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| A
slightly embarrassing experience, shopping for Valentine cards with a famous
Eighties pop star among the acres of pink schmaltz and I Love Yous of Liberty's
stationery department. Nick Rhodes and I retreat to separate tills but,
suddenly, he's by my side again. `Quick, this way,' he says, grabbing my
arm. `See that woman there she pounced on me.' What, a member of Duran Duran
still being nobbled by a fan? Did she get the right person? As it happens, Rhodes may receive rather more of this type of attention before the year is out. The original members of Duran Duran (not seen together since Live Aid in 1985) are about to relaunch their careers with a new album. It's odd, considering what has come and gone since the pretty boys from Birmingham burst onto Top of the Pops in 1981 with `Planet Earth', that the music industry is prepared to give them another chance. But Duran Duran, and Nick Rhodes in particular, were never just about music; it was their looks and style that also captured the zeitgeist. That was 20 years ago. Today, hunched over the table in a West End Conran, Nick looks surprisingly good the only person worth looking at in the room. Dramatic, in top-to-toe Dolce & Gabbana, he's carrying a small Chanel carrier bag. It contains a mobile, Dior sunglasses, an invitation and a smart ink pen. I-Ic has not seen the natural colour of his hair since he was 16. Dyed Marilyn-blond, it hangs in a rough-cut fringe over the palest green eyes. It is not immediately obvious that he is wearing make-up. But of course he is. There's a touch of mascara on his long fluttery eyelashes, a thin veil of foundation on his velvet-cushion-plump skin. I resist the temptation to stroke it. Despite the make-up, he looks wholesome and young not at all how a 40-year-old pop star should. That's probably because the only thing he did to excess during the band's wildest days was shop-the music career as fashion statement. While Simon Le Bon and John Taylor sent their teenage fans into romantic tailspins, it was Nick Rhodes. head-bobbing at the keyboard, a geisha-face full of make-up, that is the band's most enduring image. `News presenters cover themselves in panstick - why shouldn't he?' asks his friend Antony Price, the fashion designer. `He's never done it to look like a woman but to be a better-looking man. It doesn't make him gay, does it?' Thank God someone's brought that up because, frankly, he's got to be, hasn't he? All that slap, the fancy wardrobe, the female side so strong it reeks. But, face-to-face, my gaydar doesn't even twitch - he's both masculine and sexual.'He's always been able to pull fabulous birds,' confirms a begrudging Lc Bon. `Almost better than.., well, I haven't done so badly, have I?' Most of all, Nick Rhodes likes to confound all our preconceptions of how a straight man should behave. You could meet him 20 times and still not get the measure of him. That's because you think you know who he is - an effeminate pop star pretending to be straight. You think that because he comes from the concrete soullessness of Birmingham he's a little rough round the edges, someone who keeps his famous flame burning by sticking to his Eighties androgynous look. You should be right about all of the above. But you're not. As it turned out, Nick Rhodes's friends were a little more forthcoming than he was at first. `There's no one quite like Nick,' says Antony Price. `His idea of heaven is being in a top restaurant surrounded by 10 supermodels, discussing make-up. He's a girl with male genitals.' The feminine side of him possesses a collection of Vogue magazines, dating back to 1912; it makes him answer `the camp ones, of course' when I ask him what artists he prefers, and also why he enjoys going to fashion shows. Nothing to do with front-row seats, apparently - he just loves fashion. `He has an obsession with the photographic image,' says Price. `He's like Bryan Ferry. They both know more about what's going on in Vogue than what's happening in the music business. And it's no coincidence that all his girlfriends are very photogenic.' Is he argumentative? `Is he ever,' says Le Bon. He's very analytical and that can be a pain in the arse. He cares about everything, and I mean everything. He feels it's his business to choose my socks and underwear.' Le Bon should calm down. Rhodes's girlfriends haven't fared so lightly, and have all undergone a top-to-toe makeover. `He used to go to Harvey Nichols and buy all my clothes,' his ex, Madeleine Farley, tells me. `He taught me how to wear make-up, how to dress. He's the closest link between gay men and straight women. He was the woman in our relationship. I had a pair of couture fangs surreptitiously made for him - the dentist and I were in cahoots. He'd always wear them in bed, and I'd have on my six-inch Manolos.' The relationship ended after 10 years and left Nick heartbroken. `Nick, almost Svengali-like, invented Madeleine,' a friend of both tells me. `He created somebody who walked away. She wouldn't have done so if he hadn't created what she became.' Although he rarely invites anyone home preferring to eat out in places such as Sketch and Locanda Locatelli - his Chelsea house is described as `rough-edged and glamorous, like a St Petersburg palace', and `a bordello - turn-of-the-century Parisian with Tintoretto-style ceilings'. I wheedle out that he `favours gently decaying Venetian' and that he possesses an art collection that includes Warhols, Basquiats and Clementes, although this comes with no invite to view it. `I love that wonderful contrast - a Brummie lad with so much sophistication,' says Princess Katya Galitzine, who refers to Rhodes as `my Prince Nicholas'. `We visited Tallinn together once and he couldn't believe his luck that we'd landed in a city full of icons, gold and rococo.' `I like culture-type things,' says Nick, as we wander round the Titian exhibition in the National Gallery a few days later. He refuses one of those electronic contraptions Titian in 15 minutes - and gives me his own, surprisingly academic, running commentary instead. As he weaves excitedly through the hordes, Ican't help noticing that Nick Rhodes is still an unusual sight among real people. |
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| Scans
and text thanks to Stephen. |
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