Duran Duran

Duran Duran It’s been twenty-one years since Simon LeBon’s ex-girlfriend convinced Nick Rhodes, John, Andy and Roger Taylor (not related, of course) that he would be the best vocalist for their band. Thirteen albums and fourty-five singles later, and the band are still going strong – without Andy but with a new album, produced by Mark Ronson. BEN HARLUM was as excited as a… well, girl at a Duran Duran concert when he caught up with Roger Taylor (who, as he notes, was in the same hotel that Russell Crowe threw a phone at the receptionist).

First of all, it’s been about ten years since the original members got back together. Does it even feel like you had left the band?
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve been in the band about twice as long this time as I was the first. It’s gone really quick, and time really does go by when you’re having fun. You’re right, at times it doesn’t really feel like I left but it’s just so different to how it was in the 80’s.

Before Red Carpet Massacre you shelved a complete record full of material, which I’m sure is never a fun experience for any band. Did that make you more aware, when recording All You Need is Now, of making sure you had the sound the band wanted?
That album really was shelved because it wasn’t quite good enough. We had that realisation, as we came to the end of recording it, that we had some great album tracks but there were no lead singles for radio. That’s why we brought in Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, to try and give us those lead tracks.

We thought Red Carpet Massacre was a great album and I don’t think we’ve really changed that position, at the time it was a dream team – Timbaland and Timberlake. It didn’t really fit with our audience, as you know, but that lead us to make this album which is much closer to our sound. It was a good, valuable experience for us.

What’s the collaboration process these days, especially compared to the 80’s?
It’s very, very similar to when we’d sit down together as a band in the 80’s, jam in a room and come up with loads of ideas; sometimes we’d come up with ten songs in a day. Then it’s all about Simon feeling comfortable with the song and coming up with a lyric for it. We haven’t changed the process at all, it’s very much the same, and it seems to be a winning formula for us.

It did change a bit for Red Carpet Massacre because it was a bit more programmed and more about what Timbaland was doing. It was Mark Ronson who brought us back to the way we used to write and record, down to fishing out the old bass that John used on the first album. He even made sure the drums were set up exactly the same way we would’ve done in 1983. I think for Mark it was a sort-of scientific project to recapture the sound that we had in the early 80’s.

Back in ’99, Electric Barbarella was the first song available for digital purchase online. Now All You Need is Now was released initially on iTunes. At what stage did the band decide to take this route?
Duran Duran The decision was made for us because we had parted company with Sony, didn’t have a record label and were a free agent. We were halfway through making the album, which was completely self-financed and recorded in this tiny studio in London which I called the “Black Hole” because there were absolutely no windows, the guys from iTunes wanted to come down. They loved what they were hearing, and that was the first sense we had that it would be a very well-received album. This was in November last year, and they said that “we’ll release it for you.” We asked when they could release it and they said “before Christmas.” It was very much in the spirit of new wave the way it was released, we just dropped it on iTunes and thankfully people are loving it and I think it hit number one on fifiteen different countries.

Speaking of Electric Barbarella, when you returned to the band there were a bunch of songs now on the setlist that you hadn’t played before. What was it like going back to learn these tracks?
It was really tough, actually. It took a lot of time and practice because some of the drummers they brought in were amazing drummers. It’s one thing to go back to your own back catalogue but now you have to learn how other people were playing these tracks. It was a tough nut to crack, but I got there and I think we’re sounding very cohesive as a band. As you know, Andy left around three years ago, so we have a guy called Dom Brown playing with us and it’s a very cohesive unit. I think this album is really about the live experience and it’s been very refreshing.

You’re the first person anybody sees in a Duran Duran video, that being Planet Earth…
Yeah! Nobody’s mentioned that for thirty years and it’s actually true!

Do you miss making the exotic, over the top videos?
Not particularly. We were always about the music, and for us the videos were just another promotional tool. Funnily enough our first number one record was in Australia, and the record company couldn’t keep flying us down to play on Countdown every week because it’d cost them a fortune. So they told us that we had to create a video to promote the single, so we got Russell Mulcahy who was an Australian and had a tremendous vision.

We made this amazing video clip that managed to launch us around the world and in America. We never really understood the importance of the first video but it was always the music we enjoyed doing, while the film clip was just a necessity that we don’t really miss doing.

The two times I’ve seen you live, it’s been very stripped back with no elaborate set or lighting, just the band playing music. On the flip side you had the David Lynch-directed live show last week. Do you enjoy having all the theatrics or do you prefer the stripped back shows?
We do enjoy the theatrical side but sometimes it’s really nice to perform our songs in that stripped down way. We watched the David Lynch show back and it was mindblowing because we had no idea what he was doing, it was directed and produced live as we were playing. To see that back afterwards was quite incredible, it was very much like a live music video.

Is there one track, whether it’s from the new album or the back catalogue, that you wish received more love than it currently does?
There’s a couple of things on the Astronaut album that I think are pretty great, Point of No Return has kind of been forgotten. Maybe we’ll resurrect the album one of these days, but we have so many songs that we can revisit that it’s quite incredible. Usually there’s a big argument before the show, whether we should play Hungry Like the Wolf or Rio, Sunrise or Ordinary World… It’s a great problem to have, we almost have a queue of songs w
aiting to get back on the setlist; one of which is New Moon on Monday at the moment.

Then you’ve got the diehards who have their obscure favourites, mine is Make Me Smile…
Yeah! I’ve been trying to get Make Me Smile back in for a while. We’ve put Friends of Mine back in because I knew that was a diehard song that goes down a storm when we play it. Maybe Make Me Smile could be a good one…

Are there any plans to come down and tour again?
We’re definitely coming down toward the end of the year, or maybe next year. It’s definitely something that we want to do.

Finally, what is the reflex exactly?
[laughs] That’s a very good question! You should be asking Simon, but I think it’s whatever you want it to mean. I was just talking the other day about the poetic, abstract lyrics that seem to be coming back. It went very much out of fashion in the 1990’s because everything became about realism but now it’s back in. I think that’s why so many people like the new album, because you have tracks like The Man who Stole a Leopard, which could’ve been on the Rio songs.

Duran Duran’s new album, All You Need Is Now, is available in stores through Shock Records.