From the November 14 Toronto Sun:

Duran Duran can't get no respect
By Jane Stevenson

It's not easy being a faded pretty boy pop act like Duran Duran -- especially when you've finally managed to attain a degree of musical respect only to lose it so quickly.

"They say we'll get over it, disappear like dinosaurs to the sound of small applause," sings Duran Duran's Simon LeBon on "Undergoing Treatment", a telling song off their latest album, Medazzaland.

Duran Duran, who have almost sold out the Warehouse on Sunday night, led the wave of New Romantic bands in the mid-'80s, playing stadiums full of screaming teenage girls as a result of their well-coifed good looks and popular music videos.

"We did look great!" says LeBon good-naturedly down the line recently from London.

"We all thought we looked great, c'mon! The music still sounds good to me and we are playing songs from our first album that we haven't played in 15 years. I think the haircuts were the thing, really."

Duran Duran's strongest musical statement, however, came in 1993 with the release of The Wedding Album, which spawned the two Top 10 hits "Ordinary World" and "Come Undone".

Unfortunately, the group followed up with a simply awful album of covers, 1995's Thank You, which saw LeBon struggling through songs like Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" and Lou Reed's "Perfect Day". What were they thinking?

"We did make a mistake with it," says LeBon, now 39 with three daughters aged eight, six and three.

"Maybe we didn't make a mistake, but it didn't work. It's really tough for us now because of what happened to Thank You. And just getting people to hear this record is proving to be quite a struggle. It's tough. It's very competitive. It's almost like being in a new band, having to really fight for that kind of attention and air space."

The making of Medazzaland was complicated by the surprise exit of founding bass player John Taylor, who co-wrote three tracks and played on four. Taylor has since released his own solo album, Feelings Are Good And Other Lies.

"He done gone and left the group half-way through the project," explains LeBon, before adding: "Well, actually no, two-thirds of the way through, more like three-quarters. I couldn't believe he bailed out when he did, really. I thought he could have just stuck it out for another couple of months, but he couldn't. I mean, he had his life set up in Los Angeles and he couldn't commute and he couldn't face compromising his ideas anymore. He just wanted to go off on his own."

LeBon says he remains friends with Taylor and there are no hard feelings. And even if the remaining veterans in the band -- LeBon and founding keyboardist Nick Rhodes &endash; aren't playing arenas anymore, they're still fashion-conscious.

They launched their club tour a week ago at the Andy Warhol retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York.

"Didn't Andy Warhol say one of his favorite pastimes was sitting down masturbating while watching Duran Duran videos?" says LeBon.

There's also a Duran Duran tribute album currently out featuring everyone from ska-punk band Goldfinger doing "Rio" to ABBA worshippers Bjorn Again performing "Girls On Film".

The first single on Medazzaland is "Electric Barbarella", and hardcore "Duranies" will remember the band got their name from a character in the sexy sci-fi movie "Barbarella".

"Nick worked the lyric for that one and he wanted that four-syllable name and somebody had already used Macarena," jokes LeBon. "Barbarella just seemed like the right one."

Medazzaland debuted at a respectable No. 58 on the Billboard 200, but it has since sunk to 178 after three weeks.

LeBon says the British music press continues to be unkind.

"We just basically get the same review every time we make an album, which is (a) 'The worst album ever made' and (b) 'Why do they still bother?' In fact, I should write to them and say, 'Why do you bother?'"