DURAN DURAN ENDURES SANS '80S STIGMA, MEGAGROUP RE-ENTERS 'ORDINARY WORLD'
Published on Friday, August 13, 1993

Byline: By Thomas Conner, The Arizona Republic


What do Duran Duran and the Velvet Underground have in common? Both began as pretentious art-rock quartets, both inadvertently touched off their own musical sub-genres and both had to wait at least a decade before receiving any semblance of respect.

Duran Duran covers VU's Femme Fatale on its new, highly hyped release, Duran Duran. The band also is working up the song to play in the current concert set. The band brings its show to Phoenix at 8 tonight at Blockbuster Desert Sky Pavilion. Terence Trent D'Arby opens the show.

Still can't see a connection? It gets weirder: Frank Zappa is responsible for the VU cover. ''When Warren (Cuccurullo, guitarist) first joined the band, he suggested we cover that song,'' explained charter Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes. ''Warren used to work with Frank Zappa, and Frank had always suggested that we do it. He said (Simon Le Bon's) voice would sound so good with it. It has a pretty tune and a great lyric, so we worked it up, and now, a few years later,
Frank got his way.''

VELVETY COVER
This is a case of Murphy's Law No. 752: When a rock band reaches a midlife crisis and yearns to be taken seriously again (if it ever was), it will record a Velvet Underground song.

It's a law as concrete as any law of physics. Lou Reed's oldies that were virtually ignored while the Velvet Underground was together have found new life in the catalogs of such artists as R.E.M., The Feelies and the Cowboy Junkies.

And now Duran Duran.

Duran Duran always has struggled to be taken seriously. Every album has been a plea to be taken seriously, each one more so than the one before it. C'mon, they didn't intend to have an audience full of screaming preteen girls. ''Our early '80s success was a greater shock to us than anyone else,'' Rhodes said. ''We began as a sort of pretentious art-rock group with a very cultish following. Suddenly we went from playing the Spit Club on Long Island to Madison Square Garden.''

And back to the Spit Club. Duran Duran's megafame in the early '80s was snuffed quickly in 1985 after an upheaval in the lineup. The band kept on making records, but not many people knew it.

The original core -- singer Simon Le Bon, bassist John Taylor and Rhodes and longtime guitarist Cuccurullo -- is back this year with the release of Duran Duran, the ninth album, and the group is having to convince the old fans that it's a comeback album, not a reunion album.

UNPLANNED COMEBACK
Rhodes said Duran Duran didn't make the new record with a comeback in mind, but the band did go about things differently in writing the songs. ''We really spent a lot of time with all of us together at the same time, just jamming. It's harder to write a song with everyone else around, but when they work, they're the finest songs we write as opposed to other players coming in at different times and adding a part here and a part there.

''This album is just the next album, the follow-up to Liberty. I think it's a stronger album than Liberty -- it's got stronger lyrics and melodies -- but when we finished Liberty, to us it was a great artistic success. But somehow we knew it wasn't going to be easy to get on the radio.''

They're back on the radio with a vengeance. Three tracks from Duran Duran -- Ordinary World, Too Much Information and Come Undone -- have cracked Billboard's Top 40 lists (the first time since 1989) and suddenly critics who once used the band as a punching bag are praising the band for its influential work and survival.

''It's funny what time does to things,'' Rhodes said. ''It's the only true test, better than any review you could get of anything.'' How has a decade reviewed the changing faces of Duran Duran?

''I think we've managed to retain our original identity and still develop in different directions and explore things musically. We've managed to retain our dignity. I mean, a lot of people who jump on bandwagons are foolish. They lose grasp of the things they can do themselves. MTV wasn't a bandwagon yet when we got aboard.

''Duran Duran has always been about using all the modern techniques available and believed the cutting edge is on the dance floor. That's still where we are.''

DURANIES FOR DURATION
The audience is still with them, wherever they are. Rhodes said most of this year's audience is the same core of loyal Duranies, just a little more grown up. ''There are a lot of people who grew up listening to us,'' Rhodes said. ''It happens to most performers. Look at the Stones. They've managed to go through three generations of fans.''

Does that mean Duran Duran's members will still be dyeing what's left of their hair two generations from now?

''I can never think that far ahead. I can't even tell you if we'll still be recording in 1994. We're very pragmatic about what we do, and we really are the sum of our parts. If one of us bows out, we really miss it, and it wouldn't be the same. ''But I suppose we'll go on as long as we can still do what we want to do. We are definitely survivors.''

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