January 18 | physical album and single, bonus tracks, tour and more treats in 2011 for the fans of Duran Duran!

Physical release: album march 21, single february 24

Duran Duran are planning to tour the world in 2011, including some special shows, where they'll play the new LP front-to-back. "Writing and recording a new album is the most challenging part of the job," says Taylor. "Now we can relax and plan our year on the road"

In North Amercia the album will be released on Universal-distributed S-Curve

January 18, 2011 | A very informative article with an interview to Wendy Laister has been just published on Variety.com | Three decades ago, Duran Duran positioned itself at the cutting edge of pop music with a manifesto that was as much about the look and the lifestyle as the music itself. And while the band has undergone much morphing over the intervening years -- hitting the mainstream, receding into the shadows and then re-emerging as one of the biggest draws on the Gen X nostalgia circuit -- its members haven't given up breaking new ground.

That fact came into focus late in 2010 with the announcement of the band's 13th studio album, "All You Need Is Now" -- a collection that emerged surprisingly quietly, strictly in digital form, and positioned them once again at the forefront, not so much in a sonic sense as in the form of a business model. While there's nothing particularly unusual about a digital release at this stage of the game, Duran Duran's decision to offer up an iTunes exclusive sans label, and with an album only partially completed, was certainly atypical of an act of its magnitude.

"We definitely found ourselves on the front end of a wave and got a learning experience on a logistical level," says Wendy Laister, founder of Magus Entertainment, the band's longtime manager. But iTunes offered us some really good real estate at a fortuitous time of year and we thought that made it attractive to go forward."

The digital, nine-song version of "All You Need Is Now" sold 14,000 copies in the U.S.

in its first week of release during Christmas week, garnering a goodly bit of alternative radio play for its title track in the process. At the time, the band didn't consider the set to be complete. But that didn't deter them from offering what Laister calls "an appetizer" before a planned physical release.

"It's certainly new for us, but this is the way a lot of people consume music now, one song at a time," says founding member and keyboardist Nick Rhodes. "We've always looked for ways to use technology to our best advantage. When the Internet started to happen years ago, we saw amazing opportunities to connect to people around the world."

While Laister acted as a de facto label during the initial push, she began negotiating with more established entities last fall, securing licensing and distribution deals for major territories.

In North America, a deal was struck with the Universal-distributed S-Curve imprint, which will issue a 14-song set on CD in late March, with an April tour and a deluxe vinyl edition to follow.

"Now that music has been reduced to its most basic component, a sound signal, you might as well offer people the most romantic, beautiful thing," says singer Simon LeBon.

Laister says that she and S-Curve are working to offer specialist packages to individual retailers, with "a tremendous amount" of bonus content in the pipeline. "Obviously, the business end is becoming more and more fragmented," she says. "But that's advantageous. Rather than have one way to reach a fanbase, you have a practically infinite number, and when a band has as dedicated a base as (Duran Duran), you can have a traditional campaign and augment it with all sorts of other things. It's quite exciting."

"At S-Curve, we like to make records that sound completely original. We’re not looking for the “next” anybody. We are interested in uniquely talented recording artists who can inspire passion and make listeners FEEL something! We love our artists and the records that we make and we hope that you will, too."

S-Curve Records was founded in 2000 by former Mercury Records executive Steve Greenberg. It is based in New York City. In 2001 the label established a distribution and licensing agreement with EMI Records. In 2007 Greenberg relaunched the label after a two year hiatus, during which he served as President of Columbia Records.

In 2010, the label's distribution deal with EMI came to an end and S-Curve entered into a new distribution deal, with Universal Music Group.

After nearly a two and a half year hiatus, S-Curve – the record label that launched the career of Joss Stone and brought the world such hits as “Stacy’s Mom” and “Who Let the Dogs Out” – re-launched in 2007 as a full-service recording and music publishing company by our founder and CEO, Steve Greenberg. S-Curve has released many successful records since its re-launch in Octoer 2007 including albums by alternative pop/rock band We The Kings, critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Diane Birch, teen punk rock trio Care Bears On Fire, power pop supergroup Tinted Windows and music icon Tom Jones.

Is Emi completely out of the game?

Is Emi out of the game? Until late december didn't seem so, the album was in fact even listed on their upcoming releases newsletter. An italian Emi representative said recently: "Unfortunately, with Duran Duran we are currently on standby". But BBC Radio 2 has 'All You Need Is Now' single listed under EMI. Wrong?! Is EMI still a possibility for the european release? Who knows?!

Simon Le Bon flashes a peace sign as he arrives at the BBC Radio 2 studios. London, 1/13/11

You can listen Simon's interview on the Steve Wright programm online for 7 days on the BBC the Radio 2 player. If you want to get your copy, here is an mp3, just righ click here, save target as.

More interview downloads and articles scans coming soon so watch this space!

All You Need Is Now will hit the stores on march 21

According to Steve Wright, who just had Simon on his BBC Radio 2 show:

the extended, 14 track physical CD version of the new record will hit stores on March 21th and the single will be released on february 24th!

Tracklist should be as follows

1. All You Need Is Now
2. Blame The Machines
3. Being Followed
4. Leave A Light On
5. Safe (In The Heat Of The Moment)
6. Girl Panic
7. The Man Who Stole A Leopard
8. Runway Runaway
9. Before The Rain
10. Mediterranea
11. Other Peoples Lives
12. King of Nowhere
13. Too Bad, You're Too Beautiful
14. All You Need is Now (Reprise)

Bonus Track *Boys Keep Swinging (Japan Only)

The guys are working on some new bonus tracks

Simon and Nick are working in the studio in London on some bonus tracks for the upcoming physical album. John has been working on them in LA with Matt Hager. Hager was probably the first name which popped up when the guys first started working on their 13th album as reported on www.duranasty.com two years ago, on january 24 2009: "Simon and John have been also working with Matthew Hager [a prolific music producer, songwriter, mixer and multi-instrumentalist based in Los Angeles] on some music while the duo were in LA last month [Nick's was stuck in Panama with his his ear infection and Roger in Texas]. Matthew has produced many tracks of John Taylor solo album [on Avex Records] and also mixed Duran Duran's Cry Baby Cry and helped engineer Falling Down. Matthew was kind enough to answer my recent email and confirmed the rumors, he also added that they have been working on new material."

The title of these new songs titles are "Too Close to the Sun", "Early Summer Nerves" and the guys have just started work on a third bonus track.

Check out two interesting Simon's tweets about these new songs:

"Going to meet NR at Sphere for what we anachronistically call B-sides; now more prosaically known as "extra tracks" We're b-side ourselves." and... "laying down vox trx. Nick sez "I want some slap-back on it, real, not the digi stuff. I sez "yeh the kind you get from a real old slapper"

Duran Duran World Tour

Simon Le Bon says: "We are currently putting a new tour together and it will be as big as it possibly can, we'll be going to new places wherever possible, and it will be the perfect visual live representation of All You Need Is Now"

Roger Taylor says: "We're going on tour with the band this year. We've been in the studio for two year and will take the record to the world. It's going to be a major, major tour. Hopefully we will be in the Middle East too."

No one of the following shows has been officially confirmed by the band |

According to tgverona.it, a local tv news from Verona, Italy, Duran Duran will play at the 'Arena di Verona', the historic italian temple of the music, on july 11, 2011. here is the original article and this is the translation of the Duran mention as reported on the Quick and Brief section of the site on January 9:

"On 11 July, after six years from the first appearance at the Arena, will arrive those wild boys who have sold 85 million albums worldwide. Simon Le Bon with Duran Duran are still on top after almost three decades since their first album dated 1981 with their latest successful hit "All You Need Is Now".

here is also a link to the 'TG Verona' tv-news from january 8. At min 15 starts a report about next summer shows at the Arena. According to this italian report Duran Duran seems more than confirmed.

More concert rumors... According to artiestennieuws.nl Duran Duran will be playing in Amsterdam [Heineken Music Hall] on June 19th 2011.

Duran Duran is also confirmed to play the iTunes Festival at the Roundhouse in London on july 16. Tickets are free and awarded via lottery. Enter here

Full interview to Roger Taylor about his DJ trip to Dubai here

Recent Press Coverage

Pop icons chat up the release of new Mark Ronson-produced record, All You Need Is Now

This is an edited version of the article originally posted at stereogum.com

Duran Duran have described their new album as a kind of psychic follow up to 1982’s Rio (and pretending that the intervening 29 years never happened), and it is without a doubt the freshest sounding record the band has released in over a decade. According to band members Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes, the experience of working with Mark Ronson — and finally playing up to their obvious strengths as a pop band — proved to be a career-defining experience.

“Originally we were only going to have Mark produce a couple of songs for the record,” explains Le Bon, “But he really wanted to do the whole album, which ultimately worked out well for everybody. He’s as good as anybody we’ve ever worked with and he has a vast musical knowledge. He turned us on to all sorts of new things, which was very exciting. It was a tough record to make, though. Writing the lyrics was quite hard for me this time. It couldn’t just be any old gobbledygook. We also allowed certain little mistakes to stay on the record, which makes it sound more human and alive.”

“Mark wanted everything to be organic,” says Rhodes, “Everything was basically recorded onto tape. All analog synths. He sat in on every session, every second of recording. We talked at great length about what the record was going to be before we ever started and he had a vision for what he wanted things to sound like. Our last record was produced by Timbaland–which was a great experience–but Mark’s way of working was completely the opposite. I’d say this is the most meticulous album we’ve ever made, but it was also somehow the most natural. It felt very much like the early days of Duran Duran where it would just be all of us in a room slaving away for hours until it was done. It felt very intimate.”

“At the moment, the dynamic between all of us is as good as it’s ever been,” says Rhodes. “Mostly it’s because we’re all so excited about the new material. We’re a good live band, mostly because we’ve been doing it for so long. From our point of view, things have really come into focus more. The shows we play now are much better than the shows we were playing 20 years ago, even though people might not always remember it that way.”

“It was surprisingly easy to get us all back together,” says Le Bon, “It was simply a matter of everyone being ready and able. It was a couple of phone calls, basically.”

“It’s the principal dichotomy of Duran Duran,” says Le Bon, “When we started out, I remember that John would say things like ‘I really want us to be #1,’ which I thought was just impossible. I thought our songs were too out there, too odd. Ultimately, I guess the people who really liked our image — mostly young women, at the time — also had very open minds about music. People that got into us, even if they originally got into us for our looks, often really went deep into the band. The connection people felt with the music was really profound, which was amazing and surprising, even to us.”

“Once the teen hysteria started to happen, people got a really strange idea about us,” says Rhodes, “Male rock critics hated us. They felt like what we were doing clearly wasn’t for them. You know, I had grown up listening to John Peel’s radio show and following all of these bands that were really pushing music in all these weird directions. We blew up so big so fast that we were really separated from that world, in a way. I would have loved to do a Peel Session, but we were already too far down the line by that point. We were already being chased by crowds of kids.”

"Frank Sinatra said that if you make at least one great song, there will always be people who want to come out and see you,” says Rhodes, “And if you could make more than one great song, or a few of them, you’ll always have a career. I actually feel that having the amount of popular songs that we do — that people really love — is amazing. It’s great to know that when you play those certain songs — when the first notes start and people realize what the song is — that you can generate this instantaneous happiness in them. I feel very blessed to still be making new music with people I enjoy and admire, but I’ll always be happy to play those old songs. Our fans have supplied us with a very good life, they deserve to hear the songs that they love.”

John says: "For the first time in my life I'm pleased to say I'm very happily married. I used to think my success was contingent on my availability to women. I was the world's worst boyfriend in the 1980s."

Edited article from the Scotlandon Sunday orginally posted here

John Taylor, always the wildest of those Wild Boys, says now: "I believe in age-appropriate behaviour."

I've just asked Taylor and namesake Roger which former incarnations of themselves they definitely won't be dragging out of the closet when the band tour their 13th album, the Mark Ronson-produced All You Need Is Now.

"You won't see my ponytail," says Roger, the drummer. "God knows what I was trying for there. Mel Gibson in The Bounty, perhaps. So John, what'll you wear - something vaguely Nazi-esque?"

"I've got my fascination for military costumes out of my system," confirms the bassist.

"And now I've turned 50, I think there's nothing worse than mutton-dressed-as-lamb. For the first time in my life I'm pleased to say I'm very happily married. I used to think my success was contingent on my availability to women. I was the world's worst boyfriend in the 1980s.

"I couldn't even hold hands with a girl because, as the pin-up, I reckoned I always had to be available. It's taken me years to claim a marriage, to be proud of it."

"Nick is out every night of the week and he's shopping for girls the way all of us did once," laughs John. But I'm happy with the combo of John and Roger, also 50 - both exceedingly well-preserved, especially the pin-up with his leonine mane and too-babylike cheeks - who seem to strike the right balance between humour, boasting, candour and self-deprecation.

This is Roger on having it all: "I was never more unhappy than when I had the most money. By the age of 24 I was absolutely minted. If I wanted a house I could buy it for cash, then when I got bored I'd virtually give it away. I never had to graft or save up for a deposit like most people and I never appreciated anything. It was a very shallow existence."

And this is John, with the odd transatlantic twang, on never having enough: "I had three Aston Martins and that didn't make me happy.They say about pop stars who crave attention and all that comes with it, the girls, the drugs etc, that they're compensating for some deficit earlier in their lives. Well, I don't think any band since the Beatles could have gotten more of everything than Duran Duran, and still that wasn't enough for me. Was I really such a lonely, lonely boy? I must have been!"

Their earliest songs revealed a sci-fi obsession which endures to this day, with Le Bon trying and failing to persuade knob-twiddler Ronson that the song which became Girl Panic! should have been about Carl Sagan.

But in 1981, John phoned up Jackie magazine. "The editor, who was called Jackie, put us on the front cover." Then the screaming started and didn't stop for the rest of the decade.

Most of the 80 million were shifted in the 1980s, of course. John and Roger both quit the band, the former to try acting and the latter to "grow up, learn to do things for myself - I didn't even know how to get on a plane".

Andy Taylor left in 2006 and, after writing a memoir which irked the others ("Very chippy," says John), isn't expected to return. Unlike other combos the Durannies never actually disbanded so cannot be accused of cashing in on an Eighties revival flavoured by another recession.

Has it done any good? "Well, I have a lot of spare time on my hands! But, yes, I think it has. I like self-examination and [lapses back into Californian] want to be the best man I can be: the best husband, father, bassist, co-worker and even interview subject."

John and Gela, London 2010, Juicy Cuture party

'All you need is now' Says Le Bon, "It's a message, really, from the band to our fans, saying, 'Keep the flame burning."

Album review from the National Post, both printed and online

The Sunday Times, Malta | ‘Possibly their finest work since 1993’ | jan 11, 2011

Two years after the underachieving RedCarpetMassacre album, 1980s idols Duran Duran return with their 13th offering. Although it was released digitally in the second half of December, preceded by the free single download of the title track on iTunes, the official CD format will come out in mid-February, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Birmingham band’s first release.
Trivia aside, All You Need is Now is a welcome and surprising collection of songs that far outshine the band’s output in recent years, and is quite possibly their finest work since 1993’s outstanding WeddingAlbum.
From start to finish – that’s nine songs or 40-something minutes – this album oozes a progressive essence that weaves its way in between tunes that revive Duran’s Rio-funk, revisit the electro-pop of their era and, on the magnificent ballad LeaveaLightOn, for example, reflect a band totally in touch with its roots but with an eye still firmly focused on the future.
Boosting Duran Duran’s triumphant return, Scissor Sister Ana Matronic appears on Safe(In theHeatoftheMoment) while Kelis pops up in the background on The ManwhoStoleaLeopard.
The biggest boost, however, comes in the shape of Mark Ronson, whose magic fingers previously propelled the likes of Amy Winehouse and Kaiser Chiefs to fame and fortune. Don’t go expecting any of his typical heavy brass/soul inflections here, though; it’s his presence that seems to have been the main inspiration on AllYou NeedisNow. Welcome back, Duran Duran!

More interesting online press also on:

dailymail.co.uk:

"In addition to serving as a reminder that pop music should be fun, All You Need Is Now is long overdue. And with electronic dance music riding high once again, the time is surely right for Duran Duran to reclaim a little of their legacy" check out the full 4 star [out of 5] review on the site.

time.com:

Q&A with Simon and Nick | The band is named after the villain in the movie Barbarella. Does Jane Fonda know? Le Bon: Absolutely. I saw her recently, and she said, "At first, I thought you were having a laugh at my expense. But later on, when I was in a more humorous relationship, I saw the funny side of it."

birminghammail.net:

All Duran Duran want is to be on Birmingham's Walk of Stars | Drummer Roger Taylor said: “I can’t believe Duran Duran isn’t on the Walk of Stars yet. “We have one in America. How can we have a star in Hollywood’s Walk of Fame and not in Birmingham where three of our members come from and where we started the band? We need to get some campaigning going on to get us a Birmingham star.”

Kainuun Sanomat, newspaper from Finland, january 11.

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