Episode 3: Spandau Ballet’s Through the Barricades
For many, Spandau Ballet’s 1980s classic Through the Barricades is a cheesy slow-set love song, but dig a little deeper and a much more profound and affecting story emerges. It is a story of hope, love, music and the exuberance of youth; but also a very real story of tragedy, loss and injustice, one rooted in Dublin, London and Belfast.
Forty years on, Aistear an Amhráin reporter Garry Mac Donncha meets the song’s composer, Spandau Ballet founding member Gary Kemp, and the people directly connected to the story which inspired the song. We delve beneath the hype of the 1980s hit parade to reveal a deeply human story – and a tragedy that would leave a mark on many.
On the surface, Through the Barricades is Romeo and Juliet love story set in conflict-ridden Northern Ireland: a boy and girl, one Catholic, one Protestant, defy their tribal traditions to meet on the no-man’s land between divided communities.
But the incident which inspired the song was the murder of the band’s Belfast-born roadie, Thomas “Kidso” Reilly, by a British Army soldier in 1983. Kidso, a professional roadie for bands like Depeche Mode, Bananarama and Spandau Ballet, was home for the weekend to see family when he was shot. Ian Thane, the 18 year-old soldier who shot Thomas, was the first British soldier ever to be convicted for murder during the Troubles.
Many of a certain era will remember the iconic photograph of 80s chart-toppers Bananarama walking, heads bowed, behind Kidso’s coffin as his community laid him to rest during one of the bloodiest periods of the Troubles.
Reporter Garry Mac Donncha, a teenager when the song was released, travels to London to meet the song’s composer, Gary Kemp, and to Belfast to meet Kidso’s brother Jim Reilly, drummer with seminal Belfast punk band Stiff Little Fingers.
For Kidso’s brother Jim, the song is a lasting tribute to a young man who followed his dream to work in the music industry, escaping the Troubles for a life on the road with some of the biggest bands of the era.
Gary Kemp, who wrote all Spandau Ballet’s big chart-toppers, recalls the day the band found out that their beloved Belfast roadie had been murdered. He recounts how a trip to West Belfast after Kidso’s murder would remain with him and how it came to inspire one of the band’s biggest hits.
Aistear an Amhráin: Through the Barricades airs Tuesday, 7pm on RTÉ One and on the RTÉ Player.
