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

by John Taylor

  Gela had come to Birmingham with me to see Mom and to say good-bye, then stayed on to support Dad and me. After the funeral we returned to Los Angeles.

  I felt such deep appreciation toward her and for having her in my life. I wanted to become whole with her; I wanted her to be my wife.

  We made plans to marry.

  71 The Reunion of the Snake

  In March, Gela and I married in Las Vegas. Travis, Zoe, and Atlanta accompanied us, and Gela’s sister Anita acted as witness. It wasn’t an Elvis wedding; there was nothing particularly Vegas about it, but it was a short flight from home and easy to organize. Neither of us wanted anything extravagant or flashy. What we really wanted was a private moment with our kids. There were five unions that afternoon.

  2000. A new millennium. We all survived Y2K. What a load of nonsense that was.

  Late summer, and Gela and I are enjoying a latte at Barneys’ top-floor restaurant in Beverly Hills, when I spot a familiar face.

  “Oh my God, Gela, that’s Simon over there!”

  They had yet to meet. I got up from the table and slyly sidled over to my sexy ex-bandmate, surprising him with my presence.

  We hugged. He was in town with Nick and Warren, playing a series of shows to support their Pop Trash album release. There had been one other album before that, Medazzaland, which I had participated in the writing of, although I had left before it was completed. Pop Trash was the first Duran album I had played no part in. I led him back to the table to meet Gela, who could not contain her excitement at meeting him.

  Of course they clicked. Why wouldn’t they?

  “You have to come back to our house, Simon, come and hang out by the pool!” said Gela, who would not have accepted an answer in the negative.

  He came over a few hours later.

  Simon is not good at hiding his feelings, especially when they are strong; he wears his heart on his sleeve. That is one reason he is such a good lyricist. Our private reunion at my home was filled with sentiment, both of us feeling a sense of nostalgia as we traded our war stories. We were both still working hard, playing live a lot, and music was still the ruling passion in our lives. He played me Pop Trash. I was knocked out by the single “Someone Else Not Me.” It was crazy beautiful, and I felt a twinge at not being a part of it.

  It was a little overwhelming. We had been so close for so long, gone through so many experiences together, yet since the day I bowed out of Duran, we had not had even a phone conversation. Is that the English way?

  Perhaps. There was a lot to process.

  Gela could see something in our friendship that needed further drawing out. Out of the blue, she asked Simon if he would come to New York for a party Juicy was throwing to launch their menswear line. A party I was playing at with my band.

  “You guys should sing a song together!”

  “Come on, Gee, that’s the last thing Simon would want to do!”

  “I’d love to,” Simon said.

  A few days later, he and Nick came over to the house for lunch. The idea of a reunion of the original band lineup was floated over the penne arrabbiata. Nick had reservations, but by the time we were sipping on our espressos, we had Roger on the phone.

  Roger had played with us a few years ago on the sessions for the Thank You album. He had played on “Perfect Day,” our version of the Lou Reed song, and “Watching the Detectives.” He had appeared in the video for “Perfect Day” and had spent most of the day complaining about the waiting around and time spent between takes. I wasn’t sure if Roger would want this badly enough.

  However, his response to our suggestion of putting the original band back together was an immediate and enthusiastic yes.

  Now it was time to call Andy, and Nick, Simon, and I held our collective breath when he picked up the phone. But guess what? Andy was cool and happy to hear from us too. His response to the proposition was equally positive.

  There was the question of Warren, and whether there would be a part for him to play in the reunion, but that was put off for now. As it happened, his participation didn’t make sense to anyone involved, and Warren bowed gracefully out of the reunion project once it got rolling.

  Simon came to New York and joined me onstage for the Juicy launch. It was ten of the best minutes I have ever had under the lights. The audience went through the roof, pandemonium breaking out all over us again. It was exhilarating. After that, there was no doubt in either of us that a band reunion was what we wanted more than anything. Whatever the effort, it would be worth it if we could create more moments like that around the world.

  It was one thing to have the idea, but the execution was something else.

  The Reunion of the Snake, as I like to call it, turned out to be an immensely challenging undertaking, not least because we had been out of touch with each other for so long, especially in the case of Andy and Roger. Nick and I had work to do on our relationship too, which had been damaged not inconsiderably by my decision to leave. I didn’t realize quite how badly.

  All of us underestimated how difficult it would be to just pick up where we had left off. Unfinished business was the term we used to describe our reasoning why, after so many years away from each other, we now decided to kiss and make up.

  The reunion was not so much about the money as it was about the creative opportunity a reunion would afford us to prove how we always had more to say than we got a chance to, and to show that the whole “Too Much, Too Soon” thing, all the fame and adulation and business stuff we had to deal with as young men, had actually stifled our creativity rather than furthered it.

  Thinking we could just slip back into each other’s lives turned out to be somewhat naïve. Nick insisted we record an album of new music before taking it on the stage.

  That was not what I wanted to do. I draw my energy from the stage and wanted to give the re-formed band the injection of confidence that going out in front of live audiences, hungry to see the five of us back together, would give, before rising to the far more formidable challenge of writing new hit songs and revamping the old band sound for the modern world: post hip-hop, click-hop, DJ culture, rap rock, boy bands, and electropop. Andy agreed with Nick, and the argument was won, but it would be a tall order.

  Nick’s idea to begin the songwriting process in Saint-Tropez helped soften the blow. We spent a week there in a rented house, no WAGs allowed, sleeping under the same roof, eating meals together, then playing through the afternoons and evenings before spending time out on the town.

  It was a crash course in the pros and cons of band reunions.

  By the time I got home from those sessions, I realized I was going to need every skill, every tool, every bit of clarity and courage my sobriety had given me to get through it with my sanity intact.

  I’m sorry if I’m being a tease, but it’s not my place to go into all the issues and problems we had. My friendships with all of my bandmates, future and past, are my highest priority. Suffice it to say there had been a lot of water under the bridge, and none of us were great swimmers.

  It would be almost a year later, after another half-dozen such writing sessions, three short but turbulent relationships with possible managers and dozens of meetings with A&R people, label heads, and lawyers that an offer came in for us to play a series of concerts in Japan.

  Specifically, the Budokan in Tokyo.

  We had played the Budokan at the peak of our eighties run, when we had been showered with soft toys. There was something symbolic about us returning to the live stage at that venue, with or without an accompanying album of new music.

  We had settled on a manager, Wendy Laister, whom we all respected and who had the ear of each band member. Wendy set a conference call to discuss the offer. She was in New York, I was in LA, the rest of the guys were on GMT in England.

  It was do-or-die time as far as I was concerned. I had been committed to the reunion but was just about out of gas and belief. I needed some of that live love.

  I took a
walk and picked fistfuls of wildflowers, bringing them back to my office desk. I laid them out in a pagan offering to the gods. I lit a candle and waited for the call to come through.

  72 Osaka Time

  We were headed to Tokyo, but first, Osaka.

  The night before opening night, there was so much tension in the air, so much vying for control, and I’m the worst in that area.

  My stress levels were reaching upward toward an all-time high. Less than twenty-four hours to go to showtime and there was still a risk this whole thing would blow up in our faces.

  My recovery was under siege. I needed a drink. I could not remember being this thirsty since rehab. For the first time in years, a drink was looking really good. Necessary.

  Whenever I had been out of town before, away from LA, I had found it easy to check in with other addicts and alcoholics walking the same walk as me. London, New York, Birmingham; you’d be surprised—we’re everywhere.

  But Osaka? Zilch. Maybe it was time to call a friend. But it was nine o’clock in Osaka, which meant it was four in the morning in Los Angeles. The phone was ringing off the hook and my head was about to explode.

  There was one last call I could make.

  Some of you are going to hate me for this.

  I had to hit my knees, transcend human help, throw myself at the mercy of the universe. I had to ask a higher power for help.

  In rehab, they told me that eventually I would need to relearn how to pray, that I would have to work on changing my ideas about God. After my Catholic upbringing, I was certain that all religion was a load of bollocks. Opium for the masses. Freedom for the weak. But I acknowledged that in my first year sober, I had gone from being a man with no faith in anyone or anything to being someone who had faith in something; a few dozen individuals at first, then some kind of a philosophical ideology.

  One idea in particular had been proved to me, I felt, and that was: If I could just stay sober and not use drugs or drink booze anymore, everything would turn out okay, I would be able to handle anything the universe might choose to throw at me, and the ball of confusion would untangle.

  A glass of sake would not be the answer tonight.

  So I had been working on a new concept of God, with the intention of creating something that I would feel comfortable praying to, conversing with, trusting. That would have seemed heretical to the old Catholic in me, but the truth was, the old ideas had been able to get me only so far. I was a nice enough guy, who knew it was wrong to kill and to steal, but it wasn’t enough to get me all the way through life successfully, and it wasn’t going to be enough to get me through this night.

  The God I now turned to for help was not a God who might blow me up for asking questions or having doubts, would not be a God of judgment, or use thunder and lightning as techniques of intimidation. I chose to turn to a higher power that was filled with the generosity of spirit and unconditional love that my parents always had for me and was as supportive as my family now was, as loving as my wife, and as good-hearted as my bandmates.

  This God was on my side, had my back, and wanted the best for me.

  Help take my ego out of this. Help make this a positive experience for everyone involved. Help soften the tensions between us. Help take away my fears of failure.

  Next thing I know, I’m waking up from a deep, restful, much needed sleep.

  Today is: Showday.

  Your name is: John Fucking Taylor.

  • • •

  Walking out onstage that night was the best live experience in a long, long time. Fans had flown in from all points to be there. Flags and banners draped around the hall from the United States, Great Britain, Italy, Australia, Korea.

  Wherever Duran Duran music is sold.

  It was an amazing sight, encouraging and energizing, and it was a great gift.

  We still had it, and they still wanted it.

  73 Learning to Survive

  I was to lose two of my closest musical colleagues in 2003. First there was the sudden death of Robert Palmer at a Paris hotel in September, closely followed by that of drummer Tony Thompson, who lost his battle with cancer in November.

  There would be no more music from the Power Station.

  Andy Taylor had been a member of Duran Duran for the release of the reunion album, Astronaut, when it came out in 2004, but he was no longer in the band by November 2007 when we celebrated our next studio album, Red Carpet Massacre, with a run of shows at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway.

  Why did he leave? Let’s not call it “musical differences” for once; let’s call it what it was: Differences!

  Andy’s replacement was Dom Brown, a bluesman from Clapham in south London who is a player of great depth and versatility. We were lucky to find him. I value Dom’s friendship highly, not least because we are happy to jam with each other for hours on end.

  On the first Friday of the Broadway run, I was in New Jersey for a live drive-time interview with a local radio station. On the way back to Manhattan, I got a call from cousin Eddie back in Redditch, outside Birmingham. It must be quite late there, I thought, about eleven o’clock. Unusual to be getting a call at this hour.

  “Hello, kid, it’s me.”

  “Hey, Ed, nice surprise to hear your voice. What’s going on?”

  “Well, not to worry you, but your dad’s gone missing. Apparently, he left the house around lunchtime and he hasn’t come back yet. You know he likes to take his little drives every day, but he’s usually only gone for an hour.”

  I breathed in this information.

  “I’ve contacted the local police station and filed a missing persons report. The car was picked up on cameras in Leamington Spa about four o’clock.”

  Leamington was fifty miles away from Simon Road and way off Dad’s beat.

  “What was he doing in Leamington, kid? Any ideas?”

  “None whatsover.”

  Dad took a drive every day. Rain or shine, sleet or ice. He lived for it. It gave shape to his day. Generally, he took the same hour-long route: south down the Alcester Road, cutting across country as he would have done with Jean, both of them liking to stop at some favored country pub—except Dad never stopped at a pub anymore; he just drove around until his hour was up, then he would come home.

  None of us who loved Jack were happy that he was still driving. I used to ask myself, “Would I let him drive with Atlanta in the car?” and my answer would always be a resounding no. I wouldn’t choose to be a passenger with him myself either. Last time he had driven me to the chip shop, I had almost had a heart attack.

  I had discussed this with his doctor, who told me there really was nothing we could do, so we waited, sure of some bad news to come, sooner or later.

  There was no separating him from the tiny A-Class Mercedes I had bought him a few years ago. Just discussing him having to give up his driving rights at some time in the future would get him agitated. He had put so much bloody stock in car ownership over the years, and now those daily drives had become the only interaction he had with anything outside his own home.

  • • •

  I couldn’t get him interested in moving into a retirement community either. I’d had hopes that after the initial shock of Mom’s passing had faded, he might meet another lady he could spend his later years with. He was still a handsome devil, with the sweetest nature, but when Gela would tell him, “Jack, you’re a good catch!” he had no interest.

  “How could anyone possibly follow Jean?” he would say whenever the subject was broached. “She was perfection.”

  • • •

  Eddie promised to keep me up-to-date on any news of Dad’s disappearance. I told him I would be onstage for a couple of hours later that night but was otherwise entirely reachable. I called Gela and told her, but did not mention it to the boys in the band. Throughout the performance, I had some rather horrid thoughts about what could possibly have happened to him, but I played through it.

  As I walked off the stage a
fter “Girls on Film,” Wendy Laister took me aside.

  “Did you know your dad had gone missing?” I did not pick up on the past tense.

  “Yes, I got a call from my cousin before the show.”

  “Well he’s been found, and he’s all right.”

  “How do you know?” I asked Wendy.

  “I received a call about an hour ago from a gentleman who lives in Nottingham. He and his wife had been in Manchester, and they were on their way home after midnight. As they were exiting the motorway, they saw your dad’s car, zig-zagging across the road. They pulled alongside and flagged him down. The window was broken, they said, and he was freezing cold. The man said it looked as if the car had been in an accident.”

  She continued, “This man, Rob, who really is the most extraordinary Good Samaritan in all this, he and his wife took your dad to a Travelodge, which is where he is now. And all your dad kept saying to them was, ‘My son, John, he’s in Duran Duran, you know; they’re playing in America.’ Really, that’s all the sense they could get out of him. So this man, Rob, when he got home, he went online and tracked us down here and sent me an urgent e-mail for me to call him, which is what I did.”

  When Rob and his wife had flagged Dad to pull over, he was ninety miles north of his home in Birmingham, a hundred and fifty miles from Leamington. We’ll never know what happened, exactly—a stroke perhaps? Dad had absolutely no memory of it or, more likely, would not allow himself any memory of it.

  Sadly, it only meant more pain for him. He had to give up the car now. And that would be the beginning of the end. Within a year, he stopped leaving the house altogether. He had to be forced to visit relatives, pubs, and restaurants.

  • • •

  The last time I took him out for a drive and a bite to eat, we settled into a table at the Hare and Hounds, just off the Redditch Road. By now, Dad was moving very slowly, with a cane, which he despised, and conversation was stuck in a rut.