DURAN DURAN IS BACK BACK
Thursday, July 22, 1993

by Scott Benarde, Cox News Service

British glamour-pop group Duran Duran - the pretty boy band that helped launch MTV (and vice versa) and define the video music age - is resurrected. From 1983 to 1988, Duran Duran sent nine songs into the Top 10 and millions of teen-age girls into hysterics. Then it faded.

Two of the original members left, causing instability. The band continued to record, but stopped touring. The singles got little airplay and the albums failed to sell. But that was more because of overexposure and lack of interest than lack of quality. That's changed now.

While the title of its latest and ninth album, "Duran Duran," is the same as its 1980 debut, this record is not about chasing pop stardom and looking good. Duran Duran has made an album about chasing truth and looking for goodness.

The album, which has sold 3 million copies and spawned a pair of hit singles - "Ordinary World" and "Come Undone" - is as much a declaration of newfound independence as it is a comeback.

Now in their mid-30s, remaining original members Simon Le Bon (vocals), Nick Rhodes (keyboards) and John Taylor (guitar and bass), along with longtime guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, have more on their minds than going to "Rio" or checking out "Girls on Film." After surviving five years of lean times and uncertainty, the band members are unafraid to get topical, be critical or tell it like they see it.

Duran Duran immediately cuts to the chase in the opening song, "Too Much Information": "Destroyed by MTV, I hate to bite the hand that feeds me so much information. The pressure's on the screen to sell you things that you don't need." With that, they criticize the medium that sent their message and made them international stars a decade ago - and is once again airing their videos.

The signal this time, however, is: "We don't care if you don't play our videos." That career gamble worked, because the first single, "Ordinary World," quietly released early this year, became a hit without a video.

The lyrics to the power ballad "Ordinary World" are as much about the band's maturity, strengthened resolve and self-reliance as they are about any romantic relationship: "I won't cry for yesterday. There's an ordinary world I somehow have to find. And as I make my way to the ordinary world I will learn to survive."

The rest of the album finds the band trying to overcome the alienation it senses in society. The record is also the medium for passing on the lesson that money, power and fame aren't sure-fire ingredients for contentment and happiness.

This is also the most musically diverse and divergent record the band has made. Credit Cuccurullo, the band's musical director, for much of that. Acoustic guitars and pianos are heard as much as electric guitar and synthesizer. A Latin flavor has crept into the band's formerly funkier rhythms. One song, "Breath After Breath," was co-written by Brazilian legend Milton Nascimento and features him playing guitar and singing in Portuguese.

It's odd that Duran Duran is even involved in a comeback. The group continuously has made good pop records. In fact, the band's previous record hinted at the maturation taking place and of confidence reborn. The album was called "Liberty"; the first single was titled "Serious." That's a substantial change from the band's pin-up poster heyday. Back then, one of the group's last big hits was a song called ''Notorious."

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