“We tried to get hold of him but we couldn’t,” Simon says. Guitarist Andy Taylor never turned up to the studio. The bigwigs subsequently put them in the hands of widely-acclaimed producer Timbaland, but the road was set to get rockier still. Then they said ‘well it’s all very nice but it’s not really what we had in mind’, which was a bit of a shock to us.” We played it to them and they all sat there politely. “We’d made it ourselves, we didn’t have a producer really – it was very alternative, quite a spiky sounding album, quite political. “We started making the album back in 2005 in San Francisco and we thought we’d finished it by May of 2006, so we took it to the record company. “It was quite a ride actually,” frontman Simon Le Bon tells SX. It will perhaps come as a surprise then to discover that their latest album, Red Carpet Massacre, released late last year, was the byproduct of strong disapproval from their record company. Back in the ’80s, the band was almost a licence to print money. Songs such as ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’, ‘Girls on Film’ and ‘Rio’ have become iconic pop-cultural beacons. The stats on Duran Duran are remarkable: a total of 70 million records sold, 18 American hit singles, 30 UK top 30 tunes, and a global presence that still guarantees them huge concert audiences on five continents. But, we're not finished with this one yet.Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon spoke to Garrett Bithell ahead of the band’s headline appearance at the V Festival. "Absolutely, you try to be in the moment," Taylor said, "but you have to think a little bit about the future, and I think we'd all like to make another album together.
Another stateside leg is expected this summer for amphitheaters.Īs for its future, it appears the band is still hungry like the wolf for mainstream success. I think everybody came to play and we're all very capable musicians, but it was, 'Can we work out the head stuff?' We've had to do a lot of work on that."ĭuran Duran is currently touring Astronaut with a set list that includes the two aforementioned new tracks, as well as plenty of radio classics ("Hungry Like the Wolf," "Rio" and "Ordinary World") and a few obscure gems ("Hold Back the Rain" and "Tiger, Tiger").Īt this point, the Fab Five remains committed to spending the rest of the year on the road in support of Astronaut. "And those are two of my favorite songs on the album. "The first few days we were working together we wrote 'Nice' and 'Bedroom Toys,'" Taylor said. As for the recording of the disc, that was a delicate process of trust regained and friendships restarted. Perhaps somewhat humbling to a group that has sold millions of album and toured the world as the toast of the party, the experience brought the band members together as friends.Įventually, Epic Records came to the table with a four-album deal, culminating in the release of Astronaut this past October. Taylor added that in hindsight, initial hesitation by record labels to sign the band actually worked in Duran Duran's favor. We had to pull a couple more rabbits out of the hat." "We thought that just the mere fact of us going back in the studio and writing songs together would have been enough. "It wasn't meant to be that way," said Taylor, calling from Minneapolis, MN. Mind you, a quarter of a century had passed since Duran Duran had to showcase its talents for a recording contract, but that's ostensibly what the band was doing by touring American theaters. After being cooped up in France for months writing material for a new album, Simon LeBon (vocals), Andy Taylor (guitar), John Taylor (bass), Roger Taylor (drums) and Nick Rhodes (keyboards) were still without a label deal. What the audience didn't know was that the 80s synth/rock act was just as happy to see them, and it wasn't because of the box office receipts. When a reunited Duran Duran toured in the fall of 2003, sold-out audiences presented the band with a heartfelt standing ovation before a single note was even played. Duran Duran talks with 9X's John Benson from the road
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