MISSING PIECES DURAN DURAN FINALLY HAS ITS ACT BACK TOGETHER
Published on TUESDAY, July 21, 1987
Byline: By ANDREW MEANS , The Arizona Republic


No one is calling them the Beatles of the '80s this time. But just being on the road again is an achievement for Duran Duran. It has been a tumultuous three years since the English group toured this country. The initial quintet has lost guitarist Andy Taylor, now a soloist, and drummer Roger Taylor, now reportedly farming in England.

Duran Duran as constituted by the remaining trio is stronger than ever, keyboardist Nick Rhodes said.

''The group has changed so much,'' Rhodes said during a phone interview. ''And the people who are coming to see us are radically different. . . . It's more of a cross section. We have so much more experience now.''

Singles like Is There Something I Should Know? and New Moon on Monday, together with boyish good looks and an exotic taste in video locations, had made Duran Duran teen-age idols by late 1983.

By the end of 1985, the picture had changed dramatically. Bassist John Taylor and Andy Taylor had turned toward hard rock with a splinter group called Power Station.

Not people to stand on the sidelines, Duran's singer, Simon Le Bon, Rhodes and Roger Taylor formed Arcadia, a group oriented more toward keyboard arrangements and atmospherics. The mother ship, if it still existed, seemed to be in limbo.

Rhodes said that when Duran Duran reassembled last year to make a new album, Notorious, it was still not clear how many of the original five would return. Roger Taylor had stated his intention to quit, according to Rhodes, but
''Andy didn't really tell us what he was going to do.

''He said 'I want to play on some of the album, and that's the final thing I want to do with the band.' It obviously was very strange,'' Rhodes said. ''In the end, it worked out great. Andy's ideas were so radically different from ours. He wanted to go into heavy rock, and we wanted to go more toward modern rock.''

Thus Duran Duran shed its surfeit of unrelated Taylors. Rhodes said he has no regrets about Duran's fragmentation into Power Station and Arcadia.

''We got something out of our system, and we worked with other people, which was very important. We learned a lot and realized that Duran Duran was what we wanted to do.

''All I can say is that if we had made a Duran Duran album at that stage, it wouldn't have been as good as Power Station and Arcadia. . . . Everyone was a bit disillusioned.''

Rhodes said he doesn't expect Duran Duran to add permanent replacements for Andy and Roger Taylor for some time. The three remaining members, he explained, have known each other a long while, and it would not be easy for an outsider to share their rapport.

''I'm not saying we would never have someone else become a permanent member,'' Rhodes said. ''But we're very happy with the way it is.'' The trio has continued to benefit from working with others all the same.

As a producer and musician, Nile Rodgers contributed to the rhythmic buoyancy and the technical polish of Notorious. On the tour, the trio is sharing the stage with eight supporting performers, including drummer Steve Ferrone, whom Rhodes described as ''probably the finest drummer in the world,'' and Warren Cuccurullo -- ''a fabulous guitarist.

Unlike So Red the Rose, Arcadia's convoluted album, Notorious was made with live performances in mind, Rhodes said. The trio took a more ordered approach to recording than had been the case on previous Duran albums, he said. Taylor
handled rhythms, Rhodes took care of structure and melody, and Le Bon wrote lyrics.

In the past, Le Bon's lyrics have been impressionistic if not unfathomable. With Notorious, Rhodes said, they have become ''more realistic.'' One track, Skin Trade, is about ''how everybody works for somebody,'' Rhodes explained, while the title track ''is about the media and how it treats somebody.''

If the media are paying less attention to Duran Duran this time around, at least they are not writing off the group as a record company's invention. Despite the manicured videos and albums, group members have always insisted they created their own image. After the ups and downs of the past three years, that claim is starting to sound more credible.

''I think we've always been a lot more competent musically than anyone's given us credit for,'' Rhodes said.

Click here to go back to the articles page.

Click here to back to the front page.