Thinking About Duran Duran

I’ve been thinking a lot about Duran Duran. Don’t ask me why.

I’ve been thinking about the electrified telegraph wire that helicopters its way in at the start of Planet Earth, and its synth hook and its bubbling bass breakdown and its flat, robotic lead vocal and its air-punching bah bah-bah pop refrain and I’ve been thinking that it’s a truly great track that I could never admit to liking at school. Or anytime even really until now.

Duran Duran – Planet Earth

I’ve been thinking about the band name. Duran Duran. It’s good. Runs off the tongue like a little slip of alliterative poetry in a ‘so good we named ourselves twice’ manner. It was cribbed, as you well know, from a character in a comic book series that became a cult movie, just like the literary/cinematic influences of (The) Heaven 17 and Fine Young Cannibals and The Tyrell Corporation, all bands who came after the pioneering Duran Duran.

I’ve been thinking how Duran Duran properly learned their chops and paid their playing dues in the swill circuit of toilet pubs around the Midlands, Bowie obsessives who admired a good cut of suit as much as a good riff, and as such should be correctly thought of in the same way as The Smiths or Dexys or The Specials. You might logically include early Spandau Ballet in the same way, of course, but personally, I…just…can’t…bring…myself…to…admit…this.

I’ve been thinking about how they made the most of their celebrity and their status, flicking casually yet eagerly through catalogues of supermodels in the upmarket agencies of early ’80s London, ordering girls like takeaway food to appear in their glossy, expensive videos and maybe even something more at the post-shoot pool party.

I’ve been thinking about effete Nick Rhodes, a very smart man in his lipstick and his blusher and his exaggerated cheek bones and his highlit Lady Diana blow-dry and his…woah!…totally gorgeous wife. Some guys have all the luck, as the song goes. Maybe he picked her out of one of those catalogues and the after-party went particularly swimmingly.

I’ve been thinking about that ridiculous BBC4 documentary from a couple of years ago where they drive around Birmingham in an old Citroen and discuss their career in those self-assured and rounded Mid Atlan’ic accents they’ve acquired through years of international jet set travel, le Bon’s aloofness and self-importance as inflated as his jowly, hungry-like-the-wolf face (no matter how hard he lemon sucks that affected pout), yet still is always overshadowed by effortless John Taylor and his cheekbones and his hair and his rockstar-on-a-day-off choice of wardrobe.

I’ve been thinking about those terrible, laughable, rich-guys-being-cool versions of 911 Is A Joke and White Lines that they released in the mid ’90s, the world turning to the bow-legged beat of Manchester while Duran Duran try to claim relevance with rap/rock abominations that even the Red Hot Chili Peppers would steer clear of. Don’t Do It, indeed.

I’ve been thinking also that I might need to reappraise that tatty copy of the Rio album that I found in a charity shop, £1, no bag, and me leaving with a face blushing the colour of the album cover itself. It’s filed there, spine-on and untouched since the day it was shamefully saved from the skip, just between Dr Feelgood’s Private Practice and Ian Dury’s New Boots And Panties!, an anomaly of airbrushed designer pop amongst the grit and grime of ‘real’ music.

Duran Duran on this blog? Makes you think, doesn’t it?