Duran Duran does stint as house band

Billboard, April 3, 1993
Jesse Nash

NEW YORK--For guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, there was no place like home for creating "Duran Duran": The Capitol Records set was recorded in the living room of his small London-flat-cum-recording studio. An unlikely choice, maybe, but not unwise. The album already has spawned the successful "Ordinary World"
single.

The making of the album was not an easy process. The group--Simon Le Bon on vocals, Nick Rhodes on keyboards, John Taylor on bass, and Cuccurullo on guitar--took nearly half a year alone just in preproduction.

"The actual writing itself took about three months," says Cuccurullo. "We started by late January 1991 and we were demoing by mid-April. Then it came time to record. We did everything in my living room in my apartment in London because I have a lot of gear there to begin with ... and I have my drum machines and sequencers.

"I also have this device called a DMP7, a digital mixing console," he continues. "We had a few of those and we were able to digitally cascade one to another and go directly into a headphone amp. This way you can have your keyboard system in
one channel, all your drum machine stuff in another one, and all the guitars and vocals in yet another one. With this setup we were able to play without disturbing the neighbors."

In the early stages of the recording process, the band recorded the album as a demo to present to the record company. But, even from the beginning, Duran Duran knew it was on to something and did the recordings on two Akai Digital 12-track machines so it could keep the basic tracks when it came time to record the real thing.

"When these digital machines became available, we knew since we had an engineer working with us--John Jones, who also did some of the programming--that if we rented a desk and if we had these machines we would have master-quality performances to go with it. So whether we were laying down a guitar part or a vocal, we knew at that point
that they could be keepers.

"It took about another three months--April 1991 to July 1991--to get 14 tracks that we thought were the strongest ones and to get them together," he adds. "And that was all demoed because we had to play them for the record company. But they were demoed on the Akai machines so that when we decided to make the 'real' album we were able to keep the basic tracks."

Nick Gatfield, Capitol's head of A&R in London at the time, monitored the group's progress. "He'd come by like every three weeks and say, 'Hey, I hear another hit,'" says Cuccurullo.

In particular, Cuccurullo says, Gatfield loved "Ordinary World" immediately upon hearing it. But the song went through many stages before it reached its current form. "There were crucial edits made," Cuccurullo says. "Listening upon listening you'd think, 'Yeah, that third verse is too long.' And there were all these little things like the adding of the electric guitar just at the end. It was written with acoustic guitar, bass, keyboard--it was very basic. So adding the electric guitar at the end and then editing and shortening the third verse, it just added a lot to the dynamics of the song. Simon also added this higher harmony on the last chorus which really helps the song to soar."

Although much of the album is acoustic, technology still played a major role in the recording process. Says Cuccurullo: "We used an analog DDA DM Mach 12. It's designed with the Akai Atom digital 12-track machine in mind. But it's applicable to other kinds of machines. It's made for the professional domestic recording studio, which is what we have in my apartment. Analog to digital. We used a lot of outboard gear--two Eventide Ultra Harmonizers, AMS Reverbs, AMS Delay, a Lexicon 224X Reverb, SSL Compression, four Yamaha Compressors. Our keyboard rack included an Ensoniq DFX, the Emulator E3, the Roland D50, and the D550. We even used the Yamaha DX100."

For the tracks Duran Duran thought needed live drums, the group went to Maison Rouge Recording Studio in London because of its great drum room, Cuccurullo says. "Some of the tracks are simply programmed drums," he says. "'Ordinary World,' however, has Steve Ferrone playing drums on it because that was one of the songs we felt needed that human touch. We never mixed the two on any track. It was either programmed or live."

Le Bon's vocals had the singer using a brand-new microphone setup. "We used this new microphone by a company called Cal-Rec," Cuccurullo says. "They're doing it with AMS. It's called the Sound Field microphone. It's the only microphone that I've ever seen that had an actual two-racks bass box. This box gives you the ability to simulate the distances on the mike without actually changing your position."

Cuccurullo says recording the Duran Duran album in his living room was the greatest challenge of his career. "You have to be sure that it sounds like a record," he says. "But we monitored everything on NS 10 Ms and for playback I used my home BNO Tower speakers. They're not really what you'd like to listen to playback on. But when we first had to go do some of the real drums at Maison Rouge--well, that was the first time we had the opportunity to listen to it in a studio where everyone was used to making records. And it sounded absolutely incredible.

"I mean, all along we knew we were getting quality stuff on tape but you're still in your house, you know? But, then again, that's where you listen to records. So it's kind of funny."

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