Rewind Festival: Accepting of the Eighties

A DECADE ago 1980s pop roadshows could be edgy affairs. I was backstage for one in 2002 and the atmosphere was as thick with tension as an 80s wine bar clogged with Drakkar Noir. Spandau Ballet's Tony Hadley wasn't talking to Martin Fry of ABC and the latter wasn't talking to Belinda Carlisle. In hindsight what they probably needed was Clare Grogan to play camp commandant.

Still as infectiously bubbly as when she sang with Altered Images, Grogan is the compere for Rewind Scotland, this weekend's 80s extravaganza in the grounds of Scone Palace in Perthshire. "If anyone throws a hissy fit I'll exercise my right to tell an embarrassing story about them, and because we're talking the 80s there were loads," she laughs. "I'll be open to bribery and, really, this could be the ultimate revenge."

But everyone from that era gets along so much better these days. "I used to be terrified of the Bananarama girls," admits Grogan. "They were very London, very cool and very scary and we have a good giggle about this now. In the 80s, bands didn't hang out together. We were young with no social skills. Now we're finally being allowed to have a relationship and it's great."

Grogan never spoke to Toyah Willcox all through the decade; now they swap stories of grim 80s dressing-rooms, being forced to get dolled up in the loos and how the Middlesbrough Rock Garden with its nailed-down tables and chairs was probably the toughest venue. "We've all become such good friends it'll probably make you sick," adds Carol Decker from T'Pau, another star of Scone. "We borrow each other's hair-dryers and lipstick and once I even loaned Kim Wilde a Tena Lady. That's a joke, by the way, but I remember how prickly my first revival tour was. There was lots of bitching over who had the biggest dressing-room and one performer really tried to lord it, telling the rest of us we were only there to warm up for him. I won't name and shame because this guy has become a friend, having learned his lesson."

So how have the big chart-botherers of the decade got to be so happy and relaxed in each other's company? How, to paraphrase Calvin Harris, have they become accepting of their 80s? Lots of reasons. A decade ago was probably too soon for the 80s revival. Back then, and this especially applied to the New Romantics, the music was still considered incredibly naff.

In the 80s lots of things were overblown. Yuppies, Margaret Thatcher, Brideshead Revisited, share issues, hair. And let's not forget Tony Hadley's booming voice ricocheting off mountain-tops while the rest of the tartan-clad Spandau Ballet looked like the campest Jacobites you ever saw. That roadshow of 2002 toured indoor venues, lending the shows a furtiveness, as if they could only happen in darkness to minimise the embarrassment, as if only the drunkest office parties ever reconvened amid the gloom.

But with so many of today's acts now drawing inspiration from the 80s, and the decade being viewed as the last great one for pop glamour, audiences have gotten over their embarrassment. Now that their kids are off their hands, they're returning to the light and, in common with other festival-goers, demanding their own alfresco events such as at Scone.

"Rewind is like the best-ever Top of the Pops, organised by Friends Reunited, with a bit of School Disco thrown in," says Grogan. And it's clear the performers have grown up a bit, too.

"I had to be dragged kicking and screaming onto my first Here And Now tour," says Nik Kershaw of the 80s package which has just celebrated its own anniversary, now being ten years old. Decker, part of the first one, was just as nervous, fearing the circuit would be "tragic". And Glasgow-born Grogan simply couldn't see how a fortysomething woman could get away with Happy Birthday, a song she originally sang in such an innocent girlie voice. That debut Altered Images smash, coupled with her performance in the Scottish movie classic Gregory's Girl, seemed to cast her as forever 17 in many eyes.

But Grogan, now 49, isn't the same person she was even ten years ago. Then, she wasn't getting the acting roles she wanted. "Now I've carved myself a nice wee niche as a debauched, randy mum," chuckles the star of BBC Scotland's Legit and Channel 4's Skins.

Then, she wasn't the mother in real life that she desperately wanted to be. Now she is. "I had ten years of trying for a baby, six miscarriages and four failed IVF attempts. That was really, really tough. Then I bumped into an old friend in Glasgow who introduced me to her adopted son. I thought, 'I can do that.'" Daughter Elle is now six and the main reason she still sings. "So much has happened to me since Altered Images – extreme situations and a deal of s**t.

"For a long time I found it impossible to sing those old songs because I would have been addressing this wee girl full of hopes and dreams. But now I think, well, the band was a big part of my life, a part I loved, and Elle should know about it. I limit myself to two of these 80s fests a year, that's enough. Most kids only have to deal with the embarrassment of their parents singing on special occasions. Before Happy Birthday I tell the audience, 'I'm officially the world's most embarrassing mum'!"

Grogan, a passionate patron of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, who is married to Stephen Lironi from Altered Images, took on the role of singer originally earmarked for big sister Kate. Two years older and "the gorgeous member of the family", the latter had snorted: "You're kidding! I don't hang out with boys!"

Like the other Rewind performers they sold millions, but Grogan eventually tired of life on the road. "I got chronically homesick. Plus, no offence to the guys in the band, but the morning after selling out Hammersmith Odeon, which itself had followed Top of the Pops I was down the laundrette washing their clothes."

She claims not to have missed the pop fame when it went although admits she was lucky in still having the acting, but Carol Decker definitely did. "Heartbreaking" is how the 53-year-old describes T'Pau having China in Your Hand, then nothing. "When we released album No 3 in 1991 it was like finding ourselves on the Moon. The whole pop landscape had changed. Suddenly it was all Stone Roses and raves in warehouses and people were going, 'Ohmigod, you were in that cheesy band!' "

Before her look was nicked by Rebekah Brooks, Decker's tumbling red curls had been iconically 80s. She cut them off and hid what remained in parka hoods. Then, after becoming a mum in her forties, she admits it was the increasingly good money available on the nostalgia circuit which lured her back. The hair returned, too.

The bulk of these acts haven't had a hit since the last of Joan Collins' Dynasty shoulder-pads was floated out to sea and blown up. Most are more accepting of this now, which makes for a better atmosphere, but some like Tony Hadley, 51, still dream. "Look at Take That," he says. "When they split up no-one took them seriously – and as a member of Spandau I know what that feels like – but they've got great credibility now. As an artist you should never give up."

But the main reason the aftershow party at Rewind may be more fun than the performances is that the stars of the 80s are finally able to laugh at themselves. Kershaw's crimes against fashion – the snood, fingerless gloves – were not insignificant but the Spands topped them. "All that plaid, of course," chortles Hadley, "and the too-tight grey leather jumpsuit I wore with ballet slippers – the buttons kept popping and bouncing off the drums. But maybe our worst was when we wore loincloths on London's Primrose Hill for a 5am video-shoot where we had to tie our sax player Steve Norman to a tree and daub him with red paint. Someone living nearby thought they were witnessing a druid execution and phoned the police.

"'Ah, Spandau Ballet,' the officer said. 'Carry on.'"