In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, and Duran Duran

by John Taylor

  The tour picked up the next evening at Rock City in Nottingham, where I experienced my onstage contact-lens calamity. In reaction to a sudden head move halfway through “Anyone Out There,” my left lens fell out. The room dropped out of focus. Instincts surged. I saw it, glinting cheekily up at me, standing out against Rock City’s carpeted floor. I swooped down on it and, in one sleek move, picked it up and put it in my pocket without missing a beat. At the end of the song I had a mirror brought to me so I could reapply it into my eye. It was a nerve-racking moment, and the thought it might happen again became a nightly worry. Thank God and the Russians for Lasik eye surgery, which would arrive in time for the 2002 reunion.

  When our first national tour was over, we were ready to complete the album. Nick, Simon, and Andy decamped with Colin to the residential facility in Chipping Norton for a few weeks of overdubs. Roger and I, our work done, had time to kick around. We were scheduled press interviews to do, which I found easy and didn’t require the kind of discipline that playing did. Throughout the course of a press day, I could get slowly hammered, and it wouldn’t matter one bit because there was no show to play that night.

  I found myself struggling to fill the time when I wasn’t working, particularly if I was away from girlfriend Roberta in the capital. A great deal of my identity was now caught up in the late-night club world, and my nights out were becoming longer, more often than not stretching into the next day. I was developing the habit of mixing my drinks, and discovering the even higher octane thrills that came from mixing my drinks with drugs.

  Cocaine was a big part of the seventies rock mythology I grew up with. It went with the territory of fame, success, and record sales. It wasn’t even a secret. I’d read about it in the pages of the NME.

  I had already gotten a taste for coke at the Rum Runner, where it was popular with some of the more louche clientele, who were always happy to share with the golden boys. In London, in the music business, cocaine use was as normal as drinking a pint of bitter was in the pubs of Birmingham. Everybody was doing it and no one felt bad about it. The business took account of the hours that would be lost due to hangovers and scrambled thoughts. Hundreds of grams were being charged to record company accounts across the city every week.

  It was all a bit of a laugh, really. No one took it seriously. No one had been to rehab. Yet.

  PART 2

  HYSTERIA

  28 The Whole Package

  We asked Fin Costello, a photographer whose work we liked, to shoot the album cover. I wanted an old car in the picture, to give it a Gatsbyesque, neoclassical vibe. But I paid the price for the suggestion, getting stuck at the back, my eyes barely visible. I’m not crazy about the photo that was chosen for the cover of the album. None of us were, as there were many better pictures of the band taken that year, but the design that wraps around the image is superb.

  At Nick’s suggestion, EMI brought in Malcolm Garrett, who had designed all the Buzzcocks’ artwork. Malcolm created designs that were thoughtful and clean. His Duran cover is a classic. It could have been designed by the great minimalist architect John Pawson. The band logo—my favorite of all our logos—was expensive to produce, with silver foil strips added for emphasis.

  It was classy.

  It said, “We are the new breed.”

  • • •

  “Planet Earth” peaked at number 7 in the UK pop charts. We all wanted “Girls on Film” as the follow-up and were keen to get it out quickly, but EMI claimed to know better, saying “Careless Memories” was the right follow-up to “Planet Earth.” It had more integrity as a song, apparently, and would show the audience our deeper, more serious side. Maybe it did all that, but it didn’t sell, and in some corners of the industry we were swiftly written off as one-hit wonders.

  At this point, in an attempt to stanch the flow of blood, EMI’s press and public relations department kicked in. Press and PR was run by Janice Hague, a strawberry blonde who coordinated publicity for a most diverse roster of artists: Kate Bush, Angelic Upstarts, Queen, and Bow Wow Wow.

  She dealt with the national tabloid newspapers, the weekly music press, and the now-burgeoning glossy color pop press. Smash Hits was the market leader, and they took to Duran right away, giving us our first cover.

  When the magazine came out, we were all surprised that they had chosen a picture of Nick and Roger for the cover. They didn’t use a band shot or a picture of Simon, which would have been a more conventional choice.

  People around the band saw that as a signal. There was clearly depth to Duran Duran and a wider appeal.

  Our policy of equality was justified.

  We took photos at Chipping Norton for The Face magazine, which had also just started and was already being thought of as important. That was a great session—off-duty, having a laugh in and out of the farm buildings, playing pool.

  As if in retaliation for the embrace of Smash Hits and The Face, my beloved NME declared us the enemy. They gave our Rock City show the meanest review I had ever read. “Duran Duran are going to be huge,” ran the last line, “and the sad thing is, they don’t deserve any of it.”

  I couldn’t get my head around that. Should we have put in more time in the Transit van on the motorway? Should I have gone to Juilliard? The NME never altered their position on us once they had formed it.

  The other area of press that Janice handled was the teen-oriented girlie press, magazine weeklies like Jackie and Diana and My Guy. I knew Jackie and Diana well. All the girls at school read them and would often tear out the Bolan or Bowie center spread for me if I asked. I didn’t see anything wrong in Duran appearing in those mags, and one afternoon, when I was sitting in Janice’s office, I raised the subject.

  “What about the teen press? What about Jackie? Is that still popular? It was a couple of years ago, when I was at school.”

  “Oh yeah, it’s huge!” says Janice.

  “So why don’t we send them some pictures?”

  “I could put a package together,” says Janice, a bit doubtfully.

  A week later, back in Janice’s office again, she said, “I heard back from Jackie and they really like you. There’s a girl there, you should call her. In fact, do it now.”

  She slid me the number across the desk. I picked up the phone and called her. The editor’s name was—by pure coincidence—Jackie.

  And so began a love affair with the British teen press, a courtship that would last years and trigger a level and type of fame that none of us had intended or could ever have expected.

  Like all the best seductions, it only worked because we weren’t really conscious of what we were doing. We weren’t trying to seduce the teen press. Never had we envisaged ourselves as having that kind of appeal. We were just trying to get the music out.

  Once we made ourselves available to Jackie, all the other teen mags wanted in, and once they had a taste, they couldn’t get enough. What’s more, we were as equal in their eyes as we were in our own. Each of us, independently of the others, turned out to be pinup material. Together, we now had real power.

  Back at the Rum Runner, we started receiving fan mail.

  It was a lot of fun. We would gather in the club restaurant some time in the afternoon and pass out the mail, letters, and packages, like something out of a Beatles movie: six for you, six for him, one for you.

  We sat there, all of us diligently doing more homework than we had ever done at school, signing photos and writing replies to the letters. Building bridges, forging relationships with girls—for these letters were written almost exclusively by teenage girls—around the country. We would respond to the letters and often receive responses to our responses. I got to recognize the handwriting of some enthusiastic early adopters and would know whom a letter was from before I opened it.

  What began to happen was that girls aligned themselves with their favorite Duran star. Some gangs of friends formed subgroups of five, mirroring us, where each friend could have a favorite Duran without steppin
g on the toes or desires of the other four friends, because if you were an Andy fan, clearly you could not be friends with another Andy fan. That would not work. You could be friends with a Nick fan, however, because there was no conflict of interest. Both friends could live together in harmony with Nick and Andy on that designated fantasy desert island for ever and ever, without a hint of envy.

  The fans would do some pretty crazy things over the years but my favorite has to be the girl in Atlanta who was present at a press conference we gave on the reunion tour. I had a cold and was sniffling into a series of tissues, absentmindedly throwing them into a wastepaper bin under the table.

  Next time into the city, the girl called out to me at another public appearance, “I was the girl who got your cold.”

  I wondered what on earth she was talking about.

  “After you left the press conference last year I stole your used tissues. I wanted to get your cold.”

  • • •

  In June, we toured again, kicking off with that fateful night at the Brighton Dome when Durandemonium officially began.

  The fans were as much of a surprise to each other at Brighton that night as they were to us. They had thought that as they were the first in their school to get into DD, maybe they were the first in Brighton. But that night they realized they were members of a rapidly exploding club.

  Duranies rock on.

  Every night on that tour, Simon would try to take control.

  The stern teacher pose seemed to work. It could at least create enough of a pause in which to say, “Good evening, Newcastle,” or “This is our new single, ‘Girls on Film.’”

  But what did that matter, really? They already knew that. What they really wanted to know was this: Can we be theirs? Individually or collectively? Do we want them as much as they want us?

  The tour concluded with a triumphant night at the Birmingham Odeon. This time it was our sound check, our limo getting chased across town. We were now strapped in for a ride, and there would be no getting off. The mania that we had witnessed inside the concert halls enveloped us 24/7.

  • • •

  Being a teen idol means you become the focus of a very unique kind of energy, midwives to adolescence. Everywhere we went, there were young girls trying to get our attention, catch our eye. More often than not, their eyes were teary and bloodshot. They were sad and happy at the same time.

  The most negative aspect of our fan-driven fame was the degree to which we found ourselves in competition with each other. The fans really were comparing Nick with Andy, Andy with John, John with Simon, and so on. Who was the most handsome, the smartest, the most artistic, the most popular? At first we didn’t take it too seriously; we had all studied at the school of A Hard Day’s Night.

  It had never occurred to us that any one of us might be more important than the others.

  But, one afternoon, as the driver attempted to back our tour bus out of the Glasgow Apollo parking lot after a matinee performance, the kids swarming around the bus were banging on the steel sides, chanting, “We want John! We want John!”

  I wanted to crawl into a hole. I still didn’t like the attention that came with coming first. I would much rather they had stuck to chanting, “We want Duran Duran!”

  Confusing. And not at all the kind of confusion that I had expected to have to deal with as a member of a modern art-school band, and one that prided itself on its democracy.

  29 All Aboard for the Promised Land

  In September, we left Heathrow for our first trip to the States.

  It was a long flight by Air India. Air India economy.

  When we finally emerged at JFK, it was dark. Manhattan had been glimpsed out of the aircraft window, and Nick, Simon, Roger, Andy, and I were all incredibly excited as we made our way into the arrivals hall, to be greeted by long lines waiting to clear immigration.

  Finally, it was my turn to face the terrifying-looking customs officer; paunchy, mirrored shades, you know the look.

  I must have neglected to fill out my immigration form properly, because the officer in charge wanted to know where I would be spending the night.

  I had no idea. So I called back down the line to our tour manager: “Where are we staying tonight, Richard? What’s the name of the hotel?”

  Richard cupped his hands either side of his mouth and shouted back, “The Holiday Inn.”

  That answer didn’t satisfy my officer. He took off his shades, the better to glare at me. “The Holiday Inn where?”

  “The Holiday Inn where, Richard?”

  “Long Island.”

  “The Holiday Inn, Long Island,” says my man, ironically.

  “I’m sorry, I’m . . . in a band.”

  That seemed to work. He put his shades back on and sighed. Stamped the papers. Handed back my passport and said, “Well, if we need to find you, we’ll just put out an APB for a funny-looking guy with purple hair.”

  “It’s burgundy, not purple, you wanker,” I muttered under my breath, walking over to the baggage carousel.

  We collected two self-drive rental cars from Avis. I sat in the passenger seat of one, alongside Richard, and eagerly unfolded the map. I always fancied myself the navigator. Roger and Nick were in the backseat, and Andy and Simon were in the other car. We had to get onto the Van Wyck Expressway, but all I could find referenced on the map were expwys.

  “I can’t find the fucking expressway, Richard, and what’s a fucking expwy?”

  “I think they are one and the same,” said Richard, who had been to the United States before.

  We had all assumed that our first New York gig would be in Manhattan. Kojak’s Manhattan, the place with the high homicide rates, the streetwalkers, and the Empire State Building. But, as the signs directing us to Long Island made clear, we were heading the wrong way. A low moan gathered force as we realized that the best view we’d be getting of Manhattan that night was in the rearview mirror.

  Duran Duran’s first US gig was actually in New York State, on Long Island, and the Holiday Inn was in a town called Hicksville. By the time we checked in, it felt like we were paying a good-times tax before we could enter the promised land.

  When I woke up the next morning, I was amazed by two things: the size of the breakfast and the number of TV channels.

  I ate: bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, hash browns, bagels, pancakes, maple syrup.

  I watched: The Munsters, The Addams Family, Mister Ed, I Dream of Jeannie, Lost in Space.

  I liked this place.

  The gig the following night, at the Spit Club in Levittown, was even more amazing, jam-packed with kids who seemed to know all the songs from the album: “Planet Earth,” “Girls on Film,” “Careless Memories.” They were friendly and enthusiastic, just like the kids back in Birmingham, and we felt at home. The fashions were different; not so extreme, but you could tell that they wanted it, that they were ready to break from the chains of denim and T-shirts.

  In the States, we were always thought of as the epitome of a new wave band—the terms New Romantic and Futurist, which were being attached to us by the British press, all got rolled into this one catchall term. We were fortunate to have had massive support from a radio station on Long Island, WLIR, which was known as the East Coast “knowledge” for new British music. The station embraced Duran from Day One and was responsible in large part for turning young Americans on to our music.

  As well as through the independent and college radio stations, our music was also becoming popular thanks to the RockAmerica network of video clubs. These were extraordinary venues—mostly large ballrooms—that had taken to projecting videos onto giant screens above the dance floor. The artists who were most successful with this audience were those who were combining cutting-edge visual material with groovy dance beats: Adam and the Ants, Ultravox, Depeche Mode, and us. The energy and creativity that was coming out of the British video boom was finding its place in America.

  There is a fantastic clip on YouTube of a vid
eo club mocked up in a TV studio. MV3 was a short-running music video show that could only be seen in a few West Coast cities. If you check out Romeo Void’s performance of “Never Say Never,” when the cameras pull back from the band’s video to reveal a dance floor crowded with teenage kids dancing the “Planet Earth” dance, that’s the closest I’ve seen to what those American audiences looked like that year.

  The last thing we had done before leaving London was film our latest contribution to this new art form, the video for “Girls on Film.” Two versions: one for the single and one to accompany the longer dance mix of the song, the night version, which was specifically intended for these video clubs.

  This night version video became the biggest hit across the RockAmerica network that summer—in no small part because it was very, very raunchy. It was filmed in a warehouse in North London with the band playing on a makeshift stage at one end of the set. At the other end was a boxing ring, in which there took place a succession of increasingly lurid scenes—the sumo bout, the shaving cream on the pole, the mud wrestling, and, of course, the ice cube on the nipple. So many guys have said to me over the years, in hushed tones, “Oh my God, that video, I watched it over and over.”

  • • •

  Is there a wow quite as wow as the crossing of the East River into New York City? We could barely contain ourselves as Manhattan unfolded in front of our eyes. This was the city of the Ramones, the New York Dolls, Frank Sinatra—and now Duran Duran.

  We checked into the elegant St. Moritz Hotel on Central Park South. Outside, a line of horse-drawn carriages waited to take tourists on romantic tours of Central Park. Inside, red velvet splendor enveloped us. I had a room the size of my suitcase, but I didn’t care because it was a room with a view. Twelfth floor, corner. I was not planning on spending much time in here, but standing at the window, looking north across the park, it was breathtaking.

  I had to call Mom and Dad to share my excitement.