That Gaby Roslin Podcast: Reasons To Be Joyful - Gary Kemp

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Gary Kemp joins Gaby for a natter about all things joy. (and Gaby still can't believe she's speaking to someone who she used to have a poster of on her wall!)He talks about the joys of being alone, sometimes, and just walking in a city not really knowing where you're going. He talks about his love of art and how it is a huge part of his life. And then, there's music. And we discuss his incredible career from Spandau Ballet to now, and his new solo album. From doomscrolling in the morning to sitting in a church in silence, there are some do's and don'ts for everyone in this episode. We hope you enjoy it! (And remember you can watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel - as well as watching our Friday Show N Tell extra nugget of joy!) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gary Kemp, it's lovely to see you. Every time I see you, it's lovely to see you. And every time I see you, I remind you that you were on my wall as a teenager, which always does my head in. Not literally. No, literally. That's where you couldn't get, get me off this wall. It is, there is something very weird about that, though, in life.

Talking to the man who was in your bedroom on your wall all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when I grew up... Who was on your wall? Well, I was just thinking about this because there's, I was in my, we shared a bedroom until I was 15 and Martin was 13. And he had on his wall, Bruce Lee. Okay. And we probably both loved Arsenal.

So there might have been like someone like Frank McClintock or the captain of Arsenal at that time in the early 70s or Johnny Radford actually, leaping like a salmon to score a goal. but he was all very much Bruce Lee in football I was really into space and I think I had this sort of famous that famous picture of Buzz Aldrin on the moon Oh, I would! I know I was really into it when I was a kid In fact, so into it, my dad got space wallpaper

for our bedroom of little men sitting, you know, standing on the moon. Little rocket? Yeah, little rockets. Oh! And I had a record player as well because my dad had built into the sort of headboard area of my bedroom where my bed was. Two little single beds, gap in the middle.

My bed behind my headboard was a record player because he'd upgraded his radiogram at some point and decided to sort of slightly dismantle the record player from the first radiogram and give it to me because I was really into my music. And I had guitars hanging on my wall. and I had a dulcimer hanging on my wall. My dad, sorry, I'm chatting away like that.

I'm looking at giving you a space. Hello, no, go. So my dad beautifully did this. So Sunday mornings, after David Kossoff had read the Bible stories, which he did every Sunday morning on TV, there was a program for a short while on how to build a dulcimer. Do you know what a dulcimer is? I have no idea what a dolcum.

I haven't brought it in. What is Adulcum? It's like a folk guitar, but it's in a particular key. So it sits on your lap. It's sort of two little diamond shape it is, and with a set of strings and some frets in the key of C. And he made me this. I can still see it now.

It was painted orange. And it was the first instrument I ever had, and I used to make up tunes on it. I took it to school, but I got a bit bullied for doing that once, so I didn't bother anymore. And then, of course, when I was 11, I got my first guitar on that used to have.

hang on my wall from... What was your first guitar apart from the Dolomar? Do you know, I don't know what the first guitar was called. I know what it looks like. It's an archtop with F-holes, like a little mini kind of cello-y type guitar shape. My dad had seen it in an electrical shop window in Holloway Road in Islington.

And it was five pounds second-hand. You know, they just sell guitars in like electrical shops. That's extraordinary. And he went, you know what? I reckon I could get that for Gary for Christmas. and I have no idea why. No idea, because there was nothing musical about our house. No one was interested in playing an instrument.

No, I played an instrument. The only instrument I was truly aware of was the piano in the pub next door because my bedroom wall, where I slept, joined with the pub next door. And the pub next door was that pre-rock and roll generation, upright piano, you know, just singing old music. Was it my old man?

Yeah, old musical songs. No. Yeah, a bit of American songbook, I would imagine, but Franks and Archer or something. And you could hear it? I could hear it when I went to bed at night. Yeah. So that was your first love of music, was it?

And that record player and then that guitar. Well, obviously, yeah, because when I was 11, at the same time as getting the guitar. So they were about simultaneous. My dad, I bought my first record, which was ape man by the Kinks. and my brother and I who were we were working in, we were paper boys at first.

He was very young as a paper boy. I think it was nine. I remember once he made a terrible mistake of getting up and going to do his paper around, getting dressed, walking around the corner to the news agents and seeing the clock in the window of the post office and realizing it was 2 a.m. Oh no!

Oh no! Anyway, I was the head paper boy, of course. And he was a paper boy So I used to chuck him all the papers And get in the head paper Anyway, we made a bit of money No, no, no, you were head paper What is the difference between paper boy and head paper boy?

Well, if you're the head paper boy, you don't do the paper round So what, then you're not a paper boy? Well, I worked my way out No, no, then you're just a person who bullies Put the addresses on the... Oh, is that what you do? Yeah, I marked up, got the book, put the addresses on the top You're nice to Martin.

I can't promise that. Did you make him go up to all the flats that had upstairs? Yeah, yeah. And so we had to give a third of our money to our mum. So even when we were getting 10 pence or whatever it was, we'd have to give a third of that to our mum for keeping. It was my dad's insistence. And anyway, we saved up enough money to buy a single

and we went and bought records together. And we started building our record collection. And I had this guitar and, of course, you know, songwriting came into my life. So did you? So did you start writing there and then when the guitar, that first guitar, that five-pound guitar appeared? Well, it was fairly quick.

So I get the guitar for Christmas. This is 971. 72. I'm learning the guitar at the beginning. And I learned four chords from Bert Weeden playing a day book. And I know the period now, because it's now approaching Easter,

because I take these four chords into my teacher. He said, look, I've got a melody for them, but I don't have, you know, don't have any words. And he said, well, it's Easter. Why don't you write a song about Easter? So my very first song began. Jesus rode through Jericho on his way to the cross. Can you remember the tune? I can remember all of it.

Go ahead. Oh, sing a little bit. He met by Bartimeus, who his sight had lost. Jesus touched his eyes and Bartimaeus could see it again. So Jesus rode on bravely to Jerusalem. I'm sure I plagiarized it somewhere. Oh, my word. You were 11.

And then I wrote another song immediately in a minor key called Alone. And I played that to my mum and dad and they said, you can't play that to anyone. They'll think you're depressed. Oh, my what? But I did. I played it to the school. No.

But it was something about my only friends, a sparrow. I see him in the morning. But actually, that's poetry. Well, that is. I think I understood that. Words. What it was. Feeling.

Why it's so important to me, I was discovering the bliss of creativity. and it was, I could go into a room on my own, my bedroom. Hopefully my brother wasn't there. He was out playing football because he was a football boy. And it was just me and my guitar, and I would leave with me, my guitar and a song. And that song was empowerment for me.

It was a piece of armour that I'd made. It was something extra and sort of like letters that go after your name, you know. and that joy has never left me. I'm going to say, is that still to this day? Do you feel empowered when... So this destination's out, a new album out. Do you feel empowered? I love that.

Please say you do. Of course I do. Yeah, absolutely. And look, I'm not in this industry now to sell lots of records and break the charts and compete with, you know, duelieper or anybody. But I still make that music

because I need to. There are certain people who want to hear it, which is fantastic. And I'm hoping that... Okay, so when I started this album, I don't think I was in the best headspace. Right. And I think I was really allowing everything to disturb me.

So there were a few things. Post-COVID, obviously, lockdown. And, wow, we're all vulnerable. I didn't realize we were that vulnerable. And then, you know, I'm a doom scroller. I look at news a lot and all of those awful things that happen in the world are actually happening in my bedroom at 7am when I wake up and look at the phone. Yeah, maybe not look at your phone first thing in the morning.

Exactly, exactly. I'm working that one out. And there's that and there's a sense of mortality I think you get. I'm in my 60s now so you start to think about that and how much longer have you got and all that stuff. Anyway, I wasn't in a good space. But the real truth of why I wasn't in a good space is because I don't think I'd grieved my parents both dying

and they died within four days of each other. I know. When you said this to me, when you came on my radio show and you said this to me, I could just... The thing about grief is that there are... And I say this often, but there are no rules to grief. And everybody thinks, oh, you should feel this or why don't I feel that?

Or how should I feel? All of those questions. But what you went through is... I mean, it's heart, it's heartbreaking. It is. It is. Your heart has broken. And you have to give it that time to fix it.

And you never, and it's also trying to fathom it and put it together in your head. It's not just your heart. It's trying to sort it out in your head. I didn't do it because I was grasping at all the positives. So I was thinking, well, this is what my mum and dad would have wanted. You know, my mum wanted to go after my dad. You know, they would have signed that contract. They were together for 60-odd years, you know, or 60 years maybe.

and then my son gets born like two weeks later and then I go on tour immediately afterwards with my band and my band knew my parents all their parents were very friendly this is my band that I use the word my band everyone in Spanish else says my band

and it's like it's all their bands you know we all say it and it's a family as well and it was a family that had been really broken and had argued and had come back together and I went straight to rehearsal rooms I think the week after my parents died

with Martin and they embraced us and we got on with everything we got on we grasped the positives and we moved on but I didn't go through what I needed to go through so making this album was apart from doing normal therapy which I had to do and I realised recently

but making this album was also my own therapy. It was a way of just talking about my emotions, you know, sometimes metaphorically, sometimes in the third person. But every time I do it, and every time I made that record, I tied up another little piece of the problem, made it better. You know, I healed a little bit and eventually get to the end of the record of the writing. And I feel so much better. Oh, Gary, that's so wonderful to hear. Do you know, not only has it helped you, as you've just admitted, but it will help so many other people as well. So people that are going through what you've gone through. But also when people, I mean, you and I have spoken about the actual

the power of me. I love music. It takes me to a place, to a time, to a, I can, I can see the moment I was, I can feel it, I can smell it, you know, you're there. And music is, is, it reaches you so deep inside you. And you're going to do that. And your songs have done that for not just obviously the new stuff, which is wonderful. But all the songs over the years, it's extraordinary. I'm sorry that I've asked you this before a few times, and I know everybody asks you.

But when you know that the music that is now, it's in history, it's music history, those songs, that I can't help but look at you in my head. I'm singing those songs that we all know and love. That they have meant something so immense to so many people. That must just do your, Nothing. I mean, it's just incredible. Yeah, I mean, you do feel a certain amount of responsibility,

but you can't... You know, when the band split, and then we don't get back together and people start to blame each other for why the band isn't getting back together, people have got angry with me like I've let them down because... You're meaning audience?

Yeah, right, okay. Because we're not there for them to repeat those moments to still be relevant to them and playing on stage and time has stopped you know so that's the negative side in a way you know and I feel

yeah I am disturbed by that sometimes but the positive is yeah the amount of joy that it still brings the amount of times I've heard stories about you know that song is the song that brought me and my wife together we had our first wedding dance to it. You know, when I stand in my

favourite football club stadium and I hear all the fans singing a song I wrote, that is the biggest thrill ever. That must be extraordinary. Because it becomes a folk song and that's what I think, you know, you feel proud of. No one, most people singing it out there

have no idea who I am or what my name is. Maybe a lot of the younger people don't even know who Spanthau Ballet is. So, but they know the song. It's become a folk song. like one of those songs that I used to hear coming through the pub wall when I was a kid. And also that first song alone about the Sparrow.

You know, it's that. It's, that's folk song. But it's here. But all your new stuff as well, I was saying, that's also going to help people. It's helped you. It's going to help people. Yeah, I think you look for, you know, okay, I'm in a privileged position. You know, I have a job like no one.

Very few people have. You know, I've done, I've been successful in that job. and I have comfortable surroundings and I don't have to worry about tomorrow's bills. That doesn't stop me feeling crap quite a lot of the time. But I think when you write a song, it's really about the simple universal emotions

that you're writing about, the universal struggles of self-worth or where do we find happiness, how do we make our glass half full, and you can wrap that up in stories and present it in a universal way. So someone else goes, oh my God, I'm not alone in the world.

I feel that as well. And that's all art is really for, why we do it, why it's here, because we want to know that we're not alone. That's why AI is never going to write lyrics, right? No one's interested in a machine. You're still alone if it's just a machine telling you something. But if I read a novel or even a painting or a great song,

I just think, wow, that's exactly how I am. feel that's great and you just encapsulated it perfectly and hopefully as a writer I'm giving that to someone else too but you also do that with your acting so I mean I know you love your acting and you know Anna Sher and people that came out of that but but your acting also does that to people so they'll they'll watch something that you're in and they'll think oh I've been in that situation or I don't sometimes you just take people and it's escapism acting is really important I think I think performing is really important. For us as an audience, we need it.

We need entertainment. However, whatever, you just mentioned painting. Music, live theatre, live theatre, as you know, I'm a massive fan of live theatre. Television, my favourite thing on the planet. Films, all of that. We need all of that as an audience. I love the theatre, so I love it.

My wife and I go quite a lot. You know, I've been collecting theatre programmes since I was in my 20s. Have you still got them? All of them. Where are you going to give them? I don't know. Theatre museum or something.

I just, I don't know. I always look back at them and think, oh, dead, dead. Oh, no. Oh, that's pretty lovely. Okay. No, no, but no, I do look back at them and think, oh, look at them, you know, what great actors I've seen. Wow, I'd forgotten I'd seen him or her. No, it's all right.

You as an actor. Okay, me as an actor. You as an actor. I like acting. I like, yeah, I like being able to be on stage and help present that story. I do like the theatre the best. That's where I really... But you've done a lot of film.

Yeah, I've done. You have done film. And TV. I like doing comedy with my brother. That was really funny. And we absolutely, you know, when we took the Mickey out of ourselves and we did the two Kemp's spoofs, you know, the Kemp's all true and the Kemp's all gold,

written and directed by Reese Thomas. I love that because, oh my God, we just spent everyday laughing. Corpsing is the best feeling on earth. Laughing is the best thing. You and your brother, though, I mean, he, Martin and Shirley were on this podcast a few episodes again. go and they

they just you have a lovely outlook on life you all do like to laugh you do like to laugh you're very you also you're going on

about your age and mortality and everything but there is a there's you're still like a naughty teenager both of you you like you like to be naughty

and I'm naughty with a small end you know you have a laugh and I think it captured it captured that on those two

programs I mean it was funny because I took the mic out of myself you know I was you know yes I am a little bit pretentious now and again.

It's only because I'm passionate about art and some of that it might be highbrow, considered highbrow. So we take that idea of who I am and we just make it even more annoying. So we have this great relationship, but I think that laughing that we were doing because we were improvising a lot of it as well

is, I mean, I have so many great memories of just my brother. My brother's the greatest corpse, so he just can't control himself and he just gets into, you know, okay, I'm all right now and he starts blowing. Okay, I'm all right. Go again, turn the camera over. We go again and the next thing you know,

he's laughing. And it's just feeling in your stomach that you get. But it's important. And actually, you know, you were saying you do scroll and that the news is very, very bleak and very, very dark.

Here in the UK and around the world and everybody's aware of it. That's what I'm saying, maybe don't look at your phone first thing in the morning. Try a smile and all of that. Yes. But all of the darkness, laughing is really important.

Laughing is really important. And in a way, you can sort of kid yourself into it, can't you? You can just like, if you said, smile in the morning, can feel you with certain endorphins. Well, it does the brain, the brain thinks, the brain says if you, the first thing you do in the morning, this is actual fact. If the very first thing you do when you wake up is smile, your brain then goes into, oh, we're happy He's good Yeah

We're happy And it's a great way To start the day Even if things you've got to cope with And everybody has a lot of stuff You know There's no There's no

I'm not saying fake it But just for a moment Feel that a little bit better And that's what music does I think for me I mean I have a few little Can I tell you I mean I have a few little things

That I really love doing That change my mood Please tell right What changes Gary Kemp's mood Okay so sometimes I'm on tour for a and and I can I mean with Nick Mason

we'd visited 32 countries together and uh not just I mean you do music together you haven't just gone out now no no no so and it's quite difficult touring you know you you're with the same people all the time and we actually have a real great laugh because one of my favourite guys to laugh with is Guy Pratt

but we all have a really great laugh together and we've got great sense of humour and I think when you know someone really well, you know all of their foibles, you know all their interests, you, you, you can communicate in things that, I can make him laugh and no one else would understand it, right? That's not. But when I'm on tour, I, you're always being told what to do, where to go, and then I like those moments when I've got a few hours off and I just go and wander in a city.

And I don't know where I'm going. And I was right at the beginning, I remember guys saying, oh, can I come with you? I say, I love being on my own at this point. So if you don't mind. And I just like getting to a T-junction and thinking, I can go left or right now and I go right. But I normally go to a gallery and normally go and see some art, which I always like doing in a city.

And I just think that just completely relaxes me. How wonderful. Just looking at some older paintings and, you know, I know a little bit of art history and I just take that in. And then walking into a cathedral or a church, I'm not religious. I don't believe in life after death, but I love the experience of being in that atmosphere.

Humans have created this place where we can contemplate. And to go in there into the silence, you know, into that vast, you know, sort of stonework that looks like you're in a forest and to sit in one of the pews and just, I suppose it's a form of meditation, but it's within a piece of architecture that was built for meditation.

So I like doing that, yeah. Maybe it's the silence away from, because it sounds so cliche, but from the noise. I mean, there's acting, music, the adulation, the fame, all of that, it's quite noisy. But also you're not, it's, it's, you're part of a machine of people. So there's a lot more than, I mean, it's a great feeling being on stage. I mean, when you're making music or when you're putting on a play and it's all working,

and all of you are passing the baton at the right time and you're interacting and you're putting down a layer that on its own means nothing. But with these other three people who are putting layers onto it as well, it's incredible. And it's a cathedral of sound. You know, so that's an amazing thing. feeling, but you are part of this big group. So I need a lot of space on my own.

Yeah, of course. I say I write on my own. You know, I need to... We read on our own. We don't read in a group, do we? There's a book group. There are book groups. Yeah.

But you were saying, before we started recording, you were saying about how... Because so many people talk on this podcast because they know this is an open space. Talk about it, shyness. And I'm... I would admit very openly I'm shy, I wish more people would talk about it.

Because I think young people have a worry about it. They do have a worry. And then they think, oh, no, you can't tell anybody you're shy. Hey, we are all loud and proud. And you're another one who suffers with, you're not good at parties like me. No, it's funny because, you know, I sit here gabbing away and everyone thinks, oh, you can talk, he's really good at that.

But, I mean, the anxiety, you can talk to my wife. I mean, the anxiety I get before I go to an event or, you know, like a premiere or a party, even a party. where I know there's going to be a lot of people that you need to small talk with and walk around and I find that quite I don't know what it is I'd much

I'm saying I'd much rather have a night in that sounds awful but I do find that intense that's really intense and maybe it's to do with this thing about oh what do you do and what do you do and what I really want to say is well I tell you what I do I'm a dad and I'm a husband

that's really what I do and all this other stuff I talk about and everyone wants to hear about or all of it, is just to pay for that. Yeah. I mean, there's an element of that in it as well. My other place of joy

is the countryside. And I'm an urban person. I live in... You're London born and bred. London born and bread. Why do I like? But I do love cycling and hiking. And I need that.

I'm like, you know... Face. You need it. It's silence. It sounds like you need your time. Time for you. You've got 500 children. You know, there's a lot going on. Being on the bike, and I really got into cycling. I got into the camarader of it first. I got into hanging out with some other guys and talking bikes. Do you wear Lycra? I used to be a middle-aged man in Lycra. Now I'm just an old man in Lycra, right? So I like all that, but I like to. You like Lycra? It's practical, Gabby.

We're not leaving the lycra. Ed, he's working on this. He cycles everywhere. Do you go lycra, Ed? No, he's no Lycra. No, right, man. And yeah, he's probably got mud guards and evil things like that. Yeah, he's nodding.

I loved it. I fell in love with it when I was about 49, 48, 49. And I started just really enjoying the camaraderie of being with some bunch of guys, but also that silence of being out for two or three hours when you're not thinking about anything else, just thinking about the next eight yards, right? But I love, you know, cresting a hill and the endorphins,

and then you look out and you see wonderful scenery, and you did that. You made it something that you deserved. So then my wife went, you know, this is driving me mad, you going out for a couple of hours every Saturday morning or whatever, I'll get a bike, and she got a bike. I gave up all those guys,

and the two of us go out regularly. We've been doing this for about eight years together and we love it and it's our real bonding time away from our kids and you know we often get babysitters we did get babysitters to come at 7am and then go out together for three hours

and she's really good she's really fit and we're about equal on the road and we've done cycling together in France and of course in the UK where you know we do it out in the Cotswolds mostly or the Chilton Hills

or something we used to drop our kids at school with our bikes on the roof head to the Chilterns park up, cycle for three hours and just makes you feel amazing I can see in your eyes when you talk about something that you really love doing

and it's as you did it's the same look when you just said that as it was when you talked about the guitars on the wall when you were at home. Yeah, no, these are the good things. It's finding the time and the finding the space.

But you'll find time now, surely. I mean, I know you're busy. You're always very busy. You're always running around. You're either with Nick Mason or you're doing your own stuff now as well. Are you going to be doing Gary Kemp? Tours.

I don't know yet. I'm kind of seeing how it goes. Yeah. And, you know, it's my third solo record. But they were a bit spaced out. I did one. in 95 and then I didn't do another one until 2002 which was a bit weird and a bit annoying

but I just, I don't know whether that was an insecurity that I had about getting that or the million of other things I did which was getting Spandau back together numerous times. Spandau back together that news when that broke was you know, it was your the row the arguments or whatever that was everywhere it was like suddenly everybody knew your business and then when you got back together it was I mean, it was a similar reaction to Oasis last year

when they said they were coming out. Suddenly everyone was like, what? Spang our ballet, back together. It's true. I remember the headlines. You know, that's what they all said. They couldn't believe it. I think that we had such an important,

we have such an important place in each other's lives. You know, if it wasn't for this disparate group of blokes, all had different tastes at different times all with different kinds of people. Bands never formed because they're friends. They formed because he's the only guy I know who plays the drums, etc. And you become workmates and you come very close.

But we change each other's lives so much. And the lives that all of us are leading now are because of what we did in our early 20s. And that to ignore that and to be enemies is such a terrible feeling really. And all I ever want is resolution. Because I know that, you know, you can't end up your days with enemies. You can't.

You don't want that. Life's for sure. And it's painful as well and it's annoying. And it's, oh, I can't go there because he'll be there or she'll be there. You know, it shouldn't be like that ever. When I broke up with Sadie in 93, you know and she was with someone else and I spent like a year

avoiding that person and just you know delivering my son at weekends or whatever it was and then not going in the house and then one day I just went I'm going in and I went in and I actually became friends with the guy she was with and oh my God that was so good

that was so... You and Sadie are good mates now You know, it's lovely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're a great big family. And, of course, the families are, I mean, it's really been joined together now with the birth of our grandchild. You're a granddad.

There's a granddad. You used to be on my wall when I was a little girl, and you're a granddad. You're still, you're still, I remember that poster, and now you're granddad. I know, but you haven't really changed. I mean, it is, isn't it weird that I remember that poster? I remember it.

And it was the, I wanted those shirts. Do you know, you find it? Why don't you mention the shirt? Oh, those shirts. I tell you something really funny about the shirt. I'm wearing a Jean-Paul Gaultier orange shirt that's got this slashed open at the back with a knot in it. So you can see my kind of shoulders for some reason. Bright orange.

And I was at a party about eight years ago. And I started talking to Paul Rudd, the actor, Ant Man, you know. Yeah. Oh, I love Bull Rudd. Paul said, I got to tell you something. He said, my son, who's five, is a man. obsessed with the live aid film. So obsessed, he got my wife

to make an orange shirt just like yours for him. That's the coolest story. Yeah, it's mad at. That's never going to go. The live aid and the love of live aid, and that was all last year as well, because the anniversary. And the anniversary of live aid is this year.

No, this, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Band-Aid was last year. Oh, my God, Band-Aid last year. Live-Aid this year. That's never going to... I don't think we'll ever witness or experience anything like that? No, I think it was at a particular time.

Music was everything, and the Brits were the most successful globally. You know, we were just, you know, these bunch of working class kids mostly. At that point it was. You know, were there some kids from Birmingham or Manchester or London like us, just Cockneys. And we were selling records all over the world in the mid-80s.

And Geldof went, that's powerful. We should use it. But he gave another gig. gift as well. He gave an empowerment to the general public to think they can change things, do things with charity that goes up and over and above

the government's wishes even. And I think that was the beginning of that sense of, you know, empowerment that we, you know, I mean, Red Nose Day that comes out of that and all of the different charities that have really done well post live aid. It was extraordinary

and I mean they'll be, obviously, you'll be involved this year with all the anniversary stuff as well. What a thing to be part of. You've just been you have you know you have been a part of our modern history and I know that you've I

love your Instagram when you do all you're walking around streets you've got to do more of those but you're talking about how important the sex pistols were to you and how I mean the 80s were vital and what it did for a lot of us young

kids then it was so important to us, the music in the 80s. I'm now working on a station that plays 80s till now and my 18 year old daughter listens to Magic because she loves 80s music. Yeah, it was a good time, you know, and the productions were really good

so they stood the test of time. You know, Trevor Horn's coming along and he's making these of great sounding records. You put it on a Frankie goes to Hollywood record now or an ABC record or Spanner. They sound as good as anything you can produce now. But once you go back a bit further into the 70s, it gets a bit thinner.

You know, so... But you loved that, though, didn't you? You love the music of the 70s. Of course. That's my. That's your big thing. No, but 70s is me. I do do that thing where I walk around talking about places because they're sort of...

They have turned into ghosts that are on the street. And London is always in flux. There's a track of my new album called Borough Town. And it's about that. It's about how, you know, we're only kings of the street for a certain amount of time. And then a new crowd come through and different ethics. ethnicity has come through and it's always in flux. You know, my grandfather was an Irish navvy coming over.

You know, so, you know, this is the story of cities. And it creates such an amazing... You know, when I walked around as a kid, I didn't know that old bloke, same age as me now, fought in the war to save this town, you know? So in the same way that people don't know who I am when they're singing my song in a football stadium. Oh, they do. Everyone knows Garretem.

Thank you, Gary Kemp. That was a complete. a lot of joy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.