| Amazon Interview 1 |
| Martin Kemp went from North London fop-pop star to East End heartthrob when he swapped a plectrum for the keys of the E20 in Albert Square as clubowner Steve Owen. The road to Walford wasn't without potholes, however, and before Eastenders his life was shattered when two brain tumours were discovered, prompting major surgery. Happily recovered, he quickly established Steve as one of the Square's most popular and controversial characters with a gripping storyline involving ex-girlfriend Saskia, callow youth Matthew Rose, and an ashtray. Martin Kemp spoke about his incident-packed life and how he came to write his book "True", while Amazon's David Vincent tried not to ponder where to hide the tape if anything untoward happened during the conversation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amazon.co.uk: People have written autobiographies at a younger age, but you are still this side of 40. What inspired you to write the book now? Martin Kemp: When I first starteed writing, it wasn't intended to be a book. I was going through a dark time in my life: I'd just had one brain tumour surgically removed, and I was waiting to find out how fast another one was growing. The gap lasted about two years before I had the second one treated with radiation therapy. In that time I wasn't sure whether I'd come out the other side of it, and so I started to write the book as memoirs for my kids, to leave behind a firsthand account of me rather than them getting the knowledge secondhand. That's how it started. It was only last year, when I started on EastEnders, that every interview I did from then was a retrospective piece that made me think that perhaps I should put this out. Amazon.co.uk: The diary from your year as a tax exile in Ireland is for me one of the most interesting passages in your book. I was struck by one entry in particular: "I'm always waiting for the next day, the next week, the next year … When will I learn to appreciate every day as it comes?" How much did your brush with mortality affect your attitude to life? Kemp: I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I changed as a person after that experience. I do appreciate the good times now, whereas in the past I've always been on a rush to get to the next stage in my life. When the good times are here, I can sit back and enjoy them. Maybe that also comes with experience as well as the brush with death. Amazon.co.uk: How useful was therapy in dealing with the aftermath? Kemp: Very useful, but it wasn't something that I went to straightaway. I was always the type of person that thought medication purely came in tablets, which I think is the same with a lot of British men. Therapy was something that I bumped into. I went for cranial osteopathy, which was something that my wife believed in, and while I was lying down on the bed with my head in his hands, the osteopath sprung it on me. It was only then that I realised the stuff I'd been keeping inside, the fears that I had, and it started to come out. It was after that, when I went home, the memories I was recalling through those visualisation techniques inspired me to write the book. Amazon.co.uk: Let's briefly dwell on your pop-star days, as it occupies half of the book. You were very young when Spandau Ballet had their first hit. Kemp: I was 17. It was superb. When you're that young, and you have that kind of success, you're not really taking it in. You're just in a rush to do better and better things, so you don't really stop to take it in. You're on this massive ride, which you think at the time will go on forever. Amazon.co.uk: You admit to not being one of life's natural bassists. You write at one point, "I always feel like saying, 'Why don't we put a bass synth on that one?'. Just to lose the responsibility of having to come up with bass lines …" Which was what happened on True! For me, that was the main revelation of the book. Kemp: I knew I was a terrible bass player. Well, maybe not terrible, but any band is made up of different elements. Look at some of the biggest bands, like the Rolling Stones. Bill Wyman isn't the best bass player in the world, as I'm sure he'd admit, but he was an important part of the set-up. For me, I wanted to be Bruce Lee, or Marlon Brando, or Elvis. I wanted the kind of charisma they had. I didn't want to be Stanley Clarke. I was more into influencing how the band looked, its visual style. Spandau Ballet was built on our style and our songs. Amazon.co.uk: How much did the achievement of True become a millstone around the band's neck? Kemp: I don't think it did, it was a massive step up the ladder. Looking over the history of the band before that, it was Journeys to Glory and those early records which were all hits, and then there was the album Diamond. I suppose that if you cut that word in half, it says "dire". It wasn't my favourite album, and it didn't go down that well either, though it had a couple of fantastic tracks on it. The band went into a huge slump during that album, and then we came back with True, which took us to another level. So it was never a millstone. At one point it took us to the most successful point we'd ever been. Once you have that kind of success, you have that to live up to. The pressure's on, which is part of the achievement. Amazon.co.uk: Duran Duran are an amusing theme in your book. How well did you get on with them behind the headlines? With Wham! you made up a triumvirate of British pop--though I imagine your relationship with Wham! was helped by meeting Shirlie in 1981. Kemp: Meeting Shirlie (one half of Pepsi and Shirlie, backing singers for Wham!), and also the fact that George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley were nice guys. There was a rivalry between us and Duran Duran, but it was a healthy one. There was no squabbling, we didn't get up on stage at the Brits and offer each other out, there was nothing like that. Underneath it all we were friends with a very good healthy rivalry, though perhaps the rivalry was heightened because Duran Duran were bigger in America, and that's the jewel in the crown for any pop group |
| Part One |