Duran Duran “All You Need Is Now”
“Hungry Like the Wolf” opens with an innocent giggle that, within three minutes, becomes a lustful moan. Duran Duran’s fifth U.K. single was their first to chart in the U.S., reaching number three on the Hot 100 in 1982. And while it may not be their greatest song -- “Rio” and “Union of the Snake” provide stiff competition -- it’s their definitive text. Along with its video, the track set forth the prototype for the Fab Five: young, dewy, beautiful, shirtless and prone to white, designer blazers. It had late Moroder synth, Post-Punk guitar, anglophilia and heaps of sex. In fact, it contained everything that we ever wanted from Duran Duran. Unfortunately for us, they wanted so much more.
Between 1981 and 1985, if you were under the age of thirty, and especially if you were a young woman or a girl, Duran Duran were the most important band on the planet. Michael Jackson was music for everyone. Prince and The Boss were mostly still American phenomena. The Police were for college types. But Simon, Nick, Andy, John and Roger were music for twenty one year old Diana Spencer -- the Princess of Wales, which meant that Duran Duran was also music for every English speaking girl on the planet, which meant that they were necessarily interesting to every teen and pre-teen boy who liked those girls, or who liked Princess Diana, or who liked Simon, Nick, Andy, John or Roger.
All that adoration, though, was either not enough or far too much for “The Fab Five.” Initially, they had been lumped in with the New Romantic movement -- Adam and The Ants, Culture Club, and the like. But they wanted to be taken seriously, like Roxy Music or New Order. In their minds, they had more in common with Gang of Four than Spandau Ballet. And so, they eschewed those frilly shirts in favor of angular, tailored, white suits and pastel shirts and headbands. Their synth programs were post-Moroder. Their guitars were post-Punk. Their music videos were actually films. Duran Duran were The New Wave. They were only Pop inasmuch as they were Pop Art. At least according to the band.
Their “Tiger Beat” aversion, however, was ultimately for naught. They were simply too adorable. Their hit songs too infectious. Their throngs of “princess prep” fans too irrepressible. It did not matter that they wanted to be taken seriously as artists. It didn’t matter that they made high concept videos with actual movie directors, shot in remote locations on 35mm film. It didn’t matter that Nick Rhodes believed that “Video is to us like stereo was to Pink Floyd." Or rather, all of it mattered only to the extent that a fledgling cable network called MTV needed content and that Duran Duran made extraordinary content.
As much as Princess Di and her teenage acolytes loved Duran Duran, MTV loved them even more. Between the network’s launch at the end of 1981, and their ascent on the shoulders of “Thriller” in 1983, Duran Duran were the grist that kept the music video mill working. Duran Duran were must see music television. They wore periwinkle blue suits and tucked in their ties for their Bauhaus inspired short film for “Is There Something I Should Know.” They sat, bare chested at sundown, on a beached ship in some exotic, far off land, for “Say I Prayer for Me Now.” They traversed the desert fleeing from, or in search of some serpent man, occasionally rocking the casbah in “Union of the Snake.” They rode motorcycles and waved sabers to ignite a rebellion in “New Moon on Monday.” They sailed the sea in pastel colors, drinking champagne and playing air saxophone for exotic models with painted faces in “Rio.” And, of course, they drove their vintage Land Rover across Sri Lanka, stopping into the occasional canteen after nearly dying of dehydration in the desert, in search of love in “Hungry Like the Wolf.” There is no band who ever achieved such audio video conflation as Duran Duran. At least in America, their hit songs were their hit videos.
Duran Duran’s telegenic success ensured that the group would go on to sell tens of millions of albums. But it also ensured that they would be largely derided or ignored by critics and high minded adults. No matter how artful their videos were, grown ups decided that Duran Duran were Pop stars -- enchanting, but disposable. They were described like a box of assorted confections — every fan could have their favorite. John seemed tall and mysterious. Nick and Simon were effete and gorgeous. Roger looked tough but funny. And John looked bookish and sharp. Alternately, and if you wanted to be ungenerous, you could say that they resembled Derek Zoolander and his friends singing, dancing and car washing to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go;” except Duran Duran were (much) better looking and ostensibly not fashion models.
By the time Duran Duran tired of their plight, however, it was too late. They would never be Chic meets Roxy Music, with a dash of The Sex Pistols. The corner of the world that they imagined for themselves had been taken over by New Order, The Cure and The Smiths. Duran Duran were doomed to be Pop stars. And they could not tolerate it. After half a decade of fame, fortune, drink, drugs, and screaming girls, they splintered, and then buckled. They’ve spent roughly the last forty years trying to put things back together.
John Taylor and Andy Taylor were the first two to break. Seeking harder edged, more adult respite from their Pop stardom, the duo teamed up with Robert Palmer and Tony Thompson (Chic) to form the Power Station. The supergroup’s self-titled debut was a massive success in both the U.K. and the U.S., spawning a couple of hits and keeping the Duran Duran name in the air. For their part, Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor formed Arcadia and released one modestly successful, but quickly forgotten, album as a trio. Ultimately, neither dalliance stuck, but collectively, the break opened a door that would never be properly shut. Over the next thirty years, each of the Taylors would walk out through that door. First there was Roger, who quit the band in the mid-80s and would not return for nearly two decades. Next was Andy, who actually quit the band twice, the second time permanently. And, finally, John Taylor left in the late 90s, only to return several years later.
Regardless of the permutation, though, nothing new seemed to work. Or rather, nothing seemed to work nearly as well as it once had. “Notorious” from 1986 was a huge seller, but also a lackluster beginning to a series of mediocre albums from the “Faltering Four” (my nickname, not theirs). In 1993, however, the “Tottering Three” (I apparently have a long list of these zingers) -- Simon, Nick and John -- released “Ordinary World” and “Come Undone,” two surprisingly massive, and mostly boring, hit singles. Nearly a decade removed from their dayglo prime, Duran Duran had become stars once again with the help of “Adult Alternative” radio and VH1 (not MTV).
Their second wave of success proved short-lived. They followed up “The Wedding Album” with a record of covers (“Thank You”) in 1995, and then “Medazzaland,” from 1997, which was not even released in Europe. As the nineties became the aughts, Duran Duran were not quite an anachronism and not ready to be nostalgia. Remarkably, however, they refused to give in. Simon, Nick and John, it seemed, were willing to try most anything to keep Duran Duran going. That included a much anticipated, but ill fated, reunion of the “Fab Five” for 2004’s “Astronaut,” and a follow-up that was co-produced by Timbaland and featured guest spots by Justin Timberlake. But nothing seemed to work. The singles didn’t hit. Radio didn’t seem to care. MTV had long moved on. It increasingly seemed that Duran Duran would simply be known as one of the greatest Pop bands from perhaps the greatest moment in the history of pop — and nothing more.
But what if that moment returned? Or rather, what if they could recreate it? That’s what super-fan and super-producer, Mark Ronson, wondered. Ronson, who’d produced Christina Aguilera, Amy Winehouse and Adele, wondered what every Duran Duran fan had been hoping for since 1984: “What if we made the follow-up to “Rio?” The idea was almost too obvious. Ronson was a studio wunderkind, a world class DJ and a child of the 1980s. He knew, firsthand, the power of Duran Duran on the dance floor, on the boombox, on the radio, on MTV and on posters on the wall. A generation of English women and anglophiles had dreamed about a sequel to “Rio” (or, rather, “Seven and the Ragged Tiger”) but Mark Ronson was the only one who maybe, possibly, conceivably, could make it happen.
Except that he couldn’t. Not exactly. Recorded throughout 2010, and released digitally in December of that year, and physically in early 2011, “All You Need Is Now” features many of the ingredients but very little of the flavor of early Duran Duran. Simon, Nick, John and Roger are joined by Ana Matronic (Scissor Sisters), Kelis and Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire) who, along with Ronson, help the fellas attempt to balance the pretense of New Wave with the reality of middle age. In the end, though the intentions were honorable, the trick proved too precarious. To be clear, Ronson’s not to blame. He did his darndest. And it would have been a helluva trick had he actually pulled it off. Meanwhile, he managed to get some French Disco out of Nick Rhodes and some Giorgio Moroder from Roger Taylor. The issue is not the sound, which is lively and true to early Duran Duran, while also demonstrating awareness of DFA Records and Daft Punk. No -- it’s not the sound of the band or the record. Sadly, it’s the songs -- which are mostly good but never thrilling -- and the singer -- who had simply lost some of the force and affect of his younger self.
2011 was also the nadir of the modern recorded music industry. CD sales were non-existent, download sales were bottoming out and streaming had not yet begun to fill in the gap. As a result, artists -- even super-famous ones like Duran Duran -- had to go to great lengths to encourage commercial interest. In the case of “All You Need Is Now,” it meant at least a half dozen versions of the album. There was the digital (i.e. iTunes) version, which was released late in 2010 and featured nine tracks. There was the physical version, which included five additional tracks, though, two were really just orchestral takes on the title-track. There were additional tracks for the “Deluxe” additions. There was a Japanese only edition, designed to combat rampant piracy in Asia. And there was the special U.S. edition with a DVD.
Honestly, I still don’t really know how many variations of the album were produced in total. But, one thing seems fairly obvious: the best tracks were the nine featured on the original, digital release. At a time when sales were brutally hard to come by, it seems illogical, possibly masochistic even, to have held back the good stuff for CDs, vinyl or special markets. As a very lapsed fan, I was convinced that those nine iTunes tracks were all I needed to hear. And yet, I spent a couple of weeks with the “physical version” of the record -- all fourteen tracks and fifty seven minutes of it -- smelling the sounds, in touch with the ground, on the hunt down for something. Anything.
As it happens, there’s a lot of good to be found on “All You Need Is Now.” It’s exceptionally well made -- almost never feeling desperate, almost always sounding like an actual band. In spite of his reputation for big hits and club bangers, Ronson understands restraint and the benefit of live recording. And in the same way that Rock and Dance music had increasingly co-mingled in the 2000s, Duran Duran sound quite contemporary on their thirteenth studio album. The title track sounds like Damon Albarn doing a Trent Reznor imitation. Or possibly vice versa. But, either, way, it’s not a bad thing. It’s taut and loud in the verses and open and sweeter in the chorus. The irony, of course, is a song about resisting nostalgia by a band who was necessarily doing the opposite.
It gets better, though. “Blame the Machines,” a propulsive response to Gary Numan’s “Cars,” only thirty years later and with a warmer bounce in the synth, is as fun as the album gets. Simon Le Bon sounds paranoid and excitable and the guitars take a back seat to the computers, which, according to the story, lead our protagonist the wrong way on the Autobahn. It’s medium high concept, mostly-danceable, catchy as all get out, Pop music -- precisely what Duran Duran had once been known for.
The closest Duran Duran gets to “Rio” is midway through the album, with “Girl Panic.” The tribal beat and synth horns that open the song practically direct the video for Russell Mulcahy: Cut to the boys, wearing matching white jumpers, hopping into some vintage Jeep on a side street in Tokyo to avoid the throng of over-excited, will stop at nothing, young girls, chasing close behind. It’s probably the only song on “All You Need is Now” that could have been made in 1983 -- tight, Post-Punk guitar and Simon vamping more than singing. It’s among the fastest tracks on the album and -- to state the obvious -- it’s also about girls. When I imagined the sequel to “Rio,” this is probably what I pictured and heard. Which is not to say that it’s perfect, or as good as any of their first dozen hits, or even that it’s the best song on the record. But it adequately scratches the decades old itch in a way that no other song on the record does.
The less scintillating moments -- of which there are many -- fail on account of pacing and voice. Too much of “All You Need is Now” is mired in mid-tempo, not quite Rock song, not quite ballad. No amount of second (or third) rhythm or clever synth inserts make up for the fact that tracks like “Leave a Light On” and “Mediterranea” are more listless than they are moody. These are very competent, Adult Alternative love songs for fans who loved “Ordinary World” as much as they did “Union of the Snake.” There are some of them out there. But I’m not one.
Similarly, and all too often, it’s Simon who gets in the way. Though his defenders always fancied himself a writer and a poet as much as a singer, the truth is that he was never much of either. Simon Le Bon was a brilliant frontman -- gorgeous and full of attitude. Technically, he was a perfectly adequate singer, though, anyone who remembers his 1985 Live Aid performance might suggest he was not even that. But he was exuberant and desperate and completely English. As a writer, Le Bon is better than most. He can write narratively and metaphorically and -- it goes without saying -- cinematically. But he is not Keats or Rimbaud or Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan or P.T. Anderson or Aaron Sorkin. Moreover, we wouldn't care if he was. We don’t care all that much if our favorite bands have writers behind the microphone. We care what they sound like, and, in the case of Duran Duran, what they look like.
There’s a famous (at least for me) MTV segment from 1983 wherein Martha Quinn asks Simon Le Bon if he thinks his fans know what “Union of the Snake” is even about. After Simon charmingly fumbles his way through an answer, Martha sends it out to her reporter on the beat, who asks several fans if they do, in fact, know what the song is about. One man indicates that he’d never thought about it. One teen girl demurs, saying she does not know. Another girl says that she thinks the song is about “an idea.” That last girl, of course, was right. Simon loves singing about his ideas. And, with age, he had more ideas. It also seemed that he likes to “sing” more. Whereas young Simon got by on attitude, middle-aged Simon would nurse songs, showing off his lower register and his range, as if to right the wrong from that bum note back at Live Aid.
Honestly, I don’t want too much Simon Le Bon singing. He’s not Freddie Mercury. He’s not Sting. And so, when he gets into George Michael territory on "Safe (In the Heat of the Moment),” alongside Ana Matronic, he sounds outmatched. Inversely, when he actively tries to sound disaffected in service of a concept, as he does on “Other People’s Lives” -- a song about celebrity gossip and voyeurism -- he sounds bored and silly. Perhaps the single biggest difference between “All You Need is Now” and “Rio” is the transformation of Simon Le Bon from irresistible frontman to uninteresting singer. It’s more than a difference, in fact. It’s a void -- a chasm.
“Too Bad You’re So Beautiful,” on the other hand, is perhaps the best of the “bonus tracks,” sporting a killer synth program and some compression on the vocals that make fifty-something Simon sound like twenty-something Simon. Eighty percent of the song would stand admirably on the band’s early records, but, for whatever reason -- perhaps because it was bolted on before it was truly done -- the chorus is a flat, two-note recitation that threatens all of the fun. Graciously, the track is more verse than it is chorus and, along with “Girl Panic,” is as close as we get to “totally 80s.”
Both the digital and physical versions of the record close with “Before the Rain,” a Baroque Pop song with swirling strings, about a man haunted by the ghosts of his own guilt. Whereas many Baroque Pop songs get self-serious or twee or overwrought, though, Mr. Ronson keeps the album closer properly attired. “All You Need is Now” closes in a dark evening suit, appropriate for a gentleman of a certain age, but many years apart from the coverboys who would wear anything -- white linen jackets with no shirts, periwinkle, double breasted suits, red headbands -- anywhere -- Sri Lanka, Antigua, Hungary, on a boat or in the sand.
Over the past decade, Duran Duran have released two more respectable albums, carefully toeing the line between looking backward and forward. More recently, in 2022, they were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, having handily won the fan voting ahead of Eminem, Lionel Richie, Dolly Parton and other luminaries. At this point, there’s a dual sense of inevitability and triviality about the band. On the one hand, Duran Duran may go on for years, releasing totally fine and completely not thrilling albums while looking oddly younger than their age. Lifelong fans will be happy for the new material and the milestones, while more discerning listeners might roll their eyes. However, I’m not sure any of it matters — the above average albums, the below average albums, the awards and the gossip. They persevere in part because they seem to want to. But, I suspect, they also go on because we all need them to.
Duran Duran are not like most of the members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In fact, they are unlike most Rock bands. They are more like Marilyn Monroe — captured in celluloid and frozen in ember. We cannot unsee or unhear what we saw and heard between 1981 and 1984. They’ll never remake “Rio” because, in our minds, they’re always twenty years old, playing “Rio.” Their perseverance — their ebbs and their minor flows — are more like echoes of our first time than they are like new material. They’re always the Wild Boys. It’s all, always, The Reflex.