December 24: A picture is worth a thousand words and I really couldn't find a better image to post duranasty.com's Christmas wishes than this one showing a daddy dressed as Santa Claus with his daughter. The mentioned daddy is none other than Nick Rhodes with a very young Tatjana Rhodes [the picture has been posted on jewelsfromtherovingstove blog where Julie Anne is also running the competition "Name That Santa". Well, what can I say, I Just want to wish everyone in the Duran Duran universe a wonderfull Christmas time and a Fantastic 2010, I'm sure the new year will bring us a lot of Duran Duran emotions with many releases to celebrate the band's 30th anniversary and finally the so awaited new album and tour... so never lose faith and keep on loving Duran Duran!
December 20: Below the very nice Christmas greeting we have received from Duran Duran's guitarrist Dom Brown. We just wish the best to you, Dom, and your growing family, and lots more years of success with Duran Duran and Blue To Brown. We are so lucky to have a talented musician and down to earth guy like you is in the band, we just can't wait to listen some new music. Happy Christmas and a spectacular 2010!
December 17: In the last KatyKafe John mentioned a new project with Nick Egan, not something that seems of immediate concern... the news needed more investigation anyway! John said: 'I've got a little project on the back burner with Nick Egan who designed the Wedding Album and he did the videos for Ordinary World, and White Lines, and it's kind of a, well, it's sort of in the works, but it's like a book project, we've been thinking about, it's kinda about Nick's work, it's about really the twilight of the album cover years, it's really about the death of the album cover.
I've always been a huge fan of Egan's work, he's a 360° visual artist and I just loved what he did with Duran's image, graphically and in video, over the years. I particulary enjoyed the totally new visual identity of the band that he created around the release of the Wedding Album [Ordinary World video, the album cover, the press adverts, the tourbook and all the merchandise including the cool t-shirts: just terrific and very fresh at the time]. So it was a real pleasure to drop him a line and ask some more info about the project. Nick was very nice to return a quick but informative email: below I report what he said'.
Hi Salvo, Thanks for contacting me, actually the book isn't about Duran. It's a book, written by John, about my artwork starting with The Clash and Ramones and including Bow Wow Wow, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Malcolm McLaren, Bob Dylan, INXS, Iggy Pop, Oasis and of course Duran Duran. I can't really give you anymore info than that, other than to say that John is a terrific writer. Feel free to check in with any updates of the next few months.
Best wishes.
Nick
For sure I'll do it and I'll keep you posted! Thanks again for sharing this bit of info Nick!
In the same Kafe John speaks about his talk at ucla, his musical obsessions [he did a nice analogy of mp3's to vinyl as McDonald's to a fine, local restaurant] to art, poetry and books. He also commented on the Rio reissue and said: 'Emi is warming up to do the same with the first album, the third, fourth [Arena] and fifth album'. My contact at Emi Catalogue told me that, despite all that has been posted online, the only confirmed reissue at the moment is Seven And The Ragged Tiger: release date march 12, 2010. According to my source the special edition of Duran Duran and So Red The Rose have been both postponed to april 2010, but no date has been announced yet.
In the pictures Nick Egan, Ronah Elliot Catherine Roylance [publisher and designer], John Taylor, and Catherine Roylance [Owner of Genesis Publications - Publishing industry]. The pic was taken on October 8th 2009 at Taschen in Beverly Hills for The Brian Wilson Book Signing. I guess the book will be released on Genesis Publications, it's the world's leading publisher of signed and numbered limited edition books and fine art prints on modern music, art, sports, and historical manuscripts. The b/w John Taylor portrait was taken on October 1, 2007 during a shoot in London for Rockin On magazine from Japan.
December 9: As we reported last spring, Drama Americana, the documentary filmed during the 2005 Astronaut tour, is now finished. Nick said back in march: "it needs to go out soon, so it will be released on dvd, download or whatever it is". We still haven't got a clue in what kind of form the prodouct will be available to the public but we made a very interesting discovery... on heyluke's website [Gavin Elder's London based Video Production] have been uploaded the trailers of Drama Americana and another documentary titled Duran Japan. "Drama Americana" Usa Tour Film is 64 minutes long. You can watch the trailers directly from the source heyluke.com under the section 'work'. You might get trouble watching them 'cos these are Adobe Shockwave files. The way Shockwave files tend to work is to link to external resources which is why they often don't work... so if you won't get anything when trying to play the swf files you have a second opportunity here, you can watch and download the quicktime files by clicking the links below [right click - save target as]. Glad to help you! This news wouldn't be here without the precious help of Donata and Mr.T.
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Drama Americana Trailer: 30 sec Duran Japan On tour in Japan. Preview: 1min 30sec |
Nick says: "We also have a lot of footage we filmed during the South American Tour, mostly documentary and a little bit of live stuff, but I think it's very different than anything else we have put out before. It needs editing, hours of editing..." Will this stuff ever surface? We wonder also what happened to the Pop Trash tour documentary, hours and hours of shooting...
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December
9: In August 2009 Orion Books has released
a small paperback version of Andy Taylor's book
'Wild Boys, My life in Duran Duran'. If you liked the first
edition and you think it was an interesting read, well... you have to
get this new one 'cos it has a new chapter, chapter
18, titled "Accountants and Cocaine Don't Mix".
The new script is revealing and once and for all Andy gives the fans
all the answers they have been asking since he left the band. This chapter
represents the end to the speculation and all the discussion the fans
have been making over the last couple of years. Below just a couple
of interesting quotes from the mentioned chapter. You really have to
read the full chapter, so if you didn't buy a copy of the book when
it was originally released you can always get it now, I highly recommend
it if you want to get the full picture... Well, I should say the full
picture from Andy's point of view! |
On chapter 18 Andy talks about RCM and the management...
[...] Experience tells you that you can’t spin a good record [no pun intended]; it actually has to be a good record. There are those around Duran Duran who mistakenly belive that as long as they repeatedly state something is good, then it’s eventually going to come good. Force-feed the public till they damn well love it. I prefer to win by winning and not by spinning. I was reported on BBC website in November 2006 that Duran Duran had worked with Justin Timberlake in ‘a writing and production manner’ one one of three new tracks produced by Timbaland. Oh no, I thought, Duran Duran is about to become a celebrity fan club. The cast of characters was staggering: Timbaland, Timberlake, Furtado, Nate Hills... who next? You have to ask yourself what on earth they were all chasing - and really, was the creative energy so lacking that so many other beautiful minds, dare I say egos, had to be involved?
...and about running into Roger Taylot at a Who concert and the end [?] of their friendship.
[...] The box from wich Tracey and I watched the concert was close to the one Simon and Roger shared but but Simon disappeared pretty quickly. Roger and I, however, came face to face over drinks - and I think that was the moment when the enormity of the split finally hit me. Roger smiled and we shook hands in tacit agreement to put any bitterness to one side. Opening up any differences would hardly have been appropriate given the time or the place. Roger is never one to be confrontational and even though I can rip someone’s throat out if I ‘m in a temper, I just didn’t have the heart to bear an old friend any ill will. I felt a little saddened knowing that Roger and I had adgreed on so many issues and now he seemed as if he was just cruising along with whatever was dished up, including using some beat machines. [...] Roger and I vowed to keep in touch with each other, but while we were chatting, i couldn’t help feeling that the atmosphere seemed just a little too polite, if not a tiny bit frosty. I think that’s when it properly sank in: we have nothing left in common, our friendship is gone. I was no longer a member of the band we created - we no longer had the same terms of endearment. It was the last time Roger and I spoke and none of us have ever spoken since.
He speaks also about Reportage and mentions that people keep asking him if he'll ever return to Duran Duran, and he finally answer the question...
[...] I hadn’t disagreed with Sony in 2005 when they’d rejected JT’s painful production of Reportage [our unreleased album], and I wasn’t alone, but nobody had the balls to tell Nick and John that the album just wasn’t up to it. JT couldn’t see this, or more to the point, feel it. They knew how I felt but in their ignorance ignored the one guy who was being straight and actually knew how to operate the machine. Occasionally [like on most days] I get asked by fans if I would ever consider joining Duran Duran for a third time? Sadly, I don’t think there’s any likelihood of that and the direction they’ve taken would not be of my choosing. Aside from anything else it would mean Nick and I have had more make-ups and break-ups than Liz Taylor and Richard Burton! So there’s not a cat in hell’s chance - it’s over. Like all divorces, it was inevitable that at some stage the lawyers would become involved. Our financial affairs had always been a bit of a complex web to say least, and no severance was ever going to be easy, particulary one as sudden and deceptive as my exit from the band. there were no farewell or handshakes and there was not even time to arrange for all of my musical equipment to be sent back to me'.
Andy closes the chapter saying:
[...] I have the satisfaction of knowing that in Duran Duran we did it all, and we did it ‘our own way’ - twice - [well nearly]. So there's no point in getting hung up about how things turned out. It’s over baby, they didn’t want me around anymore and fundamentally I’m okay about that. And we were gone just as quickly as it all had began.