![]() Le Bon similarly wanted to emulate Jim Morrison the problem was, that with his sailing, he was less Doorsy, more outdoorsy. “I want to be David Bowie or Iggy Pop,” complained Robbie Williams once upon a time, before conceding he was more Norman Wisdom than anything else. And how they’d love to find a song of this quality down the back of the couch now. It’s fair to say his vocal, and the band’s squelchy, angular attempts to emulate Chic, were works in progress, but the raw goods were all there from the beginning. Lyrically, it deals with nothing much deeper than all-night parties in hotel rooms, but the tune is magnificent and draws you in, with Le Bon’s voice going from a deep insouciant croon to a deranged “la la la” in the chorus. What they had in spades though – aside from delectable cheekbones – were great songs, and tellingly Late Bar was tossed off as Planet Earth’s B-side, not even making the final cut of the band’s debut album. At 6ft 2ins, Hertfordshire-born lead singer Simon Le Bon was an imposing figure, but styled in foppish collars and cuffs, he looked “more like a scrum-half who’d blundered into his mum’s washing line” according to one reviewer. These days, boybands, for want of a better word, are normally militarily slick from the off, so it is a joy to behold the amateurishness of an inchoate Duran Duran. They’d set their sights on the very thing they were singing about on their debut single. The single peaked at No 12 in 1981, though Duran Duran were thinking bigger than a trendy club scene dominated by Spandau Ballet. Dropping the words “new romantic” into the song earned the derision of their cooler Blitz-kid contemporaries in London, and bass player John Taylor admitted it was an “opportunistic” attempt to get their foot in the door (even if Rhodes later claimed it was sarcastic). The first signs of life came when Planet Earth was released in 1981, a gloriously catchy sci-fi adventure that owed a debt of gratitude to Japan’s Quiet Life, right down to the sequenced opening it was the kind of homage that could have been brazened out had keyboard player Nick Rhodes not turned himself into a bleached clone of Japan’s David Sylvian. Their faith would be repaid handsomely as a bidding war broke out, with EMI emerging victorious. They were managed by the entrepreneurial Berrow brothers, owners of the Rum Runner nightclub in Birmingham, whose conviction that the five-piece would eventually hit the big time was such that Michael Berrow mortgaged his house to finance a tour with Hazel O’Connor. ![]() The group kept moving forward amid lineup changes (most notably, guitarist and Missing Persons cofounder Warren Cuccurullo spent 15 years in the band), leading to new generations of fans discovering Duran Duran via their 1993 self-titled album and its hit power ballad “Ordinary World.” Across the decades, they have continued to collaborate with modern pop icons (Justin Timberlake, Janelle Monáe) and innovative producers (Mark Ronson, Giorgio Moroder) while reinforcing their roots an elegant 2021 cover of David Bowie’s “Five Years” captures the original’s wistful vibe through a bittersweet modern lens.Duran Duran emerged out of the state-funded art-school free-for-all of the 1970s, though their naked ambition and subsequent years of success would coincide with those of Margaret Thatcher it’s difficult to imagine they could have existed at any other time. 1 singles in the U.S.-a Nile Rodgers-helmed remix of “The Reflex” that boasted a funkier sound, and the sultry James Bond theme “A View to a Kill”-and became known as a dynamic live act. After Rio’s globe-trotting videos received heavy MTV support, an entirely new universe opened up to Duran Duran: mainstream pop stardom. Duran Duran were initially lumped in with the UK’s New Romantic movement, owing to their fashion aesthetic and their shimmering 1981 debut single, “Planet Earth.” However, their 1982 breakthrough LP, Rio, established them as sonic trendsetters, as the hits “Hungry Like the Wolf” and the title track paired fresh dance-floor grooves and an optimistic lyrical outlook with inspiration from David Bowie and Roxy Music, the vibrant rhythm section of disco stars Chic, and a dash of punk bravado. ![]() Formed in the late ’70s by childhood friends John Taylor and Nick Rhodes, the Birmingham, England, band settled on the lineup that would make them New Wave stars in 1980 with the addition of guitarist Andy Taylor, an avowed hard-rock fan, and theatrical frontman Simon Le Bon. In a career that’s spanned decades, Duran Duran have always steered pop and rock music in futuristic directions.
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