BBC 4 had an evening with Duran Duran last night showing the career to date. The BBC had exclusive access to the band, two newly filmed documentaries bring incredible insights, display previously unseen archive footage and rare demo tapes, and reveal the thoughts and inspirations of the band across the decades.
In the eighties Duran Duran where the band to hate if you thought yourself cool and your tastes led to the sounds of reggae, ska, and two tone, a more credible taste. All the New Romantic crap filled the newspapers, musical press and the TV because the style of dress and boys in make-up. Some punk boys wore make-up but you would never get their sexuality wrong. With it turned into new wave the dressing up started to calm down. They were a tribe without a natural enemy just a lot of hate towards the make-up waring males of the species. I have to say as a male without make up that the girls of the tribe were hot, hotter, then punk girls.
My first encounter with the tribe was when the said band played the Casablanca Club not far from my home I remember cycling past their fans queuing for the gig and a strange lot they looked. I recall getting the sexuality of the singer Marilyn wrong and may have said I fancied him in a carefully plan trap my friends led me to.
Duran Duran turned into one of the UK’s greatest and most enduring pop bands of all time. In the space of four years, five lads with one dream became the biggest band in the world and fulfilled their dream. They went from playing at the Rum Runner, a small new-wave nightclub in Birmingham, to filling Japan’s Budokan stadium and arenas around the world.
This extraordinary success came at a price, fame is never easy, in 1985, the band imploded, the tolls of excess took over and creative differences caused them to fracture. At one, point the band when down to two original members and after many years the five originals re-formed, today only four remain.
I just couldn’t get over the image but a few years later I remember watching MTV, listening to an acoustic version of - Save a Prayer – it was beautiful, and I thought I shouldn’t dish the band on an image. I not saying I was a fan but some of their music was strong. Then there was the videos filled with some of the most beautiful woman in the world.
I checked my YouTube stats to see which Duran Duran song I have played the most. It was really no surprise to me, Ordinary World closely followed by The Chauffeur, and Girl Panic the latter two will be of no surprise. If you miss anything, get over to the iPlayer and watch it.
Ordinary World
The Chauffeur
Girl Panic
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