Spandau Ballet

Spandau Ballet was a New Romantic band of the early 1980s. Gary[?] and Martin Kemp[?] formed the band in 1979 with Steve Norman[?], John Keeble[?] and Tony Hadley[?] (see 1979 in music). They began performing and earning a local reputation around London, eventually signing to Island Records and soon released "To Cut a Long Story Short", a British hit in 1980 (1980 in music). This was followed by "The Freeze" and "Musclebound" and the well-received album Journey to Glory[?].

Spandau Ballet's fame continued to grow in the UK, and they finally broke into the mainstream with True. It topped the charts on the both sides of the Atlantic and launched several hit singles. By 1984, the album began to fizzle out, though, and "Only When You Leave" (from the follow-up, Parade[?] was the group's last American hit. A dispute with their distributor kept the band out of the spotlight in Britain for several years, and after "How Many Lies?" in 1989, the band broke up (see 1989 in music). The Kemp's did some acting work, including in The Bodyguard[?] and on The Larry Sanders Show. Hadley released State of Play[?] in 1993 (1993 in music).