Spandau Ballet’s new Scots frontman: ‘I’ve struck Gold!’
How Scot written off at school came to be Spandau Ballet’s new frontman – despite not being born when the band were at the height of their powers
THEY routinely sold out stadiums worldwide and have album sales of 25 million – so, unsurprisingly, when Spandau Ballet announced they had replaced lead singer Tony Hadley with a West End star half his age, there was an outcry from their ‘true’ fans.
Despite a highly publicised legal wrangle over artistic rights and royalties, it was always thought that the 80s band – who had a string of No 1 hits – would find their way through their difficulties and back to performing, as they had done successfully for 40 years.
That was, however, until 58-yearold, sharp-suited frontman Hadley officially quit for good in July last year, with an abrupt message to followers stating that ‘due to circumstances beyond my control, I am no longer a member of the band Spandau Ballet’. But out of the subsequent fallout and heartbreak for fans, a new star has risen to take Hadley’s spot.
To say that Ross William Wild’s arrival has been met with opprobrium would be an understatement, with some diehards cuttingly referring to the new line-up as being more like ‘a Spandau Ballet tribute band’ or a ‘karaoke number’ without their main man in the spotlight.
For Wild, 30, who grew up in Aberdeen, it is criticism he is determined to prove wrong as the band prepare for a world tour in the coming months.
Reviews of a recent six-date European tour, which culminated at London’s Hammersmith Apollo, have already gone a long way to justifying the pop act’s huge gamble in the eyes of many, with general agreement from critics that the new frontman is ‘pure gold’.
It is music to Wild’s ears. Fresh from a group phone chat with the other band members, there is still a touch of the starstruck as he confesses: ‘Sometimes I still can’t believe it and I think, “f*** me, you’re the lead singer of Spandau Ballet!”.’
He has not met Hadley but says he does care about his opinion – as well as that of everyone else who has invested in Spandau Ballet’s success to date.
Wild was particularly touched when the former frontman reached out to him on Twitter following the news in June that he had joined the band.
He said: ‘He wished me good luck and best wishes. There was no animosity, just from a singer to a singer, and it was really nice.’
It was through his role in West End smash-hit musical Million Dollar Quartet – in which he played Elvis Presley – that he met Martin Kemp.
The Spandau bassist was cast as legendary record producer Sam Phillips, who brought together the King, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins for a historic recording session at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee, in December 1956.
Wild said: ‘I knew Spandau Ballet had had trouble and Martin and I got on like a house on fire, but I didn’t know they were looking for a new singer and I don’t think it even crossed his mind – or mine – that I could be a replacement.’
In the end, Wild randomly answered an ad which had been sent out on a social media website to professional singers. Cryptically, it read: ‘Established UK band seeks frontman.’
After several unsuccessful attempts to discover which band, he gave up. Suddenly, he received a call from Martin Kemp.
He recalled: ‘I thought it was funny at the time, Martin calling me out of the blue.
‘Then he said he couldn’t wait to see me the following week.
‘I was confused and asked if we’d agreed to hang out together.
‘He said, “You’re coming in to audition for Spandau Ballet”. I couldn’t believe it.’
He added: ‘That’s when I put the pedal to the metal and Spandau Ballet became my obsession for the next week.
‘At that stage, I probably knew about 70 per cent of their hits – I was born in 1988, by which time they were pretty much wrapping up – so I had to do my homework fast.
‘But I remember watching footage of one of their last gigs with Tony and I could see that the vibe wasn’t there any more. In fact, it felt like Tony didn’t want to be there.’
For Wild – who appeared in the Queen stage production We Will Rock You and was directed by Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood in Witches Of Eastwick – his new role and his success in the West End is all the more surprising because he suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD.
The condition led to him, incredibly, being confined to a storage cupboard during lessons for a large part of his younger school years at Aberdeen’s Mile End Primary.
He said: ‘I was intelligent but at the same time I was very distracting to the other pupils. It seems incredible now, but the solution then was to put me in a cupboard with the maths books, outside the headteacher’s office. They even gave me my own Victorian desk.
‘Eventually I got elevated to the cupboard outside what should have been my actual classroom. But I don’t harbour any serious resentment. I feel that they made me what I am today.’
However, there was to be more heartache for his lawyer father Tom and his mother Lesley, a marketing executive, when he was expelled from Aberdeen Grammar School at 15. He said: ‘I wasn’t a nasty kid but it came after me being involved in a lot of fighting, as well as smoking cannabis.
‘I had a teacher who I felt was a bully. He would get right in my face. So one day I pushed him and he fell over a chair and hit the deck. I walked out of school that day.’
Around that time Wild also decided to stop taking the Ritalin pills he had been prescribed years earlier for his ADHD.
He said: ‘I felt it was stifling my creativity. I took the pills out into the garden and crushed them under my feet. I’ve never looked back. I threw myself into music.
‘Now I see my ADHD as a blessing rather than a curse. I have lots of energy and I channel it. I use it to flip from role to role and song to song.’
Ironically, he remembers telling his guidance teachers at school that he
wanted to be a lead singer in a band one day. Their reaction, he said, was: ‘Think again!’
After a spell at Aberdeen Youth Theatre and having trained at the Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow, he moved to London and carved out a career in musical theatre.
Wild said playing Elvis on stage, and getting to grips with some of the huge expectations that came with that acting role, acted like a ‘little warm-up’ for what he has experienced since replacing Hadley a few months ago.
Like Adam Lambert, who famously stands in for Freddie Mercury when Queen perform, he feels keenly the pressure to live up to the same high standards of the performer who has gone before him – while introducing his own artistic creativity. He said: ‘You can’t just take iconic music and put your own slant on it. Though I have probably about 85 per cent free rein to sing it the way I want, there are hits, like True and Gold, where you can’t mess around too much.
‘I am listening to the fans. As an artist it’s good to hear the negative comments as well as the positive comments and I’m grateful the negative are in the minority.
‘But I still want them to change their minds and realise that music and bands evolve and this is not a rare situation. There are so many bands with new lead singers and it works like a charm.’
He stressed: ‘I’m not Tony and I’m not trying to copy him. If there’s any pressure, it’s not from the fans or other people. It’s from the world and record a handful of new tracks.
Predictably, Wild says the age difference between him and the other band members – Gary Kemp, 59, his brother Martin, 57, Steve Norman, 58, and John Keeble, 59 – has been the focus of attention.
He said: ‘It’s one of the questions I get asked a lot. How do I feel working with guys that age?
‘It’s irrelevant. If people could see how much energy and vitality they have and how much they still have to give... I’m in a band with a bunch of frontmen, each one of whom is an icon in their own right. It doesn’t get much better than that.’