Richard James Burgess: “It seems impossible that 40 years have passed since I was in London’s Trident and Jam studios with Spandau Ballet. It all started when my longtime friend, Rusty Egan, called and told me I had to come to the Blitz club one Tuesday night. I had no idea why. Walking through the door of 4 Great Queen Street changed the course of my life.
“Rusty played me a revolutionary mix of European electronic music including recontextualisations of some of my own group, Landscape. Like the music, the fashion [at the club] was new, street and exciting.
“A couple of weeks later, some people I’d been chatting with at the bar suddenly got up on the dancefloor and played a set. It was Spandau Ballet – a new sound, a new look and new classic torch songs. At the time, I’d been in the studio finishing up the Landscape album, From The Tea-rooms Of Mars… I mentioned that to Gary [Kemp] and he wanted to hear some of it, so we sat in my car perched in front of the Blitz, while I played him a few roughs. “A couple of days later I got a call from the band’s manager, Steve Dagger, to see if I might be interested in producing Spandau. Most definitely!