Duran Duran
The Long And Winding Rhodes
Exclusive myLaunch Q&A By Lindsey Parker

"Styles change--style doesn't."

That's the official catchphrase being used to tout Duran Duran circa '97, and it fits. After all, these tops fops of pop have gone through myriad musical (not to mention hair and fashion) styles since they debuted in 1981, but even during their lowest lows and dullest lulls, they never let us see them sweat. Not only did these Boys On Film always look good, their music always remained as silky and polished as their designer suits.

Now, here we are, well into the latter half of the '90s, and not only aren't Duran Duran--a band often prematurely written off as an early-'80s nostalgia act--going away, they're staging what might even be the second "comeback" of their decade-straddling career (their first comeback being 1993's Wedding Album, which yielded two top 10 singles). The Fab Three have just unveiled their ninth (yes, that's right, their ninth) studio release, Medazzaland, and the album's successful marriage of Duran Duran's trademark high-gloss '80s sound with forward-thinking electronic ambience and industrial discord proves that the more things change, the more the stay the same. Medazzaland easily sounds like it could've been released in 1983, yet at the same time it's surprisingly fresh and of-the-moment--particularly for a band that's been laying down slick, seductive synthesizer grooves for going-on-20 years.

Speaking of synthesizers, Nick Rhodes, Duran Duran's dandy keyboardist since he was a teen, is described in D2's recent bio as "the keeper of the Duran flame." And surely that is accurate--not only because he still sports superbly ostentatious pink silk suits and a Easter-egg-colored head of peroxided hair, not just because he is Duran Duran's longest-serving original member, but because Medazzaland is very much his vision. Lavishly laced with keyboard and sampling effects and co-produced by Nick, Medazzaland proudly and flamboyantly bears his stylish stamp. So who better to discuss Duran Duran's evolution from '80s pretty-boy pinups to established late-millennium icons? To paraphrase a song Nick once recorded with side-project Arcadia, come step into his flame...

LAUNCH:
Is that you doing the spoken-word vocals on the first song on Medazzaland, the title track?

NICK RHODES:
Yes. It just came about, because we were going to keep "Medazzaland" as an instrumental. But I was sitting in the studio one day--it was just Warren [Cuccurullo, guitarist] and I there--we had the track up, I'd finished a lot of my electronic parts on it. And I said, "You know--somehow I feel this would be a great, great track to have a monologue over." And so I started scribbling down some words; I got this idea about being afraid to let go of something and being afraid of sinking into a state of almost anesthesia, where you have to trust other people. Just the paranoia of it all. And it seemed to suit the frenetic track. So I just wrote it out and, you know, said it.

LAUNCH:
Totally spontaneously like that?

NICK:
Yes, it happened very, very quickly, all in the space of a couple of hours. And I said, "Okay, let's see if Simon [Le Bon, lead singer] likes it." At first, Simon wasn't sure about it at all--it was the thought of the threat to his job: "Oh my God, Nick's on a track now!" But he listened to it a few times, and he loved it. He said, "Wow, it's really unusual!" And we felt the only place to put it was at the beginning of the album, as sort of an introduction to this state of mind where you're not quite sure what's going on.

LAUNCH:
Which leads me to ask: Medazzaland has been described as a "concept album"...

NICK:
[Emits startled chuckle]

LAUNCH:
Well, that's was your bio says!

NICK:
Oh, I love bios! I wouldn't say traditionally it was a "concept album." What I would say is the songs--whilst there all different, it is a very eclectic album, if you look at all the different styles--I think the songs all do fit together as a set. It's probably the most complete album we've made for many years. I think in the 1980s, we captured the spirit of the decade with the Rio album. For us, we know that that album was a landmark, in that we really, actually expressed how everyone was feeling at that time. It's something that's been a double-edged sword for us, because it was such a powerful record, and perhaps the images from the videos stuck in people's minds; then, it came to the end of the 1980s, and people wanted to close the door on us. They wanted to shut us into the 1980s! It was like, "That's what Duran Duran is; that's what they're about." I think it took us until the Wedding Album--when we made "Ordinary World" and "Come Undone"--to actually start to show people what the Duran Duran of the '90s was; I think that record captured that certain melancholy that was in the air around that time. And I wanted to make an album that really stamps Duran Duran all over the 1990s, something that again captured the spirit of what's going on. And that's what I believe Medazzaland is: it's got that controlled hysteria and that organized chaos that the late '90s seem to have, and it's little bits of space-junk glued together with really beautiful classical things. There's a lot of contradictions in it, but somehow, as a tapestry, it all works. Obviously with every new album we make, we always have to believe in it and feel we've gone in the right direction. But when we finished the Rio album, I looked around and I knew we'd done something special. I didn't know what on Earth would happen to it, whether it would be a hit or a flop or whatever, but I knew when I was listening to it, "Yep, this has got really strong songs on it, and this one just feels right." And I have to say that I haven't had that feeling as strongly since then, for any of our records, until now.

LAUNCH:
Not even with the Wedding Album ?

NICK:
Not with the whole album; with certain songs, yes. When we finished "Ordinary World" we all looked at each other and said, if this doesn't work, then we're doing something wrong. But again, I have to say, as a complete album, I really think this one makes a statement that the other ones haven't yet. I mean, I hope we do an even better album in '98 or '99, but certainly this one has said a lot that I wanted to have Duran Duran say for the '90s.

LAUNCH:
How have you, as a band, managed to keep reinventing yourselves, when so many bands that were around when you first started are either broken up or pathetic now?

NICK:
Yes, we've seen a lot of things come and go--good things, too.

LAUNCH:
Well, on that MTV documentary It Came From The '80s, practically every band that was mentioned or interviewed is no longer around, or doing dinner theater or something like that. Duran Duran was pretty much the only band featured that's still vital now. How have you managed this--especially with all your lineup changes?

NICK:
To me, I just see that as shedding skin, to be honest. John [Taylor, former bassist] leaving was obviously very sad for us--particularly for me, because I'd grown up with him--but at the same time, it was time for us to turn into a butterfly again. Metamorphosis is very important to us--to move on, to do something different. But I think some things have stayed the same with us. One: songs, music, in that we've always believed in really strong songs, even in times when perhaps melody has not been the most fashionable thing in the world. We've actually stuck with it, because I do believe that ultimately that is what people relate to. There's something about music that touches people's spirits. You listen to a piece of music and it will remind you of something--it might make you happy, it might make you sad, but it is very emotive. And I think that Duran Duran have always understood that. Two: ideas. That's my favorite currency. I always feel rich whilst I've got ideas, and very poor if I start to run out.

LAUNCH:
Is this the first time you've produced one of your albums?

NICK:
No. Really, we've been very active in the production from day one; it's something I've personally always concentrated on. But we've worked with some great people. The last album we produced ourselves, and the one before that we did pretty much ourselves, though we did work with a programmer guy named John Jones. But pretty much the last three we've done on our own. For this album the production credit is "TV Mania," which is Warren and I. The reason it's like that is we'd formed this entity earlier last year, and we formed it to produce other things and for our own writing outside of Duran Duran, which is very different. We've taken on a very ambitious project, which is like a cyber-soap-rock-opera, I suppose. It's a very modern piece called Bored With Prozac And The Internet. And that's going to be a trilogy, but the first album of that is completed, and when we were doing that, we spent a lot of time in the studio, and I suppose we really learned a lot about each other and what our strengths and weakness were for production. And we also wrote and produced a couple of songs for Blondie. So when we were doing Medazzaland, it was the logical thing that Warren and I end up doing most of the production. We've credited Simon as an associate producer, which is very true and fair, but Warren and I took control of the sound of the record, basically.

LAUNCH:
Tell me about the "Electric Barbarella" remixes you are doing with Eli Janney from Girls Against Boys and Russell Simins from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

NICK:
They're going out as 12-inches; I don't know if they're going to be commercially available immediately, but they've definitely gone to alternative radio and clubs. Also we did a couple more sort of dance remixes, with Todd Terry and an English guy called Dom T. Those are really interesting too. We just felt that we really had a track with "Electric Barbarella" that lent itself perfectly to remixes. There were a few remixers out there that we thought were interesting, plus we also got approached, so we said, "Yeah, it's time we did some." They've turned out really well, actually; I'm really pleased with all of them, though they're all very different. There have been times when we've been quite precious about remixes, because when you hand your song over to someone else and say, "Alright, now you play with it and do something completely different," you often don't like the results you get back. In our case, if we don't like the results, then we don't end up using them. But having said that, I think we've just gotten a lot better at choosing the people whose work we liked best in the first place. It's the most remixes we've done for one song in a long time, but we thought it'd be fun.

LAUNCH:
An obvious question, considering the remixes and the general feel of the album: with "electronica" having a resurgence of sorts right now, do you think the current musical climate is right for Duran Duran?

NICK:
I'm really pleased! It's somewhat of a relief, because it sort of opened the gateways again for the area that we feel most comfortable in. Whilst today's electronic music is a different breed than that which we sort of pioneered in the early '80s, there's no doubt that a lot of it is rock music crossed over with electronic dance music, which is what we were doing back then--and what we've continued to do in various guises over the years.

LAUNCH:
Since Duran Duran was one of the first hugely successful bands in the '80s that played synthesizer-heavy music--especially on the first album--do you listen to some of the new electronic music out now and hear elements of what you were doing?

NICK
With a lot of the new music that's around and the acts that have actually cited us as being influences...I wouldn't be so arrogant as to take somebody's record and say, "I think they've taken that from what we've done," but definitely I like the sound of a lot of things out there, and they're in an area in which I enjoy making music myself. I don't think I'd describe our album as being trip-hop or electronica or anything like that, but there's no question that with what's happening and the atmosphere at the moment, it fits very well into that area. I mean, I was thrilled when I saw that the Prodigy album went to No. 1 in America, because it is a very different kind of sound--especially for radio over there, which is often very conservative. I think it's a great thing that the kids are able to hear this stuff and get into different types of music. I mean, I love the Chemical Brothers' album, but I also love Chopin's "Nocturnes." It's always important to have different things to listen to; the reason the Duran Duran album has got so many different styles on it I suppose is because we like so many different things. We listen to just about everything.

LAUNCH:
There are some songs on Medazzaland that I wouldn't say sound exactly like your first album, but I definitely hear more similarities between Medazzaland and earlier albums like Rio and your first album than other records you've put out since.

NICK:
Oh, I totally agree! I think it's more like the first album and the Rio album than anything else we've done. That's not deliberate, but it is something that just felt right. When we wrote "Electric Barbarella," Warren said to me, "You know, since I've been in the band, we've never hit on one of those really up Duran songs; we haven't had a 'Hungry Like The Wolf' or a 'Rio.' We've had those beautiful, melancholy ballads and we've had nice, sultry groove tracks, but we've never hit on that. This is the first one." And in a way, he's right. But I also feel quite strongly that music can become quite pessimistic in many ways, and there's a lot of really down stuff out there. Now I love dark music, and a lot of the Duran Duran albums are almost completely dark, but I also think you need light with dark, and with "Electric Barbarella" it was nice to be able to bring a little bit of humor into it. I think music really lacks that. It's a song that makes people smile; I've seen the reaction to it with a lot of people now. And I'm really pleased that we've put something out like that, because a lot of bands, when they get older, are frightened of that and think that everything should be very serious and that they must make certain statements or social comments. Well, I'm a firm believer in pop music, and as much as I like a lot of the darker tracks on this album, like "Be My Icon," I think "Electric Barbarella" is just right for now, the feeling of it is right.

LAUNCH:
A lot of the keyboard sounds on Medazzaland have a certain quality that evokes your earlier material.

NICK:
Yes, I went back to totally analog synthesizers for this album. I used exactly the same ones that I used on the first two albums. It was a revolt against all this modern digital technology, yet it's also the sound of the moment.

LAUNCH:
You must be encouraged that the timing of this album is really good--not just with dance and electronic music's popularity, but also, for a while, in America no British bands were getting any attention or acceptance. Now, obviously Oasis is huge in the U.S., but also bands like Blur and the Verve are doing well here, and even Suede are making some leeway...

NICK:
I like Suede very much; they're my favorite of the pack, I think. Yes, it's very difficult to actually break through on radio in America. I often wonder, how do new acts break? I know how we broke: we broke because of an accident, really, in that radio programmers just had a moment when they got a little bit sick of playing "Stairway To Heaven." In that moment of weakness, they let us in, and people went, "Wow! This is different!"

LAUNCH:
Also, you had the incredible luck of coming around when MTV was starting, back when MTV actually played only videos, which isn't the case now.

NICK:
Yes, I must say I could live without all their game shows. Anyway, it's a really different thing for a new act now, to break through anywhere, particularly in America. I think there should be a much more open mind with regards to radio, because the formats now are split up into so many different sections of sections of sections, it's alarming; it doesn't allow music to just have a personality of its own. It's very difficult for an act like us, as you can imagine, when we might want to make a ballad or we might want to make a dance song or we might want to make just an out-an-out pop song, and all of them now fall into different formats on American radio.

LAUNCH:
Do you feel like you're sort of in a weird purgatory state? Before, when you were trying to move from the '80s to the '90s, a lot of people dismissed you as just an '80s new wave band. Then you had the Wedding Album and you became a more "adult," VH1-style band. But now, what about kids--new fans who may not have heard of you before? How do you expand to that audience?

NICK:
It's very difficult because things are so research-oriented in America--not just in America, but America seems to be better at it. They analyze everything, and because of that, if you don't fit into the right boxes or categories, you can fall through the gaps in-between. It's not so bad for us, in that at least our name is established; we'd get to a certain amount of our audience even if we weren't played on the radio or MTV. It certainly doesn't help if you don't get exposure, but for a new band, if you don't quite fit into one of those formats, it's impossible. And I think that is really upsetting, because I think that anybody that does something decent, whatever type of music it is--whether it's something really new or just a folk song--if it's good and it's quality, then it should have an outlet. People should be able to hear it if that's the kind of thing they want to listen to.

LAUNCH:
Do you think that Medazzaland might widen your audience?

NICK:

You never know with these things. Of course I hope so. But you know, when we put out the Notorious album, we thought, "Wow, we've got a song here, 'Skin Trade,' that's probably the best thing we've ever written!" We put out "Notorious" as a single, which did extremely well, and we thought, "Great, now we'll put out 'Skin Trade'--it's going to do twice as well, because it's a much better song!" And we put it out, and it bombed, pretty much. And we were surprised, in that we really felt that it was a very strong song; I still feel it is. From that moment onwards, I never second-guessed anything again. But still, I do feel very strongly that Medazzaland is an important record for us, and I want a lot of people to hear it. It feels like the right soundtrack for the times, so yes, I want to get through to as many people as we can.