Duran Duran and me, part 3

2023: Wild Boys shine again!

In the years following my slightly desultory experience at the 1989 Duran Duran show, my fandom continued to wane, but my enthusiasm for early Duran's work-- everything from "Planet Earth" through "A View to a Kill," encompassing their first three studio albums as well as the Arcadia project, which I likewise considered Duran canon-- never wavered.

During the early 90s, Duran enjoyed a resurgence with the effort which came to be known as The Wedding Album, since its cover featured the wedding pictures of Simon, Nick, and John's parents. "Ordinary World" and "Come Undone" both charted, and the band briefly featured as "relevant" again. But the boys would never return to top 40 territory again in the US again.

For the bulk of the 90s, the truncated form of Duran, which included LeBon, Rhodes, and John Taylor, joined by Warren Cucurullo on guitar, featured in two albums, 1995's "Thank You," which featured a mostly uninspired series of cover songs, including, perhaps most embarrassingly, Public Enemy's "911 Is A Joke," and 1997's sci-fi-semi-concept album Medazzaland, which included the minor-hit "Electric Barbarella." After Medazzaland, John Taylor quit, leaving just Simon, NIck, and Warren for 2000's badly-selling and generally ignored Pop Trash.

Then in 2004, the loyal Duran fandom got some electrifying news: the original lineup of the band, including all three of the Taylors (estranged guitarist Andy, returned-to-the-fold John, and most stunningly, drummer Roger, who had quit the scene in the mid-80s out of a desire to escape the trappings of fame, and who had dodged the spotlight for nearly two full decades). The '04 album, Astronaut, however, proved to be a disappointment, at least to me. Instead of a return to the "old sound," the album hovered in mid-oughts mediocrity.

By now, I felt even more puzzled. My thesis had always been that the high-quality music of the "glory days" would have continued if the five original members had stayed together. (This I held, somewhat in tension with my love for the Arcadia side-project So Red the Rose, which to me met the quality threshold set by the first three Duran albums in spite of only consisting of the contributions of three Duran members.) Yet, here they were, all together again, but the music still wasn’t the inspired brand of ’81-’85. (A later effort, 2010’s All You Need Is Now, produced by Mark Ronson in an active effort to recapture the early sound, came much closer; it remains my favorite of all of their post-1985 work)

Andy Taylor soon left the band again, but the rest of the original crew, that is, Simon, Nick, John, and Roger, have remained together ever since. Through the late oughts and the tens/teens, Duran kept a fairly regular schedule of an album release and a tour every few years.

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Fast forward to the present year, June 15th. I find myself, 34 years later, once again in my hometown, and in the presence of the favorite band of my youth

I was excited, of course, but also, as I was in 1989, a bit apprehensive, though for different reasons. I anticipated that the show would be fun, yet also somehow somewhat bittersweet. These guys are, after all, in their 60s now. They still look great (Simon's conspicuous potbelly notwithstanding), but they obviously wouldn't be careening around the stage like the hellions they were as youngsters. Simon certainly wouldn't be performing any leaps or pirouettes like he did on the "Sing Blue Silver" tour in 1984.

Would watching this concert, I wondered, be like going to an "Old-Timers" game, beholding former baseball greats now limp around geriatricly, barely able to hold a bat, much less swing it? That is, would it cause me to think, "These guys are great, and it's great to see them live.. but wouldn't it have been SOOO great to see them live in 1984?"

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I needn't have worried. Turns out that I had a blast.

I mean, sure, Simon wasn't the acrobatic whirling dervish that he was in his mid-20s. And the lads were older, even if they wore it well. Hell, the fans packed into the nearly full State Farm Arena were also shockingly middle-aged looking. There were no more clumps of wildly wailing "Duranie" girls, though I am sure that many of the 40-50ish women in attendance were still wailing (and lusting) in their hearts.

Yet for all that, the lads in the band seemed to be fully aware of the situation, and totally unfazed by it. Their mindset seemed to be: "Yes, we are older, and yes, our fan base is older, but so what? What do we, Duran Duran, really have to prove to anyone?"

It was precisely this absence of being anxious to establish their credibility that set apart the DDs of '89 from the DDs of '23. The former seemed to betray a wish to be show that they were still "relevant." They seemed a little hurt by the fact that they had slipped from the top, that, in the famous words of Spinal Tap's manager Ian Faith, their "appeal had become more selective."

That was why-- I felt-- they thought they had to end their set with a bummer song like "Edge of America" back then. They wanted to show that they were "mature," that they were a band to be taken seriously, not just a group of pretty boys playing vapid pop, as the critics all, quite unfairly, claimed.

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But this show, in 2023, possessed an entirely different vibe. The lads were relaxed and having loads of fun. Though this tour ostensibly supports their 2021 Future Past album, they only played three songs from it; of their rest of their setlist, nearly all of it was from the "glory years." One gathers that they might have chafed against neglecting their new stuff so much at one time, but by now they had made peace with the fact that the old stuff was what their fans really wanted to hear.

And they played well! Not at all like pitiful, geriatric "old-timers." John has always been an extremely dexterous bassist, and his talent has only multiplied through the years. Roger, the shy, retiring, formerly fame-averse drummer, played solidly. Nick, in his gaudy pinstriped suit, hat, and bright white bleached hair, provided the signature Duran synth sounds. Simon's distinctive yelping voice showed absolutely no trace of age. The backing musicians, including a stand-in guitarist (who alas wasn't Andy but shredded just like him), ably added to the alluring mix.

All smiles! John and Simon in 2023

What was most surprising, though, was my own reaction. I found myself bellowing along with the lyrics, stomping my feet, cheering myself hoarse. When it was over, and I was walking out, surrounded by a bunch of other aging, happy Gen-Xers, I recorded my thoughts.

"I feel fifteen again," I said. "But in a good way."

Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist and Muze. Visit his Youtube channel.