By Mikala Folb
Say it loud and say it proud: I USED TO LIKE DURAN DURAN! Not such hard words to part with, are they? Ah, but here’s the kicker; say it a little quieter: I STILL LIKE DURAN DURAN! Not so easy, is it? When Duran Duran buried themselves in middle-of-the-road hell in 1988, some of you were unforgiving: “Eight years too long!” you shouted and stomped on your Rio albums, Fedora hats and mesh shirts. But in 1992, when Duran Duran was kicking at the coffin and sending beautiful tunes up through the dirt (“Ordinary World” and “Come Undone”), you dug up your old “Girls On Film” video that discovered that “The Chauffeur” still sounds great in dance clubs. But here you are in 1995 and not quite sure what to think of Duran’s newest offering, Thank You. The tracks are a strange mix of cover tunes (Dylan, Doors, Zeppelin, and um, Public Enemy), but don’t be too quick to judge—looks can be deceiving. You may not like the original songs, but there’s no denying Duran Duran does rock. When the band was in T.O. last week to do promotion, bassist John Taylor had a little time to reflect on the beast known as Duran Duran and why the covers collection has been met with so much opposition.
“Every week (in the New Musical Express), it’s been like a running gag up to the release of the album,” says Taylor, curled up in a chair at his downtown hotel. “And finally, the week before the record came out, they gave two pages—two pages!—to the album, where they called up Led Zeppelin’s tour manager and asked him to review ‘Thank You’ and they called up this rap DJ and asked him to review ‘911 is a Joke.’ And I think they expected it to be unanimous trouncing, but it wasn’t…even though the editorial slant was negative, it couldn’t fight the fact that some people actually liked the stuff we’d done.”
Thank You was supposed to be Duran’s version of the Bowie’s Pin Ups–a tribute to the bands that inspired them. Taylor acknowledges that releasing a covers-only album was a bit risky, especially after winning back their original fan base and gaining a new one, but he explains that Duran is already working on new material. And although some critics might argue with him, Taylor knows it’s a good album. With their first single “White Lines” (originally by Grandmaster Flash) sneaking up both pop and dance charts, fans are allowing Duran to experiment.
“It’s such an achievement just getting an album finished and getting it out there. It really is difficult, so it gives you a tremendous amount of inertia. When you get it out, it’s like ‘Oh God, I don’t have to create for another two years now!’ You konw, you get the right to lunch for another year,” he laughs. “And I was thinking, I’m sure Pin-Ups had bad reviews when it came out.”
Some things about working with Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and the “new” guitarist Warren Cuccurullo still surprise Taylor—even after fifteen years. When Duran’s original drummer, Roger Taylor, stepped back in to play a couple of tracks on the album (Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” and Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives”), Taylor realized that the band had changed.
“Everyone became a drummer. everybody’s a computer programmer, and the way we approached writing really changed when Roger left. I think it was quite educational for him to see how things have changed, how much less spontaneity there was. For me, the best aspect of what he did on Thank You was video for ‘Perfect Day.’ I’m sitting there watching a monitor and he’s filming a close-up and I felt really sad. And I remember thinking, ‘Jesus! Ten years! What have I done in ten years?”
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