But why should I be embarrassed? I did my best, worked with some great people, rekindled my friendship with Adam and had an affair to remember with an incredible girl. To capture the essence of my Spellcaster experience it would take, appropriately enough, an Italian phrase—la dolce vita.
I’LL FLY FOR YOU
The huge numbers that my morning show on KROQ and Video One and VideoBeat were achieving were being noticed much further away than Southern California. Getting played on “the ROQ of the ’80s” and on my video shows became a top priority for many bands and their record labels.
When Tears for Fears were featured on the cover of the major international trade publication, Optic Music, in 1985 they were asked in the interview about how they found success in America.
Orzabal acknowledged the contribution of Los Angeles DJ/VJ Richard Blade in breaking them in the L.A. markets. He concurred with the opinion that Blade had been instrumental in pushing Tears for Fears long before they had any sort of breakthrough in the U.S. Because of Blade’s large following through radio station KROQ and his video shows Video One and Video Beat both The Hurting and later Songs from the Big Chair had a definite edge in Los Angeles. “He (Blade) really picked up on us since ‘Mad World,’ our first hit single in England,” Orzabal says. “That was at the end of 1982 and he’s been promoting us for ages and ages. I’d say that he’s rather chuffed (happy) that we’ve got success now.”
Another band from across the Atlantic, Duran Duran’s biggest rivals in the UK, were planning an all-out assault on the USA to try and take the pop crown away from the boys from the Rum Runner. And the vehicle that Spandau Ballet planned to use? Video One and VideoBeat.
Spandau Ballet had scored a massive hit the year before in America (and around the world) with “True” but their follow up, “Gold,” had not done as well as they hoped in the US. That is, except for in Los Angeles and in the other markets where MV3 had aired. In those places the single had gone to the top of the local sales charts.
The band was now getting a consistent buzz from US fans writing to them in England saying they were seeing their videos on Video One and VideoBeat. We, unlike MTV, were playing older Spandau Ballet videos as well, great cuts like “To Cut a Long Story Short,” “Paint Me Down” and “Chant #1” and getting tremendous reaction to them. We were also featuring the songs and videos from their latest album, Parade, a release that MTV all but ignored.
Spandau Ballet’s manager, Steve Dagger, was very aware of this as he was hands-on with the group and made their success his priority. He was an incredibly intelligent guy and was continually looking for cool and different ways to enhance his clients’ success. And Spandau were a lot more than just clients to Steve; they were all boyhood friends who had grown up together in London.
It was Steve who initially was able to book gigs for the band in their early days at London’s hip clubs like The Blitz and then orchestrated their launch into the big time with a much hyped performance aboard the battleship HMS Belfast on the Thames River on July 26, 1980. It was a not-so-subtle way of saying “We are here to give battle to all you other groups out there.”
Steve also put together the band’s publishing and record deals, and Steve, who along with Gary Kemp, had recruited both Tony Hadley and Gary’s brother, Martin, into the group.
Steve had said to Gary that they needed someone who looked good to be the lead singer and they both knew Tony from school and to quote Steve, “Tony was the tallest guy in the class and he had a leather jacket and liked Bowie, so Gary said he was in.”
Martin was approached when Steve and Gary were in a pub one night planning how the band was going to take over the world. Gary remarked that the group was almost complete; they had the brilliant musician Steve Norman on saxophone and guitars and John Keeble on drums, but they still needed a bass player.
Gary stressed that he “has to be incredibly good-looking. The kind of guy that the ladies will love. But where do we find someone like that?”
Steve was quiet, then noticed Gary’s brother, Martin, at the bar with women falling all over him. “How about your brother? The girls love him.”
Gary couldn’t deny the physical attraction that Martin exuded but he was dubious. “He wouldn’t be any good. He can’t play the bass. He can’t play anything.”
Steve’s reply was short, and those two words completed Spandau Ballet’s lineup—“Teach him.”
I had interviewed Spandau a number of times over the years; during their early days they were regular guests on my radio show, one time even serenading a huge crowd of fans that gathered in the KROQ parking lot to see their idols. The band had assembled on the graffiti-covered backstairs and led the hundreds of kids in a rousing chorus of “True.”
With Spandau Ballet on the back steps of KROQ
As I mentioned earlier, I’d also hosted one of their first American TV interviews that chilly night outdoors on the roof of Le Parc Hotel in Beverly Hills, plus I’d spent time with them in London while shooting MV Network for CBS, but now thanks to Steve’s long distance phone call I was about to become a lot closer to them than ever before.
It was Christmas Day, 1984, and that crazy, topsy-turvy year was just a week away from being over. Karen and I were getting ready to head up to Santa Barbara to visit her family when the phone rang. I picked it up and heard a familiar English voice. I glanced at the clock; it read 1pm, which meant 9pm in the UK.
“Hey, Richard, it’s Steve Dagger. How’s your Christmas?”
“Steve!” I was always happy to talk with Steve. He’s one of those fun people who never hits you with a dumb request or leaves you in a bad mood. “Merry Christmas! How are things in England?”
“Raining, of course. I had an idea and thought it might make a fun Christmas present for you.”
“Really? What?” I asked.
“We just booked an Australian tour. It’ll be our first time down there. Then we’re doing the rest of the world and wrapping it up in the States. We were wondering if you wanted to come on the road with us to Australia.”
I didn’t have to think twice. “Absolutely. So what’s the deal?”
“Here’s the thing. It’s been more than a year since ‘True’ and I’m not sure how we’re going to do in America, and right now it’s crucial that the band makes a statement where you are. All of our dates have sold out already in Europe and Australia. I mean in Sydney we’re doing two nights at the Sydney Entertainment Center. The place is massive and we’ve sold more tickets than Phil Collins for God’s sake. We need to let the American kids know that. So maybe if you could come down and talk about it on your radio program and do something on your TV shows, it would get the word out.”
My mind was running numbers and unfortunately the dollar signs were big. Too big. “I’d love to, but here’s the thing. It would be expensive.”
“I know that.” Steve had thought this through already. “We’ll fly you and a camera crew down. You travel with us for a week, then go back to America and say what you saw. Would that work?”
It was a brilliant idea and I wouldn’t go broke doing it.
“I’m in. And depending on when the tickets go on sale for your US tour, I can do a Spandau week leading up to it on Video One and VideoBeat. That should give you a lot of publicity.”
“Perfect.” Steve was really excited now. “I’ll send you the tour dates and take care of the tickets. You tell me what you need for the camera crew and I’ll draw up a budget for that. Don’t worry about any ground transportation or hotels; the local promoters will have all that covered.”
“I’m on it. Merry Christmas, Steve.”
“Happy Christmas, Richard. Hope this was a good present.”
We both hung up.
Two days later Peter and I got together to work out the crew I’d need down under. A good cameraman was essential, preferably someone who could use a portable BetaCam because shooting on one-inch tape would be way too cumbersome. We’d also need a great sound
person—after all, this was a music act—and a lighting guy who would make sure these five heartthrobs looked great.
We ended up arranging for Bruce Caulk, a cameraman we used in California, to fly out from the States; the sound and lighting crew I would pick up in Australia. It made the most sense financially and even though it wasn’t my money, the Spands were my friends and I don’t waste a friend’s money unnecessarily.
A few weeks later I settled into the comfortable business seat of a Qantas Airlines 747 and readied myself for the seventeen-hour flight ahead.
The next day I touched down in Sydney and as I disembarked I was pulled aside by a uniformed Qantas official who walked me through a special lane at customs and immigration, avoiding all the long lines and tedious paperwork. So this is what it felt like to be a rock star! It was the perfect taste of what was in store for me over the next seven days.
The stretch limo waited patiently outside—obviously immune to the recorded “white zone is for loading and unloading only” announcement which played every twenty seconds with a fun Oz accent. Inside the two Steves were waiting for me—Steve Dagger and Steve Norman.
“Do you mind if we don’t go straight to the hotel? We’ve got a harbor cruise lined up for the boys and figured you’d like to be part of it.”
Let me think. Sydney Harbor—the bridge, the Opera House, the beaches. “Let’s do it.” I said.
Before boarding the boat I pulled a small home video camera from my bag. The cameraman wasn’t arriving until tomorrow but just in case I’d brought a little backup—a mini VHS!
The food and drinks flowed non-stop as we cruised one of the most beautiful harbors on the planet. I shot nearly an hour’s worth of video and surprisingly the quality came out so well that we were able to use the footage just two weeks later on both of my TV shows. The band was in great spirits and pumped for the opening night of their Australian tour which was now only seventy-two hours away.
As we pulled back into the dock Steve Dagger leaned over to me. “Get a couple of hours sleep. You’ll need it. There’s a party tonight.” He grinned.
It wasn’t his usual smile. It was a “‘wait until you see what is going to go down” grin. I trusted Steve and couldn’t wait.
Steve had arranged with the promoters of the tour—the biggest concert bookers in the southern hemisphere—for the band to have a full schedule each day of press, radio and television, then to relax and party each night at a different club or bar that was taken over just for them.
We pulled up at the club that night in three separate stretch limos. We could have all squeezed into one but Steve Dagger was having none of that; he didn’t want an endless parade of bodies pouring from a single vehicle as if they had been packed in like sardines. This was Spandau Ballet’s first time in Australia and Steve was making a statement.
The press was waiting outside and flashbulbs exploded frantically as security hustled us into the club. However when I use the word hustled I do have to point out that Steve himself led the charge and he wanted to make sure the band was photographed for the morning papers so he deliberately limited how fast the security had us run the gauntlet of cameras. “Hurry slowly—it’s an art” he would say later with a laugh.
Once inside the club we stopped dead in our tracks. All six of us, the five Spands and me, were stunned. We had never seen anything like it. It was beautiful. Only Steve Dagger kept going towards the bar. I had worked in clubs around the world but I had never experienced anything close to this.
Apart from the black-outfitted staff we were the only men in the club. Everyone else, maybe a hundred plus people, were female. And not just regular girls, but drop-dead gorgeous women in barely there mini-dresses.
John Keeble expressed out loud what we were all thinking, “Where the fuck is Saint Peter?” But we weren’t in Heaven, just Australia at its best!
Steve Dagger walked back over to the six of us who were still rooted in place.
“What is this?” asked Gary.
“The promoters asked me if I had any special requests for you guys, like Van Halen always says ‘no brown M&Ms,’ so I jokingly said we wanted a party each night of the tour but only models were to be invited. I thought they knew I wasn’t serious but they called me this morning and said it was all arranged. They contacted every modeling agency and talent school in the country and gave all the girls a blanket invitation. This is what it’s going to be like right across Australia. Have fun guys.”
There is an expression “shooting ducks in a barrel.” That’s what it was like that night. Even though I wasn’t one of the band, I was with them and was the “famous TV host from America.” And it certainly wasn’t a tough sell because all the girls were there for one reason, to meet and hook up with the rock stars. Because of that simple fact the party didn’t last long. Within an hour the three limos were racing back to the hotel—but this time the cars had quite a few more occupants who were all excited females.
As the cars emptied out we took our new friends inside through a crowd of mostly female fans encamped outside the hotel.
John again chirped up, “Holy shit, there’s girls everywhere.”
Word had gotten out that Spandau was in Sydney and there was only one place to stay at that time if you were in a band, and that was the Sebel Town House, the Oz equivalent of the Sunset Marquis in Hollywood. The fans knew it and that’s where they would wait to meet their heroes.
Tony and Martin were not caught up in all the hormone-driven exuberance. Tony was happily married and Martin had brought his girlfriend with him. That just left the three other Spands, plus Steve and me to do our duty as good Englishmen. After all, we couldn’t give these Aussie girls the wrong impression.
I should have been jet-lagged that night but somehow the tiredness from crossing the dateline disappeared when my model date and I hit the room. But the next morning came way too quickly.
Steve woke me, and all the band, with a knock on the door. It was 6:20am! The group was booked on a morning TV talk show and had to be up, dressed and at the studio, ready to go on camera by 7:30am. Steve wanted me there to be part of the whole experience and as tired as I was I was happy to oblige; after all, Steve was picking up the entire tab and I had six more nights of supermodels ahead.
This time we all squeezed in one limo. Steve Dagger and John Keeble had not yet gotten in but the rest of us were assembled, tired and quiet. Gary, Steve Norman and I exchanged knowing glances while Tony and Martin sat there, a little sullen. I knew they were good family men but they had to have been thinking a little bit of “what if?” The car door opened and Steve leaned in and looked around.
“Still no sign of John?” asked Steve. We shook our heads. “Hey, Richard, would you run up and get him?” Steve tossed me a key. “He’s on the same floor, two doors down from you.”
“No problem,” I said and bounded out of the car.
I took the elevator to the fourth floor and headed for John’s room. “Hey, John,” I called out as I opened the door, “Steve needs you in . . .” I had just walked in on John in an extremely delicate position with two models who were obviously going to be very late for their class today.
“I already told Dagger I wasn’t doing the interview, dammit!” John yelled across the room at me.
“Got it, buddy,” I said and shut the door behind me.
When I returned to the limo the guys greeted me with laughter and a round of applause. Steve had known what was going to happen and shared my embarrassment with the band. But I wasn’t pissed. I was laughing with them before the bellman even had time to close the limo’s door.
Traveling with a successful rock group is a unique experience. No doors remain closed to you. Drinks are always free—and forced upon you. Someone else invariably picks up the dinner tab and drugs are ever-present. It can be a very bacchanalian existence and it is understandable when you hear of the abuse and overdoses that happen to so many. Fortunately for me, and for most of the guys in Spandau, our
drug was the ladies and Steve Dagger had made it easy to score.
I filmed everything that Spandau Ballet did in those first few heady days. We even shot the Aussie film crews filming Spandau! It was the ultimate reality show from Down Under. Spandau is doing an interview with a national paper—we should shoot it. The band is going to appear on Australia’s biggest pop TV show Countdown—roll tape. It was a wild, never-ending schedule.
Spandau Ballet encore on stage in Sydney, Australia
The night of the first of their two sold-out shows at the Sydney Entertainment Center was manic. A lot of people were expecting a laid-back performance from Spandau Ballet because, after all, they were famous for their ballads like “True,” “I’ll Fly for You” and “Round & Round.” Instead, under Gary’s leadership and powered by John Keeble’s powerful drumming, the band rocked from the opening notes and had the crowd of 18,000 on their feet for the entire ninety-minute set.
I had unlimited access to the stage and shot concert footage and 35mm stills from inside the security barricades. At the end of the show as the band linked arms for the final encore Gary gave me a shout out from the stage and a big thumbs-up.
The first thing that Gary said to me in their backstage dressing room after the show was, “How did we do?”
It wasn’t a glib question; he really meant it. Gary cared deeply about his band. He wanted Spandau to be great every time they stepped on stage, their shows to be big, and to leave a lasting impression on the Australian kids.
I was happy to tell him, “You rocked it.”
He hugged me and grinned. “Just wait until tomorrow night!”
Later that evening the limos ran the gauntlet of press and took us to another club booked out for Spandau and the cream of the Australian modeling industry. By now the word was getting around that these were the parties to try to crash and there was a huge mob of wanna-bes outside. The security rushed us into the club and the waiting arms of the nubile Aussie models.
World in My Eyes: The Autobiography Page 33