after spandau ballet disbanded, hadley pursued a solo career, signing to emi and recording his first album, "the state of play", in 1992. after leaving emi, hadley formed his own record company, slipstream records, and his first release was the single "build me up", from the film "when saturday comes". shortly after that, in december 1996, hadley embarked on an orchestral tour of europe, along with joe cocker, paul michiels, dani klein and guo yue, playing to 500,000 concertgoers in six weeks.