Spandau Ballet tell why playing Hong Kong will be so special
The last date on their 12-month world tour will complete a journey begun in the 1980s, stalled by bitter recrimination and now resurrected
When Spandau Ballet play at AsiaWorld-Arena on September 25, the final date of the band’s Soul Boys of the Western World tour, it won’t be just another band from the 1980s trotting out their greatest hits; it will be the completion of a monumental journey from soar-away success through bitter mutual recrimination to unexpected redemption.
This will be the first show in Hong Kong for a band that dominated the charts in the ’80s, notching up more than 25 million album sales worldwide, and more than 500 weeks on the British charts for their 23 hit singles. Among the best-known are disco-snog classic True, No 1 in 21 countries in 1983 and sampled to death since; 1983’s stirringly affirmative Gold; and 1986’s mournfully political Through the Barricades.
They have visited the city before, though: singer Tony Hadley as a solo artist as recently as last September, when the start of his gig at Kitec was delayed by the Occupy protests, and all of them to record the video to 1984’s Highly Strung, a retrospectively hilarious collection of Sino-clichés.
“We’re really looking forward to it a lot,” says songwriter and guitarist Gary Kemp of the forthcoming concert. “It’s the last show of the tour, so it’ll be very emotional for us. And if we make any mistakes, well, then we’re never going to get it right.
“I’m loving this tour. It’s the best the band have ever played, and it’s the best reaction we’ve ever had – and I really am talking about ever. There’s not a song I don’t enjoy playing or that doesn’t get an amazing reaction from the crowd.”