Last night at the 2023 BMI London Awards, Spandau Ballet’s principal songwriter and guitarist Gary Kemp was honoured with a prestigious Icon Award at a ceremony in London, in the same year that the band’s biggest hit True celebrates its 40th anniversary.
Also a successful solo artist and actor – he starred in Jamie Lloyd’s 2015 stage production of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming well as numerous screen roles – Kemp was previously honoured with an Ivor Novello for Outstanding Song Collection in 2012. Winning an Icon award, he says, was an “emotional experience”.
“It’s an important ceremony for songwriters,” Kemp says, speaking to the Standard the morning after the awards, which are held each year by the BMI, a performance rights organisation in the US that represents more than 1.3 million songwriters and publishers.
To be recognised through these “American eyes” feels particularly special, Kemp says. “To be seen as someone who’s affected the arts globally is something to be thrilled about.”
Previous BMI Icon winners include Dolly Parton, Stevie Nicks, Carole King, Willie Nelson, Peter Gabriel, and the Bee Gees. Joining such a legendary line-up in the history books was both surreal and terrifying, Kemp says: “It was nerve-wracking. To be honest I had more nerves on that stage than I’ve ever felt on any stage before. There’s this sense that almost any musician or artist has felt: ‘You’ve made a big mistake here, you’ve picked the wrong guy.’ That feeling lives with me my whole life,” he laughs.
“I found it really emotional… I found I was rather shaky when I got up on stage to deliver my speech, and gave a rather shaky rendition of True.”
Luckily, previous BMI Icon winner Don Black – the lyricist behind musicals such as Sunset Boulevard and Bonnie & Clyde – was there to give Kemp a hug once he’d collected the gong. “He’s a man to aspire to,” Kemp says. His Spandau bandmate and brother Martin Kemp also attended.
Kemp’s celebrations afterwards were relatively low-key, with a small gathering of friends who have been present for his entire creative journey since the Seventies – “I’m not a drinker, so there’s no hangover for me this morning,” he says.
Waking up this morning after staying over at the Savoy, Kemp laughs that he felt “a weight lift off my back, because I didn’t have the pressure of thinking about it [collecting the award] anymore.”
“My wife and I walked back across London, in the glorious sunshine and through Covent Garden and Soho, and really appreciated being Londoners,” he says. “It’s so nice to be able to just walk across your city and feel that, in those last 24 hours, you were on top of the world”
Spandau Ballet’s principal songwriter and guitarist is the musical mind behind huge Eighties hits such as True and Gold. Before those two songs even saw the light of day, Kemp says, he knew he had something special up his sleeve.
“You do,” he says, “It’s not a surprise. I don’t remember presenting those two songs to my brother [Martin Kemp] back in the early Eighties when we still lived at home with our parents. I do remember writing them though, in my bedroom on my own. That’s why I like writing as a solo writer; you go into a room alone, and come out with something else that didn’t exist before. It’s this alchemical feeling that I still enjoy, regardless of whether or not that song is ever going to be a hit.”
Besides his iconic output with Spandau Ballet, Kemp has also released two solo albums – 1995’s folksy debut Little Bruises, and its poppier 2021 follow-up INSOLO – and plays with Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason in his band Saucerful of Secrets. Playing in the latter, which focuses on Floyd’s early, pre-Dark Side of the Moon material, has given Kemp “greater confidence” as a guitar player. He is currently working on a third solo album, and returned from touring Australia with Mason just a couple of days ago.
He’s also reunited with his brother and former Spandau bandmate Martin Kemp for a follow-up to their 2020 comedy mockumentary The Kemps: All True. Set to come out around Christmas time, it’s once again written by the comedian Rhys Thomas.
A lot of spinning plates, then, but Kemp perhaps remains best known for his incredible songwriting with Spandau Ballet.
In their heyday, the band were at the forefront of the New Romantics movement, and continue to have huge cultural influence today. Their music has appeared in around 100 films by now. True was a stand-out needle-drop in the Eighties-heavy soundtrack for Channel 4’s acclaimed AIDS-era drama It’s A Sin, and countless remixers have reimagined the group’s music for the dancefloor.
Is there a moment that he has found particularly moving, when it comes to Spandau Ballet’s music reaching new audiences?
“Being on The Simpsons three times,” he says without hesitation. “The Simpsons manages to encapsulate all of human life.” Another pinch-yourself moment came when Kemp was watching Arsenal beat Manchester United, and the Gunners fans began singing Gold. “I got goosebumps,” he said. In that special moment, nobody clocked Kemp looking on in amazement.
Though Kemp remains focused on his work as a solo artist, as well as his collaborations with Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, he says that the band that started it all will always remain incredibly important to him.
“Spandau Ballet…. I mean, this is the truth,” he says, “and it’s important to mention this; through all of our ups and downs, for all of our rather fey arguments and stuff, I’ve got to say that Tony Hadley is one of the greatest singers in the world. Steve and John, and my brother Martin, were so important to who I am. I wouldn’t have got that award last night if it wasn’t for them, and the sound that they helped create.”
