In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, and Duran Duran

by John Taylor

  Something similar could be done with me. I would learn to take Thunders’s signature slurs and guitar runs and transpose them to bass, along with the accompanying sneers. The first time I saw the Thunders’s magic was onstage at Birmingham University. The opening act was a band I had not heard of before, The Police. At that time I would sneak a cassette recorder into every gig I went to, and I set the machine to record when they began to play, even though I had no idea who they were. It was quite possible a band you had never heard of yesterday could become your favorite band tomorrow.

  The singer with The Police also played bass, which struck me as quite clever and quite “un-punk.” After the second number, he struck up a rapport with the audience of mostly students. A little too familiar, I remember thinking at the time, not knowing then that Sting had been a teacher and spoke “student” way better than he would ever speak “punk.”

  Sting: We’ve got the Heartbreakers coming on next.

  (Cheer from me and one or two others)

  Sting: They can’t play, you know.

  Me: Fuck off!

  Sting: Who said “Fuck off”?

  Me: I did. (all of this going down onto the cassette tape)

  Sting: It’s true. They’re great guys but they can’t play.

  Me: Fuck off, you wanker!

  Sting: You’ll see. This next song is called “Fall Out”! 1 2 3 4 . . .

  He was wrong about the Heartbreakers. They were awesome that night. At the BBC in 1993, filming “Ordinary World” for Top of the Pops, I was standing next to Sting watching a playback of our performance on a monitor. I thought to myself, I’ve got to tell him about that night, but before I opened my mouth he half-turned to me and said, “I wish I’d written that song.”

  Let’s leave it at that then, I thought.

  Seeing The Human League for the first time was another turning point. Nick and I saw them supporting Siouxsie and the Banshees and Penetration at the Mayfair Ballroom in the Bullring shopping center and watched in stunned, amazed silence. They had no drummer. No guitars.

  They had three synthesizers and a drum machine instead.

  So what made for a much more exciting proposition than me attempting to teach Nick guitar was for us somehow to get hold of a synthesizer and make that his instrument.

  Nick’s mom, Sylvia, made a £200 purchase of the first Wasp synthesizer to arrive in Birmingham, at Woodroffe’s music store. It was the best investment she ever made.

  We also bought a Kay rhythm box for fifteen pounds. It had presets such as “mambo,” “foxtrot,” “slow rock,” and “waltz.” So with Nick controlling the keys, setting the tempos, and pushing the buttons on the Kay, Steve Duffy singing and on bass, and myself on guitar, the three of us made our first recordings on a cassette tape recorder in the space above Nick’s mom’s toy store. The resulting “album” was called Dusk and Dawn. We named the band Duran Duran.

  Where did the name come from? Every fan knows that. From the film Barbarella, which starred Jane Fonda as the most gorgeous astronaut detective the galaxy has ever seen, who is sent on a mission to “Find Durand-Durand and . . . preserve the security of the stars.”

  So why not Durand-Durand the band? Because you can’t hear the final Ds in the film, nor the hyphen, and there was no imdb.com back then.

  Poor old Duran(d), played by Milo O’Shea, had stolen the Excessive Machine—a machine guaranteed to give women extreme pleasure and more—and who could blame him? Woody Allen would parody it with his invention of the orgasmatron. Barbarella is a masterpiece of Euro-kitsch and we have been forever proud of our association with it.

  We brought in Steve’s friend Simon Colley to play clarinet and occasional bass for Duran Duran’s first live appearance, in our college lecture hall on April 5, 1979, at 6:00 P.M.—practically during class time. It was performance art in a sense. I listened to a recording of it recently. It’s hard to imagine that band selling out Madison Square Garden, but as a shoegazer, noise-making concern, along the lines of My Bloody Valentine or the Jesus and Mary Chain, we could have had an entirely different career experience.

  Our friends showed up—maybe twenty or thirty in all—to support us, and we took advantage of the projection screen to show abstract slides that were meant to enhance the meaning of the songs. The Human League had done that too.

  Music was moving on and we were moving with it. We were the zeitgeist. Since Shock Treatment, we had been unconsciously tapping into all the changes that were happening in the culture. We were evolving away from the three-chord angry noise. We aspired to something else, something fresh. Multimedia, fashion, dance, art. We wanted it all in the mix.

  The cover of Dusk and Dawn featured a black-and-white photocopy of a New York streetscape shot on long exposure, car lights trailing up and down Park Avenue. In the top right-hand corner, we dropped in a photo of the three of us, with our facial features strangely absent. Maybe it was art—or maybe I just overdid the contrast on the college photocopier.

  The song titles were: “Soundtrack,” “Aztec Moon Rich,” “Take (The Lines and the Shadows)”—which could be one of Simon’s titles—“Hold Me/Pose Me,” “A Lucien Melody,” and “Hawks Don’t Share.”

  I was very proud of this first attempt at album-making and decided to offer it as my year-end project. Each student was allotted a certain amount of space in the main hall to display the fruits of their labor. I covered my wall space with a shiny black plastic garbage bag and placed the solitary cassette tape on the table in front of it. It looked pretty good.

  There was a certain amount of chutzpah required to keep a straight face as the college faculty and my fellow students circled my presentation. I had taken the Steve Duffy model of freedom of interpretation to another level.

  (Professor Grundy picks up the cassette, handles it gingerly.)

  Grundy: And what is this exactly?

  Me: It’s what I’ve been doing for the last six months.

  Grundy: And what are you hoping to do with it?

  Me: Get a record deal.

  Grundy: It doesn’t really relate to your course work though, does it?

  Me: Why should it? Haven’t you been encouraging us to think more freely, about what is and isn’t art? This is art because I say it is.

  (I couldn’t have cared whether he passed me or not.)

  Grundy: Well, I am glad you’ve learned something in your time here, Nigel.

  That was my last day in academia. A few weeks later I got a letter telling me I hadn’t been accepted for a place on any of the BA courses I had applied for.

  Secretly, I was happy. All I wanted to do was make music, refine these ideas we were having as a band, and play as often as possible.

  But I had to explain this to Mom and Dad, as I wanted to carry on living at home.

  I approached them with far greater humility than I had my college professors. What I was proposing—to not get a job—went against the grain of everything they knew. They saw my music-making as a hobby at best, something to smile about but not to make a career of.

  My cause wasn’t helped by the fact that Dad had been made redundant—he liked to call it taking early retirement—at fifty-seven, and if I could get this through, for a while we would be signing on for state benefits together.

  “I just need some time, Mom, Dad. This is what I really want to do.”

  “I don’t know. Jack, what do you think?”

  Their disappointment was palpable. They both had dreams of their son at university. This was a big lump for them to swallow.

  I had to further my argument. “I’m not saying I don’t want to do anything. I’m not going to be sitting around the house. I’ll be working at the music. But I need to do it full-time.”

  Dad was pretty out of it. The debacle at work that had led to his “early retirement” had left him stunned and out of ideas. The rebel in him wanted to support me.

  “I suppose we could give it a try. One year only.”

  That was all I
needed. I could feel it. I could barely contain myself. In a display of emotion that was rare at number 34, I hugged them and cried because I knew the significance of what was happening.

  Mom and Dad giving me the benefit of the doubt and allowing me to pursue my goal for twelve months was the best gift they ever gave me.

  There was not a moment to lose.

  15 Everybody Dance

  Duran Duran played next at the Cannon Hill Arts Center on May 8 (tickets fifty pence) and then at Barbarella’s on June 1.

  Walking back to Hollywood from the Maypole bus terminus, Nick and I were convinced Duran Duran were going somewhere. We had really connected with the Barbarella’s crowd. There was enough positivity in their reaction to what we were doing to encourage us. We were on the right track.

  And then, disaster.

  Days and days passed after the Barbarella’s gig where neither Nick nor I could get hold of Steve or Simon. What the fuck was going on?

  And then the word came down the wire; they were both making music at a Cheapside squat with several members of TV Eye, another local band, my oldest friend, David Twist, among them.

  I raced around to Nick’s home on Mill Close.

  “Can you fucking believe it?” I said.

  “Wankers!” retorted Nick.

  This was not a time to play Chartbuster. The stakes had gotten too high for that.

  We were distraught. But not destroyed. We were angry.

  Anger is good.

  Anger is galvanizing. Have you ever noticed how often a soccer team performs better after one of the players has been sent off the pitch? Surely Malcolm Gladwell must have a theory about that. Our backs were against the wall. Steve and Simon had dared to count us out, thought they could do better without us.

  We retreated to the room above the toy shop and plotted our revenge.

  We had to turn this crisis around.

  What did Nick and I do? We called Andy Wickett, the singer of TV Eye, who we knew was now out of a job, and asked him to join Duran Duran. He jumped at it. It was an incestuous game of musical chairs with a Birmingham accent.

  Andy organized a meeting with Roger Taylor, the drummer with one of Birmingham’s better bands, the Scent Organs. The four of us met at a house party the following Friday.

  Roger Taylor is one of the nicest guys anyone could ever meet. He was working on the production line at the Rover car plant in Solihull, as was his dad, but he wanted to make music full-time.

  For a guy who liked nothing better than beating the hell out of his drum kit, Roger had a very laid-back, easygoing manner. There was something casually fifties about him, with his James Dean hair and preppy style. And his reputation preceded him. When the Damned had played Barbarella’s the year before, their drummer, Rat Scabies, had gotten up from behind his drum kit and dared anyone in the audience to take his place. Roger did.

  I never imagined Roger wanting to play with us. I thought of him as being on another level. But he could feel the way the wind was blowing and did not want to just thrash away anymore. He wanted to make music that had the energy and attitude of punk but was also new and different. He agreed to come and jam with Andy, Nick, and me.

  Duran Duran version 2.0 moved out of the toy shop and set up its gear on the second floor of the TV Eye Cheapside squat, where Andy Wickett still lived, enforcing a future-friendly new music zone, while the Subterranean Hawks, Steve and Simon’s new band—the bastards!—were on the third floor, working on their Rolling Stones/Bob Dylan legacy.

  The scene was set for a serious battle of the bands.

  Inevitably, the parties would meet; there were encounters at undesignated times in neutral demilitarized zones such as the dilapidated ground-floor kitchen where the dishes never got done, and sneers and cigarette papers would be traded.

  A sniffy elitism crept down from the third floor at times, especially as we began to upgrade our sound to incorporate dance-friendly grooves. When Roger first joined the band, I was still playing guitar, and I began to hone a more rhythmic style that would lock in with his drumming.

  We were venturing outside the punk bubble musically and had a social life to match. We liked going to wine bars such as Hawkins, next door to Virgin Records on Corporation Street. The girls were more appealing there, and we were made welcome and treated better than we were in Birmingham’s grimy pubs.

  The wine bars also gave us exposure to a broader musical diet. The first time I heard Chic’s song “Everybody Dance” was in a wine bar. The impact of that song on me was huge, because the bass guitar came across as the lead instrument. I had never heard bass played that way. This record was as revolutionary to me as “Anarchy in the UK” had been. I picked up a bass guitar that Andy Wickett had in his bedroom and started playing around on it. I found that I could quite easily imitate the style of the Chic bassist, whose name I had no idea of, along with the basslines of other popular disco hits such as Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real).” What I lacked in technique, I made up for in attitude.

  Roger and I got excited at the idea of playing in the style of these disco bands and began to forge a sound together. We even began to talk about a rhythm section, a term that I don’t believe had ever been used by a punk rock band. The bass was taking over, locking in the low-end notes with Roger’s bass drum. I liked the interplay and exchange of energy that took place between us.

  This is what my instincts were telling me: focus on bass. The guitar-player question would be answered soon enough. I made the decision to invest some of my meager cash resources in a bass guitar of my own—an inexpensive Hondo copy that looked meaner than it was.

  I often think, given the number of hours that I have spent looking at Roger’s face over the years, how lucky I am to have such a pleasant, nonjudgmental, friendly face to look upon. He is also the least moody guy I know. A nice yin to my yang.

  16 Plans for Nigel

  The next step was to enter a real recording studio. Bob Lamb was about to become a legend among Birmingham bands. He had been the drummer in the Steve Gibbons Band, staples of pre-punk era Birmingham rock. Their success had not been huge, but they had made it to Top of the Pops with a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Tulane” and toured US arenas opening for the Who, who were fans. Bob had invested his royalties in a small but perfect four-track recording studio built into the sitting room of his Kings Heath flat.

  He was a sympathetic and encouraging producer, the midwife who would be responsible for the birth of UB40, producing their first hit single, “King,” and their debut album, Signing Off. This would be inspirational for Birmingham bands, because UB40 were unique; they danced to their own drum—recording their album on a miniscule budget, releasing it on their own label—and ended up with a global hit.

  Andy Wickett, Roger, Nick, and I booked a day at Bob’s studio. This was our first exposure to multitrack recording. The first thing Bob did was to lovingly mic up Roger’s drum kit. I had never seen that done before. He took time to get the sound on each drum correct. I was intrigued by the cables and plugs and knobs and buttons. I could not understand what was taking so long until I heard the first playback. We recorded four songs, among them a first draft of “Girls on Film.” I laid down the bass guitar lines with Roger playing drums and then overdubbed the guitars separately, as we had not yet found a full-time guitarist. Listening back to the first rough mixes, we could not believe what Bob had done to our sound. He totally got the disco influence and had Roger record the hi-hat separately, a trick he had learned from American disco producers. We were tight and funky, and with Bob’s help we had moved on from our brittle art-school atmospheres to create a danceable, viable, pop group sound.

  On the demo cassette liner, I appear credited under my birth name, Nigel. It wasn’t long after this that I decided that a pop star named John Taylor sounded better than Nigel Taylor.

  I’d been sick of Nigel for years. It had been the nerd-name of choice for so much satire. In Monty Python’s “Great Twits of His
tory” TV sketch, the biggest twit of them all was called Nigel. The day at school following that broadcast had been a nightmare. And XTC had just released “Making Plans for Nigel,” about the neighborhood Goody Two-shoes.

  Nigel had to go.

  But John—Johnny—was a rocker. Johnny Rotten, Johnny Thunders, Johnny Ramone.

  It was more than just taking a stage name. I needed to reinvent myself. Not be Mom and Dad’s son. I didn’t want to be called Nigel by anybody; the band, my friends, my family. It would take Mom years to get with the John plan.

  Do people treat a John differently than they treat a Nigel? It’s like blondes and brunettes.

  If I had had a greater vision for myself, I would have kept Nigel and been the only Nigel in a music business crowded with Johns and Johnnies. But I wasn’t that confident.

  For all that, changing my name was a commitment, a statement of intent, like a new haircut. A permanent one.

  Nick and I were as one on this line of thinking. But he liked his first name. It was his surname—Bates—that didn’t fit the picture. We would discuss our respective alternatives at length.

  John, Johnny, Jon Ravel? Maybe.

  Nicholas, Nick, Nik Dior?

  In the end we settled on the more prosaic John Taylor and Nick Rhodes.

  “Rhodes” seemed to have the right blend of high and low culture, drawing as it did from the Clash’s manager, Bernie, and fashion’s high priestess, Zandra.

  17 Legs for Days

  To accompany our new names and to take the new sound Bob Lamb had helped us create in the studio onto the stage, we needed a full-time guitarist. It was becoming clear I had a better feel for bass, and the drum/bass dynamic Roger and I were developing was working. Plus, in 1979 there were hundreds of kids who wanted to play guitar and very few who wanted to play bass. We met Alan Curtis, a Londoner who lived in Cradley Heath with his girlfriend, and asked him to join. We brought in our friend Fozzi from Vision Collision as an occasional extra to add soulful harmonies. The band’s onstage confidence grew.