BEVERLEY GLICK ON THE REBIRTH OF THE SAVVY BAND SHE DISCOVERED IN THE EIGHTIES; DURAN DURAN ARE SET TO RUN AND RUN
From Sunday Express - 03/08/2003 (1324 words)
Beverley Glick
WHEN AMERICAN Terry Wallis woke up earlier this month after 19 years in a coma, he thought it was still 1984. The day he had the road accident that put his life on hold, Ronald Reagan was US President and glossy pop beasts Duran Duran bestrode the globe like a colossus.
Wallis may marvel at the ways in which the world has changed since then but he can take comfort from the fact that good old Duran Duran are still out there doing the business.
The original line-up of the band that epitomised the cheesy glamour of the decade that taste forgot are currently touring America - their first
appearances there since Live Aid in 1985 - to rave reviews. But the three Taylors - John, 41, Andy, 42, and Roger, 43 (no relation), plus Nick Rhodes, 41, and Simon Le Bon, 44, now have the one precious thing that eluded them in the Eighties - cachet.
The Hollywood A-list - including Brad Pitt, Colin Farrell and Nicolas Cage - have been clamouring for tickets to see the band and Cameron Diaz was recently seen buying a copy of their debut album, which was first released in 1981.
Now there are reports that record companies have entered a bidding war for their as yet unfinished album, produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, with figures of GBP 50million being bandied about.
So how have a bunch of superannuated teen idols turned it all around when many of their contemporaries have failed to make a comeback beyond Eighties nostalgia tours and themed nights at British holiday camps?
Perhaps the answer lies way back in Birmingham in 1980, when the teenaged John Taylor and Nick Rhodes were looking for the final pieces of the jigsaw that would fulfil their pop vision. They'd grown up loving David Bowie, Roxy Music and the best of punk rock and wanted to mix it with electronic music and a little funk. To beef up the rock element they recruited experienced guitarist Andy Taylor, and finally found their singer in the form of exuberant poetry-writing drama student Simon Le Bon.
The band's first managers, the Berrow brothers, owned a nightclub in
Birmingham called the RumRunner. John and Nick must have known they were on to something when they saw that the place was turning into a poser's paradise: kids of both sexes dressing up in vintage clothes, wearing theatrical make-up and dancing in a strange, angular way to David Bowie and Kraftwerk.
The second city had embraced the scene that had started in the clubs of London, revolving around a coterie of bright young fashion designers and musicians.
John and Nick could see that this was what the pop world had been crying out for - a little bit of glamour, fun and excitement.
At around that time, Taylor picked up a copy of the music paper, Sounds, to read an article entitled "The New Romantics", about Spandau Ballet, the band key to this new London music scene.
It was the first he'd heard of them. "I said to the band, 'Hey look, check this out. It sounds like these guys are doing the same kind of thing that we are - kind of white European dance music with guitars, '" he said in a recent interview.
And in a piece of pure opportunism that would come to characterise the band's career, they opted to parachute the words "New Romantic" into the lyrics of their first single, Planet Earth. Then, said Taylor: "We called up the girl who wrote the piece and said, 'Hey, we're part of this New Romantic movement you're talking about, but we're in Birmingham, why don't you come up and see us?' So, she did, and that was the first article that got written about the band."
IWAS that girl, and, John, I always knew you were using the New Romantic bandwagon to hitch a ride. Even when I first met the band in November 1980 at the RumRunner, they came across as incredibly savvy young men with an eye on the zeitgeist and the Guinness Book of Hit Singles.
"The last thing in the world we're ever going to sing about is bad times, " John, a Chic fan, told me.
"We want to be the band to dance to when the bomb drops, " added Simon. (A noble ideal at a time when everyone was anxious about the Cold War. ) John needed only to look in the mirror to recognise their chief appeal. "I think the teenage market is underrated, there's nothing wrong with it at all. There's a gap for teen heroes in England, America and Japan and we've already been thinking about those markets."
So who's the new teen hero, I asked? "We thought we'd split it five ways."
And they did.
It's now part of the Duran legend that Nick and John sat down and worked out their plan for world domination in May 1980. It went roughly thus:
Hammersmith Odeon by 1982; Wembley Arena by 1983;
Madison Square Garden by 1984.
It's testament to the power of self-belief (and MTV) that they achieved all three targets. The band played at London's Hammersmith Odeon in July 1982; Wembley Arena in December 1983 (five consecutive nights); and New York's Madison Square Garden in March 1984 (two nights, both sold out).
But Duran Duran were never cool in the same way as Spandau Ballet. They were mocked for their extravagant promotional videos (the "classics" - Save A Prayer, Rio - were made in Sri Lanka with yachts and elephants), willingness to smile for the covers of teen magazines and love of excess (the girls, the champagne, the private jets, and the rest) but they made good their promise always to have fun. To date, they have sold more than 60 million albums, which isn't bad going for a "joke" pop group from Birmingham.
Like most bands, they lost the plot. All three Taylors left the band at
different times but Rhodes and Le Bon kept carrying the flame throughout the barren Nineties.
Whether they really believed their time would come again is open to question but they never lost their ability to seize the moment.
SINCE the original line-up reunited 18 months ago, a new generation of bands has discovered Duran Duran. All of a sudden the group remembered chiefly for their videos are unsung musical heroes who achieved pop perfection.
Courtney Taylor-Taylor, lead singer with the Dandy Warhols, whose esteemed new album, Welcome To The Monkey House, was co-produced by Nick Rhodes, has said: "Rio is one of the most powerful pieces of music I know" - a statement unthinkable when that single was released in 1982.
While there's an element of rewriting history here, there's no denying that whenever you hear the song you experience that rush of youthful exuberance that's so vital to classic pop music.
It also helps that all five members of Duran Duran have aged pretty well, unlike, say, poor old Adam Ant, who has lost his looks, his hair, and, by all accounts, his sanity.
"There have been a lot of times when I didn't think it was going to work, " John Taylor said last week of the reunion, "but there's something that's been keeping me there, against tremendous odds.
We're doing it all and we're doing it with our own hair."
The gap in the market for fun, glamour and excitement that the band first spotted in 1980 is still there in 2003. And so, love them or hate them, Duran Duran are back, capitalising on the cult of celebrity they helped to create.
Get your Miami Vice suits out of mothballs, roll up your sleeves and dance with Rio - it's 1984 again.
From Sunday Express - 03/08/2003 (1324 words)
Beverley Glick
WHEN AMERICAN Terry Wallis woke up earlier this month after 19 years in a coma, he thought it was still 1984. The day he had the road accident that put his life on hold, Ronald Reagan was US President and glossy pop beasts Duran Duran bestrode the globe like a colossus.
Wallis may marvel at the ways in which the world has changed since then but he can take comfort from the fact that good old Duran Duran are still out there doing the business.
The original line-up of the band that epitomised the cheesy glamour of the decade that taste forgot are currently touring America - their first
appearances there since Live Aid in 1985 - to rave reviews. But the three Taylors - John, 41, Andy, 42, and Roger, 43 (no relation), plus Nick Rhodes, 41, and Simon Le Bon, 44, now have the one precious thing that eluded them in the Eighties - cachet.
The Hollywood A-list - including Brad Pitt, Colin Farrell and Nicolas Cage - have been clamouring for tickets to see the band and Cameron Diaz was recently seen buying a copy of their debut album, which was first released in 1981.
Now there are reports that record companies have entered a bidding war for their as yet unfinished album, produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, with figures of GBP 50million being bandied about.
So how have a bunch of superannuated teen idols turned it all around when many of their contemporaries have failed to make a comeback beyond Eighties nostalgia tours and themed nights at British holiday camps?
Perhaps the answer lies way back in Birmingham in 1980, when the teenaged John Taylor and Nick Rhodes were looking for the final pieces of the jigsaw that would fulfil their pop vision. They'd grown up loving David Bowie, Roxy Music and the best of punk rock and wanted to mix it with electronic music and a little funk. To beef up the rock element they recruited experienced guitarist Andy Taylor, and finally found their singer in the form of exuberant poetry-writing drama student Simon Le Bon.
The band's first managers, the Berrow brothers, owned a nightclub in
Birmingham called the RumRunner. John and Nick must have known they were on to something when they saw that the place was turning into a poser's paradise: kids of both sexes dressing up in vintage clothes, wearing theatrical make-up and dancing in a strange, angular way to David Bowie and Kraftwerk.
The second city had embraced the scene that had started in the clubs of London, revolving around a coterie of bright young fashion designers and musicians.
John and Nick could see that this was what the pop world had been crying out for - a little bit of glamour, fun and excitement.
At around that time, Taylor picked up a copy of the music paper, Sounds, to read an article entitled "The New Romantics", about Spandau Ballet, the band key to this new London music scene.
It was the first he'd heard of them. "I said to the band, 'Hey look, check this out. It sounds like these guys are doing the same kind of thing that we are - kind of white European dance music with guitars, '" he said in a recent interview.
And in a piece of pure opportunism that would come to characterise the band's career, they opted to parachute the words "New Romantic" into the lyrics of their first single, Planet Earth. Then, said Taylor: "We called up the girl who wrote the piece and said, 'Hey, we're part of this New Romantic movement you're talking about, but we're in Birmingham, why don't you come up and see us?' So, she did, and that was the first article that got written about the band."
IWAS that girl, and, John, I always knew you were using the New Romantic bandwagon to hitch a ride. Even when I first met the band in November 1980 at the RumRunner, they came across as incredibly savvy young men with an eye on the zeitgeist and the Guinness Book of Hit Singles.
"The last thing in the world we're ever going to sing about is bad times, " John, a Chic fan, told me.
"We want to be the band to dance to when the bomb drops, " added Simon. (A noble ideal at a time when everyone was anxious about the Cold War. ) John needed only to look in the mirror to recognise their chief appeal. "I think the teenage market is underrated, there's nothing wrong with it at all. There's a gap for teen heroes in England, America and Japan and we've already been thinking about those markets."
So who's the new teen hero, I asked? "We thought we'd split it five ways."
And they did.
It's now part of the Duran legend that Nick and John sat down and worked out their plan for world domination in May 1980. It went roughly thus:
Hammersmith Odeon by 1982; Wembley Arena by 1983;
Madison Square Garden by 1984.
It's testament to the power of self-belief (and MTV) that they achieved all three targets. The band played at London's Hammersmith Odeon in July 1982; Wembley Arena in December 1983 (five consecutive nights); and New York's Madison Square Garden in March 1984 (two nights, both sold out).
But Duran Duran were never cool in the same way as Spandau Ballet. They were mocked for their extravagant promotional videos (the "classics" - Save A Prayer, Rio - were made in Sri Lanka with yachts and elephants), willingness to smile for the covers of teen magazines and love of excess (the girls, the champagne, the private jets, and the rest) but they made good their promise always to have fun. To date, they have sold more than 60 million albums, which isn't bad going for a "joke" pop group from Birmingham.
Like most bands, they lost the plot. All three Taylors left the band at
different times but Rhodes and Le Bon kept carrying the flame throughout the barren Nineties.
Whether they really believed their time would come again is open to question but they never lost their ability to seize the moment.
SINCE the original line-up reunited 18 months ago, a new generation of bands has discovered Duran Duran. All of a sudden the group remembered chiefly for their videos are unsung musical heroes who achieved pop perfection.
Courtney Taylor-Taylor, lead singer with the Dandy Warhols, whose esteemed new album, Welcome To The Monkey House, was co-produced by Nick Rhodes, has said: "Rio is one of the most powerful pieces of music I know" - a statement unthinkable when that single was released in 1982.
While there's an element of rewriting history here, there's no denying that whenever you hear the song you experience that rush of youthful exuberance that's so vital to classic pop music.
It also helps that all five members of Duran Duran have aged pretty well, unlike, say, poor old Adam Ant, who has lost his looks, his hair, and, by all accounts, his sanity.
"There have been a lot of times when I didn't think it was going to work, " John Taylor said last week of the reunion, "but there's something that's been keeping me there, against tremendous odds.
We're doing it all and we're doing it with our own hair."
The gap in the market for fun, glamour and excitement that the band first spotted in 1980 is still there in 2003. And so, love them or hate them, Duran Duran are back, capitalising on the cult of celebrity they helped to create.
Get your Miami Vice suits out of mothballs, roll up your sleeves and dance with Rio - it's 1984 again.
