Duran Duran: Going 'round again
The Courier-Mail (Australia) | By Sean Sennett | 9th April 2011
The Courier-Mail (Australia) | By Sean Sennett | 9th April 2011
THIS popular '80s band is likely to be renewing its romance with the hit charts and a whole new bunch of fans. Duran Duran emerged out of a particular cultural moment and became the defining band of the 1980s video age.
Who could forget singer Simon Le Bon leaping off the edge of the world in the Planet Earth film clip, or how salacious Girls On Film seemed in those comparatively censored times?
Influenced by the early glam of Roxy Music and David Bowie, the svelte NYC groove of Chic and the Germanic pulse of Kraftwerk, Duran Duran were at the forefront of the New Romantic movement: They melded pop music with pop art, reinstated glamour on to the charts and cut a slew of singles that, 30 years on from their debut, still resonate.
In the intervening years, the band members have hardly rested on their laurels. When times were lean, the Fab Five was down to two original members, Le Bon and Nick Rhodes. At the turn of the new century, the original fivesome reformed, reclaimed their commercial stock and, apart from losing guitarist Andy Taylor, haven't looked back.
Now they've released a new album All You Need Is Now which is, arguably, their most anticipated release since their mid-'80s heyday.
Feted by a hip new breed, the timing is as close to perfect as the band could hope. There's a hint of reconnecting with the zeitgeist: The '80s are in vogue, Apple chased the group for an exclusive iTunes pre-release and they've collaborated with pop's most influential contemporary hit man, Mark Ronson.
Ronson's CV includes a flourishing solo career as well as production work with Amy Winehouse, Lilly Allen and Kaiser Chiefs.
A massive Duran fan as a kid, producer Ronson's ambition was to recapture their slinky mix of '80s pop and stadium-lifting choruses and to re-energise the band in 2011.
"He was the best choice I think we'd ever made for a producer,'' admits Nick Rhodes down the phone line from New York City. "And we've worked with some great people.
"He just gets us on every level. He gets us stylistically, he gets the music and he gets the fact that we're such a mix of all kinds of pop culture.''
Ronson calls All You Need Is Now the perfect imaginary follow-up to 1982's Rio.
"I think it's more of a follow-up to the third album, Seven And the Ragged Tiger, if anything,'' concedes Rhodes. "A lot is said about the Rio album, because of what it represents from that period.
"I always think of those first three albums as a trilogy.
"Simon, I know, actually disagrees. The songwriting now is very much in the same vein as the first couple of albums. Mark gets that and it brings out the best in people.''
As when they started out in a back room at Birmingham's Rum Runner Club in 1978, Duran Duran went back to the rehearsal room and wrote as a band: This time with Ronson and guitarist Dom Brown who has replaced Andy Taylor in tow.
"We'd just jam until we'd find something we liked,'' Rhodes says. "We tend to gravitate towards whatever the strongest idea in the room is.
'We're pretty democratic about it - it really doesn't matter whether it starts with some keyboard line that I'm playing or whether it's a rhythm, or just one vocal phrase.
"We sort of know what the strength is. So we usually just follow that.''
As with any classic Duran album, there's a cache of possible singles.
Guests appear in the form of Ana Matronic (Sister Scissors), Kelis and Arcade Fires' Owen Pallet.
Alongside the pop, there's also room to dabble in the avante garde, most notably on the Rhodes-driven The Man Who Stole A Leopard.
"That was the most radical of the songs we recorded,'' he admits. "I spent a day programming that from scratch and then presented it to everyone and said, 'Do you like this? Should we dial up this further?'.
"We added some bass and drums to it and some synth guitars and then we added some strings to it. We decided we wanted it to be a duet, so Simon sang a part and then we sent it to Kelis and she added something to it.
"Owen then came back with his real string parts, so that one was probably the most interesting development.''
While Rhodes' almost-trademark '80s Fairlight synthesiser is nowhere to be heard, his storage shed was raided for sonic period pieces.
"Mark insisted that I use almost entirely analogue synthesisers,'' he says. "We really went back to everything I was using before the Fairlight things from 1980 to 1983, things like the Roland Jupiter-8 and the Prophet 5.
"They're beautiful instruments in the same way that someone will look at a Stratocaster from whatever year is the vintage and say this one was really great because it just sounds different with the way it was built and all the details that matter to guitarists.
"It's even more so with synthesisers, because each one had its own quirky character to it.
"I did have a pang the other day, wishing that I had that Fairlight,'' he muses. "I think that sort of got lost the first time the band broke up. I think Andy had it and then let it rot or something, which is a terrible shame because it was a
beautifully strange instrument.''
Rhodes has fond memories of Australia and hopes the band will tour here later this year.
He's also overseeing the release of a concert film shot two weeks ago in Los Angeles by David Lynch that was initially streamed live over the internet.
"We've always been huge admirers of his work,'' he says of the director. "I've actually seen every single movie he's ever made, including Inland Empire. I like all of them. So to get to work with somebody who you've followed their career and you admire like that was great.
"He had great ideas, a fantastic sense of humour, and I think the film he's made looks really beautiful. It's very different, dreamy and unlike anything I've ever seen from a live film for a band before.''
All You Need Is Now is out through Shock and is also available digitally
Who could forget singer Simon Le Bon leaping off the edge of the world in the Planet Earth film clip, or how salacious Girls On Film seemed in those comparatively censored times?
Influenced by the early glam of Roxy Music and David Bowie, the svelte NYC groove of Chic and the Germanic pulse of Kraftwerk, Duran Duran were at the forefront of the New Romantic movement: They melded pop music with pop art, reinstated glamour on to the charts and cut a slew of singles that, 30 years on from their debut, still resonate.
In the intervening years, the band members have hardly rested on their laurels. When times were lean, the Fab Five was down to two original members, Le Bon and Nick Rhodes. At the turn of the new century, the original fivesome reformed, reclaimed their commercial stock and, apart from losing guitarist Andy Taylor, haven't looked back.
Now they've released a new album All You Need Is Now which is, arguably, their most anticipated release since their mid-'80s heyday.
Feted by a hip new breed, the timing is as close to perfect as the band could hope. There's a hint of reconnecting with the zeitgeist: The '80s are in vogue, Apple chased the group for an exclusive iTunes pre-release and they've collaborated with pop's most influential contemporary hit man, Mark Ronson.
Ronson's CV includes a flourishing solo career as well as production work with Amy Winehouse, Lilly Allen and Kaiser Chiefs.
A massive Duran fan as a kid, producer Ronson's ambition was to recapture their slinky mix of '80s pop and stadium-lifting choruses and to re-energise the band in 2011.
"He was the best choice I think we'd ever made for a producer,'' admits Nick Rhodes down the phone line from New York City. "And we've worked with some great people.
"He just gets us on every level. He gets us stylistically, he gets the music and he gets the fact that we're such a mix of all kinds of pop culture.''
Ronson calls All You Need Is Now the perfect imaginary follow-up to 1982's Rio.
"I think it's more of a follow-up to the third album, Seven And the Ragged Tiger, if anything,'' concedes Rhodes. "A lot is said about the Rio album, because of what it represents from that period.
"I always think of those first three albums as a trilogy.
"Simon, I know, actually disagrees. The songwriting now is very much in the same vein as the first couple of albums. Mark gets that and it brings out the best in people.''
As when they started out in a back room at Birmingham's Rum Runner Club in 1978, Duran Duran went back to the rehearsal room and wrote as a band: This time with Ronson and guitarist Dom Brown who has replaced Andy Taylor in tow.
"We'd just jam until we'd find something we liked,'' Rhodes says. "We tend to gravitate towards whatever the strongest idea in the room is.
'We're pretty democratic about it - it really doesn't matter whether it starts with some keyboard line that I'm playing or whether it's a rhythm, or just one vocal phrase.
"We sort of know what the strength is. So we usually just follow that.''
As with any classic Duran album, there's a cache of possible singles.
Guests appear in the form of Ana Matronic (Sister Scissors), Kelis and Arcade Fires' Owen Pallet.
Alongside the pop, there's also room to dabble in the avante garde, most notably on the Rhodes-driven The Man Who Stole A Leopard.
"That was the most radical of the songs we recorded,'' he admits. "I spent a day programming that from scratch and then presented it to everyone and said, 'Do you like this? Should we dial up this further?'.
"We added some bass and drums to it and some synth guitars and then we added some strings to it. We decided we wanted it to be a duet, so Simon sang a part and then we sent it to Kelis and she added something to it.
"Owen then came back with his real string parts, so that one was probably the most interesting development.''
While Rhodes' almost-trademark '80s Fairlight synthesiser is nowhere to be heard, his storage shed was raided for sonic period pieces.
"Mark insisted that I use almost entirely analogue synthesisers,'' he says. "We really went back to everything I was using before the Fairlight things from 1980 to 1983, things like the Roland Jupiter-8 and the Prophet 5.
"They're beautiful instruments in the same way that someone will look at a Stratocaster from whatever year is the vintage and say this one was really great because it just sounds different with the way it was built and all the details that matter to guitarists.
"It's even more so with synthesisers, because each one had its own quirky character to it.
"I did have a pang the other day, wishing that I had that Fairlight,'' he muses. "I think that sort of got lost the first time the band broke up. I think Andy had it and then let it rot or something, which is a terrible shame because it was a
beautifully strange instrument.''
Rhodes has fond memories of Australia and hopes the band will tour here later this year.
He's also overseeing the release of a concert film shot two weeks ago in Los Angeles by David Lynch that was initially streamed live over the internet.
"We've always been huge admirers of his work,'' he says of the director. "I've actually seen every single movie he's ever made, including Inland Empire. I like all of them. So to get to work with somebody who you've followed their career and you admire like that was great.
"He had great ideas, a fantastic sense of humour, and I think the film he's made looks really beautiful. It's very different, dreamy and unlike anything I've ever seen from a live film for a band before.''
All You Need Is Now is out through Shock and is also available digitally