On Air Now
Gold Radio Breakfast with James Bassam 6am - 10am
Exclusive
Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley reveals his massive Live Aid regret and how he thought 'True' would flop
26 June 2024, 16:54 | Updated: 27 June 2024, 13:38
Tony Hadley had one of the most distinctive voices of the 1980s.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
As lead singer of Spandau Ballet, Tony Hadley ruled the charts around the world with hits like 'True', 'Through the Barricades', and the brilliantly-titled (if you ask us) 'Gold'.
However, Tony revealed to Gold that he wasn't actually that impressed with perhaps their biggest ever hit 'True', and didn't think it would do that well.
"I didn't think it was a single," he told Gold's David Andrews. "No. I mean, that was our first proper ballad, really. And I have to say, I didn't think it was a hit.
"I thought it was a lovely song. But it was Simon Bates at the time who said, 'I've got the new Spandau Ballet album, True, this is the title song. If this is not a number one song, then, you know, there's no justice or whatever'.
"And he played it twice and I thought, well, if Simon said it's a number one, then I'll go with that every day of the week."
Tony also opened up about Spandau's triumphant performance at Live Aid in 1985, revealing that he's never watched it back and wishes they did it differently.
"I've never watched it back," he said. "But the one thing we didn't do, which I think, 'why didn't we do it?'. Why didn't we do 'Gold'? We never did it. And I think the reason was because it had lots of sort of orchestral 'da da da'. Those kind of cellos and strings. We didn't think we could replicate that.
"I mean, computerization and sequences were in their infancy at the time. And what we should have done is just played it as a rock band, you know, just on guitar, you know, and just really rock it up. And we didn't do it. That was a huge mistake."
Tony will be going out on tour this December with fellow synthpop legends Culture Club and Heaven 17. Full ticket details can be found here.
