Please Please Tell Me Now

May 1, 2021
A history of the quintessential video band, from its New Romantic roots to the nostalgia circuit. Duran Duran came together in the late 1970s when the band mates were still teenagers, enchanted by Roxy Music's musical and sartorial style, Chic's disco-funk, and the nascent British synth-pop movement. Soon they became the house band at the Rum Runner, a dance club that was Birmingham's answer to London's New Romantic ground zero, the Blitz. Once singer Simon Le Bon arrived with a notebook stuffed with abstract, earnest lyrics, they developed a formula that got them halfway toward being the dominant dance-pop act of the early 1980s. The other main factor, of course, was MTV. Informed that the new cable channel was tired of rote performance videos, the band delivered ambitious clips filmed in far-flung locales ("Hungry Like the Wolf" in Sri Lanka, "Rio" in Antigua) and became superstars. Multiplatinum success brought them mansions and a glamorous social circle; keyboardist Nick Rhodes became close friends with Andy Warhol. But it also delivered a harsh backlash and cocaine habits that left the band in disarray for years to come. Veteran rock biographer Davis, best known for his 1985 Led Zeppelin biography, Hammer of the Gods, cobbled this book from interviews for a band autobiography that never came together. While he delivers some interesting details about band gossip and chart action, he rarely comes off as enthusiastic about his subject. Aside from some insights into the band's early songs and perfunctory attempts to braid the band's rise with Thatcherism, he's content to chronicle record releases, tours, breakups, and rehab stints, only more speedily after the band's mid-'80s peak. If the band's music deserves a critical reassessment, Davis isn't interested in exploring the matter. A disappointingly bloodless bio of a band all but defined by flash, color, and the "fervor" of their devoted fans.

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Starred review from May 21, 2021

Veteran rock biographer Davis, who has written about Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, Jim Morrison, and Stevie Nicks, among others, turns his attention to Duran Duran, the English New Romantic synthesizer band that topped the charts from 1981 to 1985. Basing his account on interviews with the five-man group, he expertly chronicles their early lives and discusses the band's formation within the social context of Margaret Thatcher's England. Davis demonstrates the impact on Duran Duran of David Bowie and the funky Nile Rodgers--led group Chic, explores their relationship with pop artist Andy Warhol, and documents how MTV aided the band's meteoric rise to fame. The author describes a blur of studio sessions, mobs of rabid fans, and worldwide concerts, including Live Aid, the benefit for famine victims on the African continent. Davis also addresses the gradual unraveling of Duran Duran's "Fab Five" amid nervous exhaustion, depression, and drug abuse; and covers band members' spin-off groups Power Station and Arcadia and the group's reunion in the 2000s. VERDICT This lively, engaging work captures the initial adrenaline rush and eventual stultifying downward spiral of a band that helped define early eighties rock. Highly recommended.--David P. Szatmary, formerly with Univ. of Washington, Seattle

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