by John Taylor
We started dating right away.
On our first date she took me to Portobello Market on a Saturday. I had never been there. I loved it.
I had been living in my ivory tower, and the idea of mixing it on the street at a Saturday market would never have occurred to me, mainly as a result of the years when doing something that normal without getting chased around the block was just not a possibility.
But that was now some time ago. It was safe to go outside again. Amanda opened that reality up to me. She let me out of the cage.
Within a few months, Amanda and I learned that she was pregnant. Given that I had been so hostile to that idea less than a year ago, I was surprised how good it was to hear the news. Any thoughts about breaking up, that this relationship might not be “the one,” were instantly dispelled. We both went to work right away. This pregnancy would be perfect! There was not a moment of doubt in either of us that we should have the baby, which put us immediately on the same page. In fact, I was thrilled: A baby sounded great! I would allow myself this rounded life experience, and maybe it would help my art as well.
What had changed? During a tough twelve months, I had come to realize that the sacrifices I misguidedly thought had been necessary in order to have a career were unwarranted.
We both embraced the news, which gave me impetus to make some changes. Amanda and I decided to give up drinking altogether, and we put the party schedule on hold. What better motivation can there be than the knowledge there is a baby growing into the relationship? Staying sober for nine months was easy.
With Amanda’s help, I confronted the financial mess that my life had gotten into. I sold the house in Knightsbridge, the New York apartment, and the house in Paris I had bought when the band relocated there to record Notorious. I had taken great pride in that perfume-bottle real estate thing I had going—John Taylor of London Paris & New York—but now was the time for stocktaking. I had to let go of that idea. I paid off my enormous credit card debt and the mortgage with Crédit Lyonnais. I bought a house on Ossington Street at the unfashionable end of Notting Hill Gate, and we moved in together.
When we first met, Amanda had just begun a job as a presenter on the burgeoning BSkyB cable TV channel. After a few months, she took an audition and got a better job presenting a late-night music and culture show to be called The Word. The series began as Amanda’s bump began to show, and Amanda would dress to show it off. The bump became a little star in itself.
The bump had given me a higher purpose. It wasn’t all about me anymore, and I liked that. I was happy.
62 Wedding Spaghetti
On Christmas Eve 1991, Amanda and I married at Chelsea registry office on the King’s Road.
“A shotgun wedding!” said John Jones, our co-producer gleefully. I didn’t like him for saying that—although Amanda and I were both traditional enough to want to tie the knot before our child was born—so I named one of the instrumental tracks we were working on “Shotgun,” as if to say, “And proud of it, you fucker.” That indirectly led to us naming the album The Wedding Album, and to Nick’s inspired sleeve concept, which featured the wedding-day photos of all our parents.
I call that creative revenge.
The wedding party was last-minute and small, not a cultural event like Nick’s had been. Neither Amanda nor I had a desire to be extravagant. I was still reluctant to shout my nonavailability from the rooftops, and by this time, “the bump” was getting in the way of her style.
There was a certain street cool in getting married at Chelsea registry office in the Old Town Hall on the King’s Road. Nick was out of the country for the holidays, but Simon and Yasmin were present. Mom and Dad were there, with cousin Eddie and his wife, Liz. On the bride’s side, her dad, Alain; her mother, Anna; and her brother Bruiser were all in attendance. From the register office, we walked to photographer Bob Carlos Clarke’s studio on Flood Street, where we posed for the wedding pictures. Atlanta’s arrival was less than four months away, and Amanda was not happy having to squeeze into any kind of wedding outfit. She opted for a pink Chanel suit.
From the studio, we went to an Italian restaurant—Leonardo’s on the King’s Road—for a low-key plate of wedding spaghetti. Just as everyone was loosening up and starting to relax, Bob appeared at the table. Something was wrong with the pics he had taken, and he needed us all back at the studio right away for a reshoot. Doing it all again was a real drag.
We were not fans of those pictures. Neither of us kept copies of them.
Afterward, at the house on Ossington Street, my poor mom made the mistake of welcoming Amanda to the family. Amanda, who wasn’t crazy about being a member of her own family, let alone mine, freaked out.
“I can’t handle this,” she told me that night. “I have to get away.”
So she did. To Barbados.
If she hadn’t gone with two gay friends of ours, I might have been a lot more put out than I was, but by now, I knew Amanda well enough to know that when she needed a time-out, I’d best let her have it.
Besides, there was work to do. The band was working on new music, which always kept me in good mental humor, so I went back to the studio.
Although Liberty had been a flop—our first—EMI were standing by us. We had made a lot of money for them over the years, they told us they were going to tighten the financial reins. Instead of handing over the usual six-figure advance, Nick Gatfield, EMI’s new A&R head (who had once been the trombonist in Dexys Midnight Runners), said he would review our songwriting on a monthly basis, and if he was happy with what he heard, he would dispense the next month’s stipend.
• • •
Warren had moved into a terraced house on Octavia Street in Battersea that Simon and Yasmin had occupied while construction work was being carried out on their Chelsea abode. Now they were back in their own house, and Warren took over the Battersea lease.
He offered to install a studio in the back room that we could use to write and record new material. It would be cheap and effective. How we got away with it I do not know. I’m not aware of receiving any complaints from the neighbors for the entire duration of those recording sessions. Warren could certainly charm those south Londoners.
He also agreed to be the interface with Nick Gatfield, go over the bills and play him the fruits of our labors. I was grateful to him for taking on that role.
Sterling was now out of the mix and out of my house. For the first time in my life, I was delighted to use drum machines.
After a fun but unfruitful period of being managed by ex–Rolling Stones manager Peter Rudge, we were now basically managing ourselves. We had a meeting at Manchester Square with EMI Records president Rupert Perry, with whom we had a good relationship. We voiced some of our concerns about the band’s status and where we were at.
“Just take your time,” said Rupert. “There’s no rush. Just make the right album.”
Well, on the one hand, he was right, we did need to take our time, and The Wedding Album did become the right album. I would laughingly refer to the album we were working on as “The Right Album”—referencing the Beatles’ White Album—and tried to convince the rest of the band that we should name it just that.
But I missed having deadlines. Maybe we could have done an even better job if he had said, “We need it in eight weeks. Better get your skates on, guys.”
Artists don’t do well with time on their hands; that is my experience. All creative projects have their own energy, which is not infinite. Deadlines are what I need, otherwise I get lazy and start taking days off and loafing around on South Molton Street.
Amanda got back from Barbados in late January.
On March 30, she went into labor, checking in to the Wellington Humana Hospital in the late afternoon. Everything went smoothly. Mozart and Stevie Wonder tapes were playing—we’d done the research and read the books, so we knew what to expect.
Having said that, there is nothing that can quite prepare you for the incredible experienc
e that is the arrival of new life into the world. We had made a choice not to know in advance whether we were having a boy or a girl, so the arrival of Atlanta came as a complete surprise. It was the most joyful moment of my life. Fantastic!
I had not had a lot of experience with infants or babies, but holding that serene and tiny bundle of flesh and bone felt beautiful. It felt like all good things had come. For once, I was not thinking about myself, about how this was going to impact me. I was thinking about us.
Amanda came from a long line of A’s, so giving her child an A name was a priority. I was OK with that, but it would have to be an A name with a difference. I liked the sound of “Atlanta”; it reminded me of something from the past—Atlantis or Atalanta, princess of Arcadia. It would turn out to be a most appropriate name for my daughter, born in London but to be raised across the Atlantic in California.
63 Take Me to LA
John Lennon once advised that songs should always be written in one sitting. A pretty tall order if you ask me. More often than not, I have found, a song develops over time. After the energy of the initial idea, the arrangement and subject matter, melody and harmonies need time to develop. Now that Simon, Nick, and I all had families, the rush to finish had started to slow. We were cool with a slow-cook approach. None of us wanted to be “all work, all the time,” as we had been in our twenties.
It is rarely the case that everyone likes an idea equally, so songs need champions. There might be one idea that Nick really believes in and won’t let go, keeps in the spotlight. Or it might be me, or Simon. Warren took “Ordinary World” under his wing, nurturing it and tending to the fragile chords.
It had begun life on his acoustic guitar and was not typical band material. At one point, Simon was singing “Ordinary Girl” but then developed the words in a different direction.
A couple of years previously, during the sessions for Big Thing, Simon had lost a very good friend of his, David Miles, to depression and suicide. It was a massive blow. Simon wanted to address his feelings about David in song. He knew it was not the kind of subject Duran usually employed, but it was a good thing for us to do, and it yielded the song that would have the biggest impact on that album, “Do You Believe in Shame?”
When introducing “Ordinary World” onstage, Simon often refers to losing David and how it took him writing three songs about the experience before he could truly get over it. “Ordinary World” was the second of them, and I don’t know which song was the third; he has never said, and I have never been able to figure it out.
I was never a fan of the song, particularly—it had no bassline to speak of, didn’t rock or groove—but everyone who heard it fell in love with it.
When Nick Gatfield heard it, he was happy. His happiness triggered the release of money, which made us happy. It was a bit like a game show.
As the album took shape, we hired a Los Angeles–based firm, Allen Kovac’s Left Bank Management, to manage us. Allen was among the new school of music–business entrepreneurs who made a science of getting their artists onto US radio stations. After he listened to our finished album, he got on the phone to us. We took the call in Warren’s kitchen.
“I need six months to set this up,” he said. “‘Ordinary World’ is a hit song but I need time.”
This was a new concept to us, and a taste of things to come. Up until then, EMI had always wanted new songs as fast as we could produce them, and they would schedule releases as soon as material was complete, sometimes even before. Now we were being told to chill out and wait while the organs of power grinded out their (hopefully) green notes.
I went back to Ossington Street, to Amanda and Atlanta, now a delightful three months old, and told Amanda we had been gifted some free time, as the album we had been expecting to release in the autumn had been put back to the following year.
Right away, Amanda said, “Then I want to go to Los Angeles.”
She wanted to get into the film business, and I was okay with that. I didn’t have a great sense of LA, had not spent much time there other than being there for tour dates. I really knew only the hotels and the main strips: Sunset Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, Rodeo Drive.
I said I would be happy to play a supporting role in Amanda’s dream.
When we got there, I found to my surprise that I liked it. A lot.
I liked the light and the heat. The ocean. And the food was healthier than it was in London. I even overcame my allergy to pot and took to the California grass.
“Ordinary World” was released in January 1993 and went into the Top 10 in the United States and the United Kingdom. We were back on the radio and back on television. On January 13, I was picked up by a rather large and incongruous RV and driven to film Top of the Pops at Elstree Studios (not Shepherd’s Bush anymore).
As the vehicle turned left onto Bayswater Road, the song came on the radio. There it was, the sound of my bass guitar! It may not have been a funky bassline, but it was on the radio, and not on an oldies show.
Thank you, God!
We had a hit song in a second decade, and thanks to “Come Undone” (a song I missed out on the writing of, as I was unwilling to come back from Los Angeles to work on “one last track,” a decision I will always regret), Duran Duran were back.
The tour behind The Wedding Album began in South Africa, our first time there and my first time on the road as a dad. South Africa was a great place to take a one-year-old, who got to go on safari and play with lion cubs. After a few weeks of the touring life, however, Amanda wanted to go back to Los Angeles and get on with her career. We started spending a lot of time apart, and I experienced the absolute torture of driving away from home to resume the tour’s next leg to the sound of a screaming daughter.
“D-a-d-d-y! Don’t leave!”
It took her a while to get used to the idea that I wasn’t leaving for good.
Amanda was a natural networker. Born to it. Her career plans seemed to my jaded eye to involve going to a lot of parties or having intimate dinners-for-two with movie stars at their Mulholland lairs. I didn’t feel good about that, and I felt even worse about it when, coming home after a particularly rough few weeks on the road, I heard Amanda announce that she was going out. I was feeling my age.
64 Paranoid on Lake Shore Drive
The tour just kept growing. That’s the sign of a successful album. You keep going, adding new countries and returning to others to play bigger venues a second or even a third time around.
My obsessive desire to get the band back on top had been realized. I should have been happy about that: the tours, the sales, the TV, the flashbulbs. It was like 1985 all over again.
I should have been happy.
But was I? What do you think?
Why wasn’t I satisfied?
When I was living the family life, I wanted to be a rock star, and when I was being a rock star, I wanted to be at home living the quiet life.
We rolled into Chicago just after midnight and checked into Le Méridien hotel for a few days. We had learned to “hub” in major cities and fly in and out for gigs in the area. That way we could cut down on the number of hotel rooms we had to check into and out of.
I had a huge duplex overlooking the city, which I attempted to fill with the contents of two Samsonite suitcases stuffed with clothes, books, and music, the crap that keeps my identity sewn on when I’m away from home for extended periods of time. But this time it wasn’t working. Opening my cases on arrival, I thought, “I could empty both these cases out of the window right now and not give a shit. I don’t care about one thing in either of these cases.”
So I guess I wasn’t in the best place, overall.
The following day, Allen Kovac and his brother Lewis flew in for a meeting. It was ugly. We were all exhausted and ready to go home. Nick was furious. Simon was missing his family. However, Allen and Lewis still managed to leave the meeting having gotten their agenda passed; we agreed to extend the tour dates still further.
War
ren was a full-on member of the band as regards songwriting and imaging—his parents featured on the cover of The Wedding Album next to mine—but band business was still decided by Nick, Simon, and me. We have never let a non–founding member into that area of concern. That may change in the future, but it hasn’t happened yet; there is just too much history.
I watched Allen and Lewis run off to the elevator, thinking, “They’re going back to LA, back to their homes and families, and here we are, out of our minds and fit to drop.”
In an angry daze, I went back to my room and smoked a joint, as if I wasn’t paranoid enough already.
And I called Amanda. Big mistake. She wasn’t going to be able to fix this. Damn the phone.
I called Simon, who was in the room next to mine, and asked him if we could talk. He came by right away.
I poured out my heart.
“I’ve got to go home, Charlie. My family is falling apart. I’m not going to make it.”
We stared at the walls for a while. Empathetically. We were both depressed.
“Why don’t we take a walk, Johnny?”
We walked down to Lake Shore Drive and along the “concrete beach,” as Chicagoans call it, that circles the lake, where two years ago we had been inspired by the idea that became “The Edge of America,” the song that closed the Big Thing album.
This time we spoke silently, as men often do.
Everywhere I looked, I saw coded messages, signifiers, on billboards and license plates. A green jeep drove past us as we stood on the sidewalk waiting to cross. It was our family’s jeep. What was it doing here?
Fuck, I was losing it.
I was at the epicenter of my own emotional drama.
The following morning, I got an extraordinary call from our tour manager. Simon had gotten sick and could not sing. The next few weeks of dates were to be canceled, and we were all going home that very day.
