This Simon interview was found at http://www.nuvo-onlin.com/97/10/09/sound/:

Nuvo Sound
Duran Duran: Back from the dead
Simon LeBon talks about their new album Medazzaland

In one of the unlikeliest comebacks in pop music history, Duran Duran is back. And the bigger surprise is that they're better than ever.

Their new album, Medazzaland, to be released next Tuesday, is a brilliant suite of pop music that has as much bit and punch as D-squared's greatest hits. Like Rio, the group's 1982 breakout album, Medazzaland is chock full of wit and hooks. And unlike the band's recent work, the heavy-handedness is gone. Tracks such as "Electric Barbarella", the album's leadoff single, and anthemic "Big Band (sic) Generation" make a compelling case for Duran Duran as saviors of '90s pop. Stuck as pop music is between the played-out formats of grunge and gangsta, the synth-and-guitar stylings of Duran Duran once again sound fresh and bright.

In a telephone interview from his home near London, Duran Duran's charismatic lead singer, Simon LeBon, sat down for a chat with Steve Hammer, NUVO's arts and music editor. A partial transcript of the interview follows.

SH: The buzz on this album is that it hearkens back to the days of Rio and Seven and the Ragged Tiger.

SLB: I think it does, definitely, the feel of it. It's a very free-sounding album. It's not playing safe. And Rio was not about playing safe. We've got that really up, optimistic sound that Duran Duran used to be about before we started taking ourselves seriously. In songs like "Electric Barbarella" and "Big Bang Generation", we've got a real sense of fun. And we haven't really had that for years and years.

SH: Why not?

SLB: We started to take ourselves too seriously. We really did. We wanted to be a seriously acclaimed band and, you know, I think we lost our sense of fun a little bit.

SH: And that's back now?

SLB: Definitely, very much. I think that we started to believe our press. When the press said, ah, this pop star thing is ephemeral and inconsequential and doesn't mean anything, we began to overlook the fact that there were millions of people who bought our records who loved it just like it was. They didn't want us to change. And we overlooked that and we changed, and we fell out of favor because of that.

SH: Do you feel that tastes have sort of shifted back to what you guys were doing in the mid-'80s?

SLB: I think it has, in a way, yes. We've had six years of very dark, very insular, self-obsessed, very depressing music. And people are breaking out of that and they want something that's a bit more fun. It's kind of like what happened after punk, although punk wasn't really as dark as grunge. You know, there's been all these other influences that have been going on at the same time. The dance thing has been happening and now it's really coming up to the forefront, in the same way as the disco scene, which had happened simultaneously and in parallel with punk, had. The success in America of bands like Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers just adds weight to that.

SH: Well, you know, when I saw Prodigy at Lollapalooza, the first thing I thought was, "They're stealing Duran Duran's stage act."

SLB: I don't know if they ever saw us. But I've had a lot of people say that. I think they have this vibe, you know, this really rocky dance-music vibe that's fun on stage, and that's what Duran Duran's been about all along.

SH: Andy Warhol writes very admiringly of you and Nick in his Diaries. How did you guys end up meeting him? That must have been an incredible scene when you came to New York in the early '80s.

SLB: He had a real crush on Nick, Warhol did. And Nick, at that time, looked like a young version of Andy Warhol. So it's quite funny, really. New York was an incredible place in 1982. It was absolutely amazing. You had all these amazing nightclubs. The Peppermint Lounge. Studio 54 was still going. There was the Paradise Garage. There was Danceteria. It was incredible. You'd go to clubs and run into Billy Idol and Johnny Thunders, and all kinds of people were just out. Debbie Harry. And the whole scene was still there and it was out, and it was about having fun. It was really, really kicking at the beginning of the '80s, New York was.

I don't know how we met Warhol. I think Nick just decided that he wanted to meet him. He and I both went over to the Factory [Warhol's studio], and we met him, and he was charming, and very funny, and obviously quite flattered that we were interested in him. We were quite flattered that he was flattered that we were interested in him. And, um, it became this mutual admiration society. He came and did MTV with me and Nick. And we got introduced to people like Keith Haring and Julian Schnabel and the entire early-'80s art scene. The one guy we never met was Basquiat.

SH: Critics had a lot fun with Duran Duran in the '80s, saying you guys were plastic and artificial and such. That has to get under your skin.

SLB: I think what happens, though, is that the critics like to be the people who discover you. I think it threatens the job security of critics when bands break through the masses before they're critically acclaimed, you know? That's the fact with the Spice Girls, it really is. I mean, they may be really ephemeral and a bit superficial, but that's what pop music is. I mean, if it had been critics that had said, "There's this great underground scene in London, and there's these five girls and they're really good fun", then it would be a different story. They get knocked left, right and center because it was the kids who discovered them. And that's what happened with us.

SH: They really seemed to savage the Thank You album.

SLB: We are aware of the fact that we confused a lot of people with Thank You. And we confused ourselves to some extent as well. What we wanted to do with this album was go back to what we knew we could really do well, which was a new studio album. We thought, let's go back to what we really do, which is write and record our own songs and go on tour.

SH: How did this album come together?

SLB: We came up with a lot of songs at the end of the Wedding Album project. Songs that really started there were "Big Bang Generation" and "Be My Icon", and "Medazzaland" itself were some of the really early pieces.

SH: There's a real cohesion to the tracks, almost like a concept album.

SLB: We never consciously came up with a theme for it. The title -- I came back from an operation. Oral surgery. And I floated into the studio and Warren said, "Man, where have you been? What's wrong with you? What have you been taking?" And I said, well, I've just had this operation. It wasn't a general anesthetic; they gave me this thing called Medazzalim, which is a sedative enabling you to respond to the surgeon's directions. But at the end of it all, you lose all the time. You forget it all completely. He said, "Man, you're still in Medazzaland." That's where the album title came from.

I want to say right here, right now, that I'm not promoting the use of drugs, but I'm definitely in favor of pain-free dentistry. [Laughs]

We took a long time to do [Medazzaland]. We did a promotional tour for Thank You, which took six months out of the project and really stopped the creative flow. And we came back about a year ago, two years ago really, and put our head down and really thought that we had to finish it. And it took us a long time to get it together.

SH: There seems to be a lot of different musical influences on it, too.

SLB: I think the inspiration and the influence for this album comes from so wide, it's very difficult to identify. There's an influence of grunge, a little bit, in things like "So Long Suicide", which is kind of about Kurt Cobain, anyway. There's definitely the rock influences. A lot of that comes from Warren. There's a very hip-hop feel to the tracks as well.

SH: Is there a tour in the works?

SLB: I'm looking at a very small tour. A teaser, really. This band kind of fell down the back of the sofa, and we need to get back on the mantelpiece.

SH: Did you ever think you'd find yourself married with three kids and still being this sort of sex symbol?

SLB: I don't particularly feel like a sex symbol. It's not something that one thinks about. The idea of being a sex symbol at my age is really rather laughable, to me, anyway. But if people are willing to buy it, I'm willing to sell it. [Laughs]

SH: What would you say about the new album to someone who maybe was a Duran Duran fan in the past but who has lost track of you over the years?

SLB: It's just worth a listen. It might remind you of the old Duran Duran that you used to be into. You might not want that, but don't listen to it as an old Duran Duran fan. Just listen to it as a music lover, because if you were a Duran Duran fan, you were always a music lover anyway. Give it a shot.