Duran Duran Growing Up With Its Fans
01-21-1989
By Wayne Robins

Duran Duran. The English rock band, Wednesday night at Nassau Coliseum. Duran Duran is a textbook example of how quickly in pop the cutting edge becomes mainstream entertainment, how yesterday's insurrection becomes today's product.

Earlier in this decade, Duran Duran was one of the first bands to take its case to the people through video rather than stepping-stone touring or radio airplay. A series of glamorous, globe-trotting videos made this band from dreary Birmingham, England the first sex symbols of the MTV era. They become bona fide teen idols, the object of female teen hysteria on three or four continents. In their prime, it was impossible to think of Duran Duran without envisioning rich young twerps stepping off a yacht, champagne glass in one hand, absurdly gorgeous near-anorectic fashion model in the other. The kids loved it, and the music wasn't bad - heavy on the synthesized dance beat, leavened with an occasional catchy chorus: fast music for fad people.

Some rock stars aren't as naive as they used to be, and members of Duran Duran (the name comes from a character in the 1960s science fiction film "Barbarella") saw the writing on the wall. There were various crosses in the road in which band members concentrated on outside projects (Power Station, Arcadia). Two of the original members (Roger and Andy Taylor) have since left the group, and Duran Duran continues as a trio, albeit a heavily augmented one. At Wednesday's Nassau Coliseum concert, singer Simon LeBon, bassist John Taylor, and keyboard player Nick Rhodes were supported by two horn players, two female go-go dancing backup singers, a guitarist and drummer.

The material focused on their latest album, "Big Thing," which is more guitar-driven than previous Duran Duran efforts. There was also a smattering of earlier hits. It's a little future-shockish to realize that "Hungry Like the Wolf," performed early in the set, is now an oldie-but-goodie, but there you go. The new stuff is decent though unexceptional. The set opened with the title song from "Big Thing," a booming anthem with lyrics that could come from a pep rally at Soft Porn Regional High School. That song aside, Duran Duran's late adolescent sex charge has lost a lot of its smarminess (also, alas, some of its effect), so that the group seems to be a tamer version of Queen.

But what's really miraculous is that it's anything at all. Sex-idol bands almost always become obsolete when the initial ardor of their fans has cooled: that is, when the screaming teenyboppers grow up a few years and develop other passions. Though the show was far from a sell-out, Duran Duran and its audience seem to have grown up together. New songs such as "Do You Believe in Shame" were nearly as well-received as guaranteed crowd pleasers like "Girls on Film." So while it's nice to report that singer LeBon doesn't have to pander to prepubescent ravings, the flip side is that he and his band don't have much to offer besides smooth professionalism. It was an innocuous and uneventful evening.

Click here to go back to the articles page.

Click here to back to the front page.