• The Duran guys have been enjoying some family time or holidays before the band reconvene in London next week for a new rehearsal session. John has been posting pics as he travels around the british countryside these days while Simon has been sailing for 1 week on the Adriatic Sea with his family. He left Split, in Croatia, on july 3 and arrived to Venice on the 10th.

Here a quick translation from the article published in this week italian Vanity Fair magazine [scan above]. And of course we all know that they got the picture of the wrong Taylor!! :/

To welcome the birth of their first child Gisella Benales (39) just got delivered in London only products Made in Italy. She has just finished setting up with her mother Nancy (pictured) the baby's room with furniture by "Nanàn" and crib by "Baby Più", while the pushchair is "Inglesina".
The clothing brand chosen to dress Julian Roger Taylor is by the milanese brand "La Stupenderia".

On the left Roger with sons James, Elliot and Ellea in a picture dated 2007.

Summary

• I think we are all gonna have a bit more fun in December that we might have in May. We’ve got a lot of projections & props & all sorts of things going on to make the show as much fun to perform as it is to watch. John Taylor.

Read it all below!

On june 30 2011 John Taylor has been interviewed on the radio show 'Pure Breakfast With Tim & Sara' on Pure Radio 107.8 from Manchester. During the interview he talked about Simon's voice problems and about the the UK Christmas tour. There are some interesting news so here is a transcription of the most interesting parts.

About Simon's voice problems:

It was quite a shock for us all, but especially for him - I mean it’s… you know it’s his body, it’s his voice - but you know this things happen and they not happen all that often with him, I think in 30 years we had to cancel dates perhaps three times because of problems he had with his voice so I think that’s a pretty good record… and so you know, he’s just got to learn some new tricks, you know – it’s like Ryan Giggs being out of the team for a year - but he’s gonna come back and is gonna be as important and better in some ways than before.

Q: So it was laryngitis wasn’t it that got him…?
A: No…
Q: Was it not…
A: …no, it was actually a sort of a haemorrhaging within the… I don’t need to get into the technicalities of this…
Q: No it’s breakfast time, don’t.
A: Yeah, it was pretty nasty...

About the tour:

We’ve got a lot of projections & props & all sorts of things going on to make the show as much fun to perform as it is to watch.

Actually it was one of the silver linings of getting the tour cancelled is the fact that the tour got moved to December which… I mean Duran… we’ve always had great times on the road in December, you know we’ve done over the years… we have done some of our biggest tours of the UK at Christmas &… so I think that… you know… we are the kind of band that people really like… you know they get in that Christmas spirit, and they like to party and we are a party band, and so I think we are all gonna have a bit more fun in December that we might have in May.

Maybe the worst of the headlines on the cancellation of the euro tour and Simon's voice problem, from the Danish newspaper BT from july 6 it says "Is Simon le Bon about to sing his last verse? Duran Duran has been forced to cancel their tour" [thanks to Rie for the Translation]

Some more headlines from international newspapers: "Duran Duran delays TA show" Jerusalem Post Israel 3 July * Duran Duran schrapt Europese tournee" De Morgen Belgium 4 July * "Duran Duran annuleert tournee" Het Belang Van Limburg Belgium 4 July * Piazzola sul Brenta, forfait dei Duran Duran" Corriere Veneto * "Simon Le Bon, problemi di voce Salta il tour" L'Arena * and so on... the news about the cancellation of the europena tour has been published everywhere...

Nick says: "What I can tell you is that we all think in the band, all four of us, that really is the best looking show we ever had, we had a couple I really like, one around the Wedding album, which was very good, the reunion one was good too, but this one just looks beautiful.

I can’t tell you how heartbreaking was for us having to cancel the shows because not only for the personal point the view wanting to play, obviously, knowing the disappointment for all the fans was deeply uncomfortable and upsetting, but also knowing how good the production looks.

I’m just dying to get it out there and show people what we created so I truly hope that it all happens as soon as we can go out there… there’s a lot of video projections, there’s some movig parts, some mechanical parts to the show, and is also interactive which I need to test out first, but we have people building programs so that we can do all kind of sms, tweeting, photographs and things...

Plans about bringing the show in the United States:

At the moment It’s currently slated for mid September trough Octber but I truly don’t know until we really lock down when Simon is going to be completely fit to really do all the shows, I’m very reluctant to actually say anything because now we have a lot of the british tour to reschedule, we also want to try to go to South America, Australia and some of the Far East and I would actually like trying to do China, I supect this will be happen next year."

He let me be part of the private life ot the Hooks. He learned me how to sing rhytmically. In Funk this is a common thing, but I come from Punkrock and from Roxy Music.

Even though I liked very much the music of Chic, it would have never dawned on me to sing songs like Notorious or Skin Trade in a funky way, with the funk-hooklines.

Maybe it looks like a banal thing to say but here we are speaking of an 'operation' which defines the Before and the After of a singer. Nile had a huge influence on me.

Having myself been a choir-singer, we are talking of two completely different worlds. The daily work with Nile has taught me that as a singer I have to pay much more

attention to the melody and to the structure of a song.

In a certain way Rodgers has been like a teacher to you?

Yes, someone who taughts you things which you will never forget for the rest of your life.

How difficult is it to feel like yourself in a gang of 50 years old?

Even if it’s irritable, not very easy. Anyway, the most difficult thing has been the writing of the lyrics. Because if we want to be honest: What I’ve written before/years back, was quite 'naive'. I didn’t want to reproduce the same thing. I wanted more mature lyrics, stronger lyrics but at the same time recognizable as Duran Duran lyrics. When writing the lyrics I was alone in the studios. Only Mark was there with me, but he left me in peace and worked very concentrated on the music.

so you weren’t writing in trance?

Of course not! While the others were trying out the music, for me it was a quite penal proceeding. The most part of the actual song lyrics have been re-written 5 to 6 times. The song 'Girl Panic!' was called berfore 'Home Wrecker', 'Brain Wrecker' then 'Dollhouse' and 'Cold Fires' and finally 'Pale Blue Panic'. These are 6 reincarnations of the same song with different lyrics. Lots of good ideas are not born out of inspiration, out of intuition or out of spontaneity.

Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001, the moment of the Twin Tower catastrophe?

Of course, very precisely indeed. I was in a meeting with the genius musician manager Miles Copeland III in London. He is the brother of Stuart Copeland, the drummer of The Police.

I'm quite excited about this upcoming release because it will actually relaunch the album exactly one year after its digital release. I think is gonna be a great combination: single, video and the band touring! No need to say that video with all the top models will bring a lot of interest and hype from the 'media-machine'. This video is gonna be epic.

Helena Christensen talks about Girl Panic! video

From graziadaily.co.uk | Let's talk about Girl Panic! The video starring a gaggle of legendary catwalkers dolled up in Dolce & Gabbana [corsets! lace! chokers!] and performing as an uber-glam girl band. Oh yes, it's set to be an iconic Fashion Moment reminiscent of George Michael’s Freedom video, and that's no mean feat.

'Oh, it was amazing,' Helena sighs. ‘I originally wanted to be involved because Jonas Åkerlund was directing and the track’s great – the band's songs represent different stages in my life.' Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Eva Herzigova and Yasmin le Bon, who also feature in the video, must represent a fair few Supermodel Era memories too? 'Yes, so many! I had dinner with Yasmin recently and we spent the entire evening laughing and reminiscing. I took a photo of us and sent it to my mum because she remembers our times together from way back when.’ Yeeeep, we can’t wait to see that video.

Let's have a look back to the songwriting and see how the guys describe Girl Panic!

Nick: Mark said, “This has to be about a girl, if it was, it would be the most perfect of all Duran songs”. John and I were talking about it and he said, “It needs a title that is the sort of phrase you’d see on the cover of Italian Vogue. Girl... girl panic”. And there was something about the urgency of that, and adding an exclamation mark in a sort of Russ Meyer way, that was hugely appealing.

Simon: To me, it’s the most “up” track on the album.

John: It reminded me of The Prodigy, but it reminded Mark [Ronson] more than any of the other musical ideas, of what he really loved about early Duran Duran. Mark was always quite clear, he wanted a return to ‘Rio’.

Caption time: John, Helena, Simon?! Can we also have a look at that video in your camera?