DURAN DURAN ENJOYS ITS NEW-FOUND RESPECT
Tuesday, January 17, 1989

By Tom Moon, Inquirer Popular-Music Critic

What happens when you grow out of the teen-idol business?

Duran Duran, the British band whose image-heavy early-'80s success reinvented the very notion of pop heartthrob-dom, recommends shooting for respect.

And the three remaining Durans - keyboardist Nick Rhodes, vocalist Simon LeBon and bassist John Taylor - who are scheduled to appear with a six-piece band Thursday at the Spectrum, have been working on it.

The group's two latest albums, Notorious and Big Thing, featured a stripped-down, less frothy sound. Both received favorable notices from critics, who used words like mature and sophisticated to describe the formerly lowbrow (some would say bubblegum) band, which regrouped in 1986 after the defection of two of its founding members, Roger Taylor and Andy Taylor. (None of the Taylors is related).

The live shows have won similar praise - the current tour follows a 10-city U.S. club trek Duran Duran engineered in December to packed houses and rave reviews.

But the new-found respect hasn't done the band a whole lot of good on the charts: Big Thing, the band's sixth album, has sold 500,000 copies - compared with Rio, which sold more than two million in 1983. In 12 weeks on Billboard's album charts, it has never entered the Top 20. The Big Thing tour is not the instant sellout previous tours were: Performing in Miami Saturday, Duran Duran played to a crowd of 8,000 in an arena that holds up to 16,000. There are still tickets available for the Thursday show here.

"Most of the new pop coming out, it's just junk," Rhodes said in an interview last week, savoring the irony of Duran Duran's transition from teen idols to critics' darlings. "If it's working, what can you say?"

What's working lately for Duran Duran comes under the category of growth, the marketplace be damned. "We always think it's important to expand, spread the wings a little bit," Rhodes said. "Every time we have a success, we think, 'OK, time to change.' That keeps us happy, whether or not it does anything for the audience."

Rhodes said he knew what the critics were reacting to with Big Time: the lyrics.

"There are a few songs on this album - "Palomino," "Too Late Marlene," and "Do You Believe in Shame?" - that show a side we'd hidden in the past. It's a direct lyrical approach. With Notorious , we were obsessed with making a great dance record. This time, we scrapped a lot of songs, tried things and discarded them. We really concentrated on the songs."

This shows. If Big Thing isn't the most consistent album in the repertoire of this hit-making outfit, it's at least decorated with some of the band's most believable songs. Songs that are not bleached and teased and moussed. Songs with eccentricities, like "Drug (It's Just a State of Mind)," in which the protagonist bluntly equates himself with a drug - one that'll keep you up all night. The album's jazz-influenced and thoroughly harmonized ballad of regret, "Too Late Marlene," makes Phil Collins' equally slow "Two Hearts" sound like a jingle for marshmallow creme. Even the throwaway dance single, ''All She Wants Is," contains jabbing, cut-and-paste lines more often found in hip-hop.

And while the band recognizes that at least part of its success comes from video - early hits "Girls on Film" and "Hungry Like the Wolf" were staples of MTV in its inception - Rhodes said the emphasis is now on being a band first and making videos later. "I still maintain that you don't have a video worth seeing without the song. That's the first thing."

Videos are still part of the Duran plan, he admitted, and the band has worked to maintain its toothpaste-clean image. "I think other people think it's more important to our success than we think it is," Rhodes said. "But we're trying to stretch the boundaries." He said the video for "Do You Believe in Shame?" will be a departure from the flashiness formerly associated with the group - "lots of soft colors, very moody."

The band's image has apparently been a sore spot for Rhodes, who claims he ''hates yachts" and turned green during the filming at sea of Rio. "I've not really been happy with our packaging up until now. Around Notorious , we were paranoid about every move we made, of being stuck with a very wrong image of us."

He believes the Big Thing look is much closer to the way Duran Duran really is - more of a band, more serious musically. The band is the same one Duran Duran used during its sneak-attack "Caravan Duran" club tour in December: guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, drummer Sterling Campbell, keyboardist Spike Edney, saxophonist Stan Harrison, and vocalists Melanie Redmond and Jackie Copeland.

"We really have gone through a lot, in terms of playing with each other," Rhodes said. "The last album was the first time it was three of us instead of five. By the time we recorded this one, all the politeness had been dispensed with. There's a great competitive spirit within this band - we like tension, we have disagreements. I think that's how we create."

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