Good Life Project - Gary Kemp | Life Beyond Spandau Ballet

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

If I said the words, “I know this much is true,” a certain generation of humans would immediately start humming along with the lyric and the unforgettable melody from the iconic Spandau Ballet song, simply titled True. As the songwriter and guitarist for ‘80s music phenom, Gary Kemp wrote True, along with 23 hit singles, and the band’s androgynous, glam look changed the culture of music in a way that wouldn’t be truly understood for year. He later worked with everyone from Nelly to Lloyd and the Black Eyed Peas, wrote music that’s appeared on TV shows worldwide, including Spin City, the Simpsons and Ugly Betty a well as Hollywood blockbusters like the Wedding Singer, Charlie’s Angels, 50 First Dates, and Sky High.When Spandau’s opening run came to close in the early 90s, Gary then followed a parallel muse into acting, appearing in the hit British gangster movie, the Krays, and then in Hollywood movies like the Bodyguard, and Quentin Tarantino’s, Killing Zoe. He also made his theatrical debut in the London West End production of Art. Gary began touring again with Saucerful of Secrets, alongside Pink Floyd drummer, Nick Mason, and bassist, Guy Pratt, rekindling a desire to be back in the studio writing and recording an album he produced during the pandemic called INSOLO, which is a deeply reflective look at his life, love and work.You can find Gary at:Website : http://smarturl.it/INSOLOgkInstagram : https://www.instagram.com/garyjkemp/If you LOVED this episode:You’ll also love the conversation we had with music icon, Ben Folds, about music, creativity and the power of nonconformity : https://pod.link/goodlifeproject/episode/e4c6ed32b87354e9fe5773e88892207d-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So if I said the words, I know this much is true, a certain generation of humans, including me raising my hand, would immediately start humming along with the lyrics and the unforgettable melody from that iconic Spandau Ballet song simply titled True. As the songwriter and guitarist for the 80s music phenom Spandau Ballet, Gary Kemp wrote True along with 23 hit singles. And the band's androgynous glam look, it really changed the culture of music in a way that wouldn't be truly understood for years. He later worked with everyone from Nelly to Lloyd to the Black Eyed Peas, wrote music that appeared on TV shows worldwide, including Spin City, The Simpsons, and Ugly Betty, as well as Hollywood blockbusters like

The Wedding Singer, Charlie's Angels, 50 First Dates, and Sky High. And when Spandau's opening run came to a close in the early 90s, well, Gary then followed a parallel muse into acting, appearing in the hit British gangster movie, The Craze, and then in Hollywood movies like Bodyguard and Quentin Tarantino's Killing Zoe. He also made a theatrical debut, and he has been in the theater in London's West End production of Art. Gary recently, just a couple of years back, began touring again with Saucer Full of Secrets, alongside Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason and bassist Guy Pratt, really rekindling a desire to be back in the studio writing and recording an album that he produced entirely and almost all remotely, originally at least, during the pandemic called

In Solo, which is this deeply reflective look at his life, his love, and work. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. I haven't played one of those since the early 80s, but I decided I needed one. And that was a really nice one that came up garage man sold it for a song and it's a guitar where I have this like enduring love affair and remembrance of I yeah I don't sell guitars is my is my um advice I still have the guitar that I wrote true and gold on and then I have the the strat that I recorded those songs on which which is a bone colored strap, but it's 1979. It's not yours, Jonathan. Nah. I, um, I, uh, I still have, and I still play it and it's all over my album.

And, uh, and I still, I play that with Nick Mason and it's been in my life since I was 22 and I'm now 61. Yeah, no, you can definitely, there's something about that guitar, especially like that vintage right around there. So like the this the 70s that was just really stunning is that actually now that i think about it there's a solo on your new haunted a new new album that's in the haunted oh yeah is that the guitar you were playing in that yeah yeah that's the strap right yeah plays basically i think that plays most of the solos on

the album i think there's one on the les Paul, but, um, you know, we, we make so much association, don't we? With, uh, with these old things, you know, there's,

uh, a guitar I'm playing at acoustic guitar that I play all the time is a J 200 from 1957. So that's two years before I was born. And, you know, you take custodianship of it or whatever, you know, it's not ownership, it and then you um

but you can somehow feel the resonance of the past coming through it it's like that old bottle of wine isn't it you know and the same with the strata got a 57 sky blue sonic blue strap which i bought in la in 82 but it's uh it's completely original i play that on the video for ahead of the game but it's um again you know there's this there's the something what is it about that age because we're playing modern music but we really like the idea of uh having things with us that are older than us that uh that help us speak yeah i so agree with that. I sometimes wonder if it's that we have this yearning for a sense of lineage that I think is sort of getting fractured and lost a lot in the way that we live our lives and the pace that we tend to live them.

And when we find something like that, it somehow reconnects us to that sensibility. It's not made of zeros and ones. You know, it's made of wood. And, you know, there's this thing of, you know, if it's, I mean, old Les wood and i you know there's this thing of you know if it's i mean let's hold let's pause a difference there's one piece of wood but a bit of strat is two pieces of wood and as it ages they there's somehow these these two bits of timber start to resonate together and i guess when i play a guitar it's like other people hugging trees

i'm hugging the wood and a little bit of electricity that's in there electronics that's in there but it's the same feeling yeah i completely agree it's funny we had um peter franzen on a little while back and he was sharing the story of you know he was playing he played this classic black gibson that was uh on the cover of Friends and Comes Alive. And then that guitar, he thought, got lost in a plane crash. That's right, in South America. Right. And then years later, he discovers that it's actually alive and reasonably well and finds his way back to him. And it's like, when he plays that guitar for the first time,

which I think was on stage at the Beacon in New York, it's like, you know, the guitar is actually the star of the show and not him. Yeah. And he was just also he's reconnecting to the greatest moment in his in his history to his pop. And there's something in that, you know, there's something in the fact that that guitar I'm playing now on new music, you know, played on a record that's been played, you know, over five million times on American radio. You know, it's the same record. I'm somehow, you know, I might, it's interesting because a lot of my album is about looking back. It's about resonances. It's about versions of me in the past and how that relates to who I am now. But by carrying that guitar that still has a direct connection, in a way, more direct to the past than I have, because every cell in my body has changed.

You know, my voice doesn't sound, nothing sounds really, am I still that person? I mean, philosophically, this is a whole interesting concept, you know, do these people is there a moment when that image of yourself that person that you remember in various incarnations actually dies you know it there's a line when it transforms from one thing one being to another being um i've been thinking about that a lot lately you know because a lot of my life is kind of trapped that you know my my sort of pomp as it were is caught in a bell jar you know which has probably 80s written on it you know and and that bell jar keeps being shown to me i can't i can't escape what's in it if you know people talk about baggage it's not baggage because baggage is locked up and closed you can't see

through it so i envisage it as this sort of bell jar that keeps getting carried around with me aged between 20 and 30 you know and and is that is that how is that person is that person influencing me still is it is he is he breathing inside of me or is he has he completely gone and i only have some memories that are slightly sort of fabricated over the years? Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting thing to revisit, right? Because there are parts of us that I think, you know, in hindsight, I'm a couple of years younger than you, I think. So we're similar enough in age, you know, you're, you start looking back and you're like, you know, there are moments or qualities of, of who you are that you almost, they seem alien to you.

And then there are these other things where you're like, oh yeah, that's been that way since I was six. Yeah. And it will be that way until I take my last breath. But it's, you know, if you look at, we can never understand evolution, can we? Because we look at animals changing and evolution changing. It changed so slowly. We don't quite see the change. And it's the same with us. You know, we know we've evolved. We know that we're not the same

people we were when we were 20s, but we have no idea how that change has come about. You know, when did it happen? But there is a big leap when I see myself talking as a 20 year old, you know, and I'm thinking that's not, that just isn't me now. Or listen to my songs that I wrote. Yeah. I mean, it's got to be interesting for you also, right? Because so much of your life, especially in that sort of window that you describe as being in the bell jar, was lived so publicly and so documented and so captured and so shared that for you, I would imagine more so than the average person. It's less about sort of like remembering you know there's also there's a metric ton of visual and and sonic references that exist

that you can sort of constantly keep revisiting but also yeah i and i completely agree you know and when i walk on stage i'm probably still that 20 something in my head. You know, it's a bit like, I still feel I cycle. So when I get on a bike, I still feel like I'm 15, right? That's the feeling I have rushing through my body. And when I see a picture of myself or a film of myself doing, I'm like, that's not the guy I thought I was. I thought I was much younger. Let's just have a think about that a bit longer. So now all of us are archivists and all young kids are archivists. You know, I have a lot of pictures of me going back to a certain time. And obviously then I have all that video from Spandau Ballet period. But most people only have what's on their iPhone. That can go back quite a

long time or whatever phone they use. Other phones are available. But then they maybe have some photographs. Older people have some photographs that were printed out, you know, down at the pharmacy, chemist, wherever you guys get your photos printed. And they can look through there and capture, recapture. How must it have been before the photographic image go back a hundred or so years for human beings who never had anything to remind themselves of their past? I mean, my grandfather, when I grew up, I never saw a picture of him as a young man. He was always an old man. So I think it's a good thing to be able to see your own evolution

and your process through life. I think there, because you can see the jumping off points, you know, and you can see, I think I'm, okay, I may be putting on weight, but I think I'm getting better inside. There's a lot to be gained from this past. But also, there's a lot of times when I would imagine that people look back on old pictures of themselves as young people and feel a great sense of loss, of bereavement. And that's maybe what shot the plastic surgery business through the roof, you know.

Yeah, I think it can be, right, a bit of a double-edged sword, you know. But, you know, you brought up this really interesting reference too, which is, you know, if you go back three generations or a little bit longer, you know, everything was passed on orally, you know. It's not that far back in our history when the vast majority of things, the primary way that we reference the past was through storytelling that was meticulously developed

and then shared and passed on from generation to generation. But also in music, you know, a lot of those stories are told through rhythm and through sound and through collective storytelling. Yeah, yeah. There was a guy called Cecil Sharp here in the UK in the, I guess he would have been, I'm guessing around 1900, maybe even a bit earlier. I'm not sure. And there's a

place here called Cecil Sharp House. He went around all of the farms and the fields and the workplaces and he collated English folk music, maybe British folk music, but certainly what I know is English folk music. And he got that, but literally by sitting down with old people and getting them to sing songs to him that no one had ever written down, but was really social history, you know, and suffrage and all of that sort of stuff and and and and i think you know it has been it was really popular the the the folk revival in 1970 you know with bands like um fairport convention and people like that you know really took it up middle class people i have to

say who were really obsessed with working class people from the past. Didn't really want to know about working class people from the present. You know, pre-industrial revolution was favourite because that was a romantic kind of era. But nevertheless, you know, that really was the Instagram of its day. Singing a song and passing it on to the person that you're working with next in a field or to your child or someone else. You know, making those social interactions through music and, and,

and word that was social media, wasn't it? Yeah. Albeit in a field of corn. Yeah. I mean, that was the way that, that,

you know, we communicated, we shared shared experiences and we pass them on from person to person and from time to time. Um, it is interesting to think about that. We call it Homeric, don't we? After Homer.

Right. Because the Odyssey and the Iliad were all passed down verbally, never written down until some stage one person wrote them down, but it certainly wasn't Homer. But now, of course, it's, you know, okay, let's think a little bit more about stuff from the past than how it really infringes on our present. So my generation of kids, I bought my first record in 1971, never bought a record from the past. So I never bought a Beatles record as a teenager growing up, where music was really the dominant force in my life, where it was

getting under my skin, where it was becoming the dominant force in my life, where it was getting under my skin, where it was becoming the soundtrack of my evolution and everything that I hold dear now is from the seventies. Cause that's the first time I did everything, you know, that was important to me. I only bought the records that were, that were coming out.

So I bought, bought McCartney's records. I bought Lennon's records. I bought Harrison's, not the Beatles. And occasionally I might step one step back, you know, so Bowie brings out Ziggy Stardust and they re-released Life on Mars and I bought Life on Mars. But we reach a stage probably in the 2000s when everything starts to become available where kids are now

archivists. So I went and gave a talk today at my son's school to the music kids, doing their sort of, you know, 16 year olds doing their exams in music about songwriting. And all of them were fans of Floyd and Zeppelin and bands in the past. That's like me being fans of music, a fan of music from the 1930s, you know, which I've grown to hear about. Noel Coward, maybe, but I'm not, you know, it wasn't on my radar. But they are archivists. And does that, the question is, does that weaken their sense of now and their sense of generation gap and their sense of forward motion and revolution and identity that they are forging, does that weaken it by having so much power up behind you?

Yeah, that is a fascinating question, right? And what comes to my mind immediately when you pose that question is my knee-jerk response is no. But I want to think on that a little bit because my sense is that what may be happening is that because we live in a society now, especially if you're Gen Z, you're just kind of coming up, you were born with technology tethered to you. You've lived your entire life that way. Almost everything that you do on a moment to moment basis is being shared in some way, shape or form through some sort of digital device. And I wonder if that impulse to reach back in time to reconnect, you know, with the Zeppelins and the, you know, is a yearning, is almost a sense that I feel too untethered from something that feels real, connects me to a sense of my own history, of history writ large. When I'm simply existing, I spend so much of my time in

the moment in the digital ether, which also very often tends to be fleeting and vanishes quickly. And I wonder if there's a deeper impulse that is a yearning to connect to something that feels more real in an odd way and more grounded. Like I get to tether myself to something that is rich. Yeah. Analog. I think that's possible. Yeah, I can see that. We're looking back to a period of sort of naivety in their eyes when options were less. And so the choices you made were more definitive. We would probably look back to the romantic poets like Byron and Shelley and Wordsworth and Coleridge. And I can name four. But probably around that period, there were a lot of romantic poets, right? All giving their romance out, you know, and their autobiographical pain into their poetry. But then it gets filtered down, doesn't it, into the sort of key protagonists. And we still, you know, we still want to know about that.

But it doesn't interfere with our music making. It doesn't interfere with rock music, you know, because it's funny how different periods of time, different medium has become, sorry, I'm jumping around a bit here in my head. I'll try and tie it together. But different mediums give us the art form. It's the medium that makes the art form. So the printing press allowed for the first novels, allowed for poetry, the novel was, in the late 19th century, was the big medium because it wasn't just the printing. It was the, you could make books very easily. You could print magazines, you know, and that was what people were buying. They were buying Dickens in installments. Then in the 1920s, it was celluloid and film. And people made a lot of film.

If you look at the money, the real money, not what it was compared to GDP, the biggest era was definitely the 30s and 40s in the movies. And then along comes vinyl. And vinyl is made originally for classical music. So 20 minutes aside, 20 minutes is about what it is for a movement in classical music, right? So you can have four movements, two pieces of vinyl and pop music jumps onto that medium and creates the album. And in the 70s, the album became the biggest money spinner in music ever. That gets digitized and not only does the

album cover fall apart, we now have the CD and we have the pamphlet that's unreadable to most people with human eyes. And digital. So what digital takes along streaming is it drops completely any artwork. There's no package. There's no ownership. There's nothing to feel and touch and tactile. Social media comes along. Here's a new art form. Here's a new medium. There's no ownership. There's nothing to feel and touch and tactile. Social media comes along. Here's a new art form. Here's a new medium. Here's a new medium. And I don't, I, is this what I'm saying?

What I'm getting round to is there was a period, a golden age period of music where music was the key art form for the generation that was, you know, in a revolution against the previous generation, if you like. You know, and they, and it represented everything to them. It represented their politics and everything. I think my kids who are, you know, young and teenagers, they're not so interested in music. They, you know, they like the odd bits here and there. You know, there's some key players doing really well, make a lot of money. Generally, it's the YouTubers and the social media guys that are somehow, or maybe it's digital art. I think the medium that we are now holding in our hands on a day-to-day basis is where people want to create their art. And music struggles with it because,

you know, when it was a piece of vinyl, it was two acts and they were limited time. So you created the form, uh, that was enjoy, you know, you could sit down in one sitting and,

and eat and see this album, you know? So I don't know how we ended up on this particular route, but I think what I think what I was saying, yes, it's because of all those, yes, they do have a weight of archive behind them. And maybe that's so dominant that out of this, teenage kids want to fight their way through it and come up with something that is theirs, that is different to anything that is not just another album. Yeah. And at the same time, I don't disagree with any of that. At the same time, we see so many people sampling and taking, not just being inspired by or learning from the sounds, the feelings, the riffs, the licks, the tones and melodies of the past, but literally feeling so compelled by them that rather than using them as inspiration to try and figure out what is my voice going to be, which they still do, but they feel so compelled that there's something

about these older sounds that they literally will lift them and drop them into their creative process now, very often with very little filtering or change. And it's almost like an attempt to not just a nod to what happened in the past, but a way of saying, I'm a part of this. I'm a part of this that happened then. I think you're right. I think it's also validation because this is a ready-made song. This is a hit. It's part of their life. It's part of because there's there's a there's this is a ready-made song this is a hit it's part of their life it's part of our life it's part of the soundtrack it's out there in folk culture the e-faith it's a big song you know the publisher slash writer is given permission that's a bit of validation itself but they're pulling some of the past into

the present and and i think it's quite exciting. It's a bit like, sampling is a bit like when Braque and Picasso were making that art where they'd cut out a bit of a cigar box and then cut out a bit of a newspaper and they'd collage that onto the canvas. It's very like that. There's some sort of, I know this, but I don't know this. The juxtaposition is what makes this exciting you know you know you you people think they know that tune but it's going to a different chord there's something yeah i think probably what i did as a writer when i was earlier in my you know years ago before any of that was available you know you might do something okay i do i did a song like true i said listening to marvin all night long so i was taking the guy's name and i was stamping it into my own song and saying hey you know

there's this this is this is my greater world these this is some of my influences and please give me some validation because because i like a really cool guy called Marvin Gaye. I suppose in a way that's kind of like a lyrical sample, if you like. It's a nod to the past. Yeah, right. I guess it's been going on. It's just been made a lot easier and maybe more obvious. The writer and illustrator Austin Kleon wrote a book called Steel Like an Artist, which was, I think, based originally on a Picasso quote.

And we do that, you know. We look to the past to inform what we create now. Yeah. You've got Jasper Johns, you know, doing, you know, sort of bastardizing the American flag, you know. And so Andy Warhol taking our Heinz tin. Campbell's soup. Campbell's soup. Yeah, Campbell's soup. That's it. Sorry, Heinz is a bit Heinz tin Campbell's soup Campbell's soup yeah Campbell's soup that's it

sorry Heinz is a bit too English Campbell's soup and in a way that's sampling right in art yeah Mayday Mayday

we've been compromised the pilot's a hitman I knew you were gonna be fun on January 24th tell me how to fly this thing Mark Wahlberg you know what the difference between me and you is you're gonna die don't shoot him we need him y'all need a pilot I knew you were going to be fun. Tell me how to fly this thing. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results I mean it's interesting right I'm thinking about sort of you also over time you know when you started out it was my understanding is I mean before Spandau hits in sort of like the mid 80s the early days

of music for you were more punk driven than sort of new romantic yeah the Americans missed out on a big sort of chunk of what we were doing. What kind of two albums, six hits in the UK and Europe were in a very slightly different style to the sort of blue-eyed soul that you became familiar with and that broke us in America.

So we came out of a group of kids in London, in Soho, in the center of London, who felt the responsibility of, it's funny because we're talking about the past and the responsibility of the past. What we did know is this, that rock music so far, going back to about 1960, 58, 59, in the UK had always been about a place and a youth cult, which turns into a band and pop culture. And that was starting when maybe there was a club called The Two Eyes, where bands like The Shadows came out of in about 1960.

And then, you know, then we know The Beatles and The Cavern. Then we know The Rolling Stones and The Railway Tavern. And, you know, later on, there's the psychedelia movement starts with Pink Floyd down at the UFO Club in Tottenham Court Road, the West End of London. Then that scene moves on and turns into the Middle Earth Club. And out of that comes Tyrannosaurus Rex, T-Rex, Bowie, Glamrock. Punk happens. There's a club called the Roxy, which seems to be the heart of it. Everyone has to go there to be at this place too. And then we felt by the late seventies,

1978, we know it's going to be our turn soon. What are we going to do as teenagers? And the baton will get passed and we'll have to come up with something good because it's going to be 1980 any minute. In London, there was a guy called Steve Strange and his friend Ross Yegan, and they started this little club up on a Tuesday night and it was called Bowie Night. And they were, they, first of all, it was at a place called Billy's, then it was a place called Blitz and they were all in the center of London. And Tuesday night, because that's the worst night of the week for the club owner. And so we started going down there and all the kids of that generation, they were first, their excitement was first pricked by glam rock.

So our sort of benchmark was the theater of glam rock was dressing up, was a kind of ambiguity sexually was, um, you know, guys in makeup was wild clothes, you know? So there was a lot of that going on in this club and the music that's that sort of found itself in the background in that club was electronica so it was craft work and bands sort

of that bowie had validated in berlin i suppose but definitely a throbbing pulse that was slower than the normal conventional disco you know and i remember being in this little club on a tuesday night with my guys who we'd had this little band going back to sort of 1976 when we first seen the sex pistols together and we created this band at school we were a bit too young for punk and we said that's it let's go and buy a synthesizer this is our turn this is us we've got to be the house band here because this is the next big scene and we crawled up on that stage and we became the house band and we never sent tapes to record companies you know this club was pretty exclusive you could only get in if you made your own clothes it was like that you know it was nothing to do with having money for sure and um and and we became very successful

in those first few couple of years as being a band that, you know, was really hip and playing, you know, dance stuff that was kind of, you know, culty in a way, even though it was commercial and was getting in the charts here in the UK. And then I just had a moment where I thought, I can't be a cult band forever. I can't bow down to London scene forever. And what I really want to do is write some really classic songs. And I ended up writing a song called True and Gold and, you know, and next thing I know I'm, I'm playing True on Soul Train and the record is, is on the radio and in America. Yeah. I mean, to go through that, you know, and it's a story that I think we've all heard many times. It's sort of like, it's, it's heads down. You're doing the work, you're doing the work, you're showing up, showing up over and over and over. One of my curiosities is whether it's in music,

whether it's in art, whether it's in entrepreneurship, in business, in the world of startups, there tends to be this really interesting phenomenon where you're kind of going. You're getting slow traction, slow traction, slow traction. Maybe this is years in the making. Then something happens and there's that hockey stick moment where it just goes straight up. My curiosity around that, I know this is going back a time, is the day before that happens, is there any understanding or sense that you've done the work, you're on the precipice and something really big is about to happen or does it take you completely by surprise well i think in my

particular case it was a bit like one of those really cheesy elvis scripts or something you know where they're trying the kids are trying to get the show on the kids are trying to get the show on and then a massive hiccup happens and you know the guy with the cigar decides they're not gonna you know the theater's gonna close and then suddenly out of the mire they get it together and there's a euphoric ending right and it was a bit like that our second album which was a classic difficult second album which had some hits on at the beginning had slightly struggled towards the end. And we had our first flop, in a way. We quickly tried to reinvent our luck, if you like, by going to Trevor Horn and getting a fantastic re-recording

of one of the songs that was on the second album, a track called Instinction, which bounced us back into the charts. But boy, yeah, I then knew, as the songwriter in the band, that I had to dig deep now. So what was it that was going, that was going to give me something that was going to make our lives, you know, bigger, more exciting? I don't think I really thought I want to write a song for America. I didn't find that.

I think I sort of, I found truth. Okay. Before then, a lot of stuff I was writing about was just mood music, you know, kind of fantasy landscapes that we all sort of wrote about in the eighties, you know, that may don't really have any substance. I think about true as a song, what made that was, it was all real. So I, I had a platonic falling in love relationship with a female artist out there. We had this exchange. She gave me a book by Nabokov, Lolita. So that was part of the thing that I was reading, feeling the energy in love, you take all these things take on a more powerful resonance. And she's, she's listening to Al Green and Marvin Gaye. And I'm, I'm hearing that song that's going in some of that. I'm so in love with you. That's getting into my system. And then I start to write this song and well, I, I'm listening to Let It Be on the TV and there's John Lennon singing Dig a Pony. I love the way he snakes that little eye around. I'll try and do a song with that feel.

So I come up with her. And in it, it says, listening to Marvin all night long, in it, it says two lines that are from Lolita's Nabokov. With a thrill in my head and a pill in my tongue is a kind of twist on a line that's in there.

Take your seaside arms. Nabokov describes his heroine as having seaside limbs. And I really love that image. I know that Lolita has all of its own issues now surrounding a girl underage. But let's just put that to one side for a minute because that wasn't what it was about. And the song starts to be about the difficulty of being honest to someone when you're writing a song i can't admit that it's about you why do i find it hard to write the next line when i want the truth to be said so what i think made that song special was its honesty it was the first song i'd ever written

from inside my heart and and was genuine was genuinely about me and something that I'd really experienced. And as I went on through life, I realized now, finally, that I've experienced enough of all the seven stories to not have to make anything up anymore, that I can exaggerate on pretty much most things that have happened to me. But anyway, I think, Jonathan, what it is, is that feeling of honesty was the first truly true thing that you wrote at the level of honesty. And at the same time, it's being delivered in this sort of container of almost this nearly constructed identity of both you as an individual, the members of the band, the entire sort of like scene of music, trying to sort of like wake up every day and live into something, live into some ethos that you want the world to embrace that feels very,

very loud, very in your face. And in that comes this song, which is quiet, which is real, you know, which is vulnerable. I almost feel like it's, it's that, you know, the contrast there that really added to something too. I get it. You know, and I, I think, I mean mean people maybe don't hear it in the same way now i think when it first came out it had a it had a uniqueness about it for a for a white band you know to be doing it's interesting what you said about the loudness because it was a loud period there's mtv busting into your living room and and in garish colors and know, we are putting as much weight

upon our visuals as we are upon our audio, as upon our philosophies, which are noisy, and our gameplay, which is raucous. If I'd written that song, you know, in Laurel Canyon in 1971, 70, I would have just- A folk song and a guitar. A bit of folk song and a guitar. It would be a folk song and a guitar. Probably it would be, you know, it would feel more important in a way.

But this was a band. This was a band of working class kids who were just, you know, all with their own voices, all with their own importance. You know, here's Tony singing it in his way. And it's, you know, everyone's putting their, I don't think i'd ever explain to them what the song meant to me like i did to you a few minutes ago when i played this song to them it was another song you know and i think that's the beauty of songwriting well is it the beauty

i think it is i think a lot of people who write, I write songs, struggle with communication in other forms, in the everyday form, in ordinary words. And I certainly was struggling with that at that time. Couldn't really. I mean, I wrote that while I was at home, still living in my parents' public housing, you know. a song, sometimes we can just deliver something that is so honest about who we are and what we feel and believe in that we would shy away from in normal everyday speech. Yeah, I think that's true to say. And I had the other thing that even removed it further. I had someone else singing it. Right. Yeah. So you've got somebody interpreting, like it's there, you know, in harmony, of course, you know, in concert with you, but it's, yeah, it's not just you anymore. It's interesting. So in the early 80s, I was a club DJ and, you know, very past life for me. So, you know, I knew the beats per minute of, you know, like a couple thousand songs and like that, you know, True is always in the mix and you're in gold also. And, and I remember I put true on like when it was that moment in the evening where you're pretty deep into it and things have been like really high for a long time and you need to bring people into this

sort of like deep moment of resonance, um, and reflection, but without telling them to like go there, you know, and you would bring this on. And I can remember to this day, you know, like the energy, like sort of like that would blanket the floor for this moment of time and almost give people a reprieve to get back in touch with themselves. And then, you know, I knew we were going to take them back up and out of that. So it's funny when I think of the song, I have this other layer of how would I quote use this in the context of managing the social dynamic of like 500 people on a dance floor. You don't want to drop it in the wrong place though. No.

And trust me, I did plenty of that and got a lot of really bad stares from a lot of people. I mean, it's tough when you write a song like that. I have to say, not that I'm suffering here in my tough house anymore it's been a great gift to me that song but it's tough as a kid when you've got to write the next one and the next one and you know we had our ups and downs in america you know in europe it kept on going for quite a while until 1990 when we split up but um i think still think the best songs that I wrote were the ones that were much more personal. Even if I would, you know, there's a song called Through the Barricades that I wrote, which was about the sort of, it's about a kind of Catholic Protestant relationship in Belfast. It never ever mentions any of those three words that I just said.

So it can be taken in all different kinds of way like a romo romeo and juliet i mean we actually played it in berlin the year the war the month the war came down and it really resonated then and that was a song that i wrote out of you know visiting belfast and being taken by a friend that i knew whose brother had been killed in the troubles and he took took me along one of the main roads down towards his brother's grave. And as I was walking through there, I could see the barricades that lined all the different streets to stop one main street getting to the other main street,

you know, because that was the Catholic-Protestant divide. There were tanks in the city, you know. I mean, it was extraordinary. I couldn't believe it was the UK. And so I ended up writing this sort of lyric first, really, as opposed to a lot of the other songs that I'd written for Spanow, which tend to be hook first. And I think that was why that song has been so powerful as well,

because there's a, you know, even though it's not about me, there's a sense of honesty in it. I hope it's not mawkish, it's not claw me, there's a sense of honesty in it. I hope it's not mawkish. It's not clawing, you know, it, I think it's, it's, it's storytelling to a large extent, you know, and I think those, those songs, you know, they, they, they're, they're the two songs, you know, that I think work the best for me. And they're the most honest that I wrote when I was with Spandau. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what's the difference between me and you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk

you know it's interesting to think back and sort of like um try and reflect on how how you felt and what they meant to you and and also i i would imagine you know the feeling that you had when you write, you know, songs like that stays the same, but the way that you'd look at them in hindsight changes in the same way that we look at our lives, you know. So it's interesting timing that you really, that you and Spandau really sort of like exploded

because it feels like it wasn't that long until the tides of what people wanted in music, you know, the pendulum swung radically back in the other direction. Like not just back to rock, but like straight into grunge. In the UK, it went into the second summer of love. It went into DJ music. It went into Acid House and it went into house music and dance and sort of, you know, faceless kind of music, really. But it became about the kids on the dance floor they became the most important thing you know that you particularly youth culture was very dominated by one particular drug and that you know did not give people any

ability to want to watch a band right they were just happy to listen to staring at the lights but that became really popular. You're right. In America, in the early nineties, it did swing to grunge. And that, that dialectic is,

is common in all of all pop culture, all art. You know, you go from one extreme to the other. That's what, that's kind of what people do. We took on grunge for a bit, but we had what over here got called Brit pop with bands like Oasis and Blur, which again was the opposite of what we'd done because it was lad culture.

It was quite bloke-ish. No one was wearing makeup. You know, no one was dressing in a flamboyant theatrical way like the 80s. It was the absolute opposite in people in anoraks. So you get that. yeah you you get that i think you get that dialectic in in everything it's normal a generation grows up and thinks well i don't want to be associated with the my older brothers or the guys who did it 10 years ago and so um but then you yeah i i think you know it's. If you, what you have to do is have an image that's constantly neutral, that's outside

of all of, all of the sort of fashion, if you like. So a band like U2 really weren't embedded with anybody. You know, they sort of stood alone in a way, in a more traditionalist rock and roll form. Probably more suited to the 70s, which is where they came from. They were a 70s post-punk group. And so they could ride the storm of change. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting you brought them up,

having seen them over a period of decades and really seeing how much has stayed the same with them, even though their concerts are much bigger extravaganzas and mass technology but fundamentally you know um it's so much sounds really similar it's tethered to you know like the the 80s um when they first really exploded onto the scene great songs as well great songs and fantastic you know commitment i mean bono has this great skill of always sounding truthful you know which is what we went back to earlier. Yeah.

How to sell a song. You sell a song by being connected to the truth within you. So, you know, I briefly mentioned how nowadays and what was one of the great sort of artistic unblocking for me. And on this album that we haven't yet mentioned, Jonathan, I... But we might. We may. Jump into it. We may. I wrote this lyric first. I,

I felt that I, I didn't have to make anything up anymore. And so when I sing it, I'm directly communicating my personal truth. Even if it's storytelling, even if it's in third person singular and it's not directly about me, there's elements of it that are about me. So I'm directing that personally from my heart to your ear, to any listener's ear.

I think there's something to be had about that. There's no third person that's going to come in, your middleman, if you like, that's going to come in. I think when you are an actor playing a part, you always look for the truth in the character you're playing. So you're saying, well, what bits of this do I know about? Who can I relate to in this? And what in common do I have? So I'll find that inside my memory. And when I deliver those lines, which I didn't write, they will have bits of my reality in it. And that is the winning acting media device right you know and i think you know someone like bono so good at delivering a song as though he's giving you the news about his life it's all autobiographical it's so what he's saying is a feeling that not only does he feel profoundly

but you must do too and if you don, you will listen to me and you soon will. You know, I mean, that's slightly evangelical, I know, but I think that's the skill of the great performer. You know, sometimes it's real, like someone like Nick who wrote Five Leaves. Sometimes it's genuine, it's heartfelt, it's, you know, bedwetting. Other times it's the guy's good at tricking you, but he's really good at that delivery. But nevertheless, it's always got to have that honesty in it. That's why auto-tune is so screwed up. I mean, because it could just flatten out everything.

And I've had this conversation with so many people now, and I so agree. I don't want to hear perfection. I don't want to see perfection, you know, because I, it, it strips like the thing that is so beautiful, you know, in great gig in the sky with Floyd, when you hear that voice or the thing that, you know, in, in, in your guitar, Dave Gilmore's guitar on comfortably non-like if you put that thing through like syncopation and auto-tune and like everything, it's the thing that makes it like that, that slight variations, the deviations, the humanity in it. I feel like that's what we connect to.

And when we strip that out, I really wonder what we're losing. Yeah. And I'm sure the wow and flutter of reality is no longer with us anymore, is it? I don't want to sound like, look, can we sound like a couple of old blokes playing dominoes outside a bar? Well, we kind of are to a certain extent. It depends on your listenership. It's part of us.

Right, right, right. But agree, we're not Luddites. And technology is awesome. There's amazing things happening. And yet, you know, there is this desire right now to connect to something real and true and human, which also I think really speaks powerfully to your new album. Oh, finally. Let's go there. Yeah. I mean, you come out with an album. Your first album was

25 years ago, right? Yeah. This is my, my difficult second album. Yeah. Yeah. So which, you know, obviously begs the question, you know, why, why this and why not? Okay. And I probably need to fill the gaps in really just briefly. Yeah, maybe. Is, so when Spandau finished, you know, I, I, I did a big movie over here called The Craze. And then I, I went to Hollywood. I did The Bodyguard. I did a Tarantino production called Killing Zoe. I did some TV shows in America, Larry Saunders, and I did some other movies in Europe. That was where I was going. I was just going to make some music. And then my marriage broke up. And the first thing I went for was my guitar, wrote a bunch of songs, made an album. It really didn't change the world at all because

Britpop was happening over here and no one wanted an 80s man. I spent a lot of time building a family again and looking after my young kid. I think that was really important for me. You know, I had him the majority of the time. And I wanted to bring him up in London and give him a lot of time. So I wasn't trying to find work that much. I was doing, I've always done acting. I've always done a lot of theatre here in the UK.

Do serious plays as well. A couple of musicals, but that sort of thing. I tried to write some musicals even. But then there's been a lot of water under the bridge with Spandau Ballet. There was a court case that went on in 99. All of it can be seen in our documentary, Soul Boys of the Western World. We got back together. You know, I've sort of been the curator of it as well because, you know, I make sure all the box sets are really nice when they come together. And when we do get back together, and we have done even through our difficulties

on a few occasions, there's always some new music to be written. But that past has really been present in my, you know, it comes to me all the time. So I'd be often writing songs thinking, oh, that's kind of, I'll put that to the side for Spandau.

Maybe that'll be for them. Finding it really hard to write for myself. Happy to be the, do acting. I did. I also have had three more boys since then. I've got four boys. I've got a marriage that I try and,

you know, that's been brilliant for the last 20 years. And then I get invited up to do Nick Mason from Pink Floyd and to go on tour with him and do the early Pink Floyd stuff. We've, you know, we've done a big American tour. There's gonna be another one next year. And this is the first time in my life I'm playing other people's music. I like it though, because I'm liberated. I can play my guitar. I can sing lead for the first time and play much more guitar. And I feel confidence, I'm growing. But I guess playing that other people's music then just made me want to write my own more.

So I found during the traveling on that album, I was suddenly writing lyrics and I was writing a lot of lyrics. And some of those lyrics I noticed were about me at my age. I was 60. I was weaker than I was as a young man. I was not as sharp of eye, not as fleet of foot. And I started writing songs about dealing with that. One's called I Remember You. Another one was called I Am The Past. And one's called Waiting For The Band.

They were about, you know, some of them look back and say, you know, how do you live with me? Why do you love me? You didn't know me when I was this super guy, you know, when I was this fast kid, you know. What do you see in me now? I Am The Past is kind of from the point of view in my head of a gunslinger who was no longer the sharpshooter he used to be. And he's with a younger woman. And how does she feel about that? And Waiting For The Band was also longer the sharpshooter he used to be. And he's with a younger woman. And how does she feel about that? And Waiting for the Band was also about the past.

And it was about me. My 13-year-old self came into my head. And this kid had just discovered music. He was dressing up and painting his face and running around the backs of theatres looking for his heroes. And, you know, that feeling of great anticipation when you're waiting for the band. That's where I decided to want to set the moment of theatres looking for his heroes. And, you know, that feeling of great anticipation when you're waiting for the band. That's where I decided to want to set the moment of this song.

It was that moment before they come on stage. It was that moment when, you know, you'd know the hairs on the back of your neck are going to rise at any minute. But the song resolves itself by saying, I'm still there. I've still got that young man in me. I'm still waiting for the band.

I'm still full of enthusiasm for music to come along and change my life and uplift me. In a way, it's like waiting for the second coming, you know, it's still in me, but it's music based. And, and I think that was a good moment because we spoke right at the beginning of this conversation about what is that connection between our younger, fitter selves when we're at the apex of our lives and careers? How do they relate to you now? And I went back a bit further and I found my first flush of excitement and I realized I still contained it. So that's why I felt I got to keep going. This is an album. I need to write more.

And not all about that subject, but they were all about how I see the world right now and what my place is in it and how social media is stressful for people. We all look for our validations on our phones for likes and we can walk through a city feeling incredibly lonely. So there were some songs like in Solo that were about that and i don't know why but that that this felt like i needed to finish it and then when nick mason's tour got cancelled because of the pandemic right

right i had that was it i was it was a race against time it was a race before everything went back to normal i had to finish this record yeah so you had already been writing so a lot of this stuff was you know like from the songwriting side it sounds like it was it was in place but then it's like well especially then because it's like okay so the world as we know it the way i would normally take this and then develop it and produce it and record it is it can't happen and yet simultaneously you know a fire's been lit in you know, and there's something is starting, like the kindling is starting to like turn into like a real fire and you're like, this, this can't stay inside of me. That has to get out. So, I mean, you want, you end up basically

recording this whole thing from what I understand almost entirely remotely. Yes. Yeah. I did get a chance to replace a lot of stuff once the studios opened so I could replace the, you you know the fake orchestra with real orchestras i could get in the room with a couple of people but a lot of the guys who play on this the drummers like roger taylor and ash zone and bass players there was a lot of communication between me and my co-producer remotely yes we did it all remotely you know i just you know i was sending demos to people and then they would send me back the drum parts or the bass parts and i'd filter that in

do you know what i you know we spoke earlier about how art comes out of the medium it comes out of the the parameters and the constraints and the the edge of the frame. And because the pandemic created a lot of limitations, that became so much easier for me to drive down. I think what would have happened in the normal state of affairs is I would have gone on tour, the album would have slightly got put back. I would have looked for some time in a studio.

Oh, you can't get the time this week. Is Roger Taylor free that week? No, he's not free. And gradually put this album together in a kind of ad hoc way like that. But I think a lot of artists work like this, you know, if they've got constraints and they've got, you know, an area marked out that they have to work in and a time and disciplines, and then i think it's it's better for your creative energy and it's a bit you know this is the problem with computers music at the moment for me it's so many options if there was just a real piano and a whirly and a hammond and a synth here just a little normal synth not one that's connected to a million sounds

and a drummer and a bass player you know you could this song together quickly, but it's when you're, we're, we're overwhelmed by choice that we're not quite sure. And, you know, I can put a song up on a demo and in the room. But I think the way this album developed was the limitations definitely helped. Yeah, I love that. And the notion that constraint breeds creativity, I'm completely on board with. I think about Jack White sometimes, like how he's trying to strip it down to the absolute, as basic as you can can get it and then see how wildly out of the box and creative can you get with the simplest possible tools available well the one thing i'm i'm always i've always done i prefer is i always have a song finished before it ever goes to demos so you know it's interesting it's finished on guitar or piano you could i could sit there and i could sing you it got it and it would be good enough like that. But let's try and make it better with some other instruments and more stuff. Harmonization.

But yeah, no, I don't think it's healthy to... I guess that's what I'd be like if I wrote a novel. I probably wouldn't just start and see where stream of consciousness took me. I'm not that kind of an artist. Yeah. I know some people who write that way and I'm always a bit awestruck by it because that is not the way my brain works either. Well, Pinter wrote that way.

Harold Pinter. Oh, no kidding. I didn't know that. Yeah. You know, so Harold would just have a room and then he, who was coming in? He was going to come into this room and someone would come in and then a conversation, something would happen and someone else would come into the room and he never knew how it was going to resolve.

He was working in a much more abstract sense though, in a conversation, something would happen and someone else would come into the room and he never knew how it was going to resolve. He was working in a much more abstract sense though, in a way he wasn't, he wasn't interested in story arc. He was interested in just friction and all you need for friction is two people. Yeah, no, it's, it's fascinating how different people respond differently to, um, constraints and possibilities. Um, it's, it's interesting also you you wrap this album you rap in solo with the song um i think our light is the last song in it which is an interesting song to sort of like close things off with and i was curious about that well um the song before it is connected to the opening song on the album yeah and in solo right and in solo they're

kind of connected they're about a story of a couple and what happens to them. You know, we feel their separation at the beginning. But that's a song about, a universal song about a lot of city dwellers who struggle with communication, even more so when they're living paradoxically in a city. Haunted is their story carrying on, really. And it's, it's about the guilty building. It's, it starts off about the house that, you know, it's that, it's like those, you know, documentaries where we, we have a camera outside the house. This house is guilty. And it's about the house that they, that they, that they had a lot of

fun in and loving and then gets kind of, you know, the heart ripped out of it. All of this, I've been through, all of this is me. You know, I've been through those divorces and all of that. The connecting thought with those two songs as well was, funnily enough, some art that I'd been into at that time. And, you know, I was getting a lot of visual references from other places. I built these two songs. They were the bookends of the album. And I just thought, I don't want to end that album on that down note. I want to end it on a positive way. And I wrote a love song about the power of my love with my wife. You know, that's fair enough, isn't it? That's not too icky. first date. It begins with our date when I took her, rather presumptuously because she's Jewish, to an even song in King's Chapel up in Cambridge to listen to choir boys singing. I thought it was exquisite. I'm an atheist, she's a Jew, and it's like, why not? Let's just go in and enjoy it.

The perfect first date. And it's about that moment in the first verse. And it ends rather strangely with me leaving the earth and her being there to say goodbye. And I thought, that's bizarre. I've just written a song that begins on our first date and ends with me dying, right? But it's not done in a morbid way. It's done in a really uplifting way. And, you know, she's quite a few years younger than me and I'm presuming and hoping that she will be,

you know, I'll be first, right? So, I don't know, this song seemed to me, even though I haven't described it perfectly, as being very positive and uplifting and about the power of love and all of those things that we want to hear about finally. And so I just, I thought I'd rather resolve the album that way than on a downbeat. I love that context because, you know, it's clear that that first song,

that In Sillow and the Haunted, were these bookends. And then I was, in my mind, I'm like, what is this other song doing here after it? And why is it there? And so that context is actually like, um, that's kind of fascinating. It's a kind of emotional encore, if you like,

you know, it's, it's a, let's come back and have a, you know, let's, let's not, I don't want,

I don't want you going to get your ice creams in that bad mood. Okay. There's a little something to send you off with a smile on your face. But at the same time, it was impossible to put it anywhere else because there was such an uplifting resolution at the end when it, you know, resolving into that nice major chord at the end that I just, I couldn't find anything to follow it by. Nah, that's the perfect way to wrap it. And it feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So hanging out here in this international container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

I am really into walking on the hills. I've always been into that. I've always been into the idea of feeling really small in a huge timeless environment like that. And I'm walking with my, my four boys. You know, I think being a dad is the most important thing I do. It's not being a musician. It's the most important creative thing I do. I'm trying to create decent human beings. I don't succeed every day in doing it well. I sometimes fall foul of my emotions when they're misbehaving, but that's all part of it. I'm trying

to set examples. I think you really need to spend more time, as much time as you can with the people you love. So my answer to you isn't, it's making music because it kind of isn't for me. The good life for me is, is family and spreading the right information to the generation below me so that hopefully they can go on and do better still. I'm not making any of that up. I absolutely 100% believe that. I put aside work endlessly to be with my kids and to be with my wife and to do all of that up. I absolutely 100% believe that. I put aside work endlessly to be with my kids and to be with my wife and to do all of those things. So, um, occasionally like to be on my own, I have to say, you know, and when I write, I write alone. I don't write with anybody else. And I, and I, I admit that it always takes me back to being 11 as a kid and, and realizing that

I could walk into a room on my own. I could write a song and I could walk out and I had something more about me. But certainly it's got to do with, you know, spreading love in my family, I suppose. That was beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, safe bet you will also love the conversations we had with music icon Ben Folds about music, creativity, and the profound power of non-conformity, even at a young age. You'll find a link to Ben's episode in the show notes. And even if you don't

listen now, be sure to click and download so it's ready to play when you're on the go. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app so you'll never miss an episode. And then share the Good Life Project love with friends, because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. Thank you. who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.