Spandau Ballet’s Tony Hadley says he would rather have been in Duran Duran

Tony Hadley, the former lead singer of Spandau Ballet, says he wishes he’d been in rival 1980s band Duran Duran.

Hadley, now 60, was vocalist on Spandau’s hits including True, Gold, and Chant No.1.

But he quit in 2017 to go solo and, despite not yet revealing why, he has hinted at an acrimonious fallout with bandmates Gary and Martin Kemp, Steve Norman and John Keeble.

In a Stars Cars Guitars podcast, Hadley says: “I wish I’d been in Duran Duran.”

Asked if he’d have swapped Spandau for Duran, he replies: “Yeah, I would. Yeah. In retrospect, yeah, I would have gone in there like a….in like Flynn!”

Spandau’s heyday was in the early 80s when their strongest competition came from fellow New Romantic group Duran Duran whose lead singer is Simon Le Bon.

In April 1999, Hadley, Norman and Keeble failed in an attempt to sue Gary Kemp, the band’s songwriter, for a share of his royalties.

The band reformed in 2009 after 19 years apart, but have failed to find success since Hadley’s departure three years ago.

Hadley tells the podcast: “Songwriting is one of the biggest….well, there are so many arguments and court cases about songwriting.

“I’m not going to mention anything. I’m not going there at all. But especially in America when you’ve got four people in a room and they do a songwriting day, well one of them might literally just come up with one line but they get 25% of the song.

“There are very strict rules.”

Asked how many songs he’s written, Hadley says: “Not enough! Judging by my royalty cheques, not enough successful ones.

“I only started writing in the latter days of Spandau Ballet. I didn’t know I could write because all had our roles within the band.

“It wasn’t until later on when we were doing the Through The Barricades album, that’s when I first started trying to play keyboards and things like that.

“So I didn’t write ’til a lot later.”