From near-death experiences to out of control drug use, Duran Duran's heyday was one crazy ride. But
despite their string of '80s hits, the group's personal lives didn't always end up on top.
The members of a band the public knows are the singers and musicians. But the rock stars
are dependent on managers working behind the scenes to make recording sessions and
live tours run smoothly. Duran Duran was just one of the acts that depended on tour manager
Craig Duffy, who also provided services for Radiohead, U2, and Lily Allen, among others.
According to NME, Duffy was a father to two children and was undergoing treatment for
throat cancer in 2021. He was driving with his partner, former hospital worker and mother of
two Sue Partimer, when they were involved in a collision on May 21 of that year near Tivington,
on the border of Devon and Somerset. Duffy and Partimer died in the crash,
while a third person suffered critical injuries. Duffy's death was confirmed to
Devon Live by Duran Duran's former publicist, Gerard Franklin, who paid tribute to Duffy's
reputation as a well-liked and respected support to the many famous acts that depended on him.
Lead singer and lyricist of Duran Duran, Simon Le Bon, has been a sailor since he was young.
The music video for the song "Rio" was shot on board a ship in the Caribbean. In 1985,
when the band's fame was at its zenith and the telecast of the Live Aid concert brought them
to over a billion viewers worldwide, Le Bon turned his attention to his hobby. He planned
to participate in the Fastnet yacht race, held between the Isle of Wight and Plymouth.
As Le Bon himself recalled for the BBC years later,
the Fastnet was meant to be a stepping stone on the way to a trip around the world by sail. But
while his ship Drum idled off the Cornish coast with Le Bon and his crew aboard,
the keel broke off the hull. The ship capsized, trapping its passengers inside
as fumes from the damaged vessel leaked out. The only light came from sunlight filtered
through the ocean water. Le Bon said the accident was the most harrowing of his life.
"It's the most dangerous situation I've ever been in."
He and his crew were trapped in the yacht for 40 minutes. Fortunately,
a rescue helicopter from the 771 Royal Naval Air Squadron managed to save everyone. Le Bon
was able to recognize himself in footage of the rescue by his bare legs. In escaping the ship,
his pants snagged on something and had to be left behind.
Duran Duran benefited enormously from coming into prominence alongside MTV.
Rolling Stone noted in 1983 how the network popularized some of
the band's songs before they made a splash on radio. Besides winning near-constant airtime,
the quality and visual range of Duran Duran's videos helped them stand out from the pack.
Among the more notable videos the band produced in the 1980s was for their hit
song "The Wild Boys." The elaborate shoot, done at a cost of 650,000
pounds at England's famed Pinewood Studios, featured choreography by noted dancer and
choreographer Arlene Phillips. Phillips also told the Birmingham Mail that "The Wild Boys"
nearly cost Simon Le Bon his life. The video featured a large windmill, and Le Bon was
strapped to one of its sails as it rotated, the ends of the sails dipping into a pool of water.
By Phillips' memory, the windmill became stuck while Le Bon's head was under the water. Strapped
in as he was, he had no way to get free and breathe, and divers had to go into the pool
to rescue him. Phillips found it a horrible sight, one that lingered on in her memory. It
is worth mentioning that Le Bon himself insists that he wasn't in any danger during filming and
that reports of his near-death during "The Wild Boys" shoot amount to an urban legend.
Duran Duran was not sold to the public as wild rock n' rollers. Their image,
as guitarist Andy Taylor recalled for the Evening Standard, was of clean-living pop stars.
"Duran Duran is a pop group. We're a pop group for young people with a lot of energy."
That image was shattered in 1984 when the British tabloids published an exposé on the prodigious use
of cocaine by various members. A former doorman to the Rum Runner club where Duran Duran first came
together betrayed their confidence and wrote an eyewitness account of the band's wild, drug-fueled
behavior at a Christmas party. The only member not castigated was Roger Taylor, who didn't partake.
While the story broke in a tawdry and backstabbing way, Duran Duran's struggles
with drugs were real. Andy wrote that he and John Taylor were the biggest users of the
group. The hectic work schedule demanded by the band's record company was rough on them,
and cocaine initially helped fuel them through the workload. John was probably under the
influence when he established contact with Cubby Broccoli, producer of the James Bond series,
leading to Duran Duran performing the title song for "A View to a Kill."
But by the mid-1980s, cocaine began fraying Andy's nerves and affecting his temper with
fans and bandmates. Coinciding with a split within Duran Duran over rival side projects,
the escalating drug use only worsened the divide. A cascade of embarrassing incidents made Andy
question his lifestyle, and he left Duran Duran after filming the music video for the Bond song.
Excessive drug use made Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor disillusioned with the music star life,
and he left the band in the mid-1980s. For bassist John Taylor, the road out of drug
addiction would be longer and more violent. Andy wrote that John's cocaine habit led him to make
brash remarks to film producers, and to fall to pieces after making a spectacle of himself
in front of the Rolling Stones. But a more serious incident, recalled by Andy in his memoir Wild Boy:
My Life with Duran Duran, occurred when John, drunk on vodka and probably high on cocaine,
nearly lost his foot after dancing on a broken bottle.
Slicing his foot open wasn't a wake-up call for John. He had his own chance to recount his drug
experiences with his own memoir in 2012, though he told the Hollywood Reporter that he hadn't
looked to Andy for a guide on how to discuss their mutual bad habits. John said that recalling his
addictions was the most difficult part of writing the book and that it wasn't a tell-all.
Not all the attention received by pop and rock stars is positive. There are entitled,
obsessive, or otherwise badly-behaved fans, hangers-on and hucksters,
tabloid press looking for salacious gossip, and pushers and enablers of bad habits. But
Duran Duran had the unique experience of facing actual assailants in the 1980s.
While in Munich on tour in 1982, according to Andy Taylor in Wild Boy: My Life with Duran Duran,
John and Roger Taylor met up with English singer Bryan Ferry at a club. What was a pleasant evening
took a dark turn when a group of men with baseball bats rushed the musicians. Roger and a security
guard were severely injured by the attack. John said in his own memoir In the Pleasure Groove:
Love, Death, and Duran Duran that he was so high on drugs that he can't remember
much of that night, but does remember seeing Roger covered in blood after a trip to the
hospital. In a fit of rage, John punched his right hand through a light fixture.
Andy told The Scotsman years later that Duran Duran was so unnerved
by the attack that they left Germany the day after. With their drummer and
bassist too badly injured to play, they needed to cancel the remaining dates of
their tour until replacements could be arranged. Andy told the outlet:
"We managed to play down the scale of [the injuries] in the media. Today,
it would have been a huge international incident."
As Duran Duran's popularity soared and John Taylor's drug use increased,
he also found romance. According to his memoir In the Pleasure Groove,
Taylor met Amanda de Cadenet after ten years with the band. He'd just endured
a fake paternity claim when de Cadenet came into his life. She had a reputation for wild,
rock-star-style behavior, and Taylor liked her way of thinking and navigating
the media. Within months, the couple was expecting a child, and they married in 1991.
Taylor described marriage and fatherhood as stabilizing forces in his life. But
there was a ten-year age gap between Taylor and de Cadenet, who enjoyed going out from
their Los Angeles home and networking when Taylor, exhausted from touring,
wanted to stay in. As the couple drifted apart, they tried therapy, but the gulf was
too great. It didn't help that marriage wasn't enough to pull Taylor out of his addictions.
"I just didn't have that off switch. I just kept, kept going."
The therapy sessions were productive enough that Taylor arranged to see
another therapist while working in London, who told him sobriety was necessary for any
productive work in counseling. After initial resistance and another wild ride of boozing,
Taylor agreed. De Cadenet helped see him into a treatment center
in Tucson. But it was too late for their marriage; the couple separated in 1995.
According to John Taylor's In the Pleasure Groove, the band's founder and keyboardist,
Nick Rhodes, met Julie Anne Friedman on a boat trip around Santa Monica. They became inseparable
after that encounter, and they married in 1984. John described their wedding, held at the Savoy
Hotel in London, as a pop culture sensation, and it was eagerly devoured by the press.
Friedman's presence in Rhodes' life — or, rather, her presence among Duran Duran — didn't sit well
with everyone. In his memoir Wild Boy, Andy Taylor notes that he and Rhodes regularly clashed and
that Friedman also didn't get on well with him. But Rhodes and Friedman increasingly didn't get
on with one another. In an excerpt published in the Evening Standard, Andy recalled an incident at
the Plaza Athenee when Friedman locked Rhodes out of their room and began screaming on the balcony,
to the point people worried she might fall. The fire brigade was called in to talk her down.
The couple divorced in 1992. The Daily Mail claimed that it was a contentious split,
with fights over the custody of their daughter and their art collection. Rhodes
received custody of their daughter and most of the pieces. But Friedman kept
a painting by Andy Warhol, given to the couple on their wedding day. She later
sold it to fund her chef's career, telling the Mail that Rhodes was aware of the sale.
The members of Duran Duran were all young and unknown when they signed a
contract with music publisher Gloucester Place in the 1980s. Under the agreement,
they produced their first three albums and the James Bond title song,
"A View to a Kill," with Gloucester retaining the copyright. Decades later,
Gloucester was a subsidiary of the U.S.-based Sony/ATV, and under American copyright law,
artists can reclaim control of their work after 35 years. Duran Duran moved to do just that in 2016.
In a U.K. court, Gloucester argued that in doing so, the band was in breach of contract and that
the terms of their agreement with Gloucester clearly allowed the company to retain copyright.
U.S. law did not apply, they said. The judge assigned to the case, while conceding that
it was a difficult case with fair arguments on both sides, ultimately agreed with Gloucester.
Nick Rhodes said in reaction to the ruling that it set a terrible precedent for other recording
artists of Duran Duran's generation, while Simon Le Bon questioned why anyone would want to work
with Sony/ATV given the way they treated talent. The British Academy of Songwriters,
Composers, and Artists weighed in, hoping that Duran Duran would appeal the decision.
If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues,
help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).