Duran Duran Makes Grand Re-Entrance

Billboard
January 30, 1993

It would seem that Duran Duran has come back into fashion. After a three-year dry spell, the British band that burst into prominence in the early '80s is exploding on the charts with "Ordinary World."

Not only has the song reached the top 20 of the Hot 100 in four weeks, it is turning into a multiformat smash as it climbs both the Adult Contemporary and Modern Rock Tracks charts.

"When flairs came back we know," says bassist John Taylor, laughing. "We said, there's a '70s revival going on; it's only a matter of time before they hit the '80s and get to us."

Keyboardist Nick Rhodes adds, "When we first came out, we were a fashionable English band, and things that go out of style obviously do come back in style, thank goodness."

Or it could all be as simple as Capitol Records director of artist development Rob Gordon states: "The time is right for Duran Duran again."

Good timing aside, the band's success has more to do with the fact that it has made its strongest and most diverse record in years. The self-titled album, due from Capitol Feb. 23, contains an unlikely collaboration with Milton Nascimento on the acoustic, soaring "Breath After Breath," as well as a cover of the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale."

Despite the stasis of the last few years, any doubts Taylor, Rhodes, and singer Simon LeBon had about their abilities were gone by the time they stepped into guitarist Warren Cuccurullo's studio to record "Duran Duran."

"We went through our secondguessing period when things first started to go wrong, shall we say, around [1986's] 'Notorious' or [1988's] 'Big Thing' because we were thinking, 'What did we do wrong?' Previously, we'd put out records and people would start to buy them, and then suddenly there was a big rebuff," says Taylor. "After [1990's] 'Liberty' wasn't a success, we said we've just got to go and do better. It's got to be stronger, the writing, the playing, whatever . . . We actually second-guessed ourselves a lot less on this record."

However, once the band finished the album, it temporarily lost some momentum by parting ways with longtime manager Peter Rudge and signing with Left Bank Management. "The split was very amicable," Rhodes says. "It was just time to change. We needed another situation and so did he."

Or, as Taylor puts it, "Peter stuck with the band through seriously hard times. He's great, but we just ran each other into the ground."

New management and the band decided to delay the album's release for six months to set up the record. A big component was generating excitement at Capitol Records, the group's home since its first record.

"When you've been with the same record company for as long as we have, unless you're consistently selling, they peter out a bit," Taylor says. "We had to come on like a new band to rekindle that excitement and it definitely happened with Capitol, they've been so supportive."

"It was really just getting people interested in the first place," Rhodes says. "We have been sitting on the shelf there for a while and all they needed was motivating."

The label in turn set its motivation machines in order. "We worked hard on changing people's minds," says Gordon. "Some people, press, retail, didn't want to hear about Duran Duran. A big part of the job was sitting down and getting them to listen to it."

When the single first began to take off, Capitol wanted to move up the album's U.S. release but couldn't because a simultaneous worldwide release date had already been set. However, Gordon says the extra time and strong setup by the radio promotion department has helped tremendously. "This has led the way for retail," he says. "[Senior VP of promotion] John Fagot wanted to give CEMA people enough ammunition to sell the record and enough time for retail to believe the band is back. When the album hits the stores next month, we're looking for big things."

"Ordinary World" took off so quickly the band and label found themselves playing catch-up when it came to making a video. "It's quite nice that the record has gone to radio so far in advance of [a video] going to MTV so that it's proven itself via that medium," says Rhodes. "I'm quite glad it happened that way, accidental as it was."

In fact, for a band whose early success is so closely linked with massive exposure on a nascent MTV, Rhodes and Taylor both show surprising ambivalence toward the video medium. They even take a swipe at the music channel on rocker "Too Much Information," a diatribe against television's constant barrage of information that includes the line "Destroyed by MTV/I hate to bite the hand that feeds me."

"Do we like doing videos? Sometimes. It depends,: says Rhodes. "If it's going to turn out really well, yeah."

"It seems a bit of a chore, you know, unless you're in a really inspired situation," Taylor says.

What excites the band more is playing live. After some promotional dates around the album's release, Duran Duran will embark on a tour that will bring them to the U.S. in late spring.

On the tour, the band hopes to stay clearly out of harm's way -- a task it has found is easier said than done. A few months ago, the London Times reported Duran Duran averted getting blown up as part of an I.R.A. plot to kill the Prince and Princess of Wales during a 1984 Princes' Trust concert only because the terrorist planting the bomb had a change of heart.

"The first time we even knew about it was when it was in the Sunday Times [a few weeks ago]. We had no idea," Rhodes says. "Maybe the moral is everybody gets a second chance."

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