
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" |
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
|

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.

|
|
Share
This
is not the official Duran Duran website | www.duranasty.com
is a fan-site made with passion from a fan to all the
fans of Duran Duran on Planet Earth.
No
part of this page can be reproduced without crediting
www.duranasty.com
contact
the editor and webmaster salvo@duranasty.com | the life
and times of D u r a n a s t y ® All rights reserved
Special
thanks to MrT, Angie and Giuliana.
|
|