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DURAN DURAN THE MERCHANTS OF FANTASY
Author: By Steve Morse
Date: Thursday, March 15, 1984
It was a cold, blustery afternoon, but shivering teenagers were already lined up by 5 o'clock last Sunday at the Cumberland
County Civic Center in Portland, Maine, waiting for an evening show by the English group Duran Duran. Here was swift
evidence of the new British Invasion at work. Only two years ago few people had even heard of the band.
While the crowd gathered, singer Simon Le Bon sat inside a backstage dressing room, trying to explain why Duran Duran
mania has taken the country by storm. Their sleek, disco-flavored songs like "Girls on Film," "Hungry Like the Wolf," "Rio"
and "Union of the Snake" have been consistent Top Ten hits. And there's no letup in sight.
"I find it difficult to describe the band," Le Bon said, lounging in a black T-shirt and pants that set off his wavy blond hair.
"But we are basically a group of individuals with a positive attitude toward life and careers. We're much more interested in
personal politics rather than party politics. We're people who are just into getting up on stage and entertaining people. We're
into seeing all the smiles on people's faces without trying to tell them which party to vote for."
Entertainment, not dogma. That's the Duran Duran philosophy and it's also the main reason so many serious rock critics and
fans have dismissed them as pretty-boy fluff merchants and teenybop escapists.
It is a revelation, then, to hear Le Bon describe the band's roots in the British punk movement of the late '70s. Because of
their love of glamour and fashion the band has often been accused of being the complete opposite of the punk movement. But
Le Bon disagrees. He sees the band as "the logical conclusion of punk."
"I think that's where punk was misrepresented," added the quick-talking Le Bon, whose group finishes a two-day stand at
the Worcester Centrum tonight. "Punk was seen as a nihilistic thing which was just out to destroy society and cause havoc
and death and all that sort of thing. But it wasn't. It was more like, Let's go out and have fun.' And it really was fun for two
years, from the end of 1976 and all of 1977.
"But then it started getting more political. You had bands like the Clash starting to make political stances. At the time they
were just a very scathing, satirical sort of band that had written a song about Jenny Jones, a prostitute who had an affair with
a politician. They were just into satire, and then they started getting much more ideological. They started developing
consciences and then had to align themselves politically and then started associating with guerrillas.
"But I don't think that's entertaining," said Le Bon, returning to his original theme. "That's soap box stuff. If people want to use
music to do that, that's all well and good. But they can't complain when they're not being successful and a band like us that's
interested in pure entertainment, is successful. And that's where a lot of writers and critics get so pissed off. That's what
upsets them."
Duran Duran, formed in the working-class punk citadel of Birmingham in 1981, wanted to hark back to the music's fun side,
says Le Bon, who had previously spent time in a "depressing" punk band called Dog Days.
"We just got sick of the grayness and the pessimism," he noted. "People were saying, Well, we're bound to die anyway, so
let's write morbid songs.' And we thought, Well, if that's your attitude then you are going to die in a slag heap somewhere.
But we're going to turn it around and see if we can get a little bit of color back into people's lives, and then things will start
looking up.' "
Look up they did, especially after the band discovered video.
Because Duran Duran's songs are often like modern fairy tales - their new album even has the fantasy title of "Seven and the
Ragged Tiger" - they lend themselves well to rock video. The band also just won two Grammy Awards for video.
"We talked about doing video to make a name for ourselves and to do something new and different," said Le Bon, a former
university drama student whose theatrical interests have helped create video scripts.
"We decided there was a good future in video, and one of the things we could do to be different was go on vacation and
shoot the videos in foreign places," he explained. "So the first three videos we did - for the songs "Hungry Like the Wolf,"
"Lonely Like a Nightmare" and "Save a Prayer" - were done in Sri Lanka (Ceylon). They were a total success because many
people hadn't seen that kind of video before. And it was very economical to go there for us."
Next on the docket were two videos in the Caribbean isle of Antigua, for the songs "Rio" and "Night Boat." Those proved
popular, too, on the Music Television (MTV) cable station, though the band received flak - again from many serious critics -
for portraying themselves as chic English playboys who seemed to be perpetuating colonial snobbery.
Although a Rolling Stone writer just wrote that the band regretted those videos, Le Bon snapped, "I don't consider it a
mistake. I also don't think we were rubbing working-class people's noses in luxury. It was purely a spoof on James Bond
movies and that's how we viewed it. I don't think it was a bad move, and it was all good fun. I still laugh when I see the
videos. We were just making arseholes of ourselves in the Caribbean. That's all we were doing."
Beyond the controversy, Duran Duran were at least pioneers in the video movement. They, in fact, didn't know where the
movement was headed when they started.
"In England, video was very much of a promotional thing. At that time we had done one tour of America and we didn't really
consider what was going on over here. I mean, I'd heard about MTV but not very much about it . . . And in England there's
no equivalent to MTV. There's just Top of the Pops,' which is like a Solid Gold' type show, where they have bands miming
on stage and they show videos."
Having become so successful at it, where does Le Bon and the band see the video movement headed?
"It can only go so far," he cautioned, "but I think you will see a lot more 24-hour video stations coming up because MTV has
obviously proven so popular. And there will be a lot of channels that will shut down in the night and just show music videos.
That's what's happening in Australia, where there's about five channels just playing music videos through the night.
"I think in that way it will become a lot like the radio. People will have the TV on in their homes and do whatever they're
doing - whether it's the ironing or doing their homework, and occasionally they'll look up and watch what's on TV. That was
MTV's vision of what might occur, and I think there's a good possibility of that happening."
The negative impact of Duran Duran's videos has been to further stereotype them as calculated pretty boys - an image that
Le Bon denies with a sort of acquired weariness at having the topic come up so often.
"The fact that we are photographable - and because there's been a lot of talk about us for seemingly no reason at all - makes
people think we're a lot of hype. People often think that, but I also think it's wrong for people to form that opinion before
they see us or listen to our records."
That night in Portland, Duran Duran put on a heavier-than-anticipated night of rock 'n' roll. It had elements of Roxy Music's
sound - including a horn player, an extra percussionist and two black female singers - but it was considerably more exciting
than much of the press has made it out to be. Le Bon showed genuine charisma, guitarist Andy Taylor set a much faster pace
than on record, plus there was an overhead video screen that captured the live action shot by four roving but well-synched
cameramen.
"I know that luck and magic figured into our success," said Le Bon. "It's something I believe in a lot, but I also believe it's not
so coincidental, either . . . I know what talent we have got, and I know we're not a manufactured band."
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