Spandau Ballet Draws Crowd In Cannes

The British pop group had an eager crowd singing along as they performed a brief acoustic set in a setting that overlooked the beach.

“We’re in bloody Cannes! We have a film!” shouted Tony Hadley as he sang the band’s hits with guitarist Steve Norman, including its most famous song, the 1980s smash “True.”

The Friday night performance was to promote their new documentary, “Soul Boys of the Western World.” This is not the first time it’s been at a festival: In March, the film showed at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas.

“Even if you didn’t relate to the band or the band’s story, because the band’s story is quite exceptional in a way that we grew up out of nothing, we rose to the heights,” said Martin Kemp, one of the band’s main songwriters, in an earlier interview.

“But I think people relate to it because basically it’s a story about friendship. How our friendship starts, how it falls apart sometimes, and if you’re lucky enough, you can bring it back together.”

The film not only profiles the British band’s rise, but the music of the 1980s.

Hadley said the quintet didn’t try to interfere with the filmmakers’ vision.

“If we’d started to get involved and we said, ‘Oh can you take that shot out of me because I don’t look too good’ or ‘I don’t like what I said on camera,’ then it’s not going to be a true representation,” he said. “At the same time it was very emotional, I mean we all had a tear in our eye when we first saw it.”

The film, which has not yet been released to the public, is being shown to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival.