Duran Duran was the 1980s, with two Grammys, several million records sold, and an absolute
banger of a James Bond theme, a feat few musicians can claim.
But along the way, Duran Duran encountered some events that would have shattered lesser
bands.
This is the crazy real-life story of Duran Duran.
Like all bands, Duran Duran had to start somewhere.
In 1978, at the Rum Runner, one of the hottest nightclubs in Birmingham, England, a group
of young musicians began playing shows while also working as employees.
They named themselves after a minor character from the film Barbarella, which itself was
also the name of another popular Birmingham nightclub.
The character's name is "Durand Durand," but they lost the D's at the end to become "Duran
Duran" instead.
"Have you ever heard of a young scientist named Durand Durand?"
Even after seeing some success, the band members, Stephen Duffy, Nick Rhodes, Andy Taylor, Roger
Taylor, and John Taylor, please note that, shockingly, none of these three Taylors are
related, helped out at the nightclub as bouncers, DJs, bartenders, and busboys.
The band's first managers were actually the Rum Runner's owners, Paul and Michael Berrow,
and Duran Duran became a sort of house band for the club, performing at night and working
the rest of the time.
The Berrow brothers helped Duran Duran record a new demo tape, which they sent out to labels
throughout the industry, all while continuing to polish glasses and work as short order
cooks at the Rum Runner.
Even after they hit it big, the band never forgot the club, and would hold after-parties
there whenever they played Birmingham, according to the Birmingham Mail.
The band's initial singer, Stephen Duffy, left Birmingham before they hit it big when
he moved on to a rock group called Obviously Five Believers.
This left a vacancy which was filled by Andy Wickett, previously the singer of another
local band named TV Eye, according to Cryptic Rock.
Wickett co-wrote the band's first huge hit, "Girls on Film," and sang on the original
demo track, which has a bit of a darker sound compared to the final release.
Wickett departed after a short time to pursue other genres, and told The Strange Brew he
has actually never listened to a Duran Duran record since he's not really into that style
of music.
It probably worked out for the best, in that case, and so Duran Duran once again had to
hunt for a singer.
At least this would be the last time they needed to do so, even if they didn't know
that yet.
They worked with a few vocalists during this time before a fellow Rum Runner employee introduced
them to her boyfriend, a London-based singer named Simon Le Bon.
Le Bon would soon become the band's permanent frontman and one of the most famous voices
of the 1980s.
While 80s pop music might all appear to be one, unified genre, it is most assuredly not.
Even at the dawn of the decade, there were a number of tiny subgenres of synth pop, post
punk, new wave, and so on.
According to The Guardian, Birmingham was considered a hotbed for the movement called
the New Romantics.
Taking a page out of David Bowie's glam rock book and the original Romantic movement of
the early 19th century, New Romantics put on theatrical costumes with lots of ruffles
and wrote songs about, well, romance mostly.
Duran Duran was considered one of the poster children of the New Romantic movement, as
they were right there at the forefront when it began to build steam.
While popular, the genre never won over critics who thought it was far more about style than
substance and, to be fair, they weren't exactly wrong about that.
So, when the New Romantic fad began to dry up within a few short years, Duran Duran was
suddenly left looking terribly uncool.
Upon reaching global fame, it didn't take long for the band to ditch the ruffles and
start on a different path: high fashion.
According to Decider, the band quickly began wearing designer suits and cutting-edge couture.
Their first recording contract is alleged to have even had a clothing budget built into
it.
"We came, because when we finally got our advance from EMI Records, and part of it was
a clothing budget."
The band, like many other New Romantics, were considered teen idols, and often ended up
in cheesy pop magazines.
Along with the critical disdain New Romantics received, these cornball photo spreads earned
the musicians more mockery.
Being cute sounds like a good problem to have, but when the band decided to mature their
sound, they ran into a lot of trouble with people assuming they were a vapid proto-boy-band,
and not serious musicians.
It took them literal years and several huge hits to prove they weren't just a quintet
of models who pretended to play instruments to look good in music videos.
Ah, the perils of being really, really, ridiculously good-looking.
Around the same time that Duran Duran was making a splash, a cable network called MTV
had burst onto the scene and promptly changed everything about the music industry, as reported
in NPR.
Bands didn't just have to have great songs, they had to look the part, too.
Video did kill the radio star, after all.
"The first video music channel in stereo!
I'm Simon Le Bon…"
"...and I'm Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran, and for the next hour, we're taking over MTV."
Duran Duran was in a good position to take full advantage of this, and they did later
on, but when it came to their first big single, "Girls on Film," there was a problem.
Since they got their start in nightclubs, Duran Duran had made a video for play in,
well, nightclubs.
The decidedly R-rated video included mud wrestling, some kinky stuff, and bare body parts, according
to the AV Club.
MTV wouldn't air it, so the band had to scramble to produce an edited, safe-for-broadcast version.
This had the interesting side effect of the original video becoming a sort of urban legend,
with all sorts of wildly incorrect rumors about what it supposedly contained.
After their self-titled first album was a hit, Duran Duran did what every enterprising
young band does and went on tour, and in 1981, they undertook their second tour of their
home country of England.
According to The Irish Times, that year there was a series of riots in the UK, over questionable
leadership, poverty, inequality...you know, the things people tend to have riots over.
So alongside the band's summer tour dates, numerous spots throughout England had active,
ongoing riots.
One night they played a show in their hometown of Birmingham while a riot was occurring.
According to The Quietus, the band could actually hear the riot going on outside while they
rehearsed, but they went on with the show anyway.
This got them some pretty scathing remarks from the press.
After all, it's not a good look for a band that emphasizes high fashion and a decadent
lifestyle to continue performing in the middle of a lot of poor people rioting at their terrible
conditions.
Duran Duran's second album, Rio, did even better than their first.
To ensure that their third release would be the best it could be, in 1983 the band opted
to settle into a chateau in the French countryside for a year to dedicate themselves to their
art.
At least, that was the story.
It turned out their reasons for recording in the French countryside weren't just about
getting in touch with their muse.
According to The Guardian, they were actually spending a year in France as tax exiles.
That is, avoiding paying taxes in England on the income they earned from Rio's enormous
sales numbers.
It's not entirely clear if the band actually knew that's what they were doing or not.
In a 2012 BBC interview with bassist John Taylor that revisited questions from a 1986
article, Taylor claimed that the band was just told that's what they were doing and
only found out about the tax exile later.
However, in the original interview, he apparently said he didn't see why he should give so much
tax to the government for a career that, quote, "may at best last five years."
On top of the whole tax evasion thing, the 1983 recording of Duran Duran's third album,
Seven and the Ragged Tiger, wasn't exactly a smooth process.
Rio had been such a massive hit that the band found themselves struggling to figure out
how to follow it up.
The six-month long recording process was marked with a lot of fine tuning that the band later
felt had been unnecessary.
When the album did finally come out, it wasn't well-regarded at all, according to the Los
Angeles Times.
Probably not coincidentally, this is around the same time that the band's drug use skyrocketed,
according to guitarist Andy Taylor's autobiography, Wild Boy.
While the band had never kept their use of drugs, especially cocaine, a big secret to
the people close to them, the public was unaware of the whole thing.
Then a doorman from the Rum Runner published a tell-all article that detailed their heavy
use of drugs.
Suddenly, the band got a lot more attention, not just from the press or fans, but from
the authorities as well.
They were now taken into customs and searched every time they entered the UK.
In the aftermath of the drug exposé and disappointing reception of Seven and the Ragged Tiger, Duran
Duran took a break from recording and touring in 1984.
To fill the time, bassist John and guitarist Andy formed a hard rock supergroup called
Power Station with fellow 80s musician and "Addicted to Love" singer Robert Palmer.
According to Andy's autobiography, upon hearing this news, Le Bon and keyboardist Nick Rhodes
decided to form their own side project, an atmospheric synth group named Arcadia.
Drummer Roger Taylor ended up working with both bands, so he presumably got twice the
paychecks.
While both bands enjoyed some measure of success, neither was anywhere near as popular as Duran
Duran, with Arcadia putting out what Le Bon called "the most pretentious album ever" as
contrasted with Power Station's "most cocainey album ever," according to The Quietus.
The two bands' limited success was essentially what brought the five members back together
as Duran Duran in 1985 to record their biggest song yet, the theme for the James Bond film
A View to a Kill.
According to music industry legend, the gig came about when an extremely high John Taylor
asked Bond mega-producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli at a party when someone "decent" was going
to record one of the movies' legendary themes.
"Excuse me, aren't you?"
"Bon.
Simon Le Bon."
Duran Duran's Bond theme, "A View to a Kill," was very successful, but it was the last single
the band would release before undergoing major changes.
In July 1985, Duran Duran was set to play Live Aid, a charity concert masterminded by
musician Bob Geldof to raise money for famine-struck children in Ethiopia.
From a stage in Philadelphia and broadcast worldwide, Duran Duran played a short set
of songs, one of which was "A View to a Kill."
Unknown to the billions watching at home, Le Bon had blown out his voice during rehearsal,
according to the Daily Mail, and during one of the final high notes of the song, his voice
cracked like he was 13 all over again.
Bad notes happen, but this one was particularly bad, and the press ruthlessly mocked Le Bon
and the rest of the band for it.
As further proof that 1985 was not Duran Duran's year, the following month, Le Bon, who had
taken up yachting as a hobby, capsized his boat and nearly died during a massive yacht
race, according to the BBC.
If that wouldn't have been the most 80s way to go out of this world, nothing is.
Following the Live Aid debacle, Duran Duran's members seemed to agree that it was one of
their worst performances.
Drummer Roger and guitarist Andy both left the band, effectively making the Live Aid
performance a farewell concert for the band's primary lineup.
The five of them wouldn't play together again for nearly two decades, when they briefly
reunited in the early 2000s before Andy left the band for the second and final time, according
to Good Housekeeping.
Thus, the search was on for two new band members, which would turn out to be a long struggle.
The band worked with session musicians for recording and various touring members for
live shows.
Eventually, they replaced Andy with Warren Cuccurullo, but only briefly had a replacement
drummer, Sterling Campbell, until Roger returned in 2001.
By the time Duran Duran made it into the studio to record their notorious fourth album, called…uh,
Notorious...it had been three years since the release of their last album and the band
had acquired a lot of bad press.
While the album did well, all things considered, it was nowhere near the heights of Rio.
Duran Duran's next two albums, Big Thing and Liberty, were both disappointments, and it
seemed the band might be winding down for good when they released their self-titled
1993 album, referred to as the "Wedding Album" to differentiate it from their 1981 self-titled
album.
This one included a huge single, "Ordinary World," and actually did very well in the
grunge era of the early 90s.
It wasn't to last, though.
The tour for the album was cut short, according to the Deseret News, when Le Bon strained
his vocal cords again, halting the band's momentum.
In 1995, they followed up with Thank You, an album of cover songs which, according to
The Telegraph, is considered to be one of the worst albums ever made.
On top of this, the covers the band chose are...extremely weird, to say the least, including
a Public Enemy song where Le Bon attempts to rap.
It took until 2004's Astronaut, which was recorded with all five members of the lineup
that made them famous, for the band to see a second return to success.
Andy Taylor left again after its release, but the band has continued on as a four-piece
to this day.
While they're not as big as they were in 1983, they seem to have finally found stability
and the critical acceptance they sought.
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