“Fame Had Its Way With Us!”

“When we formed,” says Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes, “we decided that we would be playing Madison Square Garden within two years.”

For a bunch of “blokes” clearing glasses in a nightclub in one of England’s most depressed cities, it was a lofty ambition. But as it went, Duran Duran made the Garden in four years. When this Birmingham quintet donned their girlfriends’ makeup and fused the best of glam-rock with elements of punk and funk, the world took notice.

By the time “Hungry Like the Wolf” became a hit in 1983, they were the right boys in the right shade of rouge at the right time: MTV was just underway, asserting the primacy of “look” over zeal and musical chops. Duran Duran obliged by stuffing their videos with chicks, beaches, cocktails and yachts.

After that, it was as if they couldn’t hear the director screaming “Cut!”: They ordered supermodels over the phone, played Live Aid, formed rival bands, made Princess Diana moist, went crazy, raised chickens on a farm, bought a Picasso on credit, recorded a cover of Grandmaster Flash’s “White Lines” with a straight face and fell to pieces.

Now, amid an insatiable nostalgia for all things ’80s, Duran Duran’s original lineup has re-formed for the first time since saying “Cheerio” to one another backstage at Live Aid in 1985. A box set of singles celebrates their return, to be followed soon by a new album and a reunion tour.

“But first,” guitarist Andy Taylor points out, “we had to see if we could sit around a table without vomiting on one another.”

“I see this as part two,” warns lead singer Simon Le Bon…


Part 1
Hold Me, Pose Me
1978–1981

Birmingham, England, 1978: Nigel Taylor and Nick Bates are school friends drinking at the Hole in the Wall pub. They discuss starting a band and decide a makeover is necessary. Taylor begins using his middle name, John, and persuades Bates to adopt the last name Rhodes.

Together with friends Stephen Duffy and Simon Colley, they form a band they call RAF. However, when Taylor sees the 1968 psychedelic sci-fi movie Barbarella, he suggests the band name itself after Milo O’Shea’s character, Duran Duran.

Stephen Duffy [original singer]: I met John, who was then Nigel, at art school. He was completely Nigel then. We got together at his parents’ house in Birmingham. I passed the audition, so we got together over Nick’s father’s shop — Bates’ Toy Corner. Above the shop was this storeroom with lots of dolls and things. Nick got his synthesizer out, and John played the guitar. We had songs called things like “Hold Me, Pose Me,” which was what it said on the side of a doll box.

Nick Rhodes [keyboardist]: We were very much an art-school band. It was rhythm units, synthesizers, two bass players, John on guitar, plus a clarinet and vocals.

Duffy: We used to wear strange old clothes from charity shops, quite nice 1950s fitted jackets. Nick was worried about the makeup. I said, “Don’t worry, Nick; in six months’ time all men will look like this.” I was wrong — in six months only he looked like that. Nick wanted to be famous, though, whatever it took — he said that once, and I didn’t think I’d heard him right. I didn’t think you said that sort of thing.

Duffy decides to leave Duran Duran, thinking they’re too commercial. Colley follows him. (Duffy later forms the Lilac Time and also enjoys a solo hit, “Kiss Me,” as Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy.)

Drummer Roger Taylor (none of the Taylors are related) joins, and John takes up the bass. Paul and Michael Berrow, the owners of Birmingham’s Rum Runner club, let them use an upstairs room to practice. Among their first songs is “See Me, Repeat Me,” which later becomes “Rio.” They also have a chorus remnant that features the refrain “girls on film.”

The two Taylors and Rhodes form the core. Singers and guitarists come and go. Finally, Andy Taylor answers an ad for a guitarist and travels down to Birmingham from his hometown of Newcastle. He cooks burgers at the Rum Runner. Meanwhile, Simon Le Bon, a drama student at Birmingham University, is recommended by his girlfriend, Fiona Kemp, a waitress at the Rum Runner. He turns up for the audition wearing pink leopard-skin pants, pointy boots, a suede jacket and sunglasses.

Andy Taylor [guitarist]: My initial reaction was not how out of touch I was dress sense–wise, but how shit they were at playing. But they had a hell of a lot of ambition. . . . And they had the chorus to “Girls on Film.”

Paul Berrow [co-owner of the Rum Runner and Duran Duran’s first manager]: My brother and I were importing all the new Giorgio Moroder–style records from New York. We’d been to Studio 54 and heard how dance music was changing. The Duran aesthetic was influenced by that.

Roger Taylor [drummer]: We rehearsed in the Rum Runner on Monday nights with a jazz-funk night going on in the next room. Somehow all that got into the music.

John Taylor [bassist]: In 1978, it was the year of “disco sucks,” and I felt I should be at a therapist saying, “I have this guilty love of disco.” I thought Chic were fantastic. That’s why I became a bass player.

Simon Le Bon [singer]: The band was a bit of a laugh at first. I didn’t know I’d leave college and give my life to it.

The Berrows make Duran Duran the Rum Runner house band, and Michael Berrow mortgages his house to support their opening slot on a U.K. tour with post-punk contender Hazel O’Connor. It costs them £12,000. The band earns £10 a week.

On the tour, EMI A&R man Dave Ambrose, who signed the Sex Pistols, sees Duran Duran and signs them for £42,000 (about $105,000 at the time).

Quickly, they record their self-titled debut album. In the U.K., success with “Planet Earth” is immediate. “Girls on Film” opens with the sound of Paul Berrow’s Nikon camera. Le Bon considers it a powerful critique of the exploitation of women in advertising. He will be sorely misunderstood.

By 1981, Duran Duran are touring clubs in America. Rock America, a programming service for clubs and bars that feature video screens, is playing the long-form video for “Girls on Film,” and word is spreading.

Rob Hallett [U.K. booking agent]: They went through this period of being famous, but the money hadn’t come in yet. So John used to stay at my flat in West London. It was the hottest bachelor pad in town. John was the best-looking man in Britain and got the most amazing girls. I hung around for the leftovers.

Doreen D’Agostino [U.S. publicity manager, Capitol Records]: They had no profile in America, but the “Girls on Film” video gave them a little notoriety. Older writers were a little shocked by the ice cube on the girl’s naked breast. But in the hip clubs people were like, “Hey, it’s art!”

Rhodes: Our first U.S. date was on Long Island, at the Spit Club in 1981. We flew into JFK airport. We could see Manhattan to our left, but our car turned right. Our publicist said, “What do you want to do?” I said, “Go up the Empire State [Building] and meet Andy Warhol.” She called the next morning and said that we were going up the Empire State and then to Andy’s studio. We’re like, “Whaaat?”

D’Agostino: I rang Andy up at Interview magazine and said, “There’s this English band that wants to meet you.” I might have mentioned one was in lipstick. Nick and Roger came, and Andy asked Nick if he shared his girlfriend’s lipstick. After that, Nick and Andy became friends. You’d see them in the DJ booth together at Studio 54.

Roger Taylor: The Warhol thing went over my head a bit. He wanted to do an album cover, and we were like, “The Rolling Stones have done it. . . . No, thanks.”

John Taylor: I was such a baby. At JFK airport I couldn’t fill in the address bit on the immigration form. I put “Holiday Inn, Long Island.” The guy said, “I guess if we need to find you, we’ll put out an APB for a faggot with purple hair.”


Part 2
Duranmania
1981–1984

The band returns to London and records its second album, Rio. In America, the Berrows sense that a newly launched cable network that airs music videos is the key to success. They jet the band to Sri Lanka to make videos for “Save a Prayer” and “Hungry Like the Wolf,” and to Antigua to film “Rio.”

Rhodes: The record company said, “Do you want to make a video to go with the song?” We were like, “What’s a video?”

Le Bon: When you’re 19 and someone says, “Do you want to make a video on a yacht in the Carribean?” you don’t say, “Hmmm, what kind of statement are we supposed to be making here?” It was, “Girls, boats — yes, please!”

John Taylor: It seemed like such a stupid idea. But Simon was a drama student. He pulled it off.

Roger Taylor: On the “Hungry Like a Wolf” shoot, some of the crew were annoying the elephants, trying to imitate their calls. I’m riding on one when it gets startled by all the noise and takes off down the river with me hanging on for my life.

Rhodes: I refused to go to Sri Lanka before Rio was finished. The other four went, and I stayed up all night at AIR Studios in London. I was wearing a leather outfit and went straight to the airport from the studio. After 16 hours in my leather suit, I get off the plane into a wall of heat. I stagger around the airport saying, “Where’s the limo?” and this guy takes me to a flatbed truck. I’m thinking, “20 minutes to the hotel.” It was five hours on a dust track to the beach location.

In 1982, Duran Duran tour the U.S. again, this time supporting Blondie. They meet Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers for the first time and bond “in the bathroom.” Thanks in large part to the around-the-clock support of the nascent MTV, by March 1983, “Hungry Like the Wolf” is number 3 on the U.S. charts.

Les Garland [senior executive vice president, MTV]: We had our weekly meeting to hear new music on Tuesdays. Back then it was a fledgling industry: We’d get maybe 10 videos a week, and everyone would gather and sit through them all. I remember our director of talent and artist relations came running in and said, “You have got to see this video that’s come in.” Duran Duran were getting zero radio airplay at the time, and MTV wanted to try to break new music. “Hungry Like the Wolf” was the greatest video I’d ever seen.

Rhodes: Our first gigs in the United States were crazy and culty. But when we came back after “Hungry” was a hit, it was mayhem. It was Beatlemania. We were doing a signing of the “Girls on Film” video at a store in Times Square. We couldn’t get out of the store. The cops sealed off the streets. It was scary.

Katy Krassner [U.S. management representative/fan liaison]: American girls loved them. They were like a box of Smarties — there was something for everyone. Roger was James Dean. Andy was the rocker. John was like Leonardo DiCaprio, a sort of girlish beauty. Nick was the glamorous one, and Simon was the sporty, masculine one, like Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Garland: Nick and Simon came on MTV as guest VJs. I met Simon first, and then turned to meet Nick. He blew my mind. I’ve always been a cool guy, but he was wearing so much makeup, his nails were done, he had rouge on. I thought, “You’re going on TV like that?” It spun my head.

Le Bon: We’d become one of the biggest bands in the world and then went back to these tiny apartments or bedrooms in Mum and Dad’s house in Birmingham. We hadn’t had time to spend any money, to buy a house. . .

Rhodes: I went back to my bedroom in my parents’ house in Birmingham. My mum calls up and says, “There’s a Michael on the phone. . . . ” It was Michael Jackson. We’d been leading this crazy life in America with David Bowie and Warhol, and there’d been talk at a party about working with Michael Jackson. Then he calls me at my mum and dad’s. I thought it was one of the crew winding me up. I’m going, “Sure, Michael. . . . ”

Andy Taylor: I can remember my first check for £1 million. I was only 20. Fifty percent went to Mrs. Thatcher, but still. . . .

In America, the boys are feted: Young E.T. star Drew Barrymore attends their shows; tennis ace Vitas Gerulaitis invites them “to the bathroom.” In England, their fame is such that even Lady Diana Spencer is a fan.

Le Bon: The Lady Di thing was a bit naff. It was something your mum and dad liked, so there was a part of me that bristled at it. Every time we opened the dressing-room door, there she bloody was, under the table trying to get an autograph. It was like, “Can’t your husband keep you under control?”

Boy George [lead singer, Culture Club]: Duran Duran were selling a lifestyle: the yachts, the girls. In spite of their looks, Duran were very straight. It was a time when wearing a bit of makeup could get you girls. Culture Club would get girls and their mums. Duran Duran got everyone.

By 1983, Duran Duran have enjoyed Top 20 hits with “Hungry Like the Wolf” and “Rio.” However, the advent of fame leaves them creatively bereft.

Now millionaires, they are in tax exile from the U.K. and decide to record their third album abroad. Sessions for Seven and the Ragged Tiger begin in a French château. But John gets bored and spends his time getting drunk in Cannes. They head for AIR Studios in Montserrat, but legendary producer George Martin’s swimming pool proves too distracting. So they head for Australia, where a tour looms. But alas, there are bars and girls in Australia, too. . . .

Rhodes: There were Spinal Tap moments. I bought a Picasso on AmEx in the South of France. A little one, but still.

John Taylor: I was going into Cannes and having a party every night. As a bass player, time management is a problem, because your work is done in a matter of days.

Rhodes: If we needed John to do a bass part, we’d just ring a bar and ask for him.

Le Bon: I didn’t even think Seven and the Ragged Tiger was a particularly good title. The seven were us and our two managers. The ragged tiger was supposed to be “luck.”

Rhodes: That title. . . . I don’t know how I ever let that through. I still just call it the third album.


Part 3
Power Station, Yachts and Madness
1984–1985

The remix of “The Reflex,” produced by Chic’s Nile Rodgers, becomes a number 1 hit. Rodgers almost repeats the feat with “Wild Boys” (which hits number 2), and his Chic partner Bernard Edwards tops the charts with the James Bond theme “A View to a Kill.” The band is at its creative and commercial apex.

Naturally, John and Andy Taylor are dissatisfied with Duran Duran’s direction. John is dating Bebe Buell, Liv Tyler’s mother. He decides to remake T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong” with Buell on vocals. However, before recording, the pair have a falling-out. Robert Palmer steps in for Buell. The Power Station is born.

Not to be outdone, Rhodes and Le Bon take up residence at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and form Arcadia, whose self-titled album features guest spots from Sting, Grace Jones and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, among others. Roger Taylor can’t decide his allegiance and plays on both Duran Duran side projects.

Rhodes: Arcadia and the Power Station were commercial suicide. . . . But we’ve always been good at that.

Paul Berrow: After a couple of years of that “All for one and one for all!” mentality, wives and girlfriends come along. At first it was military — videos, documentary, tour, album, tour — but what do you do when you get there? Get a girlfriend — and a demanding one, almost certainly. And then the whole entity changes. There is conflict among the band of merry men.

Boy George: I lived next door to John Taylor in New York. A friend and I would find John’s girlfriend crying in the hallway. We’d bring her in and give her a cup of tea and get all the latest gossip. John’s was the most rock & roll place I had ever seen.

Denis O’Regan [official band photographer]: I remember Nick and John having a discussion about which had the highest-ever hotel bill. One of them had run up a $30,000 bill — and this was 15 years ago. An outrageous amount.

John Taylor: The Carlyle Hotel was getting a little expensive, so I bought a place on the twenty-seventh floor of the Park Belvedere on Central Park West. Boy George was next door. Inside it was black lacquer and all about the ’80s: a beautiful place to go mad! We both lost parts of our minds on that floor. Fame was having its way with us. There was a courier service that would bike over bags of pot with little flags of the country it came from. At Christmas they did party bags — that was useful.

Peter Martin [Smash Hits magazine journalist]: I was asked to write sleeve notes for the Power Station album, so I spent five days with John over Thanksgiving. Boy George and his friends were going apeshit on heroin at the time; they had the whole London crowd over at his flat. John and I crashed a party of theirs. We went in, and Boy George was trying to fill himself up from a tap — he thought he was a kettle, which I thought was very creative of him.

John Taylor: Cocaine was my drug of choice. And Ecstasy and Valium. Downers, too. . . .

Hallett: John’s apartment had two beautiful things in it. One was a parrot. No cage. Just a parrot on a perch that wouldn’t stop talking. The other was John’s girlfriend, Renee Simonsen. She was an absolute sweetheart. He really messed that up. . . .

Nile Rodgers: That was the life: girls, drugs, wild parties. It was a way of life, and it was every day. We were limited only by supply.

O’Regan: The phrase pig in shit comes to mind.

John Taylor: Look, Exile on Main Street wouldn’t have happened without Keith Richards’s heroin addiction. Young Americans wouldn’t have happened without David Bowie’s cocaine addiction. Alcohol played a big part with Vincent van Gogh. You need that edge. The trick is to find the edge without killing yourself.

The Power Station go on tour with tight-trousered B-lister Michael Des Barres on vocals. John and Andy have lost contact with Le Bon and Rhodes. Then an angry Irishman calls them and says Duran Duran must reconvene for Live Aid. It’s the last show they will play with their original lineup.

Andy Taylor: Robert Palmer had failed to turn up for the Power Station tour, so we’d battled on alone. Then we get a call from Bob Geldof asking us to do Live Aid. I remember we put on the speakerphone and just listened to this Irish voice going, “You’re fockin’ doin’ it!”

John Taylor: When Simon, Nick and Roger flew in, we were in different teams. Andy and I had grown our hair and were doing the U.S. rocker thing. They were doing the esoteric European artistic thing. It was all in the haircuts. The writing was on the wall.

Andy Taylor: There was a 2 billion–strong TV audience and we’re helping save the world, and then . . . anticlimax. Roger’s leaving.

Roger Taylor: I didn’t have a breakdown. I was just exhausted. I bought a farm in Gloucestershire, had kids, did normal things. We rented the land out to a farmer and lived the life of landed gentry. A bit Spinal Tap, I know. We had chickens and horses. I just disappeared.

I had tabloid reporters looking for me. I was in bed one morning and there was a knock. Giovanna [Cantonne, his wife] said, “It’s the postman,” and I went down in her pink nightie. It was the Sun [a notorious British tabloid], and they said, “Hello, mate, we want to know why you left the band.” I just shut the door on them, but the next day on page five there I was, unshaven in a pink negligee.

Assessing the fallout from Roger’s departure will have to wait, though: First, Le Bon’s rock-star lifestyle demands that he marry a supermodel and then nearly die in a yachting mishap. He meets Yasmin Parvenah after choosing her from a model-agency photo album.

Le Bon: When we were doing the photo shoot for “Wild Boys,” I was going through the portfolio of the photographer, Mike Owen, and I said, “Ooh, I like that one.” But he wouldn’t tell me her name. He said it would be unprofessional. A couple of days later he slips me a piece of paper, and I arranged to meet her. Hey, John used to call the agency up all the time.

John Taylor: Bollocks! I once called up the agency and asked if we could have Christy Turlington on the cover of Notorious. I never asked to date her. It’s a good idea, but I’m not that together.

Yasmin Le Bon [model, Simon’s wife]: I’m sure I broke a lot of girls’ hearts when Simon and I got married. The fans were good to me. But there was one girl who scared me. I was in a deli about 1 a.m. getting some juice, and she popped her head around the aisle and fixed me with this really psychotic look. I thought, “I’m going to get axed to death by a Durannie!”

After the wedding, Le Bon and the Berrows decide to blow a fortune outfitting the 77-foot yacht Drum for the Whitbread Round the World Race.

Rhodes: I got a call from People magazine saying, “Did you know Simon’s been in a terrible accident, and currently the boat’s upside down and they can’t find him?” I’m like, “Thanks!” I hate boats unless they’re tied up and you’re having cocktails on them.

Le Bon: Drum flipped over. I dived down out of the upturned hull, but I couldn’t make it to the surface, because my long johns were caught on a stanchion. I thought, “If I breathe now, I’m dead.” But I was determined not to die.


Part 4
The Drugs Don’t Work
1985–1999

In 1985, with tensions running high, Rhodes, Le Bon, John and Andy start recording a funk album, Notorious, with Nile Rodgers. Though Andy shows up for some sessions, he eventually decides to move to Los Angeles and make a solo album, effectively leaving the band. The band recruits Warren Cuccurullo from the L.A. New Wave band Missing Persons as a replacement.

Andy Taylor: I was determined to protect myself from the lifestyle. I’m from a broken home. I had a son in 1984, and I wasn’t going to put [my family] through hell. I’d be damned if I was going to let music and drinking fuck me up. I also had good friends. Rod Stewart was a great friend to me. He’d say, “Pour your drink in the plant pot — just pretend.” Mind you, he would also say, “I know this great little club; let’s go get hammered.”

Hallett: Andy was the most rock & roll of all. His marriage is one of the great survival strories. The wedding was held in John Belushi’s apartment at the Château Marmont. Luckily, Andy has a very strong constitution.

By Duran Duran’s standards, Notorious is a commercial failure. For their next record, the band decides to embrace new sounds, immersing itself in the U.K.’s dance-music explosion with 1988’s Big Thing.

John Taylor: We panicked. The Linn drum machine we had basically became the fourth member of the band.

After the disaster of another dance record, 1990’s Liberty, Duran Duran decide to strike back quickly. Cuccurullo becomes a permanent member. They set up a studio in his London home and begin work on Duran Duran, a.k.a. the Wedding Album. John spends a lot of time “in the bathroom.” At this point, Duran Duran are largely considered has-beens. But 1993’s “Ordinary World” becomes a worldwide hit.

John Taylor: “Ordinary World” gave original Durannies a sense of nostalgia. They’d got drunk to “Planet Earth,” and “Ordinary World” made them wistful about when their husband went to work and they were feeding the baby. We were elder statesmen now.

Back on top, John comes up with the idea of recording Thank You, an album of covers. Roger even leaves his farm to perform on two tracks. Bad move. Upon release in 1995, the band’s versions of Public Enemy’s “911 Is a Joke” and Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel’s “White Lines” are met with spectacular media disdain. Still, for the latter song at least, no one could claim they hadn’t done their research.

Le Bon: We were finishing Thank You at Nick’s house in France, and I went to stay at [INXS lead singer] Michael Hutchence’s place nearby. Me and Michael and [U2’s] Bono were in this thing called the Lead Singers’ Club. For a couple of months in the summer of 1994, we lived it up in the South of France. The club’s main meeting place was Nick’s swimming pool.

Warren Cuccurullo [new guitarist]: Thank You wasn’t a learning curve. It was a learning cliff.

John Taylor: The press savaged us. I didn’t listen to it for five years after we made it.

Thank You sold a meager 500,000 copies. Convinced that the covers project was an aberration, Duran Duran record Medazzaland, named after the drug Midazolam, which Le Bon had taken before having dental work done. If it had been named after the drugs John was taking, it would have had an even longer title. Realizing he needs help, John quits the band in 1997, halfway through the recording of the album.

John Taylor: I was hating life. I needed to make a big change, but I didn’t know what it was. A therapist said, “You need to get into 12-step programs.” I’m like, “What?” Because I hadn’t listened to anyone since school, I thought I could clean up a bit so I could drink better — or so drugs could work again like they used to. Very depressing, when drugs don’t work like they used to. Anyway, I needed to be “born again,” for want of a better expression.

Cuccurullo: Midway through making Medazzaland, John left. No one saw that coming. We wrote a bunch of new songs after John left. Capitol loved the record. Then it just bombed.

Undeterred, Rhodes, Le Bon and Cuccurullo self-finance the recording of a new album, 2000’s Pop Trash. It’s an ignominious goodbye.

Rhodes: We had reached the end of the road. We’d come to the end of it with Warren, so we parted. But give credit to him — Warren certainly helped Duran Duran survive the ’90s.


Part 5
"We Never Learn"
2000–2003

In 2000, John Taylor is on vacation in Hawaii and bumps into Duran Duran’s lawyer. Over dinner, they discuss a comeback. The next day, Le Bon and Rhodes are on the phone. But there are still problems to be ironed out.

Roger Taylor: I got a call from John one night saying, “Hey, do you want to put the band back together again?” I said, “I’m not sure. It went a bit wrong for me last time.”

Andy Taylor: I wouldn’t have done it if Roger didn’t. There’d be no point in just another version of Duran Duran. It had to be the original. But first we had to see if we could get around a table without vomiting on one another.

In May 2001, the original Duran Duran lineup finally reenter a rehearsal room together.

During his post-Duran career, John formed a dozen bands and landed a role in The Flintstones movie (“I was fucking Keith Rich-Rock. It was not a good experience”). Andy recorded one solo and one covers album. Roger raised a family and fed his chickens.

Only Le Bon and Rhodes have enjoyed uninterrupted employment with Duran Duran since 1980. In fact, Rhodes seemingly can’t get enough. In 2001, he ran into original vocalist Stephen Duffy. They decided to record their original RAF ideas, as performed upstairs at Bates’ Toy Corner. Dark Circles was released under the name the Devils in 2002.

Rhodes: We never learn. It’s us five in a studio. The magic’s there, and we’re eager to do it all again. Like lemmings who’ve jumped off the cliff and climbed back up for another go.

With additional reporting by Sian Pattendon