Conquering planet Earth – Duran Duran in the 80s

From dingy pub back rooms to tropical climes, the glamour and excess of the Duran Duran success story defined the 80s. However, becoming the biggest band in the world came with a hefty price tag…

As the dying embers of punk gave birth to a new wave of flamboyantly-dressed club kids who pouted, preened and posed a trail across London’s West End in the late 70s, 100 miles away, a Birmingham five-piece with killer hooks to match their looks were honing a sound that would not only make them one of the defining acts of that stylish subculture but would also give the New Romantics their name.

The brainchild of Nick Rhodes, John Taylor and Stephen Duffy, three friends who shared an obsession with David Bowie, Roxy Music and the Sex Pistols, the group was born of a fervent desire to eschew the monotony of a life mapped out in the grey, grim setting of industry and manual labour, choosing instead to embark on the infinitely riskier yet glamorously glitter-strewn trail blazed by their musical heroes.

Inspired by their idols’ own escape from the mundane and the everyday by transforming themselves into otherworldly beings, the trio decided that forming a band would be their passport to superstardom.

“None of us even knew how to play an instrument at that time,” Nick Rhodes later recalled to the BBC. “But we knew that was just something we would have to learn, an obstacle that was getting in the way of what we really wanted to do – which was being in a band somehow.”

Duran Duran: Making The Wedding Album

Roles within the group would change sporadically as new members joined and quit, but the original line-up revolved around Stephen Duffy as singer and lyricist (plus occasional bass and drums), Simon Colley on bass, John Taylor on guitar (he moved on to bass after Colley left), and Nick Rhodes playing the synthesiser. In this format, the group began cultivating a unique sound which com prised elements of all the artists they loved.

Realising their four-man line-up placed limitations on the kind of music they could make, they recruited drummer Roger Taylor (a previous acquaintance from the Birmingham music scene) and guitarist Andy Taylor via an advert in the Melody Maker.

Now fully staffed, and having named themselves after a character in Jane Fonda’s campy, sci-fi sex romp Barbarella, the newly-christened Duran Duran were intent on putting Birmingham on the musical map, bridging the gap between the scintillating synth-pop that was defining London’s club scene and the punky new wave of Manchester.

The key to the group transcending the back rooms of Birmingham pubs came with their installation as house band at the Rum Runner, the city’s portal for emerging music trends. The venue was often described as the city’s own version of London’s Blitz club, although owners Paul and Michael Berrow had, in fact, taken their inspiration from the iconic nightspots of New York.

They would frequently visit the Big Apple to check in on what the latest clubs were doing, returning with suitcases filled with the hottest Stateside records, often giving them the upper hand over Steve Strange’s operation in the capital.

“It was much edgier in Birmingham,” Nick insists. “When we came to London we finally went to the Blitz and we thought, ‘Is this it?’ because it was all so manicured and nice. Birmingham was more real and less cliquey – the crowd there was very colourful, fun and expressive. It was like fantasy world, really. If you made a Hollywood movie and they tried to cast it, however quirky they tried to make it, it would never touch what it really was.

Read our feature on Duran’s 1990 album Liberty

“Paul and Michael Berrow had gone to New York to Studio 54 and Paradise Garage, and came back with a vision to bring that to Birmingham. And the look of the Rum Runner, with the mirror tiles and the neon, was a big part of that.”

The Berrows had been impressed by the demo tape Duran Duran had given them to land a gig at the club and, spotting the new outfit’s obvious potential, decided to take on a much more significant role, offering to manage the band on a full-time basis. As the brothers boasted a bulging contacts book and had a single-minded ambition that matched that of the band themselves, it made for a perfect union.

As well as managing the group, the Berrows allowed them to use the club as rehearsal rooms when it was closed (as they did with UB40 and Dexys Midnight Runners), gave them jobs as barmen, glass collectors, doormen and DJs, and bought them instruments and equipment.

However, just as the group felt they were on the verge of a major breakthrough, they were dealt a severe blow when Stephen Duffy quit to form his own band, The Hawks, deciding he didn’t want the fame and adulation the outfit was obviously headed for. The move threw Duran Duran into turmoil as they suddenly found themselves without a lead singer and lyricist.

In May 1980, after a succession of new vocalists including Andy Wickett had failed to work out (“We were known as the band that had a different singer at every gig” Nick says), Fiona Kemp, a barmaid at the Rum Runner, recommended they should meet her boyfriend, who had sung in various punk bands around town.

With a background in musical theatre, Simon Le Bon had been a minor child star and was studying drama at Birmingham University when the opportunity to join the band came along. For his audition, he perhaps ill-advisedly went in character as a “rock star”.

“I turned up in a pair of pink, skin-tight, washed-out, leopard-skin trousers,” Simon recalls. “I just put on the best clothes I had that I thought would appeal to a band – especially as Duran Duran had previously, I’d heard, had a very stylish lead singer.”

Sartorial misstep aside, Duran Duran and Le Bon were the perfect match, not only as band and frontman, but also from a songwriting perspective. The group had proved they knew how to create catchy, groove-based melodies, but were struggling in the lyrical department since the departure of Duffy. Le Bon arrived with a notebook crammed with poems and song lyrics he had written.

“Not only were they lyrics, they were really great lyrics,” Nick Rhodes said. “I remember looking through them and thinking ‘Wow! These are songs in here. All we have to do is write music to these.’”

With their line-up complete, the band quickly threw themselves into writing and recording, supporting themselves with their jobs at the Rum Runner while playing regular gigs at the club. As the house band, they quickly established a loyal, sizeable following, with crowds flocking to see them.

Ambitiously wanting to create a kind of multimedia event, Duran Duran took their cues from the art-rock of The Velvet Underground, incorporating film projection, theatrical costumes and references to the Warhol scene and the dark decadence of the Berlin cabaret circuit into their live shows.

As their appeal grew, the Berrows sensed that the band had reached its zenith within Birmingham and decided to boost their visibility by getting them booked onto Hazel O’Connor’s Breaking Glass Tour of the UK as the support act.

As the band attracted praise from critics up and down the country, a bidding war among record companies broke out, with representatives from all the major labels descending on the concluding show of the tour in London in December 1980. Phonogram and EMI emerged as frontrunners and the boys opted for the latter, citing “a certain patriotism” to The Beatles as their reason for doing so.

Duran Duran: Making Rio

Duran Duran: Making The Wedding Album

Read our feature on Duran’s cover art

As they lived it up on camera in exotic climes, the Rio videos also helped establish their fanbase. While Girls On Film had drawn criticism for its objectification of women, they redressed the balance by objectifying themselves in turn with countless scenes of the guys languishing shirtless on foreign beaches. These pop heart-throbs looked like perfect fodder for the likes of Smash Hits, No.1 and Look-In.

While mainstream success had always been Duran Duran’s ultimate goal, the rapidity at which that success turned to mania took everyone by surprise. As Rio’s delayed success in the US took hold in 1983, the band found itself the lynchpin of a second ‘British Invasion’, leading the charge of acts such as Culture Club, Eurythmics, The Police and Bananarama.

Dubbed “The Fab Five” in reference to the moniker given to John, Paul, George and Ringo two decades earlier, the hysteria that surrounded every concert, TV appearance or record shop signing (12,000 fans flocked to New York’s Times Square to meet them in 1983) was unlike anything seen since Beatlemania.

As the adulation began to impact upon their private lives, they began to feel like prisoners of their success, unable to go out without being mobbed. As fans craved more and more contact with the band, nothing seemed off limits.

In the age of social media, artists can post an Instagram story or tweet to appease the constant need for updates; in the 80s, every weekly magazine feature and television interview was pounced upon and eagerly devoured, and soon fans began to follow the band everywhere and even hold vigils outside their homes.

The constant pressure and scrutiny soon took its toll on some members of the band, particularly Roger, Andy and John. As the biggest pin-up, John particularly struggled to cope, throwing himself into the debauched rock star lifestyle.

“All I knew was that The Beatles did drugs, the Stones did drugs, The Clash did drugs… why would you not want to do them?” he later revealed to VH1. “If someone is really attractive and wants to have sex with you, then why not?”

The band had enjoyed such lucrative success in the Rio era that in early 1983 the decision was made that they should become tax exiles, living abroad for a year. This, it was thought, might also provide respite from the hysteria that surrounded them, as well as minimising the risk of becoming overexposed – something which was a serious possibility at the time, with negative or disparaging articles about the band appearing more frequently in the press.