Tony Hadley was tipsy when he recorded ‘Cut A Long Story Short’.
The 62-year-old singer has revealed he kept messing up his takes when recording his former band Spandau Ballet’s 1980 debut single because he “had too much champagne”.
Speaking to the Wired column in the Daily Star newspaper, he said: “In the blink of an eye it’s gone. I still remember recording the vocals to ‘Cut A Long Story Short’ and the mistakes that were made because I’d had too much champagne.”
Spandau Ballet became one of the biggest bands of the 1980s leading from the front of the New Romantic era, but Tony can recall feeling as though he and his bandmates – Gary Kemp, Martin Kemp, Steve Norman and John Keeble – had really “arrived” in the music industry when they performed on the iconic BBC music show ‘Top of the Pops’
He said: “Doing ‘Top of the Pops’ was just ‘Wow’. It felt like you’d arrived. Having our first number one with ‘True’ was bloody amazing, we were all about 23 and I was naked. I remember Martin Kemp and Steve Norman coming in with a bottle of champagne spraying it everywhere.”
The ‘Gold’ hitmakers eventually broke up in the ’90s and Tony admits it was a “slow disintegration” after it stopped being “fun” working together.
They did reunite in 2009 for new album ‘Once More’ and to go on a series of tours, before Tony quit the group again in 2017.
Tony said: “It was a slow disintegration, but the early and middle period, we were a fun band. Then it all started to change, people got serious. It ceased to be fun.”