5. Spandau Ballet
THE O2 ARENA
22 October 2009
Some reunions feel like magic. This one felt like a hostage video set to a light jazz saxophone. Spandau Ballet reunited once more, presumably because someone got an uncomfortable tax bill, and back on the stage tonight with all the camaraderie of a board meeting after a failed merger.
The Kemp brothers lurk like two sentient Savile Row mannequins in a clearance sale, maintaining the kind of cautious distance from Hadley you normally see in wildlife documentaries. "The hatchet is buried," they claimed, probably in Tony’s back, we think. Watching them share a stage is a bit like watching divorced parents do Christmas morning.
When Hadley belts out “Highly Strung”, it’s less a performance and more a musical middle finger with more subtext than a Netflix docudrama. You half expect him to yell “This one’s for you, Gary!” and hurl a tambourine like a ninja star. Still, credit where it’s due: the man’s voice has held up better than most Cold War infrastructure. He hits every note like it owes him money, strutting around the stage like Sinatra in a satin waistcoat.
Things take a turn for the suspiciously sincere when they roll out an acoustic With the Pride, the sort of stripped-down moment meant to tug at heartstrings but mostly just reminds you that, yes, this band once took themselves very seriously. It’s heartfelt, possibly moving, and makes you wish they'd channel that same emotional honesty into just telling each other how much they still clearly hate one another.
And of course, “True” arrives right on cue. The crowd sways in collective denial, pretending they haven’t spent the last fifteen years secretly enjoying it on hold with British Gas. There's a brief glimpse of unity, a flicker of something genuine, just long enough for everyone to forget this band once split over publishing rights and petty grievances.
They encore with “Gold”, naturally. The song that soundtracked a thousand drunken, regretted liaisons birthed from the last dance at the work-disco. People cheered. Some danced. One man near me shouted “this is my youth!” a statement that is as crushingly sad as it is likely to be factually accurate.
This was once the band of the Blitz scene, the pirate-panted visage of a London night scene that never truly went anywhere. And now? Now they’re the soundtrack to nostalgia-fuelled reunions that feel less like artistic statements and more like attempts to keep the lights on.
Still, for all the friction, the flamboyance, and the faint whiff of financial necessity, you can’t say they didn’t entertain. Even if it felt like a cocktail lounge-based hostage incident set to saxophones.