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A Model Of Pop-Music Fickleness
by Simona Chiose--The Globe and Mail--Toronto
A faint electrical buzz hums in the air at F/X, a Toronto clothing retailer with duds for the model-minded. This day the
neon-coloured factory-sized space has been turned into Duran Duran World Headquarters. Posters of Medazzaland, the
latest album from the eighties pop-synth band that spent much of the decade being pursued by screaming female teen-aged
fans, hang on the walls; the group's greatest hits blare from speakers outside and inside the store; a makeshift funway for a
fashion show later that evening has been constructed in the middle of the store.
Simon Le Bon, lead singer and a founding Duran member, wearing a tight metallic green suit and yellow tie, has sprawled his
lanky, six-foot frame on a leopard-print couch at the back of the store. He is sipping a cup of tea, the second one he asked
for. The first was judged a bit weak. Next to him, taking up a fraction of the space and wearing a complementary suit in an
indeterminate plum shade and purple tie, is the band's guitarist, Warren Cuccurullo, a former member of Frank Zappa's band
who started playing with Duran Duran in the mid-eighties and became a full-fledged member in 1989. The electrical buzz, the
two agree, will drive them crazy. It must be stopped. At once. "Could you do something about that buzz?" Le Bon asks a
record label representative who is walking by. The rep promises action and retreats.
The days when Duran Duran was rock royalty, the Kings of Ponce Rock, are gone, but the boys still have their aristocratic
airs. Admittedly, on Medazzaland, the band pokes fun at its own "delusions of grandeur." "They say we'll get over
it/Disappear like dinosaurs/To the sound of small applause/Resign to the mid-price section," Le Bon sing on Undergoing
Treatment. However, talking to the two (keyboardist and fellow founding member Nick Rhodes is ill) one gets the sense that
Duran Duran does not feel that its fall from pop grace has been just.
More than any other band in the history of pop music, Duran Duran owed its domination of the teen music market to music
videos. Indeed, while rock artists of earlier generations approaced video as a sort of necessary evil, the Durans took to it like
cats to cream. Started in Birmingham in the late seventies, by bassist John Taylor (who left during the making of
Medazzaland) and Rhodes, the band soon acquired Le Bon, drummer Roger Taylor, and guitarist Andy Taylor. (Andy and
Roger left the band in the eighties: Roger quit the music biz, Andy formed the Power Station, a side project with John Taylor
and Robert Palmer. And no, none of the Taylors are related.)
But it was not until 1981 that MTV began airing their videos: Soon the Western world would be tracking the colour of
Rhodes's hair as religiously as the stock market. Slickly sexy songs such as Girls on Film, Hungry Like the Wolf and Rio
followed, the clips as bright and shiny as the decade. Shot in exotic, lush locales, the videos featured the original fab five - as
Rolling Stone baptized them in a 1984 cover story - frolicking in water and on land with a selection of models.
In fact, years before Bruce Springsteen married actress-model and now ex-wife Julianne Phillips, and Courtney Love draped
herself in Versace gowns, the Durans were wooing the women of the runways with their fabulous hairdos and fluid Miami
Vice suits. John Taylor was married to model Amanda DeCadenet and Le Bon is still married to ex-model Yasmin Parevnah.
Their sense of style even got the Bond stamp of approval: the band supplied the title song for the 1985 James Bond flick, A
View To A Kill.
It wasn't all fun. Le Bon talks about a nasty incident where a woman pulled a knife on Rhodes and asked him to kill her.
"That was a twist," he deadpanned. But, yes, mostly it was cheesily delightful, the cheese of it all now commemorated in a
half-derisive tribute album featuring covers of Duran Duran songs by bands such as Goldfinger, groups who grew up when
the boys were inescapable on television, in bars and on the radio.
Now the remaining three members are no longer boys. Le Bon is 38, Cuccurullo 37 and Rhodes 35. And they're not as
pretty as they once were. Le Bon's face, for example is that of the almost-40-year-old man he is, a married guy with three
daughters ranging in age from 9 to 3. Which would be fine if Duran Duran had ever been taken seriously as a band. Their
self-titled 1993 album (known as the Wedding Album to distinguish is from their first self-titled effort), yielded Ordinary
World and Come Undone, two No. 1 hits, a feat never accomplished in their heyday.
But long ago critics pegged them as leaders of the New Romantic glam camp of early eighties Britain -- all style and no
substance. So when in 1994, the band released Thank You, a collection of its favourite cover songs, featuring misfire
versions of Bob Dylan's Lay Lady Lay and the Doors' Crystal Ship, reviewers were savage. With Medazzaland, the
savageness has been toned down, but if faint praise is damning, then Duran Duran are in hell indeed. Rolling Stone gave the
album three stars and Entertainment Weekly, comparing it to Rio, concluded that Medazzaland is simply "not half-bad."
"They're not clearing their heads before they listen to it," said Cuccurullo of reviewers. "They put on the album and they say,
'This is a teen band from 1985. Why am I even listening to it?' They don't listen to it on its onw merits."
The album's first single, Electric Barbarella, a fast guitar ditty, does sound like it was recorded circa 1984. The rest of the
album, both Cuccurollo [sic] and Le Bon point out, is far more experimental and broody, drawing on Cuccurullo's solo
ambient electronic work and the band's art-rock roots.
The video for Electric Barbarella, however, is also an eighties throwback. Except, as befits the nineties, it is generating moral
controversy. In the clip, the band buys a life-size Barbie dressed in a plastic sheet, brings it home and sets it to doing
household chores before the doll rebels and beats them up. MuchMusic briefly refused to play it and Musique Plus, the
Quebec music video service, still won't because it deems it to be in bad taste.
"I think it's completely anti-art," Le Bon said of the decision. "I can see exactly what the problem is: she's young, she's
beautiful, she's nearly naked and she's Hoovering." Hoovering, in this instance at least, being a reference to the maid's skill
with a vacuum cleaner. In any case, the two say, they're making fun of themselves and their image. "You would think that
there would be a lineup of girls wanting to do the bloody job," Le Bon said, a rare smile crossing his face. "We're taking the
piss out of ourselves and out of men's idea of women, out of cyber-sex and technology."
It's unclear whether fans are getting the idea. Medazzaland made its debut at 58 on the Billboard Top 200 chart in October,
now it's at 178. In Canada, the single is at 28 on the Soundscan charts, from last week's opening at 19. Still, the two are
nonchalant about other bands taking their place. Le Bon says his daughters' favourite band is...Duran Duran, but, like any
modern dad, he's also taken them to see the Spice Girls. "We listen to music in the car on the way to school."
Former Duranies seem to have adjusted to the idea that perhaps father Simon is no longer the man of their teen-age dreams.
Later on, after the fashion show has wrapped up, Le Bon and Cuccurullo are ushered in from a back room for a
meet-and-greet with fans who won invitations to the event. A funnel forms around them, but the bodyguards flanking the two
don't need to push anyone away, the crowd moving in close, but not too close. Simon has his photo taken with one woman,
his arm around her waist.
Then, just as quickly as they materialized, the two jump onto the runway, their metallic suits glimmering as they make a dash
for the backroom again. No one tries to follow them.
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