Spandau Ballet

  

Spandau Ballet is a British band formed in London in the late 1970s. Initially inspired by the New Romantic fashion, their music features a mixture of funk, jazz, soul and synthpop.

They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s, achieving ten Top Ten singles and four Top Ten albums in the UK between 1980 and 1990.

The band was called 'The Makers' in the early years. One story on the name change is that a friend of the band saw Spandau Ballet scrawled on the wall of a nightclub bathroom in Berlin and thought it was catchy.

However, Spandau Ballet is also a nickname for a form of hanging suicide done at Germany's Spandau Prison. After leaping off a chair the victim's feet land in a ballet plie position.

Even earlier, it references the 1918 German pilots who flew with two Spandau machine guns in place on the aircraft cowling. The guns were said to make the enemy dance when fired at them from above, hence the term "ballet".

The band is best known for their song "True."



Gold: Best of Spandau Ballet
Once More
True
Heart Like a Sky