“Who gets frustrated about stuff like that?” he says when asked if the band was perturbed that it took such a long time to be inducted. Duran Duran performs with Chic on Sunday, Sept. 10, at Blossom. “[The Inductions were] great. Most people who do what I do are outsiders. We’re not part of the union, but we have our little posses. When you come together for an event like that, you realize you’re part of a group that has some power because it’s contemporary music and you have your place in it. It’s invigorating. And I got some humility from it too. We were somewhere between the Eurythmics and Eminem. I can hang there. It works for me.”
Former member Andy Taylor’s announcement that he was battling cancer added a bit of poignancy to the induction.
“He’s undergoing treatment and feeling better today than he was a year ago,” says Taylor when asked about his former bandmate. “We will raise money for his treatment with a show we’re playing. We’re connected again with him, which is nice. [Singer] Simon [Le Bon] and [drummer] Roger [Taylor] just saw him over the weekend. We’re with him and hoping to pass on his spirit as much as possible. You get to a certain age, and these things happen. Friends are going to get sick.”
Given that the group started way back in 1978, it’s no wonder that aging has become a concern. Band members were still quite young when Duran Duran released its self-titled debut in 1981 and spearheaded what was then called the New Romantic movement. Despite their youth, the guys took a sophisticated approach to making music and drew from an array of musical influences.
“It was an exciting time for young people,” says Taylor. “We had the punk rock explosion with the Sex Pistols and the Clash. It was an incredibly energized era. We all got started in that. [Guitarist] Andy [Taylor] was the only one who came from a different angle and was into hard rock. The rest of us came at it from New Wave. We were unique in so far as we took disco music seriously and were toying with synthesizers and early sequencers and were groove-aware. Punk rock wasn’t a rhythm section’s medium. We were very much about building a rhythm section that would make people wanna dance. That was a big part of what we were about.”
Taylor cites the Beatles and Bowie as two of the acts he particularly admired.
“My mother loved the Beatles,” he says. “Then, I got into Bowie in my teens. I followed his journey as a teenager more closely than anybody else. I loved Roxy Music as well. I loved the sonic textures they had going with the saxophone and the oboe and the synthesizers and guitar. Bowie was great because he kept changing. He wouldn’t let himself be defined by any one sound or style. At the time, I didn’t realize how unusual that was. Now, I look back and think, ‘Who else did that?’”
Taylor says the Pistols and Clash showed him that he could be a musician even if he didn’t have any formal training. Thanks to some exposure from MTV, the single “Girls on Film” became a major hit, and the group continued delivering hits throughout the late ‘80s.
“I think in terms of breaking America, we could’t have done it without MTV, which carved out a new audience that hadn’t really existed,” he says. “It was like a rallying point for kids who weren’t into the classic rock and the stuff that was the mainstream American music. MTV was this place you could go and hear all sorts of interesting music. It was very un-American really, but it was kids looking for something different. I think the LGTBQ movement was moved forward by MTV, which was a very broad church. Duran Duran was just a part of that. We were very fortunate in that we were a strong team, and we were five very ambitious guys.”
While the band’s popularity waned a bit in the ’90s, since releasing Astronaut in 2004, the group has put out new album every four or five years. The latest effort, 2021’s Future Past, features introspective songs. Though written before the pandemic, they actually speak to what people felt during the lockdown that took place.
“When you’re working on songs, you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing,” says Taylor. “You just have to show up day in and day out. Musically, we are usually ahead with musical ideas and you have technology on your side. Lyrically, it’s harder. The one time that we really got lucky was with ‘Invisible.’ It was one of the first songs we wrote for the sessions. It was at a point when Simon [Le Bon] was having issues around the home and he was feeling invisible within his marriage. He wrote about that. To come out of lockdown and to pick up the strands of the album, we listened to this song, and it spoke to what people had been feeling.”
With its funky bass riffs, metallic-sounding drums and forlorn vocals, the tune captures Duran Duran at its essence and sounds both retro and contemporary.
The Blossom show appropriately pairs the band with Chic, a ’70s funk band that served as an inspiration. The group’s leader, Nile Rodgers, was inducted into the Rock Hall in 2017 for Musical Excellence in another long overdue gesture.
“I always say to run don’t walk to see Chic,” says Taylor. “It’s magical for us. They were there at the beginning of the band. They are such a big part of Duran Duran’s DNA. To bring them to our audience is great. The audience just loves them. They are unique. You will never see another band like them that plays disco and funk and R&B with that level of musicianship. We’re very proud to have them with us.”
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This article appears in Aug 9-22, 2023.
