by Andy Taylor
Not long afterward, I had managed to snatch a few days’ holiday in the Devonshire countryside with my family, when the telephone rang one Saturday morning. Would we be interested in touring Australia and New Zealand with Robbie Williams? I asked how big the shows would be and I was told we’d be performing in front of audiences of around 70,000. Of course we’re interested! I was determined to say yes, but I was the only member of the band in favor of accepting the tour, so I had to talk the others into it. The promoter strongly urged us to go and argued that we would add 10,000 to 20,000 in ticket sales for each gig.
“Come on, guys,” I argued. “We’ve never played in New Zealand, and it would be very cool to go back down to Australia.” I guess I was also surprised by the initial negative resistance, but that’s all part of a band’s metabolism.
Eventually the others agreed and sure as sure can be, they were bloody huge gigs—enormo-dome sized! In Melbourne we broke the house record at the Telstra Dome for the biggest-ever gig, and it was overpowering. I’ve never seen so many people indoors before. There seemed to be tens of thousands of people, tier after tier, stacked to the ceiling. Robbie had this big walkway that extended out into the middle of the arena, and I realized that I hadn’t done a gig that big since Live Aid. Robbie himself was very cool, friendly, well grounded, and very, very good live—he reminded me of a young Freddie Mercury onstage. Our own performances were also very energetic, and because Robbie had created such a huge stage, we’d cover a lot of ground during a show and it could be extremely tiring on the old legs.
I suspect that one or two of the other members of Duran Duran were secretly resentful of the fact that technically we were Robbie’s support act, but I didn’t feel that way. For me it was more like a festival arrangement, and professionally it was another important notch under our belts to appear alongside someone as current and as vibrant as Robbie Williams. When we were offstage, the tour was a very sober affair, although I admit that I was still physically shattered by the end of it!
On the way home from Australia we stopped off at Hong Kong, where we received a phone call offering us a further block of four to six shows in the UK. There had been around 200,000 applications to Ticketmaster for the Kentish Town gig, so it was a fair bet there would still be a lot of demand from people to see us live. We agreed and the tickets just kept selling, until we’d played a total of seventeen dates in the UK. This included breaking the house record at Wembley Arena for the most people at a single show, which was something that I got to announce to the audience—a little piece of Wembley history.
There was still no master plan, but our renewed success did mean that we were finally in a position to land what we needed the most: a record deal. It made sense for us to go with a US record company this time around, because a lot of our comeback activity had been based in the States. Sony, which is a predominantly American label, were keen to sign us, but Universal made us a better offer in the UK. There was a lot of debate about who to go with. There was something seductive about being with a British label again, but in the end we signed with Sony. I knew Donnie Ienner, who was president of the company, from my time in America, and we got on well because he was a bit of a rock fan and he loved acts in the mold of Bruce Springsteen. Donnie was a big, tall, Ivy League kind of guy who looked as if he could have been an American senator. He’d been in the business for twenty years and he could be a bit combative, but he liked to have a bit of a banter and he respected you if you held your own.
Donnie came to see us live at Wembley and he loved the show, so we did the deal with him instantly. Our ability to deliver live had served us well again. Intellectually, going with an American record label was the right thing to do, but with hindsight, and in my view, it was a fundamental mistake, because we later found ourselves under a lot of pressure to work with certain US producers who weren’t all necessarily what Duran Duran needed. But for now, it looked like a great deal. We had Donnie on our side, and fans were packing every gig we played.
WE were in Houston to perform “Wild Boys” at a show that went out live on US network TV before the Super Bowl in February 2004, when I received a telephone call telling me that my father had cancer for the second time. It was a different type of the disease, completely unrelated to the gullet cancer he recently beat. My father had suffered prostate problems for several years, but it had now developed into fully blown cancer. The specialist said he could not have been more unlucky: to have beaten the gullet problems only to be diagnosed with an unconnected cancer was against all the odds, very unusual. Lightning had struck for the second time. It was as if the curse of Mr. Cancer had a personal vendetta against my dad. The disease had been rampant on my father’s side of the family, something that deals unfathomable odds to you and your loved ones. I remember speaking to one of our bodyguards whose own father had died of cancer, and he told me that the second time around the disease doesn’t want to let go. It’s going to get him, I thought. From this point onward, the shadow of my father’s cancer was always there lurking darkly in the background. All the feelings of apprehension and fear came back, and I knew the prognosis was not good.
Ironically, the news about my dad coincided with what should have been one of my happiest moments professionally, because it came just before we were due to receive an award for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Brit Awards in London. It was well timed, because in early April we were due to start a fully fledged Duran Duran reunion tour of the UK. My father’s diagnosis with prostate cancer had left me feeling shell-shocked, but as the Brits approached I tried to put on a brave face. We were due to perform “Wild Boys” and “Ordinary World” live at the awards, which were being held at Earl’s Court in London. Nick had insisted on “Ordinary World” even though it was a song that had been recorded while Roger and I weren’t in the band. I thought it would have made more sense to do “The Reflex” and “Wild Boys,” but Nick got his way. (I wondered if secretly he liked the idea of grandstanding the one major hit that he and Simon had enjoyed during the nineties while Roger and I were out of the frame.) It was a strange choice, considering that two out of the five of us had nothing to do with creating it, but I didn’t mind too much because it’s a song that I love to perform—and it was an immensely popular song, as Nick never missed an opportunity to point out!
I’d only ever been to the Brits once before, in the nineties—Tracey and I had been guests of Rod Stewart when he collected an award with the Faces. That had been a hilarious evening. All the Faces were there, apart from the glorious Ronnie Lane. To me, they were all just the same as I remembered seeing them on TV, still all noses and hair, except they were a bit older. They all had a proper old drink together before going onstage and playing a fantastic set. Afterward we all went back to their dressing room, where they carried on drinking and cracking jokes (usually at some other poor bastard’s expense!). Rod is one of the funniest guys you could ever meet, and watching him alongside the Faces was like an episode of The Comedians on TV. The Faces (formerly the Small Faces) were a quintessential bunch of Cockney lads who were determined to take the piss out of anyone and everyone they met, but all in the best possible taste of course.
Amid this hilarity, in walked Lenny Kravitz, who’d also been attending the awards. There was a pause in the merriment as the group eyed up their very tall, beautiful, and impeccably dressed visitor. Lenny was just about the biggest star in America at the time, so it was a very grand entrance he had acquired.
“Hey guys, I’m Lenny,” he said,
“All right, Lenny,” replied one of the Faces.
Each member of the band offered their individual greetings as Lenny went around the room.
“Hello, Lenny, son.”
“Good to see yer, Lenny. Yeah.”
“Nice one, Lenny.”
Looking very pleased with this warm reception, Lenny then went off to continue his tour of the building and other artists’ trailers. No sooner had he closed the door behind him, when there
was a brief silence followed by the most English of put-downs: “Wanker!”
The entire trailer, guests et al., burst out laughing at the cruel assessment of Lenny. It was a very UK moment, and to me it summed up British rock-and-roll humor perfectly, and how not to take yourself too fucking seriously. It wasn’t that the boys wanted to be nasty to Lenny; they were basically taking the piss out of themselves for exuding so much fake charm when they’d been introduced to him. It was also their way of saying, You might be a big international star, but you’re not in Kansas now, Toto! The other thing I remember from that night is how the Faces constantly joked with each other by repeating over and over again the choice phrase, “Bollocks, you cunt!” (And to think they wrote some of the sweetest lyrics of the times!)
So it was with fond memories that I attended the Brits with Duran Duran on February 17, 2004. We arrived at Earl’s Court in a single limousine, containing all five members of the band and two bodyguards. Also on the bill that night were 50 Cent, the Darkness, Dido, and the Black Eyed Peas. While we were getting out of our limo, a huge convoy of black vehicles pulled up containing 50 Cent and his enormous entourage. We watched in amazement as a seemingly endless stream of bodyguards climbed out of the stretched cars before finally the man himself emerged. I didn’t have the heart, or the balls, to tell him that we don’t pack heat in quite the same way over here in the UK, but who would?
When we got inside I found myself chatting with Justin Hawkins, the lead singer of the Darkness. He was a very nice bloke, very personable. However, the conversation was somewhat surreal, because he was wearing a huge set of feathered wings on his back. The bizarre outfit was part of his costume for his performance later that evening—meanwhile, he was passing the time before going onstage by playing table tennis. Just at that moment 50 Cent and entourage walked by and Hawkins squealed out a very enthusiastic greeting.
“Hey 50, man, wanna come and play table tennis with me?”
Big mistake, Justin, I thought, big mistake. You’re dressed like a chicken and he hasn’t got a clue who you are, save that you want to play him at table tennis. To add to this, he has about thirty blokes on his side. Now, a game of basketball would have been more of a cultural exchange, but an offer from a chicken-winged, androgynous rock singer to play Ping-Pong didn’t strike me as 50’s definition of urban cool. Although Justin was wearing wings, I figured this probably wouldn’t fly and if the rapper dude took it as a public put-down then . . . aren’t they supposed to shoot you at that point? The rapper stared wide-eyed at Hawkins and then walked off, saying, “Weird, man—fuckin’ weird!” It was another very English moment during an evening when Duran Duran took center stage and held it effortlessly, and we felt like kings of the Brits. I was very chuffed that my kids and family got to see the good side of our endeavors, and I was also pleased that we, as five guys all aged forty-plus, could still hack it live on national TV at the most prestigious event on the UK music calendar.
Later, at the aftershow, I chatted to Justin Timberlake, who presented us with the award. We talked about the possibility of working together at some point and he said it would be an interesting proposition. He was very into music and he’d been doing it a very long time for such a young man.
IT was a great evening at the Brits but the euphoria soon began to wear off as the impact of my father’s illness sank in. Some of the shows that we performed on our tour were fantastic and got great reviews, so my dad was still smiling on his daily trip to the paper shop, but deep down inside I knew he was living on borrowed time. I did what I could to help and offered to pay for him to have treatment in the States, but he insisted on staying close to home. I felt uneasy that my commitments in Duran Duran meant I had to be away from him so much, and at times it felt like I was living in a Bermuda Triangle as I tried to juggle between spending time either with him or my own family or with the band. One small blessing was that Duran Duran played in a gig in Newcastle for the first time in twenty-three years, which was excellent because it meant my dad could come and see the band perform live in our hometown. It was an unforgettable evening and it lifted my spirits enormously to be on home turf.
Meanwhile, Sony were eager to get their hands on our comeback album, which we’d decided to title Astronaut. We planned to make it an out-and-out pop record. The problem was that we found ourselves in the crazy position of touring, doing promotional work, and trying to finish the album all at the same time. The pressure began to build, and Nick and Simon soon started to argue incessantly about lyrics. Nick had reappointed himself head of the Lyric Police, and he seemed to be always on Simon’s back, and they bickered so often that some of the crew nicknamed them Hinge and Brackett after the two old women characters in the famous TV drag act of the same name.
Their rowing had started in the south of France, when we first began to work on the new album, and it got worse. On one occasion Nick pinged off an e-mail having a go at Simon about this lyric or that lyric, and he copied it to everybody else. Who made you the boss, Nick? I thought. In my opinion it showed that he still didn’t have much respect for the rest of us to take it upon himself to fire off such an e-mail on his own. I felt that this was particularly harsh on Simon, who seemed to be going through a patch that many songwriters experience, wherein it suddenly becomes much harder to keep churning out the material because you literally run out of words.
I’d witnessed a similar thing with other singers. Rod Stewart had been very open with me about this and explained that sometimes it’s possible to go through periods in which you don’t always enjoy it so much. With us, it got to the point where Nick seemed to be threatening to write the lyrics himself. I was utterly against this, because Simon had always been the only lyricist we needed, and you can’t replace the uniqueness of originality. But Simon couldn’t seem to get his lyrics to where he was happy with them, and he didn’t seem to want to take on board any comments from the rest of us when we tried to help.
I suddenly realized why John had initially been so against recording a new album. He’d been around Simon and Nick more than I during the late eighties and nineties, and maybe he accepted that their creative relationship was badly fractured.
I spoke to Nick about it in the hope that I might be able to help; in situations like this it’s often useful to have someone other than the singer throw in their ideas in order to get things flowing. I said something along the lines of, “I know I can work with Simon.” I hadn’t spent the wilderness years of the nineties with him, so we weren’t worn out creatively. But my efforts proved to be mainly unproductive because I felt, rightly or not, that every time I offered any constructive criticism Simon seemed to take it the wrong way. If we’d been able to communicate healthily, then the input I was offering would have been taken in good spirit, but I think it was often perceived as an attempt to rip him apart. Was I expecting the old bugger to be up to more than he really was? I wondered. Whatever the answer, it definitely wasn’t happening. I’ve thought a lot about why Simon was like that: maybe it was because he’d taken such a battering from Nick over the years or maybe that he simply couldn’t take anyone else’s input anymore. Or perhaps he’d been trying for commercial success for so long that he just couldn’t see things with a fresh head or notice the wood for the trees.
Whatever the cause, it was very frustrating for all involved. Our management team had constant behind-the-scenes conversations regarding the problem but offered little by way of a solution. We must have recorded twenty or thirty songs that I could play you now, but they were never fully finished. Frustratingly, we all spent a lot of time and energy working on material that was not completed, either because Simon didn’t write the lyrics or because Nick didn’t like the way they were going or he had other things to attend to. It was as if the intensity of their focus seemed to have faded, although they still remained very close socially. Perhaps that’s what Duran Duran was now, I wondered—a musical social club with an overpriced transport plan.
The diffi
culties started to cause new tensions between Simon and myself, and there also seemed to be growing friction between Roger and Simon, which was something that had never surfaced before. Roger and I were still on a slightly reduced percentage of the band’s earnings than Simon, Nick, and John, and it was beginning to irritate me. In my view, our live shows had been the major driving force behind Duran Duran’s comeback, and I felt we had both made a huge contribution in helping to drive the energy and vigor of that. The problem was that every time I raised the issue, something would come up to put it off, and the matter was never given any proper airtime.
The friction over lyrics came to a head in the form of a blazing row between Simon and me during a session one Saturday afternoon when I suggested he try to sing a line to song called “Want You More” in a certain way.
“Why don’t you do it like this, take the line and stick it here?” I suggested. His angry response was not in character.
“No. Don’t be pompous with me,” he snapped back.
Pompous! Why is he mad with me? I wondered.
“Don’t call me fucking pompous,” I countered. “When you write songs together, try living on a two-way street, then perhaps you won’t feel like you are constantly driving in the wrong fucking direction year after year. You weren’t like this when we were younger.”
And neither, I thought, was I.
“I’m just saying change that line and put it somewhere different and you are flatly saying no?” I asked.
Simon stood his ground, taking as hostile my attempts to be constructive, and before I knew it we were in an angry screaming match. I am out of here, I thought. What concerned me the most was that his reaction was totally out of character. Did he harbor some deep resentment from all the troubles of the eighties? Pissed off, I slipped out of the studio and caught the first British Airways flight back from Gatwick to Ibiza. I stopped for a long overdue vindaloo en route to the airport, and like any Englishman with a belly full of curry, I then drank a lot of plonk in the departure lounge—so by the time I was boarding the plane I felt wobbly and full of anger and chillies.
