Martin Kemp reveals to Ken Bruce his “fatal mistake” at Live Aid

Ken Bruce spoke to Spandau Ballet star and fellow Greatest Hits Radio presenter, Martin Kemp on his show this morning.

Martin was on the show sharing his Golden Years and there was no surprise that he went back to the 80s, choosing three of his favourite tracks from 1985.

One of the songs he chose was Bruce Springsteen’s Glory Days, he explained why to Ken: “When I heard this song it kind of represented me and where Spandau were at the time,” he said. “I don’t say this lightly, but we were one of the biggest bands in the world at this point. There were only two – us and Duran Duran and I think we had the edge! To be fair they were big in Birmingham.”

Martin continued: “Bob Geldof told me he tried everything to get Springsteen to play Live Aid which was happening the night after Bruce had played at Wembley. He didn’t play – the only big artist not to play at Live Aid – but what he did do was leave Bob all the staging that he had used the night before as his gift to Live Aid.”

This led to a conversation about Spandau Ballet’s Live Aid appearance, memorable for all the wrong reasons for Martin.

“There were two billion people around the world watching it on television – you knew that that was the biggest day in music ever and that it would be remembered forever,” he recalled. “And I remember standing on stage, we came on and we did Only When You Leave which was a big Spandau track, number five in the charts at the time, I think.

“But then we made the fatal mistake of going up to the microphone and saying, ‘this is the new one’ and you could feel 2 billion people around the world going ‘really?!’. It was like the butterfly effect.

“We wrapped it up with True at the end which kind of got us back, but you could see by just that one moment… the only band to play a new song at Live Aid and it was us!”