By Thomas Crone
The core of the set Duran Duran plans to play as headliners at Cruel World in Pasadena on Saturday, May 11 will be made up of songs the group made famous during the 1980s and 1990s.
Those tracks by the band – including classic-era members Simon Le Bon (vocals), Nick Rhodes (synths), Roger Taylor (drums) and John Taylor (bass) – provide a crowd-pleasing selection of winners, cuts that are played virtually every time the Rock & Roll Hall of Famers take the stage.
These are the bedrocks: “Rio,” “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Come Undone,” and “Ordinary World,” and they’re supplemented by a passel of other tracks that are staples of new wave radio stations and streaming platforms the world over.
But the group is also coming off of the success of creating new work, with songs that very much fit into the band’s considerable canon. Most recently, Duran Duran released “Danse Macabre,” an album that includes three new original songs, six covers and three re-recorded songs from the band’s catalog.
Meanwhile, the band’s 15th album, 2021’s “Future Past,” is arguably the best full work by the band in years. And those songs are being spotted into this year’s sets, allowing fans a chance to enjoy the ear candies of youth, as well as songs written and recorded by a band that’s clearly still interested in crafting new material.
Thinking about balancing new songs and old, John Taylor, in a recent interview, said “There’re songs you’ve just got to do, they’ve got to be there. Then you start thinking about what older songs are fans really going to be delighted to hear and be surprised (by). Then you start thinking about how new songs can fit. And we tend to revolve them a little bit. Maybe we do ‘Anniversary’ one night and we do ‘Invisible’ another.”
Those two songs are among the standouts on “Future Past,” a project that commenced in 2019, then went on hold for a number of months because of COVID before reigniting as in-person restrictions began to loosen.
Praised by critics and longtime fans of the band as one of their best overall albums, the wait was rewarded. For “Future Past,” the title gives a decent hint as to what was on the group’s mind at that time.
Taylor suggested that “if there was a theme in ‘Future Past,’ I think it was almost looking back to, there was a genesis to all of our careers in music. I would put it down to the punk rock revolution of 1977 in the U.K., where every kid my age decided they wanted to be in a band, whether they could play an instrument or not. We had this incredible… I mean, they called it a youthquake, you know, this incredible movement of kids that just were just jumping up on stage and singing whatever and getting their hair cut and slashing their ties and shirts. This kind of artistic revolution took place. I would say that’s at the core of this album.”
Taylor added that the group was aware, through its management, that the band’s 40th anniversary was nigh. And though that was secretly known by all parties, suddenly some energy and light was being brought up around that fact.
The band wanted to create an album that fit within the continuum of past albums, while not sleeping on new sonic potentials. It had to count, to matter.
‘There were like these undercurrents of the anniversary and longevity and, you know, (wondering) ‘what does that mean?’” Taylor said. “So that was probably there.”
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In a bio sent out by the group’s publicists, a lot of time and attention is paid to Duran Duran’s relentless incorporation of the newest toys and techniques into their career, be it in the studio or on the stage. They’ve been innovators all along the way, probably not getting enough credit for that role. Taylor psyched about the blend of human and technical elements that’ll add to their thoroughly contemporary live show.
He said that the show will be “stunning. We always say this, but visually it’s one of the best shows we’ve ever put together. I mean, we’ve reached a degree of integration with the visual and the music like we’ve never done before. This show has evolved out of the shows we did last year. Rather than having to build a completely new show from scratch, we’ve taken elements of what we developed last year and made it better. It’s a very dramatic show, it’s a very sexy show. For me, it’s cerebral, but also poptastic, you know?”
Unlike a number of bands of its generation, Duran Duran are not calling this a farewell tour. So this year’s shows are part of the overall career path, not a finale. And for Taylor, it’s being seen as the band working at a peak level of satisfaction.
“This is a privilege,” he said. “There’s a deeper level of pride, I think, In what we’re doing today.”