix it up, doing some duets and having a bit of fun with it.”

So Hadley takes a crack at David Bowie’s Life On Mars and The Killers’ Somebody Told Me, and he duets with Rick Astley and Pete Cox of Go West.

But there are Spandau Ballet hits he knows he must always include in a set – True, Gold and Through The Barricades – and he is intrigued to see younger members of the audience singing along to songs created long before they were even born.

Hadley has been singing for his supper for over 30 years. He first took a stage at a Pontin’s holiday camp aged 13, then started winning talent competitions.

Finding themselves in the vanguard of the post-punk New Romantic movement, Spandau broadened out to become merchants of sophisticated pop which, in the course of their Eighties heyday, sold 25m albums. They then sundered in famously acrimonious fashion, with Hadley, drummer John Keeble and saxophonist Steve Norman unsuccessfully suing former bandmate Gary Kemp for £1m royalties.

“You come out of a band like Spandau and you think, well, what do I do?” says Hadley. “It’s a scary moment. Coming out of Spandau as a solo artist was not as successful as I would have liked, but then it was nose to the grindstone and play and play. I played all round the world, performing just under 200 shows a year. I managed to build a great following by sheer hard work.

“I like to sing every week. I don’t like too many weeks off. You want to keep your chops oiled up, and I just like being on stage, which sounds like I’m a bit of a show-off, but I’m not.”

Winning the ITV reality TV show Reborn In The USA in 2003 helped keep Hadley in the limelight. And in 2007, he did a stint in the West End as lawyer Billy Flynn in Chicago.

Then the announcement many believed would never come – a reunion tour for Spandau Ballet – came in March last year.

“Everyone was a little bit apprehensive,” Hadley admits. “But we couldn’t believe the reaction we got all over the world. It was such a warm and nostalgic reaction from everybody. The first 02 Arena dates sold out in 20 minutes. It was incredible.”

After nine months back together, Spandau Ballet are “on hold”, says Hadley, with members returning to solo projects. If there is to be another outing for the band, he says it’ll be in 2012.

Meanwhile, another strand to Hadley’s career is blossoming. He is co-owner of the Red Rat Craft brewery near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, which, naturally enough, has a Hadley’s Gold ale among its offerings.

So what’s Tony’s contribution to the ale-making?

“I taste them,” he says. “I’m big on tasting. That’s why I have to go running all the time.

“Business is hard these days, but we’re starting to do very well. We’re now just on the verge of going into supermarkets and off licences, but that’s taken time.”

Another string to his bow is acting. He had a role in the recent Brit-flick Shoot The DJ. Oddly, Hadley has only ever seen the trailer, not the whole movie.

“I don’t like watching myself. Hate it,” he explains. “I don’t like watching myself back on video, TV or anything.”

What about those era-defining Spandau appearances on Top of the Pops in the early Eighties?

“No, I’m not a nostalgic person,” he says. “I live for today. I’m excited by what I’m doing today and tomorrow. I don’t look back at the past and say: ‘Wasn’t that wonderful?’. I enjoy it and move on.”

» Tony Hadley performs at The Real 80s Summer Party, Heaton Park, Manchester, Saturday August 14, 2010, from 5pm.