Look back in lamé: New Romantic poster boy writes neat social history of 1980s

BOOK OF THE DAY: I Know This Much – From Soho to SpandauBy Gary Kemp, Fourth Estate314pp, £18.99

TO CUT a long story short . . . well two can play at that game, Gary. It’s a “Gold” standard literary device to use a famous line from your most famous song to title your autobiography.

Purists writing purists’ critiques may carp, but anyone with half a heart, functioning hearing and the slightest acquaintance with the 1980s will be ready to slap Spandau Ballet’s Mr Gary Kemp on the back and shake his Stratocaster-wielding hand.

Not just for writing the seminal, zeitgeisty love anthem True– although that would be reason enough – but for defying the well-worn and slightly bastardised maxim, "if you remember the 80s, you weren't there".

Gary Kemp was indeed there and, thankfully, Gary Kemp does remember.

In fact, on April 30th, 1999, the British High Court found Kemp’s memories of agreements he had made with his band members, lead singer Tony Hadley, drummer John Keeble and saxophonist Steve Norman, so reliable that he ruled that the others had no right to share in the royalties for the hit songs that had made Gary a fortune.

His brother and fellow bandmate Martin was not party to the action, of course, proving that blood is indeed thicker

than water in the East End of London.

In 1990, the Kemps took to the big screen as another set of East End brothers well-acquainted with the thickness of blood – the Krays.

Thankfully, the Kemps encountered less conflict with the psychopathic Cockney gangsters than the blouse-wearing Spandaus. In fact, Ronnie was quite happy with Gary’s portrayal of him – once he’d taken the earring out.

Now Gary Kemp has turned memory man again. His self-penned memoir provides a sticking plaster of reminiscences for the grazed cerebral cortexes many suffered during a decade of “Pils and pills”.

And you don’t have to have been hanging around in Soho at Steve Strange’s Blitz club looking other-worldly and checking your coat in with the world’s most under-employed cloakroom attendant – Boy George – to enjoy this trip down damaged-memory lane.

Anyone who wore tartan loons, white stilettos, guyliner or glitter; anyone who lurched from the proletarianism of punk to the poseur preening of the New Romantics in search of the next tribe on the youth culture conveyor belt; anyone who mustered even the slightest interest in the Ballet vs le Bon debate – will love this.

It’s a rock’n’roll call of outré greatness. A gushing name-check of the weirdos and misfits who gave us great art, great fashion, great journalism against a backdrop of the worst of times. And there in the middle of it, two good-looking working-class Cockney brothers who got their mum to run up their trousers on her Singer and who were lucky enough to get a fillip for their talent from Irish-born drama teacher Anna Scher.

This is a book rich with tales of people new to history books. Yet this is what this is – a history book.

From Bishop Trevor Huddleston of CND to Paula Yates, from Robert Elms to George Michael, from Adam Clayton to Sadé, from eating brown rice in Cosmo Landesman’s house to falling for a gold-painted Sadie Frost, Gary Kemp has given us a slice of pantaloon-wearing, hit-writing social history.

Sound of our soul? Not far off.

Spandau Ballet play Dublin’s O2 on October 13th.

Anthea McTeirnan is production editor of The Ticket