As public figures and maybe as people, these imperialist wimps are the most deplorable pop stars of the postpunk if not post-Presley era.
Robert Christgau (Review of Seven & the Ragged Tiger)
Tomorrow, the imperialist wimps, as Robert Christgau once dubbed them, will be inducted into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame alongside the likes of Elvis Presley and The Beatles. The induction ceremony will be hours of lovely speeches and short sets as the industry drinks champagne and pretends it always loved Duran Duran. They didn’t. Duran Duran were supposed to look great, sell a few million records, and then make way for whatever was next on the industry assembly line. However, not even MTV could destroy the Fab Five and they pushed on through line-up and style changes that are endlessly fun to talk about with other fans. Tomorrow is for those fans more than the band.
Duran Duran have always created their finest music at the crossroads between rock and disco. Those parallel lines consistently run through the band’s music with the band leaning heavier in one direction or the other at different times. Touring with Blondie in the early 80s was no coincidence. Few bands have pulled off this style as brilliantly as Duran Duran and Blondie and both still headline their own tours proving that audiences hear what the critics often missed.
The influences on Duran Duran are not that hard to spot from David Bowie and Chic to Japan and Kraftwerk but it was the explosion of punk in the UK during the late 70s that convinced bands like Duran Duran that they could have a go at music. That spirit of punk drove Duran Duran to break new ground both musically and visually. They weren’t told that disco was the antithesis to rock-n-roll, they recognized that it was being played by some of the best musicians in the world (see: Nile, Bernard, and Tony) and that young people wanted to dance away the social and economic uncertainty of the time. The escapism of the New Romantic scene exploded on the screen in Duran Duran videos and took us all on an adventure as young music fans.
The music stands up to scrutiny forty-plus years later and if you want to catch a glimpse of what the 80s actually looked and sounded like at the time, there is no better place to start than 1982’s Rio. Some albums will live on forever in popular culture in a wider context, like Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Nirvana’s Nevermind, but as a collection of songs and videos, few albums come close to capturing the aesthetic of a moment like Rio from the Nagel artwork to the rush of rock-n-roll being played over dance-floor beats by a live band.
Tomorrow’s celebration should not go without a few words about the fans who carried this band through the leaner years, both creatively and commercially. Every band experiences an ebb and flow to their art when they exist for more than a few years and Duran Duran certainly had some unexpected highs and lows. However, the diversity of the fan base has ensured that your least-favorite Duran Duran album is probably someone else’s favorite. No matter the size of the venue they toured, the band had a loyal legion of Duranies who still bought tickets and supported them. Overwhelmingly, those fans were women.
The misogyny of the record business will exist as long as old men are pulling the levers of industry but Duran Duran’s induction tomorrow gives us all hope that change is possible. Championed on radio (Lori Majewski), in print (Annie Zaleski), supported online (Katy Krassner) and even outfitted on stage (Patty Palazzo), the women are who recognized Duran Duran as a special band early on and they have been the ones to keep the band alive all these years. Without them, the band might have slipped into obscurity or found themselves on small package tours playing the same five or six songs each night. To these fans who have risen to the top of their respective fields, I give my heartfelt thank you. I would not have found my way back to 80s pop and Duran Duran without them keeping the flag flying while went off and wandered throughout the 90s and early 2000s.
Does Andy Taylor play with the band again?! What happens tomorrow with Warren? It’s fun to try and predict what Duran Duran will do next but just when you think you have them cornered, the boys keep swinging and you find them adding “Love Voodoo” to the setlist. For me, I’ll enjoy their induction into the Rock Hall as acknowledgment that I wasn’t a misguided 9-year old when I first heard “Girls On Film” and decided I needed every record, every button, and every poster that had Duran Duran on it. I was too young to understand why it was wrong for me, a soccer-obsessed boy, to love a band in make-up sailing through a harbor on a yacht. In a way, that was a blessing. There wasn’t peer pressure to steer me away from the music so I stuck with them and I’m so glad I did. No matter how many different bands I love and how many concerts I see, nothing comes close to the rush of hearing “Hold Back the Rain” and I will never let that go.