Duran Duran

Submitted by admin on March 30, 2009 - 4:34pm

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Duran Duran are a British New Wave band notable for a long series of catchy, synthesizer-driven hit singles and vivid music videos. They were the most commercially successful of the New Romantic bands, and a leading band in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion of the United States. They are still often identified as an "Eighties band" despite continuous recording and chart success over their twenty-eight year history.

John Taylor and Nick Rhodes formed Duran Duran in Birmingham, England in 1978, with the later addition of Roger Taylor (drums), Andy Taylor (guitar), and Simon Le Bon (lead vocals); none of the Taylors are related. Guitarist Warren Cuccurullo was also a member of the band from 1989 to 2001, and drummer Sterling Campbell was a member from 1989 to 1991.

The up-and-coming group were considered part of the New Romantic scene, along with other style-and-dance bands like Spandau Ballet and ABC. Over the course of 1980, they recorded two demo tapes and performed tirelessly in clubs around Birmingham and London. Touring in late 1980 with Hazel O'Connor, the band attracted critical attention that escalated into a bidding war between EMI and Polygram. ‘A certain patriotism’ toward the label of The Beatles led them to sign with EMI in December. Nick Rhodes has since said, in a 1998 interview with Deluxe magazine, that the band was ‘appallingly ripped off’.

The band was relatively unusual in that all five members were pin-up pretty. Teen and music magazines in the UK latched onto their good looks quickly, and the U.S. soon followed. It was a rare month in the early eighties when there was not at least one picture of the band members in teen magazines, even if the sugary coverage was at odds with the band's titillating videos and sometimes dark lyrics. It helped that each member had a distinctive look and personality. John Taylor once remarked.

The band has sold well over 70 million records worldwide, and has had eighteen singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and thirty in the Top 40 of the UK Singles Chart, including ‘Rio’, ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’, ‘Is There Something I Should Know?’, ‘The Reflex’ and the James Bond theme ‘A View to a Kill’ in the 1980s, ‘Ordinary World’ and ‘Come Undone’ in the early-1990s, and ‘Sunrise’ and ‘What Happens Tomorrow’ in the 2000s.

Although the group never disbanded, it went through several line-up changes over the years. The reunion of the original five members in the early 2000s created a stir among music media and the band's fans. Duran Duran released the first album from the reunited line-up, Astronaut, in 2004.