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Had
the decision been up to Duran Duran's John Taylor, ``Ordinary World''
might never have been recorded. Fortunately, Taylor was not able
to squelch the song that brought the band back to the charts after
a four-year drought.
``I'm not into ballads,'' bassist Taylor, 33, says with a sheepish
chuckle. ``I was the odd guy out. I kept saying, `It's too slow,
too slow.' But after it was written, people would hear it and it
would seem to move them; some would be in tears.''
The way Taylor sees it, ``Ordinary World'' struck a chord with a
group he calls ``early mid-lifers.'' ``It's ourselves, really,''
he explains. ``I think it's something about coming to terms with
the responsibilities of adulthood.''
Those were certainly the circumstances surrounding the members of
Duran Duran while they were recording their ninth album. Taylor
married and had a child. Singer Simon LeBon and his wife had their
second child. Keyboardist Nick Rhodes was going through a
divorce. Then there was the matter of the band's career.
With its members' pretty boy looks and stylish videos filmed in
exotic locations, Duran Duran hit like a thunderbolt in the early
'80s. Smashes such as ``Hungry Like the Wolf'' and ``Union of the
Snake'' generated a voracious teen following that was likened to
Beatlemania. Duran Duran enjoyed a couple of years as the biggest
band on the planet _ and then came the decline. There are no easy
explanations for the group's slipping record sales and decelerated
hit-making during the past few years. Duran Duran simply lost its
place amid increased competition and new musical forms; though once
considered new wave, the group's dance-oriented pop seemed pretty
tame and even a little frilly to the Lollapalooza generation.
``On one hand you tried to be kind of philosophical and grown-up
about it,'' Taylor says. ``At the same time it's quite difficult
to come to terms with. That lack of commercial success obviously
reflected in one's home life. It means giving up three of the four
cars or two of the three properties you've accumulated through the
'80s boom years.
``You have to be Superman to cope with that kind of stuff. Well,
maybe not Superman, but you have to be able to philosophize it.''
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