Fame Had Its Way With Us!

Duran Duran


“Fame Had Its Way With Us!”

They did drugs, married supermodels and bought Picassos on AmEx. But being in Duran Duran wasn’t all work, as the recently re-formed New Romantic pioneers reveal in this exclusive oral history



By Michael Odell



Blender,
June/July 2003




“When
we formed,” says Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes, “we decided that
we would be playing Madison Square Garden within two years.”


For a bunch of “blokes” clearing glasses in a nightclub in one of
England’s most depressed cities, it was a lofty ambition. But as it
went, Duran Duran made the Garden in four years. When this Birmingham
quintet donned their girlfriends’ makeup and fused the best of
glam-rock with elements of punk and funk, the world took notice.


By the time “Hungry Like the Wolf” became a hit in 1983, they were the
right boys in the right shade of rouge at the right time: MTV was just
underway, asserting the primacy of “look” over zeal and musical chops.
Duran Duran obliged by stuffing their videos with chicks, beaches,
cocktails and yachts.


After that, it was as if they couldn’t hear the director screaming
“Cut!”: They ordered supermodels over the phone, played Live Aid,
formed rival bands, made Princess Diana moist, went crazy, raised
chickens on a farm, bought a Picasso on credit, recorded a cover of
Grandmaster Flash’s “White Lines” with a straight face and fell to
pieces.


Now, amid an insatiable nostalgia for all things ’80s, Duran Duran’s
original lineup has re-formed for the first time since saying “Cheerio”
to one another backstage at Live Aid in 1985. A box set of singles
celebrates their return, to be followed soon by a new album and a
reunion tour.



“But first,” guitarist Andy Taylor points out, “we had to see if we could sit around a table without vomiting on one another.”



“I see this as part two,” warns lead singer Simon Le Bon…




Part 1

Hold Me, Pose Me

1978–1981



Birmingham, England, 1978: Nigel Taylor and Nick Bates are school
friends drinking at the Hole in the Wall pub. They discuss starting a
band and decide a makeover is necessary. Taylor begins using his middle
name, John, and persuades Bates to adopt the last name Rhodes.


Together with friends Stephen Duffy and Simon Colley, they form a band
they call RAF. However, when Taylor sees the 1968 psychedelic sci-fi
movie Barbarella, he suggests the band name itself after Milo O’Shea’s character, Duran Duran.



Stephen Duffy [original singer]: I met John, who was
then Nigel, at art school. He was completely Nigel then. We got
together at his parents’ house in Birmingham. I passed the audition, so
we got together over Nick’s father’s shop — Bates’ Toy Corner. Above
the shop was this storeroom with lots of dolls and things. Nick got his
synthesizer out, and John played the guitar. We had songs called things
like “Hold Me, Pose Me,” which was what it said on the side of a doll
box.



Nick Rhodes [keyboardist]: We were very much an
art-school band. It was rhythm units, synthesizers, two bass players,
John on guitar, plus a clarinet and vocals.



Duffy: We used to wear strange old clothes from
charity shops, quite nice 1950s fitted jackets. Nick was worried about
the makeup. I said, “Don’t worry, Nick; in six months’ time all men
will look like this.” I was wrong — in six months only he looked like
that. Nick wanted to be famous, though, whatever it took — he said that
once, and I didn’t think I’d heard him right. I didn’t think you said
that sort of thing.



Duffy decides to leave Duran Duran, thinking they’re too
commercial. Colley follows him. (Duffy later forms the Lilac Time and
also enjoys a solo hit, “Kiss Me,” as Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy.)


Drummer Roger Taylor (none of the Taylors are related) joins, and John
takes up the bass. Paul and Michael Berrow, the owners of Birmingham’s
Rum Runner club, let them use an upstairs room to practice. Among their
first songs is “See Me, Repeat Me,” which later becomes “Rio.” They
also have a chorus remnant that features the refrain “girls on film.”


The two Taylors and Rhodes form the core. Singers and guitarists come
and go. Finally, Andy Taylor answers an ad for a guitarist and travels
down to Birmingham from his hometown of Newcastle. He cooks burgers at
the Rum Runner. Meanwhile, Simon Le Bon, a drama student at Birmingham
University, is recommended by his girlfriend, Fiona Kemp, a waitress at
the Rum Runner. He turns up for the audition wearing pink leopard-skin
pants, pointy boots, a suede jacket and sunglasses.



Andy Taylor [guitarist]: My initial reaction was not
how out of touch I was dress sense–wise, but how shit they were at
playing. But they had a hell of a lot of ambition. . . . And they had
the chorus to “Girls on Film.”



Paul Berrow [co-owner of the Rum Runner and Duran Duran’s first manager]:
My brother and I were importing all the new Giorgio Moroder–style
records from New York. We’d been to Studio 54 and heard how dance music
was changing. The Duran aesthetic was influenced by that.



Roger Taylor [drummer]: We rehearsed in the Rum Runner
on Monday nights with a jazz-funk night going on in the next room.
Somehow all that got into the music.



John Taylor [bassist]: In 1978, it was the year of
“disco sucks,” and I felt I should be at a therapist saying, “I have
this guilty love of disco.” I thought Chic were fantastic. That’s why I
became a bass player.



Simon Le Bon [singer]: The band was a bit of a laugh at first. I didn’t know I’d leave college and give my life to it.



The Berrows make Duran Duran the Rum Runner house band, and Michael
Berrow mortgages his house to support their opening slot on a U.K. tour
with post-punk contender Hazel O’Connor. It costs them £12,000. The
band earns £10 a week.


On the tour, EMI A&R man Dave Ambrose, who signed the Sex Pistols,
sees Duran Duran and signs them for £42,000 (about $105,000 at the
time).


Quickly, they record their self-titled debut album. In the U.K.,
success with “Planet Earth” is immediate. “Girls on Film” opens with
the sound of Paul Berrow’s Nikon camera. Le Bon considers it a powerful
critique of the exploitation of women in advertising. He will be sorely
misunderstood.


By 1981, Duran Duran are touring clubs in America. Rock America, a
programming service for clubs and bars that feature video screens, is
playing the long-form video for “Girls on Film,” and word is spreading.



Rob Hallett [U.K. booking agent]: They went through
this period of being famous, but the money hadn’t come in yet. So John
used to stay at my flat in West London. It was the hottest bachelor pad
in town. John was the best-looking man in Britain and got the most
amazing girls. I hung around for the leftovers.



Doreen D’Agostino [U.S. publicity manager, Capitol Records]:
They had no profile in America, but the “Girls on Film” video gave them
a little notoriety. Older writers were a little shocked by the ice cube
on the girl’s naked breast. But in the hip clubs people were like,
“Hey, it’s art!”



Rhodes: Our first U.S. date was on Long Island, at the
Spit Club in 1981. We flew into JFK airport. We could see Manhattan to
our left, but our car turned right. Our publicist said, “What do you
want to do?” I said, “Go up the Empire State [Building] and meet Andy
Warhol.” She called the next morning and said that we were going up the
Empire State and then to Andy’s studio. We’re like, “Whaaat?”



D’Agostino: I rang Andy up at Interview
magazine and said, “There’s this English band that wants to meet you.”
I might have mentioned one was in lipstick. Nick and Roger came, and
Andy asked Nick if he shared his girlfriend’s lipstick. After that,
Nick and Andy became friends. You’d see them in the DJ booth together
at Studio 54.



Roger Taylor: The Warhol thing went over my head a
bit. He wanted to do an album cover, and we were like, “The Rolling
Stones have done it. . . . No, thanks.”



John Taylor: I was such a baby. At JFK airport I
couldn’t fill in the address bit on the immigration form. I put
“Holiday Inn, Long Island.” The guy said, “I guess if we need to find
you, we’ll put out an APB for a faggot with purple hair.”

Part 2

Duranmania

1981–1984



The band returns to London and records its second album, Rio. In
America, the Berrows sense that a newly launched cable network that
airs music videos is the key to success. They jet the band to Sri Lanka
to make videos for “Save a Prayer” and “Hungry Like the Wolf,” and to
Antigua to film “Rio.”



Rhodes: The record company said, “Do you want to make a video to go with the song?” We were like, “What’s a video?”



Le Bon: When you’re 19 and someone says, “Do you want
to make a video on a yacht in the Carribean?” you don’t say, “Hmmm,
what kind of statement are we supposed to be making here?” It was,
“Girls, boats — yes, please!”



John Taylor: It seemed like such a stupid idea. But Simon was a drama student. He pulled it off.



Roger Taylor: On the “Hungry Like a Wolf” shoot, some
of the crew were annoying the elephants, trying to imitate their calls.
I’m riding on one when it gets startled by all the noise and takes off
down the river with me hanging on for my life.



Rhodes: I refused to go to Sri Lanka before Rio
was finished. The other four went, and I stayed up all night at AIR
Studios in London. I was wearing a leather outfit and went straight to
the airport from the studio. After 16 hours in my leather suit, I get
off the plane into a wall of heat. I stagger around the airport saying,
“Where’s the limo?” and this guy takes me to a flatbed truck. I’m
thinking, “20 minutes to the hotel.” It was five hours on a dust track
to the beach location.



In 1982, Duran Duran tour the U.S. again, this time supporting
Blondie. They meet Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers for the first time and
bond “in the bathroom.” Thanks in large part to the around-the-clock
support of the nascent MTV, by March 1983, “Hungry Like the Wolf” is
number 3 on the U.S. charts.



Les Garland [senior executive vice president, MTV]: We
had our weekly meeting to hear new music on Tuesdays. Back then it was
a fledgling industry: We’d get maybe 10 videos a week, and everyone
would gather and sit through them all. I remember our director of
talent and artist relations came running in and said, “You have got to
see this video that’s come in.” Duran Duran were getting zero radio
airplay at the time, and MTV wanted to try to break new music. “Hungry
Like the Wolf” was the greatest video I’d ever seen.



Rhodes: Our first gigs in the United States were crazy
and culty. But when we came back after “Hungry” was a hit, it was
mayhem. It was Beatlemania. We were doing a signing of the “Girls on
Film” video at a store in Times Square. We couldn’t get out of the
store. The cops sealed off the streets. It was scary.



Katy Krassner [U.S. management representative/fan liaison]:
American girls loved them. They were like a box of Smarties — there was
something for everyone. Roger was James Dean. Andy was the rocker. John
was like Leonardo DiCaprio, a sort of girlish beauty. Nick was the
glamorous one, and Simon was the sporty, masculine one, like Harrison
Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark.



Garland: Nick and Simon came on MTV as guest VJs. I
met Simon first, and then turned to meet Nick. He blew my mind. I’ve
always been a cool guy, but he was wearing so much makeup, his nails
were done, he had rouge on. I thought, “You’re going on TV like that?”
It spun my head.



Le Bon: We’d become one of the biggest bands in the
world and then went back to these tiny apartments or bedrooms in Mum
and Dad’s house in Birmingham. We hadn’t had time to spend any money,
to buy a house. . .



Rhodes: I went back to my bedroom in my parents’ house
in Birmingham. My mum calls up and says, “There’s a Michael on the
phone. . . . ” It was Michael Jackson. We’d been leading this crazy
life in America with David Bowie and Warhol, and there’d been talk at a
party about working with Michael Jackson. Then he calls me at my mum
and dad’s. I thought it was one of the crew winding me up. I’m going, “Sure, Michael. . . . ”



Andy Taylor: I can remember my first check for £1 million. I was only 20. Fifty percent went to Mrs. Thatcher, but still. . . .



In America, the boys are feted: Young E.T. star Drew
Barrymore attends their shows; tennis ace Vitas Gerulaitis invites them
“to the bathroom.” In England, their fame is such that even Lady Diana
Spencer is a fan.



Le Bon: The Lady Di thing was a bit naff. It was
something your mum and dad liked, so there was a part of me that
bristled at it. Every time we opened the dressing-room door, there she
bloody was, under the table trying to get an autograph. It was like,
“Can’t your husband keep you under control?”



Boy George [lead singer, Culture Club]: Duran Duran
were selling a lifestyle: the yachts, the girls. In spite of their
looks, Duran were very straight. It was a time when wearing a bit of
makeup could get you girls. Culture Club would get girls and their
mums. Duran Duran got everyone.



By 1983, Duran Duran have enjoyed Top 20 hits with “Hungry Like the
Wolf” and “Rio.” However, the advent of fame leaves them creatively
bereft.



Now millionaires, they are in tax exile from the U.K. and decide to record their third album abroad. Sessions for Seven and the Ragged Tiger
begin in a French château. But John gets bored and spends his time
getting drunk in Cannes. They head for AIR Studios in Montserrat, but
legendary producer George Martin’s swimming pool proves too
distracting. So they head for Australia, where a tour looms. But alas,
there are bars and girls in Australia, too. . . .



Rhodes: There were Spinal Tap moments. I bought a Picasso on AmEx in the South of France. A little one, but still.



John Taylor: I was going into Cannes and having a
party every night. As a bass player, time management is a problem,
because your work is done in a matter of days.



Rhodes: If we needed John to do a bass part, we’d just ring a bar and ask for him.



Le Bon: I didn’t even think Seven and the Ragged Tiger was a particularly good title. The seven were us and our two managers. The ragged tiger was supposed to be “luck.”



Rhodes: That title. . . . I don’t know how I ever let that through. I still just call it the third album.






Part 3

Power Station, Yachts and Madness

1984–1985



The remix of “The Reflex,” produced by Chic’s Nile Rodgers, becomes
a number 1 hit. Rodgers almost repeats the feat with “Wild Boys” (which
hits number 2), and his Chic partner Bernard Edwards tops the charts
with the James Bond theme “A View to a Kill.” The band is at its
creative and commercial apex.


Naturally, John and Andy Taylor are dissatisfied with Duran Duran’s
direction. John is dating Bebe Buell, Liv Tyler’s mother. He decides to
remake T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong” with Buell on vocals. However, before
recording, the pair have a falling-out. Robert Palmer steps in for
Buell. The Power Station is born.


Not to be outdone, Rhodes and Le Bon take up residence at the Ritz
Hotel in Paris and form Arcadia, whose self-titled album features guest
spots from Sting, Grace Jones and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, among
others. Roger Taylor can’t decide his allegiance and plays on both
Duran Duran side projects.



Rhodes: Arcadia and the Power Station were commercial suicide. . . . But we’ve always been good at that.



Paul Berrow: After a couple of years of that “All for
one and one for all!” mentality, wives and girlfriends come along. At
first it was military — videos, documentary, tour, album, tour — but
what do you do when you get there? Get a girlfriend — and a demanding
one, almost certainly. And then the whole entity changes. There is
conflict among the band of merry men.



Boy George: I lived next door to John Taylor in New
York. A friend and I would find John’s girlfriend crying in the
hallway. We’d bring her in and give her a cup of tea and get all the
latest gossip. John’s was the most rock & roll place I had ever
seen.



Denis O’Regan [official band photographer]: I remember
Nick and John having a discussion about which had the highest-ever
hotel bill. One of them had run up a $30,000 bill — and this was 15
years ago. An outrageous amount.



John Taylor: The Carlyle Hotel was getting a little
expensive, so I bought a place on the twenty-seventh floor of the Park
Belvedere on Central Park West. Boy George was next door. Inside it was
black lacquer and all about the ’80s: a beautiful place to go mad! We
both lost parts of our minds on that floor. Fame was having its way
with us. There was a courier service that would bike over bags of pot
with little flags of the country it came from. At Christmas they did
party bags — that was useful.



Peter Martin [Smash Hits magazine journalist]:
I was asked to write sleeve notes for the Power Station album, so I
spent five days with John over Thanksgiving. Boy George and his friends
were going apeshit on heroin at the time; they had the whole London
crowd over at his flat. John and I crashed a party of theirs. We went
in, and Boy George was trying to fill himself up from a tap — he
thought he was a kettle, which I thought was very creative of him.



John Taylor: Cocaine was my drug of choice. And Ecstasy and Valium. Downers, too. . . .



Hallett: John’s apartment had two beautiful things in
it. One was a parrot. No cage. Just a parrot on a perch that wouldn’t
stop talking. The other was John’s girlfriend, Renee Simonsen. She was
an absolute sweetheart. He really messed that up. . . .



Nile Rodgers: That was the life: girls, drugs, wild parties. It was a way of life, and it was every day. We were limited only by supply.



O’Regan: The phrase pig in shit comes to mind.



John Taylor: Look, Exile on Main Street wouldn’t have happened without Keith Richards’s heroin addiction. Young Americans
wouldn’t have happened without David Bowie’s cocaine addiction. Alcohol
played a big part with Vincent van Gogh. You need that edge. The trick
is to find the edge without killing yourself.



The Power Station go on tour with tight-trousered B-lister Michael
Des Barres on vocals. John and Andy have lost contact with Le Bon and
Rhodes. Then an angry Irishman calls them and says Duran Duran must
reconvene for Live Aid. It’s the last show they will play with their
original lineup.



Andy Taylor: Robert Palmer had failed to turn up for
the Power Station tour, so we’d battled on alone. Then we get a call
from Bob Geldof asking us to do Live Aid. I remember we put on the
speakerphone and just listened to this Irish voice going, “You’re
fockin’ doin’ it!”



John Taylor: When Simon, Nick and Roger flew in, we
were in different teams. Andy and I had grown our hair and were doing
the U.S. rocker thing. They were doing the esoteric European artistic
thing. It was all in the haircuts. The writing was on the wall.



Andy Taylor: There was a 2 billion–strong TV audience and we’re helping save the world, and then . . . anticlimax. Roger’s leaving.



Roger Taylor: I didn’t have a breakdown. I was just
exhausted. I bought a farm in Gloucestershire, had kids, did normal
things. We rented the land out to a farmer and lived the life of landed
gentry. A bit Spinal Tap, I know. We had chickens and horses. I just
disappeared.


I had tabloid reporters looking for me. I was in bed one morning and
there was a knock. Giovanna [Cantonne, his wife] said, “It’s the
postman,” and I went down in her pink nightie. It was the Sun [a
notorious British tabloid], and they said, “Hello, mate, we want to
know why you left the band.” I just shut the door on them, but the next
day on page five there I was, unshaven in a pink negligee.



Assessing the fallout from Roger’s departure will have to wait,
though: First, Le Bon’s rock-star lifestyle demands that he marry a
supermodel and then nearly die in a yachting mishap. He meets Yasmin
Parvenah after choosing her from a model-agency photo album.



Le Bon: When we were doing the photo shoot for “Wild
Boys,” I was going through the portfolio of the photographer, Mike
Owen, and I said, “Ooh, I like that one.” But he wouldn’t tell me her
name. He said it would be unprofessional. A couple of days later he
slips me a piece of paper, and I arranged to meet her. Hey, John used
to call the agency up all the time.



John Taylor: Bollocks! I once called up the agency and asked if we could have Christy Turlington on the cover of Notorious. I never asked to date her. It’s a good idea, but I’m not that together.



Yasmin Le Bon [model, Simon’s wife]: I’m sure I broke
a lot of girls’ hearts when Simon and I got married. The fans were good
to me. But there was one girl who scared me. I was in a deli about 1
a.m. getting some juice, and she popped her head around the aisle and
fixed me with this really psychotic look. I thought, “I’m going to get
axed to death by a Durannie!”



After the wedding, Le Bon and the Berrows decide to blow a fortune outfitting the 77-foot yacht Drum for the Whitbread Round the World Race.



Rhodes: I got a call from People magazine saying, “Did
you know Simon’s been in a terrible accident, and currently the boat’s
upside down and they can’t find him?” I’m like, “Thanks!” I hate boats
unless they’re tied up and you’re having cocktails on them.



Le Bon: Drum flipped over. I dived down out
of the upturned hull, but I couldn’t make it to the surface, because my
long johns were caught on a stanchion. I thought, “If I breathe now,
I’m dead.” But I was determined not to die.

Part 4

The Drugs Don’t Work

1985–1999



In 1985, with tensions running high, Rhodes, Le Bon, John and Andy
start recording a funk album, Notorious, with Nile Rodgers. Though Andy
shows up for some sessions, he eventually decides to move to Los
Angeles and make a solo album, effectively leaving the band. The band
recruits Warren Cuccurullo from the L.A. New Wave band Missing Persons
as a replacement.



Andy Taylor: I was determined to protect myself from
the lifestyle. I’m from a broken home. I had a son in 1984, and I
wasn’t going to put [my family] through hell. I’d be damned if I was
going to let music and drinking fuck me up. I also had good friends.
Rod Stewart was a great friend to me. He’d say, “Pour your drink in the
plant pot — just pretend.” Mind you, he would also say, “I know this
great little club; let’s go get hammered.”



Hallett: Andy was the most rock & roll of all. His
marriage is one of the great survival strories. The wedding was held in
John Belushi’s apartment at the Château Marmont. Luckily, Andy has a
very strong constitution.



By Duran Duran’s standards, Notorious is a commercial
failure. For their next record, the band decides to embrace new sounds,
immersing itself in the U.K.’s dance-music explosion with 1988’s Big
Thing.



John Taylor: We panicked. The Linn drum machine we had basically became the fourth member of the band.



After the disaster of another dance record, 1990’s Liberty,
Duran Duran decide to strike back quickly. Cuccurullo becomes a
permanent member. They set up a studio in his London home and begin
work on Duran Duran, a.k.a. the Wedding Album. John spends a
lot of time “in the bathroom.” At this point, Duran Duran are largely
considered has-beens. But 1993’s “Ordinary World” becomes a worldwide
hit.



John Taylor: “Ordinary World” gave original Durannies
a sense of nostalgia. They’d got drunk to “Planet Earth,” and “Ordinary
World” made them wistful about when their husband went to work and they
were feeding the baby. We were elder statesmen now.



Back on top, John comes up with the idea of recording Thank You,
an album of covers. Roger even leaves his farm to perform on two
tracks. Bad move. Upon release in 1995, the band’s versions of Public
Enemy’s “911 Is a Joke” and Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel’s “White
Lines” are met with spectacular media disdain. Still, for the latter
song at least, no one could claim they hadn’t done their research.



Le Bon: We were finishing Thank You at Nick’s
house in France, and I went to stay at [INXS lead singer] Michael
Hutchence’s place nearby. Me and Michael and [U2’s] Bono were in this
thing called the Lead Singers’ Club. For a couple of months in the
summer of 1994, we lived it up in the South of France. The club’s main
meeting place was Nick’s swimming pool.



Warren Cuccurullo [new guitarist]: Thank You wasn’t a learning curve. It was a learning cliff.



John Taylor: The press savaged us. I didn’t listen to it for five years after we made it.



Thank You sold a meager 500,000 copies. Convinced that the covers project was an aberration, Duran Duran record Medazzaland, named
after the drug Midazolam, which Le Bon had taken before having dental
work done. If it had been named after the drugs John was taking, it
would have had an even longer title. Realizing he needs help, John
quits the band in 1997, halfway through the recording of the album.



John Taylor: I was hating life. I needed to make a big
change, but I didn’t know what it was. A therapist said, “You need to
get into 12-step programs.” I’m like, “What?” Because I hadn’t listened
to anyone since school, I thought I could clean up a bit so I could
drink better — or so drugs could work again like they used to. Very
depressing, when drugs don’t work like they used to. Anyway, I needed
to be “born again,” for want of a better expression.



Cuccurullo: Midway through making Medazzaland,
John left. No one saw that coming. We wrote a bunch of new songs after
John left. Capitol loved the record. Then it just bombed.



Undeterred, Rhodes, Le Bon and Cuccurullo self-finance the
recording of a new album, 2000’s Pop Trash. It’s an ignominious goodbye.



Rhodes: We had reached the end of the road. We’d come
to the end of it with Warren, so we parted. But give credit to him —
Warren certainly helped Duran Duran survive the ’90s.





Part 5

"We Never Learn"

2000–2003



In 2000, John Taylor is on vacation in Hawaii and bumps into Duran
Duran’s lawyer. Over dinner, they discuss a comeback. The next day, Le
Bon and Rhodes are on the phone. But there are still problems to be
ironed out.



Roger Taylor: I got a call from John one night saying,
“Hey, do you want to put the band back together again?” I said, “I’m
not sure. It went a bit wrong for me last time.”



Andy Taylor: I wouldn’t have done it if Roger didn’t.
There’d be no point in just another version of Duran Duran. It had to
be the original. But first we had to see if we could get around a table
without vomiting on one another.



In May 2001, the original Duran Duran lineup finally reenter a rehearsal room together.



During his post-Duran career, John formed a dozen bands and landed a role in The Flintstones movie
(“I was fucking Keith Rich-Rock. It was not a good experience”). Andy
recorded one solo and one covers album. Roger raised a family and fed
his chickens.


Only Le Bon and Rhodes have enjoyed uninterrupted employment with Duran
Duran since 1980. In fact, Rhodes seemingly can’t get enough. In 2001,
he ran into original vocalist Stephen Duffy. They decided to record
their original RAF ideas, as performed upstairs at Bates’ Toy Corner. Dark Circles was released under the name the Devils in 2002.



Rhodes: We never learn. It’s us five in a studio. The
magic’s there, and we’re eager to do it all again. Like lemmings who’ve
jumped off the cliff and climbed back up for another go.



With additional reporting by Sian Pattendon

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