CREEM ONLINE: Duran Duran — Oh! You Pretty Things

CREEM—January 1983
by Toby Goldstein

Editor's Note: When Duran Duran announced they were reassembling the band's original lineup after being apart for more than a decade, millions of GenX women swooned. Now, the band is in the midst of a stadium tour in support of new album Astronaut. We dug back into the CREEM vault to dust off this piece from when Duran Duran was the new hotness.

We journalists like to believe our opinions are graven in stone. Let's face it, in the global scheme of things, the relative power of a critic's poison pen is rather limp. It ain't gonna lower the price of a gallon of gas or revamp foreign policy. So we get our kicks playing deity with those benighted souls who think they're going to earn a living and crate great art by recording rock 'n' roll.

Take the case of yours truly vs. Duran Duran — five barely-over-teenage English boys, most of them too handsome for their own good, whose first single to reach American ears was a perfectly acceptable catchy dance tune called "Planet Earth." The somewhat nervously wisecracking quintet met the New York press two days after they set foot in the U.S., by being herded into a Capitol Records meeting room under posters proclaiming "England's New Romantic Rebels." Uh-oh, guys.

We'd already withstood and largely dismissed the pose-with-a-rose antics of Steve Strange, Spandau Ballet, et. al. and certainly didn't require any more spiffily coiffed, expertly made-up marble statues from the motherland. Especially when this group's chief claim to its 15 minutes of fame was a rather crude video for the song "Girls on Film." They might have assumed several minutes of nearly-nude beauties mud-wrestling was an amusing turn-on; quite a few of the assembled writers (including some guys, thanks) found it to be decidedly anti-erotic, certainly no great credit to the taste of Duran Duran.

Said press conference flew into an uproar when my offended sensibilities prompted me to abuse the band—for their supposedly escapist attitude as part of the new romantic movement, for their tasteless video, possibly even for their physical attractiveness, which seemed like just another part of a calculated product. Instant group—just add water and stir to a synthesized beat. Considering that encounter after a year had passed, in retrospect the only aspect of Duran Duran I didn't plow a part was the group's music, and it was through that one small overlooked item that they completely redeemed themselves in my eyes.

Throughout their second American tour, a lengthy enterprise which combined headlining dates with support shows for Blondie, Duran Duran used New York as one of their home bases. They began in July with a tumultuous show at Pier 84, managing to humanize an odious pit that at the best of times feels like a rock 'n' roll prison.

Clad in crisp whites and displaying a physical mastery of stage that came close to David Bowie's self-assured performances, vocalist Simon LeBon had only to crouch, flex a well-toned arm or sweetly grin to be inundated by a wave of screams. Bassist John Taylor, who resembles a pouty English cousin of David Johansen, pulled his share of wall s by playing cool-guy foil to LeBon's open invitation. Such a combination of healthy young flesh moving charismatically in front of 8,000 people was irresistible for the girls up front. Up toward the stage flew flowers, banners, photographs, telephone numbers.

Perhaps more encouraging for Duran Duran's longevity, the guys wearing T-shirts or skinny ties standing behind the yowlers were equally responsive, cheering the group's bopping harmonies on "Planet Earth," appreciating the relentless steady drum beat of Roger Taylor (no relation to Queen's drummer or Duran's John and Andy).

By the time the group concluded the Blondie tour at Toronto's CNE Stadium in late August, Duran Duran had honed their control of a crowd to an even more efficient edge. "Do you have any idea what it feels like up here when everyone gets up and dances?" gleefully yelled LeBon to the audience, who in response leapt around to "Hungry Like The Wolf" and "Rio." The band's power proved so inescapable that Debbie Harry acknowledged on stage that night "Duran Duran gave me a hard act to follow."

As their exhilaration at a successful tour blended with the exhaustion of over two months criss-crossing America, sporty-looking LeBon and dramatically black-clad, fedora'd keyboardist Nick Rhodes cadged French fries and derived much pleasure watching the same critic who they clearly remembered as distupter do everything but ask to join their fan club. They were mature enough to enjoy a friendly disagreement about that infamous video, and to admit how difficult it's been for Duran Duran to grow away from their original packaging.

"It's taken us the whole year since you saw us to get away from that image," emphasized Simon, whose clipped accent revealed a London education, unlike Nick's earthier Birmingham tones and guitarist Andy Taylor's indecipherable Newcastle inflections. "You have to keep banging your head against the brick wall and chip it away, bit by bit. To make sure you work enough so that people will hear of you. There's no magical instant exposure anymore in the way the Beatles had it, because there's so many more bands around. And alas, people were prepared to play the Beatles stuff. They're not so willing now.

"And I don't blame the radio (for being cautious)," says LeBon, without rancor. "'New Romantic' is such a lightweight phrase that radio stations were frightened of it, because they thought, this is gonna go for a week and sink the week after. And they're interested in bands that are going to be making records in a couple of years time, at least. People they can play and back up and talk about."

Rhodes cynically adds, "Back then the whole image was forced upon us. We got here and even the bloody record company had those posters up. We couldn't believe it." Simon: "Especially after all the hard work we put into England to get people to call us by our own name, for us to come over here and the exact thing happens—we went OH-MY-GOD-THIS-IS-REALLY-BAD. We spent a good deal of this tour explaining ourselves to people."

Admittedly, a group whose average age was 19 when they released Duran Duran in 1981 could be excused for getting enmeshed in an ongoing trend. And their tension resulting from inexperience is understandable a year down the line. Rhodes and LeBon are well aware of how insecure the group used to be and the benefits they've gained from the hard job of touring.

"It's the reason the second album is so much better than the first," declares LeBon proudly. "When John and Roger went into the studio to put down the original bass and drum tracks on Rio, they were so tight from touring that everything was absolutely spot-on instead of nearly spot-on. We had gained confidence by the end of that first U.S. tour. It's like a kid being thrown in at the deep end of a swimming pool. You struggle for a while and then you learn. (Or drown.) Also," he says cheerfully, "success obviously helps you relax a little more."

Neither Simon nor Nick feels apologetic about Duran Duran's breakthrough at a young age (the oldest ember is now 23). "So are lots of British bands at the moment," they said. "Haircut 100 are the same age as us." Unlike their American counterparts, apparently British musicians don’t aver to wait until they're on Social Security of Dead before they get a fair shake on the airwaves.

While the "Girls on Film" video may have increased pubic awareness of Duran Duran through controversy, it's inarguable that the phenomenal success of the Human League and Soft Cell, two bands who managed to break free of labels, opened this year's floodgates for eager dance-oriented performers. And Duran Duran, whose records have so far been less immediately accessible than those two hit-making units, far surpass them in presentation.

"Why us?" Simon responds, "Because we're five individuals for a start. We're not spotty, three-foot-tall hunchbacks, which gives us the image—the Beatles were good-looking. It does help, especially if you're talking about young girls. Also, things, getting different shades of emotion through to people so they can identify with us." That attitude is a vast improvement over the band's early days, when they shakily defended being a simple refuge. They obviously learned that bubbleheadedness imposes rather severe limitations upon growth.

Duran Duran's increased depth is as much evidenced by the videos done to promote Rio as by the band's summer tour. Location work in Sri Lanka and Antigua provided lush, mysterious enhancement for the group's tightly wound music, complementing the insistence of "Hungry Like the Wolf" or the desperation of "Last Chance Of the Stairway." Though Rhodes off-handedly remarks that they're going to make a film and call it "Yelp," ho-ho-ho, Duran Duran are seriously looking to intensify their performances with equally compelling visual images. For instance, Antigua was the backdrop for the recent filming of "Night Boat,' a track on their first album.

Recalls Simon, "We filmed some very dusty, rural scenes with e five of us sitting on this slipway it was almost like a garage for boats, much the same feeling as Summer of '42. We added some natural dialogue, then a couple of us slipped into monologues. And it showed, as the night fell, how things got weirder and weirder until you've got this ghost ship with zombies aboard, attacking members of the group." LeBon smiles with contentment at another job well done. His introduction was so theatrically convincing, the result of years of Shakespearean training, that I believed we were still under daylight.

LeBon's expression merely hinted at the possibilities still caged within Duran Duran. Sometimes admitting mistakes is not such a bad thing o do on planet earth.