John Kearns talks to Duran Duran – The Duran Duran European summer tour is now in full swing. The DD truck has already rolled into cities such as Antwerp, Amsterdam and Rome and will continue its album-sleeved journey until mid-July.
With a setlist full to the brim with monster hit singles as well as a selection of deeper fan favourites, the shows have attracted fans of all ages – the young and not so young as well as the initiated and the inquisitive. Many a person has been brought to a Duran gig as a plus one and ended up a superfan.
Roger Taylor tells me that the band are thrilled with the response so far.
“When you start a tour, you always have to find your bearings again, but by the time we hit Copenhagen, the show was going down a storm. The crowds have been amazing, so we’re really looking forward to the rest of the gigs.”
The band also play shows at Dublin’s Malahide Castle on June 30th and Cork’s Virgin Media Park on July 1st, and Roger has very fond memories of the night the band’s Future Past tour lit up the 3Arena.
“I remember the last time we played there, it was really special …the audience had that little bit more energy – it was like a step up. It was an amazing night, and the reaction was on a slightly different level.”
Roger Taylor‘s drumming style has been much admired and indeed much emulated since the first Duran Duran album dropped in 1981. His combination of powerhouse rhythm, intricate fills and funky breaks has been crucial in determining that intoxicating Duran Duran mixture. From rock to Motown, from pop to soul, that variety of influence is evident in his playing. However, as he explains, the band are very much the sum of their parts.
“I was heavily influenced by Motown as it was constantly being played in my house when I was growing up, so that definitely got in and affected how I drummed. I think that what actually made Duran Duran special was that we all had these different influences, all these diverse elements that came together, and we amateurishly adopted them into our music. I mean, Andy was the rock guy, Nick was the electronics man, John and I wanted to go in a more funky direction, while Simon loved The Doors. I was also very influenced by the drumming of Steve Jansen from Japan, Paul Thompson from Roxy Music and Chic’s Tony Thompson.
So we kind of put all these different influences together and created this fabric that was unique. It was very obviously Duran Duran, it just didn’t sound like anyone else. I was in the back of a car in America recently, and Hungry Like The Wolf came on the radio, and I just thought …this couldn’t be any other band!”
I mention to Roger that one of the most notable differences with Duran Duran at the time was indeed the fact that the band leaned heavily on a ‘live’ drummer to cook up shoulder shaking rhythms as in the early eighties it was extremely common for a human on a stool to be replaced by a highly programmable drum machine. This musical version of rudimentary AI, however, didn’t tempt the collective to dispense with the services of their beat master.
“Everybody in the band really loved drums, we weren’t like the Human League, for example, where everything had to be programmed. Everybody came from a background where they really wanted the drums to be prominent, so someone would say, ‘ok, Roger, what are you going to play to start the song ?’ So I played intros that became Girls on Film or Wild Boys …songs that started with very recognisable drum patterns. Colin Thurston, who produced our first two records, was also very much into original drum sounds and gated ambient sounds, so he also wanted the drums to be prominent. I was lucky I was in a band who really wanted to make the drums a feature.”
Roger and I also discussed our mutual favourite David Bowie record, and it’s one that also had a major impact on how he approached his drumming.
“Bowie’s Low album really wrote the book for me on drums. Dennis Davis’ playing was such a diversion from what people were playing in the seventies. It was very simple, very groove orientated, and had that really original drum sound that you recognised as soon as you heard it. I was trying to find somewhere to go after playing in various punk bands, and I heard Low and thought, ‘wow, that is where drumming is going, that’s the direction’. So that showed me the way. I also loved bands like Simple Minds and Ultravox – bands who were doing something a little bit different … but it was Bowie who led the post punk charge for me.”
Roger Taylor of Duran Duran joins John Kearns for a candid new interview — watch it in full here.
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