In Full Swing – Tony Hadley Interview

Having enjoyed looking dapper during Spandau Ballet’s commercial heyday, it should be no surprise that Tony Hadley has a lifelong affiliation with big band music. He’s also got an affinity for singers who value style over technique. As he prepares to get classy on tour later this year, Hadley tells Classic Pop of the joys of being an optimist, the future of Spandau and a close encounter with Frank Sinatra…

When Tony Hadley was just 17, he invaded the stage at a Frank Sinatra concert. Although he was a teenage punk in 1977, into the Sex Pistols and Generation X, Hadley wasn’t trying any anti-establishment shock tactics when he ran on at London’s venerable Royal Albert Hall. For one thing, he was at the concert with his mum.

“I was a cheeky young lad,” Hadley says of his encounter with his parents’ hero. “How I didn’t get slapped, I don’t know, as Sinatra was surrounded by his entourage. I just wanted to tell him how much I admired him. Sinatra said to me: ‘Hey, let him through.’ I told him: ‘I’m a massive fan, I just want to say what a great concert that was. I’m in a band and I want to be a singer.’ Sinatra said: ‘Son, good luck to you. It’s nice to see younger people at the concert.’”

Six years later, Spandau Ballet first played at the Albert Hall on the True tour. In December, Hadley returns there, covering Sinatra as part of his big band Christmas tour. “I got to live out my dream,” smiles Hadley. “I say to people that, if you aim big enough, you can get there.”

That Hadley is doing a big band tour is of a piece with his eclectic tastes. Growing up in Islington when it still had working-class areas in North London, Hadley’s punk tastes would merge with his parents’ love of big band music. Patrick and Josephine Hadley played swing and crooners while preparing Sunday lunch. “I would always appreciate any music that was being played,” says Hadley of his introduction to Tony Bennett, Jack Jones and Mel Torme.

“It’s like parents now who play Spandau Ballet to their kids, who might say: ‘OK, that’s not too bad.’” His parents were also into opera, as Hadley says: “I was hearing singers like Mario Lanza. In my early days, my singing was semi-operatic.”

Suits You, Sir…

Although Spandau Ballet were, of course, among the crown princes of futurism during the New Romantic era, their frontman was happier once the band’s image became a little more timeless, in line with swing’s classic look. “When Spandau entered the suit period during True, I was in my element,” remembers Hadley. “I was a massive Robert Palmer fan and he always looked super-cool, the same as David Bowie looked so cool in a suit. Excuse the pun, but suits suit me.”

That unlikely crossover between punk and crooner still survives in Hadley’s career. As well as the big band tour and releasing an expanded physical edition of last year’s swing album The Mood I’m In, Hadley is working on a new pop album for release in 2026, hinting: “I’ve written a couple of songs with my band which are quite progressive. There’s some really cool stuff on there.”

The breadth of Hadley’s tastes is summarised by the artists he names as current favourites. In the order of which he rattles them off, he’s enjoying Lana Del Rey, The Wombats, Blossoms, Foals, Zara Larsson, Shawn Mendes, Swedish House Mafia and Sam Fender. Try to pick the common thread out of that.

As CP’s writer lives relatively nearby, we meet at Hadley’s local pub. Over the course of three hours and cans of alcohol-free lager (“It’s a bit early”), the singer knows everyone here. He really does confirm he’s happy to sing at a local village function. The taxi driver home spends a good five minutes eulogising what a nice guy Hadley is. He seems every inch the contented entertainer. Is he? “Yeah!” he beams, as if it’s a daft question. “What else am I going to do, sit at home and be miserable? When I’m off tour, I’ll say to my wife: ‘Come on, let’s go down the pub.’ I’ve always been like that. I’ve never been one to sit in the hotel room on my own, I’m more: ‘Let’s get out there, live life to the full.’ Because it goes bloody quickly.”

Hadley is less happy to be reminded that he turned 65 in June, saying of his OAP status: “It’s shit, isn’t it? It’s appalling. When you’re a kid, seeing your aunties go: ‘Haven’t you got tall?’, you think: ‘Oh shut up, you silly old sod.’ At a certain point, you realise how right they were. I’m trying to take stock, and I’ve become more selective about the gigs I do. I’m not so manic, so I only choose the things I really like. But there are a lot of things I really like…”

That contentment is partly due to Hadley being at ease with his status in pop. He’d love another hit single, but accepts that’s unlikely. He’s happy that he’s shown he can be a songwriter away from Spandau, then quickly adds he prefers getting others in to arrange them. Generally, he acknowledges: “My career has been up and down like a yo-yo. I’ve hit a plateau now, where people have started calling me a legend. I’ll definitely take that one.”

A Sticky Start

Hadley’s only real self-doubt came after Spandau’s first split, when his 1992 solo debut album The State Of Play failed to chart. Hadley was considering moving to America, making an album influenced by his love of US rock like Bon Jovi and John Mellencamp.

“Halfway through, I realised I was making the wrong album,” he recalls. “When it did diddly-squat, that was a moment of panic. I thought: ‘Shit, what am I going to do?’ I love music and I don’t know anything else. But I’m one of the most determined buggers on the planet. Knock me down and I’ll come back up again and again.”

Hadley puts that tenacity down to both his parents – “Mum taught us you could achieve anything” – and the good fortune of his generation. He thinks there was “a massive optimism” in believing anyone could achieve what they wanted, that “the era of tipping your hat and thinking you were less than somebody else was fading away. That determination sticks with you.”

That spirit helped when Hadley, John Keeble and Steve Norman lost their 1999 court case against Gary Kemp over songwriting royalties. “When I lost that court case, it was like getting whacked around the head with a baseball bat,” he admits. “But I’ve always been a glass half-full optimist. Immediately afterwards, I thought: ‘OK, now what?’ I’ve always bounced back.”

Through The Barricades

Hadley has also bounced back from the aftermath of Spandau’s seemingly final split in 2017. Both sides have had their say over the reasons for the singer’s departure, but a previously forthright Gary Kemp told Classic Pop in January that he’d like to do another tour.

Asked for his thoughts on Kemp’s views causes the usually effervescent Hadley to pause. He’s convincing when he exclaims: “Really? That’s news to me.” He looks surprised rather than cautious over his words when asked what he’d say to Kemp if an offer came through. “I don’t think it would work,” he eventually considers. “I haven’t seen Gary, Martin or John in eight years. Steve is the only one I’m vaguely in contact with. We had some good times, but unfortunately there were some bad times as well. That’s just life. We had some good laughs on the last tour, then unfortunately John fell ill and it wasn’t the same without him. That was difficult.”

Trying to guess why Kemp has reconsidered the band’s future, Hadley offers: “Gary might be thinking: ‘We’re all getting older.’ That might come into it: 70 is just around the corner, so what if anything happens to one of us?” CP suggests that, when speaking to us, Kemp thought the band’s fans deserved a final farewell tour. That’s a notion Hadley disagrees with, saying: “I thought I did that in 2017. Let’s leave it at that.” He doesn’t want personal animosity among his former bandmates, saying: “I wish Gary, Martin and John well, but I’m happy doing what I’m doing. I love the freedom I have now, the fact I can go from a bit of swing to a bit of rock. You can’t do that within the confines of a band.”

Hadley is happy to keep Spandau’s music alive via the big band tour, insisting: “There’s nothing worse than an artist who denies their past.” As well as True andGold – “You have to do those” – he’s thinking of adding Lifeline. His favourite Spandau song is Through The Barricades, noting: “That doesn’t lend itself to big band, but we play it in a beautiful way, with sax and flutes.”

Through The Barricades was a song Hadley and his bandmates instantly knew was a classic. “I thought it was great because there’s a poignancy to it,” he reflects. “It told a story. This wasn’t Highly Strung, about a crazy chick who lives in a laundromat. Through The Barricades carries a lot of weight. When we recorded it, everyone was saying: ‘This song is so good and so important, you’ve got to sing this one right.’ I was going: ‘Calm down, will you?’”

Golden Years

Eventually, the pressure on the song became too much during recording sessions in Munich. “Everyone was staring at me in the control room,” says Hadley. “It was: ‘Can you sing that line more like that?’ I lost it and yelled: ‘Piss off! I’m not singing it today! You lot: sod off!’ I calmed down and sang it a few days later with just the producer in the room. A few takes, and that was it.”

While Through The Barricades’ powerful sentiment can still cause Hadley to get emotional in concert – the singer “lost it” when seeing fans in tears during one show – he can always rely on Gold to be a celebration.

Hadley has a theory on why Gold has overtaken True to be Spandau’s biggest song among the general public. “It’s easy to sing,” he reasons. “It’s just: ‘Da-da, GOLD!’, it invites you to sing it. It’s become the song cab drivers go for: ‘Alright, Tony? GOLD!’ You know you’re alright then.

“You can’t fail with Gold. There are times I get distracted singing it. I will suddenly come to and think: ‘God, what’s the second verse?’ I get round it by going: ‘Right, you lot can sing it…’ My one issue with Gold is, why didn’t we play it at Live Aid? I think it’s because we didn’t think we could reproduce the orchestral touches at Wembley. Whatever, it didn’t make any sense to me why we didn’t do it.”

Of the swing songs, Fly Me To The Moon is “a piece of cake, like putting on a pair of old slippers”, but Mack The Knife and Alfie are more intense, while Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered needs Hadley to “really belt it at the end.”

Mentioning Alfie, Hadley believes Cilla Black is an underrated singer, recalling how she nailed the classic theme song on its second take. Of his Spandau vocals, Lifeline and Empty Spaces were done on the first take. He laughs when talking about rock producer Mutt Lange’s infamously “microscopic” approach with singers that Hadley has heard about from his friend, Joe Elliott, but admits: “If I walk away from doing a vocal and one bit isn’t quite right, I’ll beat myself up about it.”

Swing State

Asked to assess his own voice, Hadley considers: “I’ve always had a big voice and it’s always sounded like me. That gives me an identity, whether you like my voice or not. My influences are all brilliant voices, but I’m not interested in technicality. Loads of singers can do more vocal twiddles than me and are technically better, but that’s not what I’m interested in.

“The great swing singers – Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Jack Jones – weren’t technically perfect. But if you put their records on, you know it’s them straight away. It was the same in Spandau’s day. Spandau, Duran, Culture Club, Depeche, The Human League: every one of those singers has an identity.”

Tony Hadley definitely has an identity. Now he can stretch himself across pop, progressive music, big band and crooning, he’s showing just how versatile that identity is. He might now be a grandad and an OAP, but he’s still living life to the full.

Tony Hadley’s Christmas Big Band Tour runs from 23 November to 17 December. For more details on dates and ticket availability click here

Featured image credit: Neil Kitson

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