GARY KEMP: Writing For Me
An interview by Bridget Herlihy.
Gary Kemp is a man of many talents. He became a household name in the 1980s as a member of one of the most successful bands of the New Wave/New Romantic eras, Spandau Ballet. Kemp’s role in the band was multi-faceted; not only was he the band’s guitarist, keyboardist and backing vocalist, but he was also the mastermind songwriter behind a staggering 23 hit singles released by Spandau Ballet.
Over the last three decades Kemp has been a very busy man indeed. He released his debut solo album ‘In Bruises’ in 1995, and acted both on stage and screen, appearing in The Krays (alongside brother Martin Kemp), Killing Zoe and The Bodyguard, to name just a few. In 2018 he joined Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets, a psychedelic rock band that channels Pink Floyd’s earlier music. He devised and acted as himself in a BBC-produced mockumentary ‘The Kemps’; a spoof of the lives of himself and his brother that will see a sequel filmed next year. He also has a successful podcast, The Rockonteurs, along with Guy Pratt; a series that reveals the stories behind renowned musicians and their music. Suffice to say, regardless of your generation, it is highly likely that you have encountered the work of Gary Kemp in one guise or another.
However, there is perhaps one project over the last 30 years that stands out above the rest for Kemp, one that could be considered closest to his heart: his new solo album, aptly titled ‘In Solo’. Coming 25 years after his debut solo work, Kemp presents a superb work that sees the musician and songwriter bring his life experiences, and a new level of confidence, to the fore. Chatting with Kemp via Zoom from his home in London, it is evident that he is very excited, and quite rightly proud, of his work on ‘In Solo’.
How are things in England at the moment? Obviously the last 18 months have been quite challenging.
Things are good. They are opening up again, but not as good as you are. We are still learning to live with it, but a lot of people are vaccinated, which has been good.
It has been 25 years since you released your debut album ‘Little Bruises’ in 1995. Was there a particular reason why you waited so long to record a second solo record?
I wasn’t in a solo album headspace. I suppose I spent a lot of my life post-Spandau Ballet still in the shadow of Spandau Ballet, and still in the… you know… people are obsessed with it, and we occasionally get back together. We occasionally go to court; we occasionally fight; we occasionally make music – new music. And I suppose I was always still tied to that younger person that I was, and those relationships that I had. I was doing other things but not ready to let it go completely, where I was writing songs and putting them aside for Spandau. Or writing sings with Tony [Hadley] in mind, or writing songs with Steve Norman in mind, etc. So, working with Nick [Mason] was a real cut-off point, and allowed me to really express myself and liberate myself as a guitar player and as a singer, and I think changing people’s perceptions of me slightly, allowed me to be more explorative in music.
I think a lot of this album is… if you put Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets and Spandau Ballet in a blender you would end up with this record. But it was a record written by a guy of a certain age, who no longer has to make things up. You know, he can just only tell the truth in lyrics. I had experienced so much, so many highs and lows, divorce and tragedy, as with everyone else once you get to a certain age you realise that you don’t have to invent anything. You have got an element of truth in whatever story you want to tell from the experience of it. I think the words started writing themselves while I was on tour with Nick, and when I start writing songs words first, they have to be for me. Then I started to develop music when I came back. I realised that I was writing these themes on the album; three songs that were very much about… how do you tie those versions of yourself up from the past? A man with faster eye, fleeter foot… how does that relate to you now? There were some songs that I was exploring that theme on.
How does this album compare or contrast to Little Bruises? You have said that obviously you are in a very different phase of your life, and have experienced trauma, divorce, and just the common experiences one has as they grow older.
In some ways it is probably less esoteric. Little Bruises, I used Irish music, jazz influences, and also I wasn’t the only guitarist; for some reason I was still quite shy on the guitar, god knows why, but I had other guitar players come in. I play every single piece of guitar on this record. It doesn’t have any of those other Irish influences, etc. I think that the songs are better; my voice is better; I have more experience now, more confidence, more faith in what I do. It’s still personal lyrically.
You mentioned that playing and touring around the world with Nick Mason has given you a greater confidence than you have ever had before. How so, given that you were in one of the biggest bands of the 80s?
With Spandau I was always… serving the song is what I was about, because I was a songwriter, and I didn’t care how the song was presented, I didn’t feel like I had to cover it in guitar. I wasn’t trying to look for an identity as a guitar player in that I way. I think that era wasn’t necessarily about a lot of guitars, so I was happy just to have a keyboard on there, or whatever it was. And also whenever there was a solo with Spandau Ballet, it was always… here’s Steve on his saxophone, he’s going to play the solo. So, what is good about this record for me, and working with Nick, is all the stuff I used to do in my bedroom but never put on record I can now do. As a writer, because it was a solo record, I have other ways of expressing my thoughts and emotions, and some of those is through the guitar, so it’s not just all through lyrics or melody, it can be through what I am playing, and solos, etc. And ‘Ahead of the Game’, for example, begins with guitar, a guitar solo, and ends with a guitar. There aren’t many singles out there doing that. But it works. You can get your character and your feelings and your emotions…you can express more abstractly through the guitar playing. Being recognised as a player more, with Nick, and having a whole other Pink Floyd fraternity accepting me, I suppose there are elements of that that have gone into this album.
‘In Solo’, the title track, is about that feeling that you can feel very isolated and very alone in a city and surrounded by millions of people, and the irony of having to look on your phone for validation; for likes on your posts from people that you don’t know to find love that way is extraordinary. And I just started writing a song about two people; a woman going off to work and her partner doing the same. And it developed into this story about them, and about me, and about us. And the opening song is six and a half minutes long; there is an element of prog-rock on there I would have though [laughs]. But it is dramatic and it was influenced by people like Scott Walker and Jimmy Webb. It is a very different song to the one you would expect from me, I think. It is surrounded by orchestra; I wrote all of the parts on the computer and then we went in and really actually recorded the orchestra, but during the pandemic, so they were socially distanced within the studio. Now that was quite extraordinary. So now the song is actually becoming relevant, even though I wrote it before the pandemic it is suddenly starting… London is a ghost town – wow, this feels like the resonance is elsewhere – it is more relevant to today. As I developed those characters I started to become much more interested in them, and there is a song called ‘The Haunted’ which is the penultimate track on the album, but has musical references going back to that first track ‘In Solo’. So yes, there are concepts there. And then there were three songs that were about me looking back, I guess; ‘I Remember You’, ‘I Am The Past’ and ‘Waiting For The Band’.
‘I Am The Past’ is about a… in my head it is sort of about an old gun-slinger who was a sharp shooter from the past, and then, he’s an older guy, he has got a younger wife, and does he still feel relevant today? So you can see that there is an analogy to my own life in there. ‘Waiting For The Band’ is a sort of hymn to lost youth, but it is also understanding that those feelings are still with me today. I started writing this song and then this thirteen year old kid came into my mind, and it was me. And I was excited about music , and I started writing a song about being a fan, and dressing up and going to the gigs, and the anticipation of waiting for a band to come on, and being a disciple of those heroes. And I took my young thirteen year old self into the Hammersmith Odeon in the middle of the song, and the band come on, and then they get swept away like ghosts, and then it ends with me saying “I still have that feeling in me; I’m still waiting for that great moment in music to come around the corner and present itself to me and lift me. That sort of search is still going on in my life, and that is what that song is about; it relates to a lot of people and how they see music, and why they live and breathe it. You know, I then found some interviews of Bowie fans outside of a gig in London in the 1970s, and I put that inside of the music. Its quite thrilling at that point when you start hearing them talk, and they bubble up like ghosts.
You wrote the lyrics from the point of view of a 13 year old waiting for the band to arrive onstage and to have that moment of euphoria wash over you as your idols appear and begin to play. As a performer do you feel compelled to ensure that you give your audience that same kind of experience?
You do, don’t you? Because you have had that experience as a kid, and when you step up you want to deliver it back to them. You want to deliver their memories, and when you sit down and work out how to perform a show – how to put a show together, the structure of the show, what order do the songs come in. We always think of three acts; you get the whiteboard out, and you write down Act I, Act II and Act III. And you take the audience through that arc that develops that show; I think there is always that more intimate bit in the middle, that’s your Act II if you like. The best shows, I think, are always the same; when the band comes on, the artists are a heightened reality. They are up above and beyond anything you could reach or touch. Its ‘deus ex machina’; gods coming to earth to present themselves to you. And as the show develops, the audience rise and the band come down, and by the end of the show you are as one. You are together; you are the same people. And then of course they all get in their limos and fuck off! [laughs] But that is the journey that all good shows need to take. If a guy comes on at the beginning and he is every man, it’s a bit disappointing.
So, I have to ask, do you still finish off the gig and head off in the limo?
I used to, but now we get on the tour bus. [laughs] But I would also add that I don’t think that you ever get goosebumps on stage; not like you do in the audience. Being in the audience when those pyrotechnics go off… and when the greatest band in the world comes on stage with some massive loud riff, nothing beats that on stage. You can’t think like that on stage because you are thinking too technically; what is coming next? Are the lights working?
Usually touring goes hand-in-hand with the release of a new album. Do you have any immediate plans to tour ‘In Solo’?
We don’t know when live music is going to start, but we are hoping that at some stage, by September I think. But I’m back with Nick Mason as of December, rehearsing for a tour which will take about six months the first half of next year. As far as my own stuff is concerned, we don’t have the venues available right now, because everyone has crammed themselves into whatever venue they can get for tours that have already sold, two years or a year ago. I would like to take this [album] out and play live. I did five tracks in a rehearsal room a few weeks ago and, one of them, ‘Ahead of The Game’, is already up on YouTube [See above], you can see me playing that live. Then we are putting the other ones up gradually when they appear. And it was great to do that; it was great to be in a room again playing with people. But it would be nice to play with people watching as well. I would love to come back to New Zealand; I love it down there.
Gary Kemp’s new album ‘In Solo’ is available now on CD or Vinyl, as well as via your favourite online streaming service.
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