‘After depression, I had to learn how to be me again’
The Spandau star is preparing for his first solo stint on stage, he tells Judith Woods
How to convey the life-changing significance of Spandau Ballet for an awkward 14-year-old feeling melodramatically misunderstood? Martin Kemp, who 21st-century teens know better as arch villain Steve Owen from Eastenders, is smiling and nodding. He’s heard it all before.
But not from me. And this is my moment, so off I go. I tell him where I was the first time I heard To Cut a Long Story Short, way back in 1980.
“I was kneeling on that horrid brown carpet in the dining room, holding a microphone up to a transistor radio,” I say. “Spandau Ballet came on and suddenly the world shifted and in that precise moment I understood who I was and where I belonged. Do you understand, Martin? Do you?”
Kemp, patiently waiting to get a word in edgeways, has got better looking with age; at 56, he’s a silver fox gone thrillingly Arctic with a fabulous head of white hair, his piercing eyes blue as ice chips.
He’s also fit as a butcher’s dog, and has been going to the gym almost every day in preparation for a stint in Chicago on the West End, taking over from Cuba Gooding Jnr.
That’s what we’re supposed to be talking about. But I’m busy telling him I used to save my dinner money and live off cooking apples so I could afford a cassette of Spandau’s album.
“I know that feeling,” he says. “It was the same for me with T Rex. Maybe not the cooking apples – but music was expensive, so when you scraped together enough for an album, you played it over and over.
“Music was far more tribal in the Eighties; you were into one band and that was it,” he continues. “Kids nowadays have access to many more genres, so they look beyond their pop tribe and that’s a wonderful thing.”
I’m still entirely tribal, but Kemp is a glass-half-full kinda guy. He also knows what he’s talking about: his 25-year-old son Roman is Capital FM’S breakfast show superstar.
“I honestly don’t think pop has been in better shape since I was in the charts – Ed Sheeran is a genius.”
I find it hard to write the next line. I always loved Tony Hadley best, but I daren’t spill the beans to Kemp because there was a big fallout and now Spandau Ballet has a new singer, Ross William Wild, who is 30.
Kemp says he’s fabulous. But I am unconvinced and sulky. It’s like my parents have split up, and my mum is trying to introduce me to her new boyfriend. “No!” cries Kemp. “Don’t say that! He’s amazing; we played a gig to maybe 600 people in Notting Hill; it was one of the best moments of my life.”
Poor Dad. I mean, poor Tony. Although he was the one who left last year, announcing it on Twitter. “But your brother Gary wrote the Spandau songs,” I say to Kemp. “Will Tony be allowed to play them any more?”
“I can’t answer that,” he says, which means he won’t. It’s what grown-ups always do and it’s so unfair.
The band first went their separate ways in the early Nineties, before reforming in 2009. Meanwhile, the Kemp boys appeared as Ronnie and Reggie in The Krays. Their performance was critically acclaimed and more roles followed in the US – until Kemp started to prowl about Walford.
“Ladies of a certain age remember me from Spandau,” he says. “Then there’s a new lot that knows me from Eastenders. There’s something nice about crossing generations like that.”
Kemp is softly spoken with a gentle manner; despite his air of repressed menace down the Queen Vic, he’s never thrown a punch in his life. “I’m a shy person,” he admits. “As a child I was painfully embarrassed by everything, always blushing and not making eye contact. When I lack confidence now, I channel a bit of Steve Owen and that transforms me.”
It was thanks to his mother that Kemp had the courage to get on stage at all. She sent her sons to a drama club in Islington for 10p a lesson. The pair amassed impressive small screen CVS; cast as child actors in everything from Jackanory to Dixon of Dock Green.
“I would recommend it for all kids,” he says. “You learn how to channel your charisma. Those classes changed the lives of kids like me.
“We lived in a run-down town house, which must be worth a fortune now,” he muses. “My parents were offered the right to buy it for £20,000, but it could have been £10million or two grand; they had no money.”
It’s a source of quiet pride that the boys were able to buy their parents a house when they hit the big time. Family means a lot to them.
Kemp has been married for 30 years to Shirlie Holliman, the blonde one from Pepsi & Shirlie, backing singers to Wham! Kemp saw his future wife on Top of the Pops and was smitten; even the fact she brought George Michael along on their first date did not deter him. The singer’s death, in 2016, hit Kemp hard. “For us, it wasn’t just George Michael who died. He was family,” he says.
It isn’t the only trauma Kemp has faced; when he first appeared on
Eastenders, in 1998, it was a huge surprise. For the previous four years he had been recovering from brain surgery. Mercifully his two tumours were benign and a protective metal plate was inserted into his skull – but the side effects, including epilepsy, were devastating.
“I was a shell of the person known as Martin Kemp,” he says. “Clinically depressed and unable to function properly. I had to learn how to be me again. When the call came from the BBC, I had no idea if I could even learn the lines. But it gave me something to push towards and for that I will always be grateful.”
Kemp won no fewer than nine awards during his four years on the soap, but is unlikely to return as his character was last seen in a burning fireball after a car crash. “I’ve turned my hand to a lot of things, but I’m not sure even I could escape from the car and scramble to safety in 10 seconds.”
Since then he’s been a judge on Let It Shine and braved Celebrity Big Brother. But his three-month stint as Billy Flynn will be rather more front of house. “I was asked to do Chicago 10 years ago,” he says. “I learned all the songs, but the timing just didn’t work out. So it feels like unfinished business. It will be the first time I’ll be singing alone on stage.”
After his run, he tells me that the band will be doing a few gigs. I’m excited – I’ve never seen Spandau Ballet live. Then a terrible thought occurs. Those words every audience dreads: “Here’s one from the new album.” You wouldn’t do that to us, would you, Martin?
“Absolutely not! I love that moment, when we play the opening of True or Gold and watch a huge smile break out on everyone’s faces.”
I chose my tribe well.
‘I was clinically depressed – I had to learn how to be me again’