I REMEMBER...Tony Hadley

Tony Hadley came to fame in the 1980s as the lead singer with Spandau Ballet. Now a solo performer, he looks back at his time with the band, performing at Live Aid and meeting Frank Sinatra

- Frank Sinatra

ONE OF MY FONDEST CHILDHOOD MEMORIES was when my cousin Rob very kindly gave me his 24-inch bike—I was around eight or nine. It was my pride and joy and I really looked after it, although I fell off loads of times. I shouldn’t really still be here because I would do stupid things like going downhill with no hands and one time I ended up in hospital with a concussion.

DAD WAS AN ENGINEER FOR THE DAILY MAIL and I loved visiting him in the machine rooms in Fleet Street. Mum was a housewife for a long time, then when we kids got older she worked for Islington Area Health. They were very much post-war parents who instilled in us the idea of “you can achieve anything you want” and they were very pleased when I got into Dame Alice Owen’s Grammar School.

I GOT HOOKED ON MUSIC when Dad would play his Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Jack Jones, and Ella Fitzgerald records in the run-up to Sunday lunches. I grew up listening to swing music, which is one of the reasons why I still love it. I was also massively into punk but Mum told me, “If you want to be a singer you should listen to all types of music, not just Johnny Rotten, and Billy Idol.”

SPANDAU BALLET WERE INITIALLY A SCHOOL BAND. I’d been singing at Pontins holiday camps, winning weekends away for my parents and my brother and sister. I already knew I wanted to be in the music business and it was just by chance that Steve Norman, who was at the same school as me, said he was thinking of forming a band and I said, “You’re looking at your lead singer.” We were called The Roots, The Cut, The Makers, Gentry and finally Spandau Ballet.