"It's going to blow everyone's socks off"

November 5, 2011 | There is much excitement in Duranworld for the upcoming premiere of the Girl Panic! video happening at Harpers Bazaar 'Woman of the Year' event in London [Claridge’s Hotel in Mayfair] on Monday november 7 as reported in this article.

Pics of the exclusive photo shoot for the Harper's Bazaar cover whose headline reads "The Supers VS Duran Duran" are starting to surface on the web. Check out this article from the Telegraph and this one from the Daily Mail with scoop-preview pics of the upcoming "superduranmodels" feature.

The nine-minute clip is directed by Jonas Akerlund [the Grammy Award winner behind Lady Gaga’s “Telephone”] and made in collaboration with Swarovski Elements. Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Eva Herzigova, Helena Christensen, and Yasmin LeBon play Simon, John, Nick, Roger, and an “anonymous guitarist,” while the real members of the group appear as bellhops, waiters, chauffeurs, and paparazzi. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana even make cameos as Harper’s Bazaar U.K.’s guest editors during a photo shoot scene, images from which can be found in that magazine’s actual December issue. “It’s all daft stuff, but it’s fantastic daft stuff,” says John Taylor in a “making of” video that you can see on Style.com. John Taylor says "is a must-see. It's going to blow everyone's socks off". He also says "the video is about 9 minutes long."

"It will blow your mind," says Simon "It's five of the original supermodels - Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen, Eva Herzigova, Naomi Campbell and Yasmin LeBon - and they each have a romp with one of the members of the band. It's shot in reportage style. It looks incredible."

"It was Nick's idea"

"It was Nick's idea" adds John "that it would be really great if we could just get some supermodels to play us. We connected with Jonas Akerlund who is famous for big, high concept music videos."

"He did Lady Gaga's 'Telephone' video with Beyonce - I think that's perhaps his most famous piece. We connected with him and once he got on board, it became an extravaganza. I think it's going to be the most talked about video of the year when it drops in November."

Roger comments of the shooting day: "It was great to see that bunch of girls back together again, they are kind of like the Rolling Stones, with that type of legendary status not many people outside of [internationally celebrated] bands have."

Singer Simon Le Bon adds, “We have made some pretty ambitious videos over the years, but this one was certainly the most challenging to date.

“Coordinating the schedules of five of the world’s biggest supermodels, Jonas, and the band was no easy task – but we couldn’t be happier with the finished film. It has all of the ingredients that we feel are important – it’s humorous, glamorous, sexy and very Duran Duran.”

Click on the banner below to get a cool photogallery of screencaps from the making of video!

Celebration: The successful North American Tour

At this point the guys should all be back in UK preparing for this huge event and hopefully for some more media promotion and buzz that the video will certainly generate... But before we turn page and look to another chapter of the Duran Duran history about the guys touring the UK we want to look back... not too far... We want to celebrate, with this new installment, the successfull North American Tour and post some other interesting little news!

Starting from Comcast Arena, Everett, WA, on september 23 and ending on October 29 at Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ, the "All You Need Is Now" North American Tour with its 24 shows in 5 weeks has been a huge success.

Critical acclaimed, loved by the long time fans - who have found all the elements of the original Duran Duran formula - and from the new generation of fans... also commercially successfull to the point that billboard.com has mentioned the "All You Need Is Now Tour" as one of the tops Hot Tours on the week of october 21.

DURAN DURAN
$430,001
Oct. 10-16 Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater, Fla. (1/1)
DAR Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C. (1/1)

• 24H 24 Canada Octber 2011
• La Press Montreal 21 Octber 2011
• Le Journal de Montreal 15 Octber 2011
• Le Journal de Montreal 24 Octber 2011
• Metro Canada 24 Octber 2011

• Metro Canada Octber 2011
• Metro Usa 24 Octber 2011.jpg
• 24H Canada 27 April 2011
• Time Out NY October 2011.jpg

• Sep 23 Comcast Arena, Everett, WA
• Sep 24 Theater of the Clouds, Portland, OR
• Sep 26 Mountain Winery, Saratoga, CA
• Sep 27 Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles, CA
• Sep 30 The Joint, Las Vegas, NV
• Oct 1 Open Sky Theatre, Valley Center, CA
• Oct 4 1st Bank Center, Broomfield, CO
• Oct 6 Verizon Theater, Grand Prairie, TX
• Oct 7 Baton Rouge River Center, Baton Rouge, LA
• Oct 8 BayFest, Mobile, AL, USA
• Oct 10 Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater, FL
• Oct 11 Hard Rock Live, Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood, FL
• Oct 13 St. Augustine Amphitheater, St. Augustine, FL
• Oct 14 Chastain Park Amphitheater, Atlanta, GA
• Oct 16 Constitution Hall, Washington, DC
• Oct 17 Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, PA
• Oct 19 State Theatre, Cleveland, OH
• Oct 21 Chicago Theatre, Chicago, IL
• Oct 22 The Colosseum at Caesars Windsor, Windsor, ON
• Oct 23 Bell Centre, Montreal, QE
• Oct 25 Madison Square Gardens, New York City, NY
• Oct 27 Air Canada Centre, Toronto, ON
• Oct 28 Wang Theater, Boston, MA
• Oct 29 Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ

With the Borgata Events Center show in Atlantic City the band leaves behind another tour of the Us and Canada. Roger thanked the fans through his facebook page:

"big thanks to everyone in the U.S and Canada that has come out to support us with such heart and soul... its been one of the greatest tours so far..and of course... bring on Brazil and the UK!"

And so does John via twitter:

"Another tour of the US and Canada is behind us. Really fantastic fun everyone, one of the best, most fun ever... Thanks to all who came".

Fancy stage wizardry at #duranlive | United as never seen before, in great spirit, this band is back with great force from a musical point of view thanks to a very well structured show and to Simon's powerful voice and stage presence. The stage set is a big part of this fantastic show, very large with all the flash and glitter you’d expect from these glamourous boys.

They blended in a backdrop of colorful video behind them that lit up the stage in faux fire, and the four heads came to life with images of the guys and even i the beautiful Nagel-esque face of Rio. During a few songs like The Reflex, the heads transformed into the singing faces of Simon, Nick, John and Roger. A clever and a great techno-trick.

Duran Duran gave a solid, electrifying performance every night of the 24 shows. They've definitely embraced the latest social media technology as well, holding a Twitter party before the show and even during the instrumental Tiger Tiger, encouraging fans to tweet #duranlive so the audience could watch their messages scrolling on the screen behind them as they played.

Kathy, one of duranasty.com friends and correspondents reports from Usa:

Atlantic City, the last show of the North American tour | "the guys hit the stage played just about 2 hours. The GA floor was packed with many people dressed up in costume, dancing, laughing, singing, and generally whooping it up! I knew they were probably going to sing Is There Something I Should Know, but hearing this song played live for the first time in 27 years was a highlight for me. Simon ran back and forth like a madman, hard to believe he's just turned 53! The guys all sounded and looked great... speaking of which Mark Ronson looked amazing in that snakeskin jacket he wore. Without a doubt having Duran and Ronson perform Girl Panic! was incredible.

It seemed as though the band was taking a little longer to get out for the encore, and we learned why - they all came out with animal masks on! Nick played Wild Boys with the mask still on his head! A funny point was when Simon turned to John and called him a cow to his cow-masked face!

Simon mentioned it was the last show in the North American. leg of the tour, and how much they appreciated how warm everyone made them feel. I thought the audience was fantastic when I saw Duran Duran in Hollywood a few weeks back - last night's audience was even more electric. It was a flat-out amazing experience...

Thanks to the fans

Nick Rhodes says thanks to the loyal fan-base

October 2011: We’re very grateful for our fan base and they have been extraordinarily loyal. But with all artists what you need to do is keep growing as well, so we’ve been very lucky because we’ve now crossed over several generations.

When I look at the audience I can see people that have clearly been following us for many, many years and some of them have brought their family with them. Other ones are kids who are still teenagers who have recently discovered us on the internet or through people we’ve collaborated with.

Then you’ve got people that maybe we’ve picked up along the ’90s with songs like ‘Ordinary World’ and ‘Come Undone’ and other people who came along when we put together the first reunion so, yeah, it’s quite a mix now.

Fan report: "It was like coming around, full circle"

Kathy Bonczyk wrote for us this nice article which discusses her thougths and feelings about seeing Duran Duran last month in the very same city where she first saw them live almost 29 years ago.It was the proverbial déjà vu, as I got on I-95 and made my way to Hollywood, Florida, for purposes of seeing the greatest band in the world, Duran Duran. Only this time, the calendar read October 11, 2011, and not March 27, 1984, and the destination was the Seminole Hard Rock, not the Sportatorium.

As I made my way down the interstate, my mind wandered back nearly 29 years previously, to the time when the word spread that our favorite band from Birmingham was actually going to appear in South Florida.

Oh the excitement that we experienced as we contemplated actually being in the very same building and breathing the same air as Andy, Nick, Roger, Simon and John. A million details had to be addressed and dealt with in our circle of Duranies: Who was in? Who was out? How would we get there? When were tickets going on sale?

Once we got out hot little hands on five tickets for Duran Duran live, the calendars were marked, but time seemed to pass soooo slowly. We tried to track the band’s progress on what would ultimately come to be known as their landmark “Sing Blue Silver” tour. This, of course, was long before the internet existed, so there was no such thing as real time tracking of anything. We had to keep the TV tuned to MTV and pray that there would be some update.

Occasionally, you’d get a telephone call out of nowhere with someone screaming “Hurry up, put on MTV right now…” No further explanation was required. If you were quick enough, maybe you’d catch the last second or two of one of the original VJs telling you about the tour as pictures of the fab five in action graced the screen. It was a different day and age, indeed.

"I looked around and wondered how many of those fans were also in attendance at the Sportatorium show back in '84"

Then, the band hit the stage, and there they were, playing all our favorites from the first three albums. We could hardly believe it. The feeling in that building was electric.

Together, the other 16,000 or so fans who were assembled to see Duran Duran were as excited as our group of five, and the band was simply amazing.At one point, Andy and John walked backwards and almost bumped right into each other. The audience gasped, and the guys looked at each other in amusement.

The evening was over much too soon, but what a blast it was. Over the years, I’ve discussed the events of that night many times, especially with my sister, Debbie, who has accompanied me to one other concert since that magical night back in ’84. We went to see them together for the third time on the last night of the U.S. leg of this tour, in Atlantic City.

Flash forward 28.5 years to October 11th – Duran Duran did not disappoint. The band and the crowd were on fire. People laughed, danced in the aisles, and sang along to all the tunes, the new ones and the oldies.

I looked around and wondered how many of those fans were also in attendance at the Sportatorium show. For us, the Hardrock show was like coming around, full circle.

A touching moment for me was when John talked about that night back in ’84 when Duran Duran first played Hollywood. Apparently, he didn’t forget either…

"The US tour was brilliant, one of our best ever- thanks to all of you [and us!].

Pondering a map of the US thinking, 'Where can we play next year...' Having said that, we've a lot of Europe, South America and Australiasia to get to first. But next, BRAZIL."

John Taylor, November 2011

Highlights from recent interviews

• I think ‘All you need is Now’ is an important song for us, because it acknowledges mortality.”

  “I think that lets the audience in,” Taylor said. “Because, God knows, we’re all walking around feeling our mortality, all the time. When you kind of set yourself up as being like, ‘We don’t age, and we’re still having sex with young girls, and we’re kind of frozen in time,’ it’s like you’re kind of cheating your audience in a way. So there’s a degree of honesty in ‘All You Need is Now’ that I think the audience appreciates.”

  a lot of people don’t expect us to rock, and they don’t expect us to be as authentic as we are,” he said. “We really are a hard-working road band. We play live all the time. We’ve been around the block, we’ve had huge successes over the years. But we really don’t take what we do for granted. We have a very sacred view of our stage performances. The most important gig we play is the next gig.” John Taylor, October 2011 blog-aol

• "We do a lot of things that are age inappropriate," said Taylor. "Whenever Duran Duran tries to grow up, we are told the fans don't want us to grow up. It's all about girls and boys." John Taylor October 2011, windsorstar.com

• As a band, we don't tend to look back much. We keep the blinkers on. We achieved so much in our early 20s, then we went through some years of real struggle. If you look back, one could almost drown. I don't like talking about album sales or concert-ticket sales, because you end up comparing them to the '80s, and you really have to struggle to put a good spin on it.

  Success is feeling good today. We'd rather sell 20,000 tickets than 2,000 tickets. But big does not necessarily mean good. We've had a tough year. Whatever momentum we had in the spring with the release of the album, we lost through the summer [when the group had to postpone concerts because Le Bon partly lost his voice]. Anybody who was looking forward to seeing the band had their patience tested. Now we're where we're meant to be We're having a good time onstage, and I think the audiences are having a good time, too. John Taylor October 2011, cleveland.com

• “We don’t need to play as much as half the number of these new songs, but not as little as a quarter,” he says. “There really is a balance that seems obvious when you’re playing a show. If you put four new songs together, then the audience gets twitchy. They want something they can dance to, and they know the words to, something they can sing along to, something they know can give them the feeling that they want.” Simon le Bon, October 2011, metro.us

• We're very much in control now. The show is the most important thing that we do in the 24 hours when we're in a city. It used to be we'd get to a city and we'd have six hours of promotion. We'd have to go to the local TV station, and we'd have to go to six radio stations, then we'd have to sign autographs for the hundred kids that were waiting outside the hotel. Then get to the gig ten minutes before we go on, then you get this instrument kind of thrown in front of you, with hardly any preparation, and you'd have to play a show. Then we'd go on partying until the early hours after the show; then the whole cycle would start again. So we're very careful now; 90 percent of our energy is stored up and used for the show. I think it works much better like that, actually. Roger Taylor, October 2011, blogs.westword.com

• Do you feel like that hardcore fan base has changed throughout the years?
  You know, it probably has changed. We've got the hardcore fans that have grown with us, that are probably now in their 30s and 40s. That's probably the bulk of the audience. But we've also got some young kids that come along, whether that's because bands that they listen to name-check us as influences or the way that people get their music now. You can go onto iTunes whenever and find any music from any generation; you don't have to be sorting around in dusty old record shops, it's all on your computer. And I think that's definitely helped us get to a wider audience. Roger, Dallas Observer

Above picture was taken at Jezebel magazine 15th Anniversary [Jezebel mag is based in Atlanta] on October 31, 2011. Simon, John, Dom and Anna played a special performance to celebrate Halloween!

News and tidbits

Sphere to publish Duran Duran rock icon John Taylor’s Autobiography

Little, Brown and Sphere will publish the autobiography of John Taylor. The bass player has landed a “major deal” [$500,000 and up]. Publication is set for the fall of 2012.

The as-yet-untitled book will chart John's thirty year career with the band, as well as tell details of his formative years. He said: “This book recounts the million tiny seductions that are required to make the journey from English suburbia to selling out Madison Square Garden – seductions that go by a hundred different names; family, friendship, romances, collaborations and strategic alliances. This is my journey and where it took me; into fantastic success, more than a little decadence, darkness and finally, I like to think, a little enlightenment.” Taylor has co-written the book, which will be released in the autumn of 2012, with Tom Sykes.

In a recent interview John said: "It's coming along, I got a lot done over summer, set to finish it by spring. I'm working with [co-writer] Tom Sykes. I couldn't do it alone. Well, I could. But I don't think I'd want to. It's like going into the attic. It's definitely better going in with someone else. I've not lost too much sleep over it. Yet.

Q: Are there any trunks in the attic that you're not looking forward to opening?

I don't want to lose any friends -- let's put it that way. I'm strong enough to take myself down. But I'm not taking anybody else down. Part of what makes a book like this work is picking the right stories. They're not all going to be dark and dangerous. But they're not all going to be good times, either. So far, I've found it tremendously affirmative and empowering.

We think that John Taylor is a very rich person from an intellectual point of view, he's a cool writer, the fans have always enjoyed his writing through trusttheprocess.com and the duran blogs. He has an extraordinary life, full of events and meetings with wonderful people and he's also a great story-teller. His honesty and great ability to open himself and tell us his story will make of this book a masterpiece.

When we got the news about the release of this autobiography it came to mind an old interview that John did back in 1984 with LesleyAnn Jones, acclaimed journalist with over 20 years' experience in London, New York and Hollywood, also author of the Freddie Mercury Definitive Biography. We thought of that particular interview because that was probably the first time that John opened himself that much in public. So here is this little treasure from my personal archive. It's an interesting interview to a 24 years old John Taylor. No need to say that we can't wait to read the book!

The guys have been in touch with John Jones lately... are they working on a Liberty reissue?

Back in July John Jones, Nick Rhodes and Chris Potter were in the studio in London. In the 90s they all worked together on the "Liberty" album, and John Jones continued to work on "The Wedding Album".

On August 1st JJ posted this on his blog:

"As if the last 20 years flew by, the dynamic trio reformed for a brief moment at Sphere Studios in Battersea, London this past July. Just think of all the water under the bridge since 1990 when we finished the Duran Duran album Liberty [now old enough to drink]!

John Jones, with SYN's Nick Wood, joined the band backstage in LA. Just wonder if these meeting of Jones with the guys are a prelude to the remastering job of the long-awaited Special editions of Liberty and The Wedding Album...

Talking about producers... Medazzaland producer Anthony J. Resta has been working to some cool Girl Panic! remixes. Last week he said that he was currently "working on Duran Duran "Girl Panic!" remixes, finalizing tracks and consolidating for mix dates in Miami... Video release is the 5th, these will follow!"

Next year the band will hopefully be shooting a documentary in Antigua and Sri Lanka to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Rio.

Both Nick and John have confirmed the rumor about a possible trip to Antigua next April to celebrate the 30th year anniversary of Rio. John said in this interview that they hope to celebrate the upcoming anniversary in Antigua and hopefully in Sri Lanka too. “We’ve reconnected with the yacht from Rio” John said, “We’re going to go down to Antigua, and we’re going to revisit the boat that was featured in the video.”

"The Rio thing, we do have one little plan for which I'm hoping will involve a short documentary film that will celebrate that period." Nick Rhodes, October 2011

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Arcadia: the Ultimate Special Edition with a book of unreleased pictures?

About Arcadia: we’ve long talked about doing the ultimate special edition of it. There's actually a book that I have that was done by an extraordinary photographer called Dean Chamberlain who photographed the album cover. He did a lot of the photography for the Arcadia project. We took him around with us and made an incredible book of more than 100 images, large format images, and we never released it. I actually have it sitting in my vault, all the originals so I wanted to do is put this out because it is a time capsule beyond belief. These things exist and nobody has ever seen them. I was gonna do this along with a book. I would love to do it.

Andy Taylor was on hand to judge Talented students' charity designs

Andy help promote the work of a teenage cancer charity

Artistic students on Tyneside have been selected to have their designs used to help promote the work of a teenage cancer charity.

More than 100 logo designs were put forward by students at Tyne Met College after they were tasked with creating an innovative symbol that embodies the work of the new Teenage Cancer Trust Teenage Cancer Trust is a charity that focuses on the needs of teenagers and young adults with cancer, leukaemia, Hodgkin’s and related diseases by providing specialist teenage units in NHS hospitals. North East board - known as the Toon Council.

Former Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor, originally from Cullercoats, North Tyneside, was on hand to judge the varied range of designs and was impressed by the standard of work.

Andy, who came up with the name Toon Council for the board, said: "There were probably four or five that could have gone with the Toon Council but there was one that we all were drawn to."

Andy Reynolds, 26, was the lucky student whose logo was selected to represent the Toon Council and he was pleased to see his work represent such a worthy local cause. The graphic design student said: "It's the first time I have won anything like this and it'll be great to add this to my portfolio."

Nick Rhodes about tour plans for 2012: rest of Europe will probably happen in May/June

We live in a very chaotic world in Duran Duran World. I think people think we're much more organized than we are. So we make things up as we go and at the moment, I think we have got as far as planning Australia for next year and there's a few European dates which we have been trying to reschedule but couldn’t fit them in this year because of the British tour and the American tour.

So we’re definitely going to play some of those in late-January. But then we're also looking at India and China to see if we can make them happen because we’ve never been to either of them.

Then we are looking at the rest Europe which would probably be May/June, I would imagine. So my guess is we’ll probably make it through to next summer. And then at that time, everyone will take a break or make a new record, one or the other.

The band hopes to work with Mark again and Nick has already an idea for the new album

In a recent interview published on thephoenix.com Nick has hinted that he has got already an idea, a theme, for the next Duran Duran album and more importantly he expressed the band's desire to work with Mark Ronson again. Below an excerpt of this very interesting part of the interview.

"Of the people we’ve worked with in the last couple decades, Mark just suits us better. He has an understanding of so many genres of music.

He has incredible style and great taste and he really, really gets what Duran Duran is about. So, I sincerely hope we work with him again. We stay in constant touch. We're so fond of him on a very personal level, as well as musical level. He’s really something."

Sean Drinkwater: Speaking as a fan, I think it would be fantastic to see what would come next, after that initial idea...

Nick: I have a little idea in my head. [Laughs]

We discussed it the other day. We almost look at albums like movies, so they do need a bit of a theme, then we just see what happens. We don't really have a script, but we definitely have an idea.

In the pic at the Halloween “Sinners or Saints” bash at the Boom Boom Room in NY

fan: Do you think you'll ever bring Andy Back? Sore subject?

John: Why? Dom not working for ya? I think he's AWESOME