It was broadcast on the BBC on 20 October 1978. BarbarellaLegendary film (now cult film) directed by Roger Vadim in 1968 and starring Jane Fonda.
A few years earlier the film had broken box office records throughout Europe (except for Spain, where we would have to wait until 1974 to see it there), but especially in the UK, where it was the second highest-grossing film of the year. That’s exactly why, on that autumn day, millions of Britons sat down in front of the television to watch this strange masterpiece of pop art. But there were two people whose lives would change that afternoon. In a suburb of Birmingham unironically named Hollywood, two boys, 18-year-old Nigel John Taylor and 16-year-old Nick Bates, were completely entranced by the film.
Nigel and Nick would eventually become the founding core of the company. Duran Duran, They are one of the most important music groups of the 80s and 90s, and although you don’t hear their name much anymore, they are still active 45 years after they were founded. In fact, they will be releasing a new album next October 27th.
The release of this record also coincides with its arrival in bookstores. Please Please Say Now. The story of Duran Duran From publisher Libros Cúpula, a biography of the band written by the renowned music journalist StephenDavis It tells the story of the band from their humble origins in the pubs of Birmingham City to the present day, including their global success four decades ago.
Handsome, young and very ‘British’
According to Davis in his book, in the last months of 1978 Nigel and Nick, in addition to watching TV, were forming a band with another friend, Stephen Duffy. They were all restless children, Nigel and Stephen were studying at school. city art school and they were aware of everything that was going on on a musical level in their country, which at the time was the absolute epicenter of the entire musical world. The cultural revolution led by people like David Bowie, T-Rex’s Marc Bolan or Roxy Music.
Following the brief and eventful reign of British punk and its spread to the US, another cultural movement was emerging in the UK which was slowly gaining media recognition and was commonly christened as: new wave, However, it contained various factions within itself. post punk or new romantics. Nigel and Nick They fit perfectly into this second group characterized by it looks androgynous, slicked-back hair, eyeshadow, and a certain theatricality in general.
Their group did not yet have a name, and although they considered the possibility of calling themselves the RAF after the Royal Air Force, the film caused them to change their minds, perhaps due to the crazy plot. In it, Barbarella makes an emergency landing on Earth and is taken to meet the planet’s president. He tells the alien that an evil scientist named Durand-Durand, played by British comic actor Milo O’Shea, has stolen the Extreme Pleasure Machine, designed to provide extreme pleasure to women, so much so that he has eliminated it for himself. her need for men.
The name sounded great, it was modern and very different from other bands of the time like The Jam, Simple Minds or The Human League. Frankly, des The endings and middle line of the character’s original name were lost because the children did not see it written anywhere, they only heard it.
Turbulent origins
The first concert of the brand new Duran Duran took place on 5 April 1979 at Birmingham Polytechnic, where Nigel was studying. The group had a very strange structure for that period (and indeed for all of them): Taylor guitar and vocals, Duffy bass and background vocals and Rhodes synthesizer. They later added more musicians, but played instruments that had little to do with pop, such as clarinets.
The band then started to play a lot in this area. Birmingham, in pubs and bars, basically anywhere it’s allowed. A few times they happened to come to a place called Barbarella’s. However, the project remained quite unstable. Other than the hard core of John and Nick, musicians moved in and out of the band very easily in those days. But the foundations were already in place for one of the most successful bands of the decade to emerge: By the end of the same year, Duran Duran records its first demoContains a primitive version Girls in the MovieThe song that would become one of his first songs a few years later hits.
historical harmony
With the advent of 1980, the group’s growth rate accelerated, but they still had some time to get out of the precarious situation. Looking for a way to live and at the same time unleash their musical passions, Nick and John began working on the historical piece. Birmingham Greek Runners Club. There, as Davis describes in his book, the boys played quite often, but on the days they weren’t playing, they worked as waiters, DJs, and even doormen, in accordance with their agreement with the owner.
It’s definitely a fellow Rum Runner who says they’re looking for a singer and suggests they try her ex-boyfriend Simon, who lives in London but is very handsome and is training to be an actor. When the group meets him they love him, that’s what they’re looking for. In the book, Nick remembers how Simon LeBon She showed up for the exam wearing pink leopard pants and a notebook full of song lyrics. They signed immediately.
Arrival of drummer Le Bon roger taylor and guitarist Andy TaylorThose who responded to their ad in the magazine Melody Makerand who brought to the band the versatility he had experienced in the cover bands of his home city of Newcastle, they formed the band’s most enduring and legendary formation.
But by then they still had a lot of work to do. The first summer of the decade the newly formed band spent writing new songs and recording demos. Meanwhile, they began playing tirelessly in both Birmingham and London. It was their first national tour, and although it had only been a few years since that afternoon when Nick and John saw Barbarella, little by little, The group was generating some public interest.
The band were full of ambition, and after their demo had just been recorded, they used one of their visits to London to visit the offices of the major record labels of the time. Of course, without an appointment. This event was an almost complete failure: neither EMI nor Phonogram, two of the most important companies at the time, picked them up. They had a little better luck at Island Records; The label executives listened to their demo and told them it was promising and their image was incredible. Unfortunately it was, no contract.
At that time the whole of the UK, especially London, was a hotbed of new and interesting bands. There was so much competition Duran Duran had no choice but to return home and continue working: play more, make more songs, try to win more fans… No record company would risk signing such a new band, although they might soon change their minds.
After a second country tour, both alone and supporting more famous bands, Finally, the expected calls came in December of that year.. Now it was EMI and Phonogram, who had never even opened the door before, fighting among themselves to get their hands on a band that was dragging more and more people, especially the girls, to their concerts to see Simon.
The group finally decided EMIFor a certain “patriotism”, as legend has it, it was a British company (it was the home of The Beatles) and a Dutch Phonogram. EMI was excited about the new signing, and the company was also dreaming of the possibility of actor Simon Le Bon appearing in films and becoming a kind of new Elvis.
Duran Duran (1981)
There was no time to waste and the band immediately began recording their self-titled debut album. Duran Duran, in London. The album contained a new version of the song Girls in the Movieas well as a good selection hits like Planet Earth anyone Careless Memories, although it was the first song to achieve greater success. The song rose to number five in the British charts within a few days and chosen to record the first Video clip from the group It has a story worth telling on its own.
It is interesting to remember, as Davis does in his book, that video clips received almost no media coverage at the time. These were changing times, MTV had started broadcasting just a few weeks before the band was due to go into the studio to shoot a movie, and no one knew to what extent it would revolutionize the music world and kill musicians in the process. star radio.
Paul Berrow, the group’s manager, described managers as “a super sexy video, something dirtywith the aim of reaching video jukeboxes American nightclubs (…). “It’s not too pornographic,” he told them, “but it’s full of tits and asses.” So it included girls having pillow fights, mud fights, modeling. topless With typical 80s hairstyles and an ice cube touching her nipple.
Clearly The BBC immediately rejected the video, but it was distributed in the United States, Asia and some other European countries.It attracted great attention from the Birmingham boys.
Later, after the huge success of MTV, the video had to be edited and toned down in order to air on that channel. The clean version is the one that can be found today on the band’s YouTube channel, which barely hints at all this eroticism (although the original version is not hard to find).
The album was successful and reached the top. Number three on the UK’s best-selling albums list. Its success allowed the band to begin their first tour in the United States. He would come the following year River, HE disk this led them to global success and this cemented them as the undisputed stars of the music of the moment. They toured Australia, Japan and the United States, supporting Blondie worldwide. Princess Diana He revealed that they were his favorite band and he nicknamed them “The Guardian”. tremendous five By the British press, he demoted them to the level of The Beatles, whose nickname was The Beatles. fantastic Four.
From then on, many things awaited Duran Duran, and Stephen Davis examines all of this extensively in his book. However, those who have stopped wanting more over the years or become a little nostalgic should know this: Duran Duran is still fully active.
They managed to evolve and adapt to new times. Actually, It will be released next October 27th Danse Macabreis a new work with a dancing profession, although it is dark and almost Halloween-themed, and includes different versions of the original songs as well as Burying a Friend Saved by Billie Eilish, psycho killer by Talking Heads, paint black The Rolling Stones wrote, Bewitched From Siouxsie and the Banshees, Supernatural Cerrone and Ghost town By the Specials.