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Although he achieved much commercial success and fame beginning in the 1980s as the guitarist and main songwriter for the popular British rock band Spandau Ballet, Gary Kemp still fondly remembers growing up in the early and mid-1970s as a passionate teenage music fan. Among his heroes from that period included David Bowie and Mick Ronson. Decades later, he channeled those memories of his youth spent going to rock concerts in "Waiting for the Band," a wistful and nostalgic song off of his latest record INSOLO.
"It became a hymn to my younger self," he tells Newsweek, "being a fan, and how maybe that young boy that I was has never left me. I sat at the piano, and something comes and you get a reverie. And in walks this 13-year-old kid so full of enthusiasm, couldn't wait to go and see a band full of anticipation, just in love with his heroes in music. And it was me and I started writing about him."
The idea of dealing and reconciling with the past is a main theme on the eloquent and poignant INSOLO, Kemp's first new solo album in 25 years, which was released last week. Before the arrival of lockdown last year, Kemp had already conceived a majority of INSOLO's songs, which were developed while he was playing and touring as a member of Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets band. Featuring contributions from musicians such as Toby Chapman (who co-produced the new record with Kemp), Guy Pratt, Lee Harris, Ash Soan and Kemp's brother Martin, INSOLO was recorded remotely during the pandemic.
"Left to my own devices and not having a band to frame my songs," Kemp explains, referencing Spandau Ballet's split, "I'm allowed to be a little bit more expansive in the musicality. I think I went through a process of writing stuff for Spandau Ballet on our comeback shows that I thought I was slightly going through the motions. But this has been really trying to be excited about new music."
He acknowledges that INSOLO is a personal record similar to his first solo effort, 1995's Little Bruises, which found him working through the pain following the end of his first marriage (he has since remarried). The new album is also about Kemp trying to solve some problems, with the introspective song "I Am the Past" as an example.
"I'm forever sort of pulling around this younger version of myself," he says. "I see the films, I see the pictures, I answer the questions. I'm so embedded in a decade in the past, and a time in the past. No matter what pop star you are, you mostly had those hits in a certain era. And yet my wife, who I've been with for 20 years, never knew that guy. It was really about that line "I am the past/Trying to be here," where I was struggling at that point. I think I resolved it by writing a song that sounds fresh and different and exorcises the things that I was feeling down about that time when I wrote it, which is: 'How do I ever catch up with the contemporary within my relationship?'"
Overall, the music on INSOLO is something very cinematic-sounding and visual lyricall, as indicated by the album's orchestral-laden title song. Its story is framed from the perspectives of two strangers—a woman and man—in a major metropolis. The track was inspired, according to Kemp, by an Edward Hopper painting "Room in New York." "When I wrote "In Solo,"" he says of the track, "it was before the pandemic. It was about the sort of paradox of feeling lonely and isolated within a city of millions of people. And then of course that took on a whole different resonance when the lockdown happened. It was kind of prophetic, but by accident."
On the flip side of the title track's melancholy vibe is the warm and soulful "Ahead of the Game," a gorgeous throwback to 1970s feel-good pop/rock radio. "It's about a relationship, about a guy who can never catch up, always struggling," says Kemp. "He's one step behind while she is just getting on with it. And that's sort of the story of my relationship with my wife, I think. I'm procrastinating and trying to get out of bed, and she's just already halfway through the day. So I saw [the] West Coast in that song a bit, driving in a Convertible up the Pacific Coast Highway.
"Part of this record was me trying to capture certain elements of music that I'd grown up on, " he continues. "Because a lot of the songs were about the past, and about my past. So I would have Wings and 10cc albums out and say, 'You know, I really like the backing vocals on this. I like the guitar sound on this. Let's try and get close to that feel.'"
INSOLO is not entirely rooted in the theme of the past as conveyed in "Waiting for the Band" and the lush, Latin-tinged "I Remember You"; a song like the soaring ballad "Too Much," featuring legendary Queen drummer Roger Taylor, also reflects these current times. Kemp says it was the last track written for the album just prior to lockdown.
"I get up every day, I'm reading the news like we all are: the environment, the pandemic, etc.," he says of the track's backstory. "I listen to artists on their social media telling us how to behave, what we should be doing, what you should be eating, what we shouldn't be eating. 'I feel exasperated. I feel like this is all too much.' That line—"This crisis on the street, but I can't move my feet"—really started to run in my head, and I felt maybe this is worth actually getting down as a song idea. And that was what it was."
Not only does the new record put Kemp out front as a lead singer, but his guitar work is also more prominently featured compared to his previous work in Spandau Ballet. "I think I've come out as a guitarist," he says. "I think playing with Nick [Mason] has allowed me to find myself much more and go back to my roots—Mick Ronson, Phil Manzanera, and Pete Townshend—those guys who I grew up loving as a kid. Now I'm saying, 'Well, I want to try and get some of that into my record. I think it's another voice, another source of melody."
The release of INSOLO puts Kemp's career somewhat in full circle as this year marks the 40th anniversary of Spandau Ballet's debut album Journeys to Glory, kicking off a run of success on the pop charts. Featuring the classic lineup of Gary Kemp, Martin Kemp, Tony Hadley, Steve Norman and John Keeble, Spandau Ballet were one of the most popular British bands of the 1980s with such hits as "To Cut a Long Story Short," "Chant No. 1," "Gold" and the iconic "True." Following periodic reunions over the decades, Spandau Ballet has now called it a day, according to Kemp.
"I didn't expect to be sitting promoting a [new] record 40 years later," he says about his longevity in music. "My answer to that is: 'It's about bloody time.' I think we're all happy that we've kind of cut the ties and let it go, and there's none of that 'Oh will we? Maybe?' I think that inhibited us all from moving on. I think Tony did the right thing when he decided he didn't want to do it anymore. That was the right thing for him to do. I didn't realize that at the time. I felt hurt, but I think he's absolutely right. I want to keep writing songs because I realize that's what I do best."
Having now released an album tackling the past as well as the present, Kemp is now concentrating on the future that includes working on his solo career; co-hosting the Rockonteurs music interviews podcast with Guy Pratt; and playing guitar and singing in the Saucerful of Secrets band, whose tour is scheduled to resume in the spring of 2022. "Going out with Nick is going to be a big thrill as well. That's a wonderful thing to do, and so great to be playing in front of that Pink Floyd fraternity and being embraced by them."
Even though it took him 25 years to put out this new solo collection, Kemp doesn't anticipate his next record to take that amount of time to be released. "Now that I've let go of Spandau and I don't have to write for them, I suddenly realized that the way through my writing block, whenever it comes, is that I no longer have to make anything up—that you get to a certain age and you've experienced so much." He further adds: "I'm going to keep writing, I'm still putting songs down for another record."
