For Duran Duran, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
A couple of weeks ago, the band dropped “All You Need Is Now,” its 13th release in a 30-year, 100- million-albums-sold career peppered with more peaks and valleys than a presidential approval rating.
The beauty of the record is that it replicates early Duran Duran’s new-wave sound, but with production that is wholly fresh and innovative. Achieving that throwback sound wasn’t the challenge, though. Clearing the mental hurdle was.
Bassist John Taylor — at 50, still Duran Duran’s resident lanky heartthrob — explained that after the band’s trio of hit albums between 1981 and 1983 with songs such as “Rio,” “The Reflex” and “Hungry Like the Wolf” commanding the charts, he started to question the band’s — and his own — musical style.
“There is a very strong style on those three albums, but style is born out of limitations,” he said recently. “I remember spending a lot of time in New York in the late ’80s and hanging around session players and feeling like a ‘musician’ and then feeling like our early style was naive. It felt like everything that had worked in 1982 didn’t work in 1987. We lost our style.”
Those ensuing years witnessed splinters amid the quintet (Taylor and former Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor formed the Power Station, while singer Simon LeBon and keyboardist Nick Rhodes created Arcadia); group reunions (Rhodes, LeBon and John Taylor reconvened for 1993’s “The Wedding Album”); forgotten experimental albums (1997’s “Medazzaland,” 2000’s “Pop Trash”); a full- fledged reunion, including drummer Roger Taylor (2004’s “Astronaut”); and, by 2007, another departure, when Andy Taylor opted not to participate in the Timbaland- led “Red Carpet Massacre.”
That last effort, an attempt to harness a more youthful rhythmic vibe, resulted in a tepid mishmash of sounds.
But John Taylor believes the dynamic of that record changed because of Andy Taylor’s absence.
“Andy didn’t make the (recording) sessions. As to why, well, it’s a chapter in his book (‘Wild Boy’). I was there, the other guys were there, but he wasn’t and that’s a great disappointment to me,” he said. “With Andy not turning up, it couldn’t be a rock record, so that whole album was an attempt to patch over the cracks with Andy missing.”
After the sting of the poorly selling “Red Carpet” evaporated, the band found itself in the company of celebrated young producer Mark Ronson, an unabashed Durannie known for his work with Amy Winehouse and Robbie Williams.
“(Ronson) enabled us to get back to those old sounds,” John Taylor said.
The outcome is an intoxicating combination of nimble bass lines, whizzing synthesizers and Le- Bon’s poetically cryptic lyrics on songs such as “Blame the Machines,” “Other People’s Lives” and the title track.
While Duran Duran’s new music is giving a breezy nod to its past, at least two of its members have embraced the social networking frenzy of today and the future.
John Taylor (@ThisistherealJT) and LeBon (@SimonJCLeBon) are rabid Twitter participants.
“This is how you have to do it. We’ve never worked harder. I don’t know how we did it back in the day when we were hung over. But if any young band saw the amount of work this requires, they’d probably become bankers,” Taylor said. “For somebody who had it, lost it and sees it happening again, I’ll never take it for granted.”
