by Andy Taylor
We jumped into the sporty little VW that Simon used to get around town and he drove us to the Metropolitan, where he pulled up right outside the door. Simon plonked his car keys into a doorman’s hand and asked him to park it somewhere overnight. I’d never been inside the Met Bar before, but I soon discovered that it’s a curious little place, very small and dark, and the toilets are located on the right-hand side as you enter it from the hotel’s reception.
We were standing there by the entrance when Geri Halliwell from the Spice Girls came rushing over to say hello to Simon. Hot on the heels of Geri was Victoria Beckham (who was still known as Victoria Adams, as it was about a year before she married David). Geri was very bubbly and excited, and I really wanted to meet her because she seemed like a really ballsy chick, more like Boss Spice. But Posh had other ideas. Victoria came over to us with a very stern face and pulled Geri away. No way are we talking to you, was the polite way of saying what her face showed; and whoosh, they disappeared off into the toilets. (Why do all girls head for the toilet when there’s something going down?)
“What the fuck was all that about?” I said to Simon.
“Ah, well . . . ,” replied Simon, looking slightly impish. “I think it might be because of something that I said to Victoria when I last met her.”
“Tell me more.”
What had happened was that Simon confided to Posh while they were chatting that he’d had a very vivid dream about her the night before. I presume that at first Posh was quite flattered, until Simon added that the dream had actually involved him having a perfect view up her skirt while she was wearing no knickers! Victoria was horrified, especially as Simon used a very unchaplike word to describe a certain part of her anatomy. She took great exception, and I think she ended up giving Simon a good slap in return. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no suggestion that Simon was trying to chat her up or anything like that, it was just his weird sense of humor coming out.
The whole thing had become something of a talking point in the showbiz world. In fact, an article about it appeared in the Daily Mirror a few months after we spoke, when Simon later alluded to the incident on the Jo Whiley Show on Channel Four. LE BON SO SORRY OVER POSH GAFFE, said the newspaper’s headline.
“Simon Le Bon has written a grovelling letter of apology for disgracing himself in front of her,” said the article. (Fuckin’ legend, I thought, that’s sorted the men from the boys then!) “Details of the Duran Duran star’s embarrassing behaviour remain sketchy. But it appears he was less than a gentleman to poor Victoria when he met her at the Brits awards ceremony earlier this year.”
I must admit I roared with laughter when he told me about it in the Met Bar, although I can see why Victoria was offended, as it’s not really the best line to say to a girl, is it? Great, I thought. We’ve been snubbed by Posh Spice because of Old Spice!
But then that’s what helps to make Simon so unique: he might have a very suave and sophisticated exterior, but deep down inside he can sometimes be a bit of a lovable slob just like the rest of us. He’s been very misinterpreted over the years by the media, who often mistake his confidence and optimism for arrogance. He’s taken a lot of stick for it, and as a result he’s grown a very thick skin and learned not to react when people take the piss out of him. Actually, most people whom I’ve introduced him to are pleasantly surprised and end up saying what a nice fella he is. Often, however, strangers will come up and pick on him for no reason in public, presumably out of jealousy.
THE day after our brief run-in with Victoria Beckham at the Met Bar, Simon and I watched the Scotland match together at his home and chatted about the possibility of a reunion. Duran Duran’s back catalogue of music was doing well, and we’d had one or two early approaches to see whether or not we wanted to do something for the turn of the millennium in 2000. Simon and Nick had carried on together in a watered-down version of Duran Duran during the nineties with guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, but the view seemed to be that if the original five were to reform it would create a lot of interest.
“Shall we do some millennium deal then?” I asked Simon as we sat watching Scotland lose 2–1 to Brazil.
“No, because everyone is going to be doing shows around that time. Let’s wait for it to pass and then see where we are at,” he replied.
“Okay.” Good, I thought, the millennium stuff’s going to be well overdone.
“How’s Nick anyway?” I rasped in a thick Brummie drawl.
“Well, you know. Nick is Nick,” said Simon pleasantly. “Getting divorced soon.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why I was asking. Is he still the same old Nick?” I persisted, but Simon was too much of a diplomat to be drawn out any further.
I had a few similar conversations about the possible reunion with Roger, but nothing came of them. Roger had pretty much dropped out of the public eye altogether and was still married to Giovanna. (They divorced later.) John, meanwhile, had finally confronted his demons in 1995, eventually going into rehab for his drug and alcohol addictions following a failed marriage to Amanda de Cadenet. I can remember very clearly the day he told me. We had arranged to work on a new Power Station album together when he suddenly called me out of the blue.
“I’m over,” he said.
“Over what?” I asked.
“I’m gone. I can’t do it anymore and I think you know why.”
John explained his position and said he couldn’t do the album. I could tell from his voice that he was serious about cleaning up his act. He told me he was going away and later claimed that it was because of Robert Palmer. I was surprised because he seemed quite lucid when we’d met to arrange Power Station II in LA, where he was living with Amanda. He was drinking carrot juice and told me he was off the drugs, but he must have relapsed or something because the following year he went into recovery and split from Amanda at around the same time, which was all covered by the press. I’d lost touch with him since then, but by the time the talk of a reunion came around he was leading a completely sober lifestyle.
After the start of the new millennium passed, there was talk of a possible Duran Duran supershow in 2000 featuring the original five of us along with Warren Cuccurullo and some of the other guys that Simon and Nick had worked with. But it all sounded a bit naff, and the idea was soon put on ice.
Meanwhile, after spending years in LA, the Midlands, and Marbella, Tracey and I were making plans to start a new life together in Ibiza. It’s a beautiful, warm, friendly island—the ideal place to continue to raise our growing family. We had four children by then: Andrew, born August 1984; my eldest daughter, Georgina, born August 1987; Bethany, born June 1991; and Isabelle, born May 1996.
I’d just come back from making arrangements in Ibiza in the summer of 2000 when the phone rang. It was John. This was the first time I had spoken to him for years.
“Hi, Andy, what are you doing these days?”
Moving to the perfect sunset soon, I thought. I guessed straightaway that John was calling me about the reunion, because there was no other reason to contact me these days, unless something sad had happened.
“I’m okay,” I replied. “I’m making plans with Tracey to move to Ibiza. What about you?”
John explained that he was calling from LA, where he had been spending some time with Simon and Nick. All three of them had agreed the time was finally right for a reunion. Already making plans, I thought.
“Simon is here now, he really wants to do it. I’ve spoken to Nick yesterday and he is coming around again to discuss it.”
The first thing I said was, “Are you sure about all this, JT, are you ready for it all again?”
“Yeah, I think it is probably the case that if we don’t do it now it will never happen because we are all either forty or well on our way to being forty.”
John was right and in his mind it was a fait accompli. I wasn’t so sure it would be that simple, but it was nice to hear from him and he sounded very positive about it. So I phoned Roger and asked him what he thought.<
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“Well, is it going to be a problem for you and Nick to work together again?” he asked.
“You know it’s going to be a problem. Will he be capable of responding in an environment of five players and relinquish his hold?” I said. “Because attempting to reinvent the wheel will be a disaster, and who’s going to produce things, Rog? I wouldn’t relish that task if it were the last band ever . . . because we always need a producer when recording, or more like a bloody referee . . .”
Roger and I decided to see how things unraveled, and after a few more conversations we arranged a meeting of all five of us in a lawyer’s office in London. One thing I was slightly uneasy about was that Nick and Simon were insisting that Roger and I should be on a smaller percentage share of earnings than the other members of the band. They argued that they’d kept things going while we were away and so they were entitled to a greater cut. I could see their logic, so I agreed to take a smaller share, but on the understanding that if things took off we’d eventually return to splitting things five ways like we had in the eighties.
It was the first time I had been in a room with Nick for a long time, but it was fine. He hadn’t changed much, but at least we didn’t argue. The main difference between now and the last time we had all met was the transformation in John. He had a new light in his eyes and he was clearheaded. John hadn’t really spent any time with me since he had sobered up and come to terms with his demons. I sensed he was still carrying a few battle scars, but it was good to see him looking so well. John later confided to me that he couldn’t remember a lot of the things that had happened during his time in the band all those years ago. His way of describing it was that when you’re caned you tend not to take part, but this time around he wanted to take part fully in everything.
The five of us discussed the fact that we’d had a few tour offers from America, but for once Nick and I shared the same view about something: neither of us thought that touring was the best way to go about a reunion. Our motivation for getting back together was partly about empowerment. It’s very rewarding to be doing what you love in a successful lineup like we had during the eighties. Later on the motivation also became financial.
“What’s the future if we just go out on the road and do a tour? Simon and I have been doing that anyway. What’s the big deal?” reasoned Nick. “So we’ll tour with the original band and that will be okay for a while, but then what? How do you sustain it?”
“That’s a fair point,” I said. “The only way you sustain it in my view is that we actually do what we’re supposed to do, which is be a complete band and make a record.”
“Exactly,” said Nick. “We have to make a record.”
I think everybody else in the room was shocked, not because of what we were proposing but because Nick and I were in such close agreement on something. The looks on the faces of Simon, John, and Roger seemed to say, Fuck! Those two are agreeing, they are going to talk the rest of us into actually doing this. Nick and I had never really been close since our epic fallouts over my feelings about Julie Anne, and my mind had been busy unpicking the past. Of course I had apprehensions, but these were outweighed by the potential benefits of a reunion and I reasoned that being older it would be easier to deal with all the baggage that goes along with being in a high-profile band. But I sensed that John seemed to be uneasy, so I suggested the two of us go outside for a chat in private.
“Look, what’s the problem? We’ll make an album and we’ll reach out to people, that way we won’t just be cashing in on the past,” I said.
I argued that touring would be good—and it would make us plenty of money—but in my view we also needed a new record to give us an edge and to build a bit of excitement. John, however, was less convinced and kept saying it would be difficult. He’d assumed we’d just go on the road together and hadn’t anticipated going into the studio.
“It won’t be like it used to be, Andy,” he argued. “Trust me, it’s not the same. A lot has changed in fourteen years.”
“Well, it’ll be the five of us again, so what we’ll be able to do, John, is something that none of us have been able to do for years. We’ll be able to plug in and see if we can still play and write songs and make something come out of the speakers that sounds good enough to make us all go, ‘Oh shit, that’s all right.’ We need to start at a place with which we are all familiar, and that’s each other . . . not Madison Square Garden.”
John nodded: I’d won him over. We shared a smoke and rejoined the meeting.
JOHN and Nick went head-to-head with each other almost straightaway, posturing about who was in control. I was with John when he rang Nick soon after the meeting in London to start making plans, and they began to bicker on the phone, just like a pair of siblings. Oh well, I mused, it’s business as usual, did you expect anything less? I’d never expected any of us to behave like vicars, but at least it was less toxic this time around. Nick made a few condescending asides about John, saying that he hoped he wouldn’t hang around the studio because he was never there the first time, apart from to turn up and play his bass.
At first things progressed very slowly—John, Roger, and I suspected that Simon and Nick were deliberately dragging their heels. So the three of us—“the Three Taylors”—booked a studio in Monmouth, Wales, without them, just to see if we could still play together. We spent about ten days breaking the ice. It felt good to be together, being creative and surrounded by the solitude of the countryside.
As summer 2001 approached, Nick and Simon finally cleared their diaries, and the five of us arranged to go into a studio together in the south of France. We all agreed that we would try to do things economically this time around, but the first thing we did was to go out and rent a huge house in St. Tropez for a whopping £15,000 a week. It had beautiful gardens with sweeping views of the mountains on one side and a private infinity pool on the other (it was landscaped to give the optical illusion that the waters of the pool merged with the infinity of the Mediterranean). There were two Michelin chefs to cater for us, so despite our vow to keep an eye on spiraling costs we’d gone back to our old ways almost straightaway.
As soon as the five of us arrived we decided to go into St. Tropez for a long lunch at the local yacht club. We had a liquid lunchtime, knocking back the wine until we finally went back to the studio to do some jamming together—before later going off to a restaurant and club in the evening.
The next day we went down to a trendy beach restaurant and bumped into Flavio Briatore, the Formula One mogul and acquaintance of Le Bon’s. He invited us for some pasta on his private yacht that night, but then failed to turn up because something came up. Anyway what the fuck, Nick had arranged for us to go on board yet another huge boat that night, which was owned by an Australian tycoon whom he knew. Here we go, I thought, boats, clubs . . . it’s like the eighties all over again.
Incidentally, over the first day or two we managed to write three of the songs that were to eventually appear on our Astronaut album, so despite all the partying it was still a fairly productive time.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take much longer than that for Nick and me to have our first big fallout—and when it came, it was as if years of pent-up tension came flooding out. We’d had many rows in the past, starting with the so-called pork pie incident all those years ago when we threw food at each other in our tour van. But this time it was much worse—and given our surroundings we’ll call this one the l’escargot incident.
We’d all been to a nightclub, and Nick and I were both fairly drunk when we returned to the house in St. Tropez. For some reason the mood had turned nasty on the way back—probably due to an excess of booze—and Nick started to accuse me of being an embarrassment in the nightclub.
“You fell asleep in the club,” he moaned. Ever the Head Boy.
“Well, you were drunk and made a twat of yourself also,” I hit back. “You know you can’t fuckin’ dance, and even if I did fall off the table, at least it was in time to the b
eat, pal.” I probably sounded like a proper smart arse, but my attitude was Fuck you, you Revlon-wearing tosser.
Suddenly we were in a heated argument as each of us continued to accuse the other of being out of order.
“Don’t talk to me like that, Nick,” I said. “I didn’t fall asleep.”
“You fell asleep,” he insisted, squaring up to me aggressively.
I thought, Does he seriously want a fuckin’ slap?
“Nick, don’t wind me up or I’ll fuckin’ whack you, and you are drunk,” I snarled back, and then I physically pushed him out of the way. We were now close to coming to blows and Nick shouted something back along the lines of if he’d had a baseball bat handy he’d have been willing to hit me with it. Ooh I was racked with fear—not. I knew he would never break a nail, and I told him where I would firmly insert the bat if he ever tried something like that. In truth, I wanted to break his bloody nose, but I restrained myself, because I didn’t have the heart to hurt him. He had never learned where the line was when he was a younger man. In real life he would have been decked on a regular basis had he spoken to the average bloke in that way. Well, at least we now knew where each of us stood, even if it had taken twenty-one years to come out. The others could see we’d both lost our tempers, and they quickly intervened to calm things down.
Things were a bit delicate the next morning, as you can imagine. I knew we’d both been drunk and we were both out of order, so let’s move on, I thought. It was a Sunday and there wasn’t much planned for the rest of the day, so Roger and I went down to the studio and played some music together. I thought about Nick and I wondered if the reason he was so uptight was because he’d been getting his own way for so many years while I wasn’t around—whereas now that John, Roger, and I were all back, things had changed. Simon, as usual, tried to act as a peacemaker between us, and I remember talking to him about the incident later that night. Simon pleaded with me to try and work things out with Nick, and I got the impression he felt that matters might quickly implode.