Spandau Ballet – I’ll Fly for You
#quotefromthe80s
Because I've nothing else here for you
And just because it's easier than the truth
Oh if there's nothing else that I can do
I'll fly for you
#SpandauBallet #IllFlyForYou
Not everyone happens to be a guest in an event or a broadcast, at some point in their career, and then come back as a guest exactly thirty years later. Of course, if you were a pop group of the 80s you were facilitated, because you were probably a guest as a young man in the 80s and then if you are still famous famous after a few decades they will come and look for you. It had happened to Duran Duran, and it had happened to Spandau Ballet: the two biggest European groups of the 80s, I would say.
And so, in February 1985 Spandau Ballet were guests in Italy at the Sanremo Music Festival, which in those years was transforming itself in an attempt to naturally attract new generations of music lovers and new TV audiences. That evening was the result of a rather long journey that began about a year earlier. In fact, for Spandau Ballet 1984 was the year of their fourth album, one of the most famous, Parade, which was released in June, preceded at the end of May by the release of the beautiful Only When You Leave, which had had a resounding success.
In the month of August, then, another beautiful song decreed the definitive success of the album, and it was I’ll Fly for You. It must be said that it did not come out in all countries, but in two countries it had a particular success and entered the top ten: the United Kingdom, of course, and Italy.
In those years Italy was a country in very strong economic, cultural, social evolution, and was emerging from a period that had been much more difficult than for other countries. Perhaps this explains why the Italian teenagers of the 80s responded to the ideas and proposals that came from the world of pop (and almost always from England) with an enthusiasm never seen anywhere else. In short, for Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet Italy was really a second homeland in which to return as soon as possible, obviously paying attention to the sensational scenes of collective hysteria that saw Simon Le Bon, John Taylor, Tony Hadley or Martin Kemp at the center of hype.
It was therefore natural to choose the song that Spandau Ballet would have interpreted in Sanremo in February 1985: the song of the moment was I’ll Fly for You.
After all, you had to make a good impression, because in a certain sense there was also a competition among the guests! In those evenings, it certainly could not be out of place, since Duran Duran would sing The Wild Boys, Sade sang Smooth Operator, there were Bronski Beat with It Ain’t Necessarily So, Gino Vannelli and his Black Cars, there was When the Rain Begins to Fall by Jermaine Jackson and Pia Zadora, Frankie Goes To Hollywood with The Power of Love, Chaka Khan with I Feel for You, Village people with Sex over the Phone.
It was a success, both for the interpretation and, of course, for the beautiful song.
Moreover, fans also loved the video for I’ll Fly for You, which is a collage of scenes set in the areas around New Orleans, with the famous Mardi Gras parade, but also with scenes set in the Mississippi delta and in other places, including a court of law. Tony, Martin, Gary, Steve, and John retrace the memories of a blonde woman, whom we see first as a wild creature in the swamps, and then involved in a trial, and who knows if it was the cause of divorce from Tony Hadley? Moreover, I could not find the name of the actress, who certainly deserves a mention.
In short, I’ll Fly for You is a song that has remained in the hearts and memories of Spandau Ballet fans since August 1984. The band also performed the following year in Sanremo with Fight for Ourselves. Do you want to know which song they performed, decades later, when they returned again to the Sanremo Music Festival? In 2015 they played a medley of three other great songs of theirs: True, Gold and Through the Barricades.
Spandau Ballet on Wikipedia
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