You don't have to dream it all, just live a day...

Whoever said that Duran Duran was just a talentless "hair band" riding the New Wave of the early 80s and escaping obscurity by virtue of the relatively new music video phenomenon (and there were many such critics at the time, I clearly remember), didn't know what he or she was talking about. Over Duran Duran's early career, before they split up and reformed a hundred different ways for some truly mediocre (and one or two very good) LPs in later years, they made three albums that, videos or not, stand on their own as great works of art nouveau in music.

Surely it didn't hurt their popularity that girls liked their looks, but one shouldn't let that take away from the quality of their work. I can see a critic perhaps citing them as too "artsy" and pretentious - but never as lacking talent. Unlike today's boy bands and carefully crafted pop stars, DD came together under their own gravity and played all their own instruments. Simon LeBon penned all their lyrics with a poetic flair that is uniquely his, and Nick Rhodes was truly a master of mood (much the counterpart of Martin Gore of Depeche Mode) with the synthesizer. And yes, the other three (the Taylors) could all write and play their parts on bass, guitar, and drums with more than mere competence. In fact, when the group was going through breakups and lineup changes after their initial success, all of these musicians were in heavy demand from other bands. If you listen honestly to a Duran Duran song, behind the synth wash is always a sturdy drum pattern and prominent, interesting basslines, complemented by John Taylor's fine, understated guitar work. David Gilmour even worked with them (in their one-album incarnation as Arcadia) producing and playing guitar here and there. You don't get Dave Gilmour to work with you if you don't have a lot of talent. He's one of the richest entertainers in England and has done everything artistically one could dream of with Pink Floyd, so if he takes and interest in your sound, it speaks volumes. He also worked with (actually more like discovered) Kate Bush in the 1980s, another underrated talent.

Anyways, everyone knows the hits like "Planet Earth," "Is There Something I Should Know?" "Rio," "Hungry Like The Wolf," "Save A Prayer," and "The Reflex," and those who were paying a trifle more attention would also readily recall "New Religion," "Wild Boys," "Union of the Snake," and "Notorious." And as good as most of those songs are, holding up better than just about anyone thought they would after 25 years when other many other bands from the period now sound dated to the point of being embarrassing, in my opinion their real gems are the album songs that didn't make it to the radio, songs like "Night Boat," "The Chauffeur," "The Seventh Stranger," and the excellent James Bond theme song "A View To A Kill."

The "New Romantic" movement of the early 80s may not have been your bag, but you can't deny that in any movement, some artists have talent and some don't. Anyone who put (or still puts) Duran Duran into the latter category is simply daft, the same way people who dismissed The Cure or The Smiths as "mope rock" didn't get the humour and irony that came entwined with both the melodrama the genuine angst of the time, and still probably don't. These bands, the Marc Bolans and David Bowies to call their own, made rock-as-art and explored themes outside the mainstream - the safe islands of the love ballad, the rebellious song about wanting respect, the feel good song you wanted to dance to - all the crap like Genesis and Madonna and Whitney Houston (despite her lovely voice) that was the mainstream and the other choice we had if we were to listen to contemporary music and not find our answers in the past. These less conventional bands all swam in that sea of sharks between the charted islands, much as The Doors, Hendrix, The Floyd, and others had done before them, and found murkier and, frankly, more intellectual subject matter. LeBon, despite his glamorous image and marriage to a model, is an extremely intelligent man who continues to this day to study philosophy and spirituality extensively, speaks eloquently on the subject, and writes from a unique perspective and with a voice that reminds me of no other lyricist. While I'm not saying his vision was thus somehow better, it was at least largely free of rock cliché and brought poetry back onto the stage even if all the screaming girls at the time couldn't be bothered to listen to it or suss out its more subtle themes; the Beatles in their early years suffered this same problem, and the only solution for them was to stop touring, end the madness, and as their fans grew up a bit and were forced to listen to them on vinyl rather than just scream their damn heads off, they were able communicate with that audience on a higher plane (one likes to think).

Time has proven that Duran Duran were not solely an "MTV band," though of course they benefited from the exposure just as Wham! and others did. But they're still touring and selling albums while most of that ground has long been collecting dust or appearing on VH1's "Where Are They Now?" programme. But look what George Michael went on to do, given such exposure; one could hardly call him a mere product of television when he has one of the best male voices in pop even to this day, plays nearly all the instruments on his albums, writes beautiful lyrics and music, and even has a major hand in mixing and producing his work. And he can command a stage live - he's the whole package. The same goes for Morrissey, though he needed Johnny Marr musically to be truly great, and the Moz of today is as acerbic as ever but no longer innovative in delivering his venom or melancholy or nostalgia for a world that never was. He's become locked into a formula in his writing that's pleasant but predictable, like an old poet who refuses to change once he's found an effective voice. Still, it's too bad so many of the bands who happened to appear in the early 80s (Depeche Mode also come to mind, as well as A-ha, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Tears For Fears) got dismissed as ephemeral marketing products and their success attributed to the new video medium, and so were not seen as the solid, sometimes great bands that they were. Don't get me wrong; just as with any period of music, there was a lot of derivative crap around too.





The Seventh Stranger
(words by LeBon; music by Duran Duran)

Those words are all remainders
Echoes growing in the heart of twilight
They lay back laughing at naivety's star
Awaken all those whispers
The dusty shadow of a passing favour
I wouldn't say that you were ruthless or right
I couldn't see from so far...
Was I chasing after rainbows?
One thing for sure, you never answered when I called
And I wiped away the water from my face
To look through the eyes of a stranger.

For rumours in the wake of such a lonely crowd
Trading in my shelter for danger
I'm changing my name just as the sun goes down
In the eyes of the stranger.

Can't tell the real from reflections
When all these faces look the same to me
In every city such a desolate dream
Some days are strange to number
Some say the seventh sounds a little bit stranger
A year of Sundays seems to've drifted right by,
I could have sworn, in one evening...
And I'm not seized in desperation
No steel reproaches on the table from before
But I still can feel those splinters of ice
I look through the eyes of a stranger.

For rumours in the wake of such a lonely crowd
Trading in my shelter for danger
I'm changing my name just as the sun goes down
In the eyes of the stranger.

I must be chasing after rainbows
One thing for sure, you never answer when I call
And I wipe away the water from my face
To look through the eyes of a stranger.

For rumours in the wake of such a lonely crowd
Trading in my shelter for danger
I'm changing my name just as the sun goes down
Walking away like a stranger.

From rumours in the wake of such a lonely crowd
Trading in my shelter for danger
I'm changing my name just as the sun goes down
In the eyes of the stranger.





Save A Prayer
(words by LeBon; music by Duran Duran)

You saw me standing by the wall, corner of a main street
And the lights are flashing on your window sill
All alone ain't much fun so you're looking for the thrill
And you know just what it takes and where to go.

Don't say a prayer for me now
Save it til the morning after.
No, don't say a prayer for me now
Save it til the morning after.

Feel the breeze deep on the inside look down into the well
If you can you'll see the world in all his fire
Take a chance, like all dreamers can't find another way
You don't have to dream it all, just live a day.

Don't say a prayer for me now
Save it til the morning after.
No, don't say a prayer for me now
Save it til the morning after.

Pretty looking road I try to hold the rising floods that fill my skin
Don't ask me why I'll keep my promise I'll melt the ice
And you wanted to dance, so I asked you to dance, but fear is in your soul
Some people call it a one night stand but we can call it paradise.

Don't say a prayer for me now
Save it til the morning after.
No, don't say a prayer for me now
Save it til the morning after.





Ordinary World
(words by LeBon; music by Duran Duran)

Came in from a rainy Thursday on the avenue
Thought I heard you talking softly
I turned on the lights, the TV and the radio
Still I can't escape the ghost of you
What has happened to it all?
Crazy, some'd say
Where is the life that I recognise?

Gone away...

But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find.
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive.

Passion or coincidence once prompted you to say
"Pride will tear us both apart"
Well now pride's gone out the window, cross the rooftops, run away
Left me in the vacuum of my heart
What is happening to me?
Crazy, some'd say
Where is my friend when I need you most?

Gone away...

But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find.
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive.

Papers in the roadside tell of suffering and greed
Here today, forgot tomorrow
Ooh, here beside the news of holy war and holy need
Ours is just a little sorrow.

And I don't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find.
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive.