Former Spandau Ballet guitarist and current member of Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, Gary Kemp recently followed up his successful Insolo album with a new work, This Destination. He tells Prog about the journey of self-discovery that led to him there and hints at what the future holds for the ‘Punk Floyd’ collective
You’d imagine Gary Kemp would be brimming with confidence, given his impressive CV. As well as being guitarist and singer in Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, Kemp has sold more than 25 million records with Spandau Ballet, starred in blockbuster movies including The Krays and The Bodyguard, and hosts Rockonteurs, the UK’s number one music podcast, with his bandmate and best mate Guy Pratt. So you’d imagine he has every reason to be confident.
“I’m not!” he protests, his forehead crumpling into a frown. Kemp, 65 – whose new album This Destination was released at the end of January – is smartly attired in button-up black shirt and charcoal gilet, the very picture of health, but mention of the ‘c’ word brings on a sudden bout of diffidence. While his third solo studio album is an impressive testament to his songwriting capabilities (he won an Ivor Novello for Outstanding Song Collection in 2012 and a BMI Icon Award in 2023) he says it started from a place of doubt.
“Maybe I appear really confident, and that’s how I saw myself in many ways. But a couple of years ago, I really had a lot of painful anxiety. I don’t know whether that was a common trait because of what we’d all experienced with the pandemic.”
Aftser asking himself existential questions (“Who am I? What am I?”) coinciding with reaching his 60s, Kemp decided to take inspiration from other songwriters. He called Sheffield musician Richard Hawley, who told him to go to a piano and put his hands over the keys, adding: “I’m going to go now, and you’re going to write a fucking brilliant song.” At that sitting, he conjured up the impressive Work, a paean to his parents that has a touch of the Sondheim about it.
Before that, he’d made himself take up the baton again during a trip to see Pete Townshend in Richmond. “I got on a tube, and it was a long journey. I thought: ‘I’m going to see one of my songwriting heroes, one of the greatest songwriters that ever lived in this genre. I’m looking around; I’ve got the city above my head and this sense of the different people coming on and off the train... and I’ve just got to write.”
Borrowed Town was the result, a song that posits the idea that the place we live only on loan to us. “There was a time when I was the king of the street, right, the peacock of my generation. We were those kids; it was our town, and there were old people on the street that I didn’t give a shit about. But hey maybe fought in the war that gave me the freedom to be a peacock. We didn’t care, in the same way that now I’m on the side of the street.”
Kemp’s playing on the album is crisp; his guitar lines on Borrowed Town contains shades of David Gilmour about them; a clear influence on his style that he’s not afraid to own up to. “When I grew up there were two guitarists that I really liked – David and Mick Ronson.
Nick is kind of an easy guy. He’s not Roger, and he’s more flexible than David, possibly
I think I’ve always liked melody. I’m not a shredder. But then David was influenced by Hank Marvin and Jeff Beck; and in many ways, Syd Barrett as well, because Syd started playing with the echoes and delays. So when David came into Pink Floyd, he had to take that on board because Syd had already established that.”
Kemp remembers practising in a school friend’s basement as a teenager, rehearsing a rendition of Pink Floyd’s Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun. “That was the first song I ever jammed with other musicians,” he says. “We all went to this counter-culturalist’s house near where I grew up in Islington. I’d been going to a drama club and I got to meet middle-class kids, arty kids from arty families, and one of them was [publisher and nightclub owner] Jay Landesman’s son, Cosmo, who turns out to be a really well-known journalist.
“Jay’s house shocked me – it was the first time I’d seen a wok or a bottle of wine; the first time I’d ever smelled garlic. Chairman Mao was on the wall; the chairs and the sofas didn’t match. We go downstairs to the basement and there’s a bunch of us, including Phil Daniels and Peter-Hugo Daly, who eventually became actors, and Miles [Landesman, Cosmo’s younger brother] was there, too. He put on Set The Controls For Heart Of The Sun, and I had my guitar, and we jammed it all day.”
Half a century later, Kemp would wind up playing the song live with the actual drummer from the recording. So, what’s Nick Mason like? “He’s kind of an easy guy,” says Kemp. “He’s not Roger. And he’s more flexible than David, possibly.”
I was in a band that went from electronic to blue-eyed soul and did very well, so people think that that’s all I am
Playing with Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets offered Kemp a way back into music after the confidence-shaking underperformance of his 1995 album Little Bruises, a Celtic-inflected work that was very out of sorts during the height of Britpop. But 36 years later, the nine-minute Steven Wilson mix of Waiting For The Band, from 2021’s Insolo – featuring Mike Garson on piano – might be the finest moment of his career so far.
“It’s hard to write another one of those,” he admits, “but Waiting For The Band was a song that I think a lot of people wanted. It felt like a song for the fans. Obviously it’s written with Bowie at Hammersmith Odeon in mind, but it could mean anyone I saw in that period in the 70s: T Rex, Pink Floyd or Genesis.”
Suddenly he had a new palette to paint with, and he could experiment and even solo without being swatted aside by Spandau Ballet saxophonist Steve Norman. “It was working with Nick that built my confidence,” he confirms. “People started to recognise me as the guitar player I am.”
This writer remembers eyebrows being raised when Kemp appeared in Saucerful Of Secrets, and also when he took on the role of Ronnie Kray in the excellent 1990 film The Krays. He quickly silenced the doubters in both cases. Prog wonders if being underestimated at times works to his advantage?
We didn’t think we could do Echoes, and then we did it. Could we go into The Dark Side Of The Moon?
“I probably have those same opinions about myself sometimes, but you’ve got to work hard and take up the challenge,” he says. “A lot of it comes from weird misconceptions and judgements that people make from a narrow view. I was in a band that went from electronic to blue-eyed soul and it did very well, so people think that that’s all that I am, and I must only be listening to that type of music.”
So, what now for Saucerful Of Secrets? Having played a lot of pre-The Dark Side Of The Moon material one wonders where they can go from here. Kemp confirms there’s something exciting in the pipeline – but he can’t say any more at the moment.
“Where can it go? That’s interesting, because we didn’t think we could do Echoes, and then we did it. Could we go further beyond that into The Dark Side Of The Moon? I don’t think so, because people have been used to seeing those songs performed with 10 musicians and backing vocalists onstage, and we’ve always been Punk Floyd.
“But I think there are still some songs that we could have a look at that we’ve never done. Nick is 81 and he wants to keep playing music. I should be so lucky to be playing with this giant who changed my musical landscape with Dark Side Of The Moon.”
Moreover, Kemp has now joined an exclusive society: “I’ve been accepted into the Pink Floyd universe. And I can tell you what, that’s a tricky membership to get.”