Duran, Duran

Duran Duran

Rock group

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

When MTV, the 24-hour music video network, dawned in the early 1980s, it changed the face of popular music forever, and the British rock group Duran Duran was the first act to take full advantage of its possibilities. The five-member band of young, sculpted faces often adorned with make-up and frilly, expensive clothes, saw in the music video the perfect vehicle for propelling them beyond obscurity and their musical abilities to fame, fortune, and good times. Combining the sounds of 1970s British punk and the more upbeat, danceable rhythms of disco, Duran Duran began producing clean, sparkling (if not critically acclaimed), pop tunes. But what set them apart immediately were their videos: somewhat surreal escapist fantasies that took the self-styled playboys to such far-flung locales as Sri Lanka and Antigua. Screaming, record-buying, television-watching teen-age girls everywhere ate it up—and nobody could have predicted it better than the band members themselves. “Video to us is like stereo was to Pink Floyd,” said Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes. “It was new, it was just happening. And we saw we could do a lot with it.”

For the Record…

Band formed in 1978, in Birmingham, England; members include vocalist Simon Le Bon (born October 27, 1958, in Bushey, England); guitarist and keyboards player Andy Taylor (born February 16, 1961, in Dolver-Hampton, England); keyboards player Nick Rhodes (born June 8, 1962, in England); bassist John Taylor (born June 20,1960, in Birmingham, England); drummer Roger Taylor (born April 26, 1960, in Birmingham, England).

Performed in the Birmingham area, 1980-84; toured the U.K., 1980—; toured internationally beginning in 1984; Number 1 album, Seven and the Ragged Tiger, in 1984; split into two groups: Power Station and Arcadia in 1985; reformed, 1986—.

Addresses: Record company —Capitol Records, 1750 North Vine St., Hollywood, CA 90028.

While the conservative rock press liked to downplay the success of Duran Duran because of their obvious vanity and lack of attention to “serious” music, it should be noted that some of rock and roll’s most time-honored heroes, such as Elvis Presley and even a few members of the Beatles, were never accused of being serious musicians. Success in pop music has always depended upon image at least as much as the music itself. And “serious music” is not necessarily for everyone as Rolling Stone’s James Henke realized when he referred to Duran Duran’s eager fans as “young girls who were glued to their television sets watching MTV every waking hour. These girls had little use for the Clash’s left-wing politics, or the ranting and raving of that weird-looking Elvis Costello. But Duran Duran, now they were something else. Five extremely good-looking young men. Dream dates.”

Duran Duran began coming together in 1978 (some sources say 1977) in the Midlands city of Birmingham, where Rhodes and guitarist John Taylor started performing with a variety of bandmates. The current group, which takes its name from a character in the 1968 film Barbarella, became complete in 1980 when Simon Le Bon, a drop-out drama student, showed up one day in pink, leopard-skin leotards and said he wanted to sing in the band. Le Bon joined Rhodes, John Taylor (who switched to bass), drummer Roger Taylor, and guitarist Andy Taylor (none of the Taylors are related), and the quintet began performing in Birmingham, most frequently at a club called Rum Runners which had become established as the home of England’s burgeoning New Romantic scene. “Donning the foppish clothes of the movement and playing a slick, if superficial, brand of dance-pop, the band was tailor-made for the style obsessed New Romantics,” says the Encyclopedia of Rock.

Duran Duran quickly became the headliners of that movement, playing at large clubs and festivals throughout England, and in early 1981 they released their first single, “Planet Earth,” which went to Number 12 on the U.K. charts. Later that year their first album, Duran Duran, went to Number 3 on the album charts and spawned two more hit singles, including “Girls on Film.” They had already been shunned by the serious music press at this point, but newer, teen-oriented, image-conscious magazines like Smash Hits and The Face were more than happy to circulate glossy photos of “The Boys,” as they had become known. The lavish videos helped transfer this new-found fame to the U.S., where “Hungry Like the Wolf” reached Number 3. By 1984 Duran Duran was an international phenomenon— their third album, Seven and a Ragged Tiger, debuted at Number 1 and suddenly the boys were living the lives they had created for themselves on video, playing soldout tour dates around the world.

They were dandies, playboys, and their profiles became plastered on teen magazines everywhere. First there is Rhodes (his name was originally Nicholas Bates), the man who probably most personifies the band’s gaudy image. Rhodes grew up with John Taylor and both found that they liked the music of glittery stars like T. Rex. “We wouldn’t buy records by ugly groups,” Rhodes told People, adding that when he and Taylor decided to start a band they “had vivid ideas of what we wanted to look and sound like, but we looked at the instruments and said, ’Do we have to learn to play these things?’” John Taylor is the ladies’ man and a huge target for the gossipy Fleet Street press. His wanderings have been well-chronicled there. “Being a rock star is like putting a huge sign in a window, ’For Sale,’” Taylor told People. “I did an interview with Penthouse and they said, ’What’s your idea of a great woman?’ I said, ’Someone who could tie me up and whip me and make great bacon sandwiches.’” Le Bon is an unlikely pop star in that he still opens doors for women, has a pensive streak that makes him yearn for sailing alone on the sea, and because his bandmates once tagged him with the nickname “Lardo” because of his pudginess. Roger and Andy Taylor round out the band and are more known for staying in the shadows while the others bait the screaming girls at center stage.

By 1985 Duran Duran had started suffering from the personality conflicts that hamper many bands. Their production slacked off as the players spent more time apart, getting together only occasionally for certain projects, such as the immensely successful single and video for the James Bond movie A View To a Kill. John and Andy Taylor began work on an outside project with Robert Palmer in 1985 and formed a band called Power Station, which recorded an album of the same name (which was Number 30 that year, according to Rolling Stone ) and played at the Live Aid benefit concert. In the meantime the remaining “thoughtful” members of the group briefly performed and recorded as Arcadia, spawning the LP So Red the Rose. It, too, climbed the charts;Rolling Stone found it harmless and bland: “Egan’s lubricated bass line contrasts nicely with Simon’s hog-calling tenor…. like the Power Station’s record, it’s proficient, serviceable pop without any unifying drive or purpose. And no matter how obnoxious (or not) you may have found them, personality is one thing Duran Duran never lacked.” By 1986 Duran Duran was back intact and recording again, although they would never regain the success of the early 1980s.

Their 1987 effort, Notorious, received the usual chilly reception from critics, but the videos were popular on MTV. Rolling Stone actually went so far as to call Notorious Duran Duran’s “most consistently listenable work,” but felt the band had lost personality in the search for musical maturity. Big Thing! of 1988 had none of the MTV audience and none of the backhanded compliments of earlier reviews. People panned the album; “As ’mature’ musicians, they’re marooned.” The Encyclopedia of Rock summed up Duran Duran’s impact on the music world in this way: “Musically, Duran Duran are no more than accomplished studio stylists, skillful welders of a host of disparate elements— hard rock, electro, white soul and, latterly, scratch and hip-hop—into an eminently commercial sound. Far more important was their marketing success, whereby they capitalized on their obvious visual attractions through the media (video and the glossy pop magazines), a technique that became increasingly important in the music industry in the Eighties.”

Selected discography

Duran Duran, Harvest, 1981.

Rio, Capitol, 1982.

Seven and the Ragged Tiger, Capitol, 1983.

Arena, Capitol, 1984.

Notorious, Capitol, 1987.

Big Thing!, Capitol, 1988.

Sources

Books

Hardy, Phil, and Dave Laing, Encyclopedia of Rock, Schirmer, 1988.

Periodicals

People, July 22, 1985, November 7, 1988.

Rolling Stone, February 2, 1984, January 16, 1986, January 29, 1987.

—David Collins