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Critics call it the decade taste forgot, the era when video killed
the radio star and image become more important than content.
Duran Duran were an integral part of the era but Nick Rhodes, the
band's keyboard player and founder member, is quick to dismiss suggestions
the group, now in its 20th year, is part of any 80s revival.
Admittedly the Durans have just released a greatest hits collection,
and are touring on the back of it - at the same time as Culture
Club, ABC, Human League and Blondie - but Rhodes insists this is
no quick nostalgia cash-in.
"The bottom line is we never stopped doing anything to go away to
be revived. Some things have been more successful than others but
I wouldn't like to think we're playing to our nostalgia too much.
"It's all very well that we are touring behind a greatest hits album
but that was pretty much planned before any of this.
"We are in the middle of a new album right now and I'd hate people
to think we were cashing in our chips on the old stuff. I'm very
much into what we are doing right now."
Neverthless Duran Duran have not been especially active during the
90s, just two albums of original material and 1995's Thank You covers
collection. and it's for that period in the early 80s, when the
Birmingham lads were one of the biggest bands in the world, that
they are most fondly remembered.
Aside from their chart success Duran Duran were also innovators,
in that they were one of the first pop groups to view themselves
as a multi-media enterprise.
"When we started I was absolutely adamant we weren't just another
band but more like a little multi-media corporation. It was obviously
about the song first but once we'd got that we'd decide 'what's
the cover going to be like, what photos are we going t o put out'.
"Until that time, apart from some of the more conceptual things,
like Pink Floyd, I don't think a pop band had paid such attention
to the detail of everything. It was a whole style movement as well
as the music.
"We didn't feel the music was overwhelmed by the look, but it's
easy in hindsight to say if we'd only known that those videos were
going to be such a part of the fabric of our pop culture then we
might have approached them a little differently. We didn't think
that they would still be in rotation 15 years later."
Nick grew up in the Hollywood area of Birmingham but was forced
to move to London as the band's fame grew.
"It was very abstract being teen idols," he says. "I don't think
we made the kind of music that fitted with that audience. We would
be singing songs like Sound of Thunder and The Chauffeur in front
of an audience that seemed very abstract to us at the ti me. The
only way we philosophised it was 'well, this is what happened to
The Doors, Jim Morrison was up there singing "this is the end".'
"At the same time we were very grateful to have an audience. It
was OK, as long as we got them to listen and I think a lot of people
did. I've got fond memories of some of those earlier hysterical
concerts, there was an air of excitement. If it had only been young
girls I think I would have been a little more worried but there
was quite a cross-section.
"It was the first time it had happened pretty much since The Stones
and The Beatles. Nobody expected it because nobody thought it would
happen again. I used to have to get the police to get me out of
shops. I could never leave hotels. That was very strange but eventually
we moved to France in 1985 because it was still going on, it was
getting too much."
With their glossy videos, cover boy looks and strong sense of style,
Duran Duran soon became lumped in with the New Romantic movement
of the early 80s.
"I thought that was very strange," says Nick,"we didn't take much
notice of it actually. In some ways it was great for us because
the whole thing got written about, it became a movement. But I don't
honestly believe we had anything in common musically wi th any of
the other bands."
Certainly when the 16-year-old Rhodes helped form Duran Duran in
1978 they incorporated a bizarre smorgasbord of influences.
"John Taylor (the band's former bass guitarist) and I had grown
up on glam rock, not just Bowie and Roxy Music but Cockney Rebel,
Sparks, T Rex and then we went into disco and punk, which were running
alongside each other.
"Punk had this amazing energy and I used to virtually live in Barbarellas
in Birmingham. I saw some great bands there, Blondie, The Clash,
Johnny Thunders, and Generation X; we also very much liked the New
York scene, Lou Reed, New York Dolls and we put all that together
with a little bit of disco. We liked the sound of Donna Summer's
I Feel Love plus a lot of things like Chic, Sister Sledge and we
mixed all that together with my electronic things. I liked a lot
of the German electronic bands like Kraft werk. All of that was
put together with the Beatles and Rolling Stones and The Doors,
and their ability to write great pop songs."
This eclecticism is also evident on not one but two albums of new
material which the band hope to release in the near future.
"We've got one album which we finished about a year and a half ago
but we had some problems with our American record company which
delayed it over here. So we are going to put that one out but the
one we are working on at the moment is a brand new album called
Hallucinating Elvis and we reckon we'll have finished that sometime
in early February so it'll probably come out in May.
"Half of it is dance music, the other half I would say is more 70s
influenced, Lennon, Bowie, sort of stuff."
Despite the troughs in their popularity over the past ten years
Nick is philosophical about the band's future.
"We've been together a long time and one of our main criteria is
to change and develop. We're not one of those bands who is content
to go out there and bring out the same record, repackaged and jigged
round a bit; experimenting is one of the things that keeps us fresh."
Duran Duran play the NEC on December 7.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Birmingham Post & Mail Ltd
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