Original subtitles

They were pinna pop idols who seduced the world with elegance, style and new wave glamour.

Five great looking guys that could play great music and could fit on the bedroom wall of

every teenage girl in a poster.

We didn't have an ex to grind, we didn't have a political agenda.

We wanted to have fun and we wanted everybody around to have fun.

Duran Duran were five English heartthrobs who packaged good looks, catchy pop hits and

exotic music videos to create a global phenomenon.

You could count on one hand the British pop groups that have achieved what we've done.

The frenzy of their fans recalled the passion of Beatlemania.

It was just complete, crazed out of control.

You know you're given this license to be new already.

But by the year 2000 only Nick and Simon remained and it was all or nothing when the

five original members reformed.

The gamble reaped huge rewards but Andy Taylor left the band for a second time amid acrimonious

recriminations.

Tonight the wild boys who defined the sound and vision of pop music for more than a generation.

Duran Duran, the story behind the music.

Throughout the 80s Duran Duran's sex appeal and upbeat hit songs kept them on top of the

pop charts.

Their sales of over 75 million records to date is testimony to their talent and endurance.

Duran Duran's got something about not going away, certain stubbornness.

Duran Duran led a music video revolution with images of jet set lifestyles in romantic locations

set to an infectious dance beat.

I guess we kind of like the idea of making little James Bond mini-epics you know.

Because there were no rules and no one really knew what they were meant to be we just would

often dip them.

We'd go out there with a mission and achieve it.

They were almost like film stars as well as pop stars.

And although excess and misfortune would eventually drive them apart they began their musical journey

as a close knit team of seven.

And the racket tiger definitely seven, the seven of us you know the band and the two

managers.

We all lived, ate and breathed Duran Duran and the music and what could be.

And it was an adventure and the music was an adventure.

They never said to us leave it to us guys we know what we're doing.

It was just an adventure that the seven of us all embarked on.

Their adventure began in Birmingham England in the late 70s.

The images of the Beatles going around the world you know as a four or five year old

kid were pretty indelible and thinking I like the idea of doing that you know now what do

I have to do?

Play an instrument.

John I met when I was about ten years old.

We hit it off pretty much straight away.

We knew what sort of sound we wanted to make but we just had to figure out how to do it.

So we got this little drum machine and started making noises.

This guy that I met at Art College Steve and Duffy you know he was a singer.

And that's just sort of shrieking in a sort of a feminine manner about things I'd read

in books because all I'd done was gone from one side of Birmingham to the other so I didn't

really have much to sing about.

Steve sang and played bass, I played guitar and he played the wasp and we had another

guy actually Simon Colley playing Bobo eclectic.

We wanted to take rock music onto the dance floor.

We wanted the sound we made to become a sound that everybody liked.

We set ourselves aims and we said we're going to play the Hammersmith Odeon.

Bay 82, Wembley Bay 83 and Madison Square Garden Bay 84.

We were kind of methodical about it.

I had never, I had met people with that sort of ambition.

They wanted to become famous.

The name of the band came from the movie Barbara Ella.

Sexy sci-fi thriller with Jane Fonda.

The movie sci-fi at its best.

It was playing on the BBC one Monday evening and I was sitting on the, sitting on the sofa

with my old ma.

A character and it was called Durandurale.

We thought like that.

I turned to my mom and said well what do you think about that?

She said oh I think it sounds ridiculous.

So I thought alright we could be onto something.

Durand Durand became the house band at the Rum Runner club in Birmingham where they befriended

club owners Paul and Michael Barrow.

They'd been to New York, they'd been to Studio 54 and they'd come back with piles of 12 inch

records which was very helpful.

When New York was the place where there were some pretty exciting production values going

on, in particular with the bottom end, the whole dance groove, it became pretty apparent

that there was something which could be incorporated into the English music scene.

For a bunch of teenage kids like ourselves, they were able to give us all jobs in the club

and they bought me an amp and gave us somewhere to rehearse, which is all you need.

That's what you're looking for when you're in a band.

Sean and Roger used to collect glasses and wash up.

Nick was the DJ, great DJ Nick was.

We had a goal and everybody did everything they could day in nights in order to achieve

it.

When Nick and John placed a Wannad in the music trade magazine Melody Maker, it caught the

eye of guitarist Andy Taylor.

He brought a practical knowledge that none of us had.

We knew you know how to match lip gloss and eyeliner but he knew how to change guitar

strings and he could also get a Ford van started if it broke down on the motorway.

There was just no way we were having another talent.

We'd already got John and we'd only found out that Roger was called Tail Up Months later,

he was just Roger.

They had this whole scene, rehearsal room off this club, offices above, the managers

out on the club, I thought well this is alright.

I thought do we get a towel at the bar?

Oh yeah, yeah.

And one of our bar mates at the run runner said oh you should, I'll get my boyfriend

to come down and Simon walked into the kitchen one day and that was it.

Simon Lebahn, a theatre student at Birmingham University, had been a child actor.

He made a dramatic entrance.

And Simon came down for an audition and the legendary Popolove & Skid pants.

He looked right and he had lyrics.

So it was like wow, somebody's written lyrics already, these are songs in here you know,

just got to put some music to this.

By 1980 Duran Duran's lineup included John Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Roger Taylor, Andy Taylor,

and Simon Lebahn.

Those guys were talking about being professional, I was just thinking yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

just keep them sweet and I'll come and do it weekends.

But that idea was soon knocked out of me by John.

He said no, we're going in the way.

Duran Duran mixed elements of glam rock, punk and disco to create a smart, danceable departure

from the angry hard-edged punk rock that dominated the British music scene.

I think it captured people's imagination, all of that colour.

The music was attractive, slightly escapist, it was a celebration of life.

They were just young and fresh and it was the crowd, it was the style, it was the fashion,

it was the music, it was magic.

I wouldn't say it was a no brainer for the record companies but certainly, you know,

it looked on the cars that this could be a band that could come out and have hits out of the box.

With the release of their self-titled debut album in 1981 Duran took full advantage of

an exciting new record marketing tool, the music video.

It was Paul's idea to really go for the video thing.

Visual media, videos, film, we grew up watching the, you know, the Sergio Leone movies,

the Bond movies were a product of that experience.

They felt that they were doing sort of something which was entertainment and would be watched

and enjoyed and wasn't just a selling product.

Duran's Risk A video for Girls on Film earned the dubious honour of being banned by both the BBC and MTV.

I think that song was actually like the number one video jukebox song for about three years running.

It's quite incredible really, the what a bit of ice cube on the nipple will do for you.

With record sales driven not just by radio play but also by their notorious music videos,

it was time to sell Duran Duran to America.

If you asked the ambition of a British group, ultimately, America would be top of the list

and basically if you broke Europe you paid the bills.

If you broke America, you ran alive.

When Duran Duran broke out in 1981 they were a potent mass media package,

five stylish pretty boys playing danceable pop tunes backed by sexy music videos.

After completing their second album Rio in 82, they went to Sri Lanka to shoot a series of exotic videos

that would set the standard for music television.

Because of the real news and no one really knew what they were meant to be,

you could nearly do anything.

There were no major creative meetings or sort of script notes and whatever.

We just went off and did them.

There was no heavy deep thought into what does that really mean and what do we do to that.

I mean it really came from like, this music says this to me, okay that's filming.

The band was creating indelible video images and those images sold their music.

Duran's artistic vision shaped the way they packaged their records and themselves.

I mean I always look to this as a more like a little multimedia corporation as opposed to a rock band.

Hungry like the wolf hit the US airwaves in February of 83 and caused the sensation on radio and music television.

Duran Duran arrived in America where the media hyped them as the new Beatles and dubbed them the FAB5.

The band soon found it wasn't safe to travel the streets alone,

adoring teenage fans pursued them everywhere.

We did an in-store signing on Times Square it was.

And somebody said there's a few people out there, we've got there, there's 12,000 people.

And we got back to the hotel that night it was on the ABC News at 6 and we thought,

gentlemen, we have arrived.

This is ridiculous. Absolutely, totally ridiculous.

In 83 Duran Duran shared a rare distinction with the Beatles and Elvis Presley,

when Duran's single is There Something I Should Know made its chart debut at number one.

We get on stage and we play our songs which a lot of them were kind of sexual and we'd have this

wave of energy, of sexual energy sort of come towards us.

Well it's just like a wall of, wall of sound, you know, whether it's screaming and stop.

There was no sort of recognition between a song starting and a song finishing, you know, another

song starting, it was just a wall of hysteria.

It really was like Beatlemania. I'd never seen anything like it before or something.

Walk out of a backstage door or something, thinking there was nobody then,

suddenly there'd be 500 people running at you.

Big band from hotel after hotel in New York especially, because they got fed up with all

the fans outside the whole time screaming, keeping the guests awake.

With their conquest of America Duran became international cover boys.

Yet as popular as they were with teenage fans, the music press was unimpressed. Duran got hammered

by the critics. Whenever you have that kind of record that's a good pop formula and when it's

successful it's really successful and little kids like cool stuff as well as big kids.

But what happens is that when it's too many little kids, you know, the the powers that be

always go, eh, they suck. As far as the media concerns you must be a bag of sh**t.

We've never had a particularly great time with music critics. They like bands that are for boys

and Duran Duran is for girls and boys and anything in between.

Though critics refused to embrace them Duran was besieged by fans seeking the ultimate autograph.

It was a babe fest backstage for all the security. Somehow the girls would get through

and it didn't hurt that they all were the supermodel type.

Last time I was in Japan all I was interested in was finding women

and I go to the clubs where the western models meet and I take them back home with me and I spend

all my time either in the nightclub or in my bedroom bonking.

I wanted to make records and I wanted to go on stage and play, you know, and never really thought

in terms of, you know, adulation and whatnot. You know, as you start getting in that groove

and all that tasty stuff that comes along with it, that's very, that's very addictive that stuff.

By 1983 Duran Duran had captured the hearts of a growing legion of female fans around the world.

When their third album, Seven and the Ragged Tiger was released,

it sold one million copies in just a month. As always Duran's videos were a key to their mass appeal.

The landmark video for the Wild Boys was an ambitious and expensive foray into the realm of

feature filmmaking for the band and director Russell Mulcahy.

Russell had gotten William Burroughs to give him the rights to turn the book of the Wild Boys into a film.

And we kind of written this song in a quite cheekily really sort of pinched the title.

So he called and I said, oh, by the way, you know that movie you've got the right suit?

We've written the song for it.

I think what he did was produced his fantasy trailer of what he would have made the movie The Wild Boys

look like. And the film never came to fruition, but the video for the song I think became his vision

of the movie and it was an absolutely amazing piece of film. While Duran became Wild Boys offstage,

excitement continued to follow the band on tour as their concerts became sold out teenage screen

fest. By 84, their devoted fans had bought 5 million albums and there were no signs the hysteria

would ever die down. With that much fun going on at the shows where everybody there was 20, 30,000

people having that much fun, you couldn't just unplug everything. We were celebrating really

what we achieved and no one was there to stop us. And sometimes it would get way out of hand.

Stories of their private partying soon became a very public property.

The excessive side of it became something that the media started to get their teeth into.

You know, sex and drugs and rock and roll and it tends to be in that order that people are

interested in your group. You know, the music definitely is the last thing they're interested in.

The sheer interest in the human factor that these boys aren't just all wrapped in cling

for them. They do have habits, increased record sales and humanised us.

But for John Taylor, the party was getting out of control.

My drug of choice was Coke. I was able to be this pin up guy, you know, 24 hours a day, you know,

especially after midnight. It was really useful then.

Even now I suppose I find it hard to realise how bad that problem had become for him.

The problem had become so bad for John that he entered a rehab program. It would take years

for him to maintain sobriety.

I'm quite proud about having been into rehab. I think it's better to be a declared alcoholic,

you know, a recovered alcoholic than not.

I mean, there's nobody watching this. That hasn't got a skeleton, that hasn't done

something, that hasn't had a drink, a lion, a joint. But pop music is not worth paying the price for.

Because that's all it is. Pop music.

At the close of 1984, an exhausted Duran Duran took a long overdue open-ended break.

We'd been on this five-year roller coaster that hadn't stopped anywhere.

And we'd sort of reach the top and we were able to look back and say, wow, that was something of a ride,

but what happened along the way?

With Duran on hiatus, the individual band members saw new avenues of expression.

At the time, I felt Andy was really underused.

My said, you know, we're going to do something more aggressive next time. You and I.

John and Andy formed their own band, The Power Station, with chic drummer Tony Thompson and

Blue-eyed soul singer Robert Palmer.

We went out of limb to prove to ourselves and then had had this extraordinary feedback of people

that we never even thought would get in. The same room as us, like, along, make a record with us.

In the summer of 85, Simon, Nick, and Roger formed Arcadia and recorded an album with several high-profile guest stars.

What an amazing time we had, incredible. It was a good lineup, you know, Dave Gilmore,

Sting, Grace Jones. I mean, it was an amazing lineup.

Arcadia and Power Station met with critical and commercial success,

but created a schism within the band, which would ultimately take many years to resolve.

In July of 85, after one and a half years apart, Duran Duran got back together to support a good cause.

Live Aid was quite something for everyone involved. We signed on very early with Bob Geldoff, who

did sort of called Simon and said, well, you do. Live Aid would prove to be the last performance

by the five original members of Duran for 18 years. After Live Aid, John and Andy Taylor returned

to touring with Power Station. It was a very odd time for us because we thought we were going to have

a five-piece band back together again. But Roger had actually, he'd had enough of the music business,

and he didn't want to come back. I think he was just exhausted quite honestly.

People, I think, tried to thrust so much more on him. He wasn't as egotistical as the rest of us,

and he felt very shy. There's only so much attention and so many glaring lights that some people can take.

And, you know, you do take on a besieged mentality. Roger Taylor left the band and withdrew from

public life. He didn't want to have anything to do with it anymore. And who can blame? And we know

every back door in the world, every hotel, every gig.

Losing Roger was a stunning blow to the band. It was time for Duran Duran to regroup,

but Andy Taylor ignored requests to return to the fold.

I think he got tired of being in a band. You know, I think he got tired of telling the party line.

I think he just wanted to sing. And he was doing some solo project in Los Angeles.

And I think it was that time when everybody thought they could do whatever they wanted.

It blows your confidence a little bit when people leave. I know when Roger and Andy left.

I think the band kind of lost a little bit of his innocence then.

And it was never going to be the same. Duran Duran was falling apart. Next, they

parted company with their long time managers. I think we were tired and the pleasure was going

out of it. You'd never going to find another band like Duran Duran that could write those songs

that had as much style that were as good looking. So we thought probably best not to try.

The desire for creative freedom had driven Andy Taylor to embark on a solo career in Los Angeles,

which is really a bad place to put a young man from the north of England who's left his supergroup.

And that put me in LA. And everyone's like, hey man, we can do this for you.

Andy signed some huge deals. A record company bidding war over Andy resulted in a multi-million

dollar record deal. I've never seen the sole sons of money. That was, you know,

no stick, just carrots. But when Andy's solo debut thunder was released in November of 86,

it was a critical and personal disappointment. And that was the first time I met the big F word.

Failure.

The remaining members of Duran weren't necessarily looking for a new guitarist,

but a new guitarist was definitely looking for them.

Okay, Andy's here with In LA and the other guys are in England. What should I do? Should I call them?

We kept getting calls from this guitarist, Juan Cukarolo, who we knew of because he was working

with missing persons and previously worked with Frank Zappa.

Well, Ryan basically got in touch with us and said, look man, you guys need a guitarist because

Andy's working with my extra, they're doing something and he ain't coming back to you.

Ryan's an incredible player, virtuoso. So he was able to step in very quickly, which was a relief.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

John Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Simon Lebahn, and guitarist Warren Cukarolo entered the studio

to record Duran Duran's fifth album, Notorious, with producer, Nyle Rogers.

When I showed up to do the album Notorious and there was no Andy and there was no Roger,

I wasn't quite sure that we feel like I was working with Duran. But the thing is, is that

the spirit of Duran is sort of bigger than the individual players, you know what I mean?

And it felt really like Duran. We've never been as funky as Notorious and skin trade

before or since. Nyle Rogers. Nyle's got the funk.

Notorious came out in December of 86. It was a turbulent time. The band members were acting as

the role managers and struggling with the daily frustrations of the music business.

Bad time in their career. The peak had been hit and they were coming back down, which is very hard,

and they decided to take over their own career. And if they're going to try to do this, then

something was going to suffer. And so trying to do it themselves, we thought was a mistake.

We always seem to be answering to or talking to people who know more about business than they do

about music. And you know, it's like we know the business has its place and everything, but it's

too damn corporate.

On the following tour, Duran Duran encountered a very different audience than the one they'd

left behind two years early. Some people were listening to us instead of screaming at us.

Oh, it was more surprise. It was, you know, walking on stage and not having facing these

wall of sound. And though the hysteria of the early 80s had faded, Duran was still adored by

their female fans. A fact Simon's wife understands. I think it's really cool that so many people

are so many girls. It's been an object of desire for so many young girls. And great, fantastic.

You know, if I could see someone was really hitting on him in a big way, you know, someone who

just didn't care at all, whether he was married or not, I did used to have a few methods. One of them

being, you know, I would walk up behind him and just grab him by the balls and just stand there,

holding them like, see, these are mine, okay?

Fans may have been listening more, but they weren't buying like before.

From 86 to 92, Duran Duran released four albums to dwindling record sales and tour attendance.

It seemed impossible that they'd ever rekindle the fire of their glory days.

It's too much information for me.

We spent about a year really writing a lot of songs and an ordinary world and come undone,

came out of those sessions and the wedding album was recorded in the living room.

After years of struggle, Duran finally triumphed with the release of the wedding album in 1993.

It was fantastic, you know, it was the biggest success we'd ever had.

For the first time, we crossed over a generation. People were coming and bringing their kids along.

The wedding album sold millions worldwide and renewed Duran Duran's status as pop stars.

The band also scored their first top 10 success in five years with their single, ordinary world.

It took us until ordinary world, really, to show people what we were about in the 90s.

In September 1995, Simon performed ordinary world with Luciano Pavarotti at the Great

Tenors' Benefit for War Children in Modena, Italy.

And just the fact that me and him were standing on the same stage together, for me, it was a mega

moment and for my mom, I mean, out of this world.

In 1994, Duran followed up the success of the wedding album with a record of cover songs entitled

Thank You, featuring tracks written by such varied artists as Public Enemy and Lou Reed.

I think Duran Duran's version of Perfect Day is possibly the best re-recording of a song of mine.

I'm not sure that I sing as well as Simon sang it. I think he sings it better than I.

If I could have sung it the way he did, I would have. It wasn't the lack of trying.

They recorded it the way I meant it, which is a real big thrill for me. So thank you Duran Duran.

But by the time the band finally finished recording their 11th album two years later,

Duran had lost their newfound momentum. Duran Duran suffers from this, you know,

never really capitalizing on momentum. It's really disappointing for us, but I think it kind of kicked

us out of a little bit of ambivalence. Then Duran faced another disappointment. In 1997,

as their album, Madazzaland, neared completion, founding member John Taylor quit the band.

I'd wanted to get out for a long time, actually. For me, it had run its course.

You know, after making so many huge corporate albums, where so many people's agendas have

to be satisfied. It was kind of fun just to do something for myself.

John, who is now living in Venice, California, opened his own recording studio and began a solo

career. He also toured with his own band, Tara Reeston. I miss him. I want to do. I have him back tomorrow.

As the millennium approached, Duran Duran found themselves down to just two original members.

When John decided to leave the band during the Madazzaland sessions, we really lost a lot.

I felt that we'd kind of come to the end of the road with that line up. Duran's last two albums,

Madazzaland and Pop Trash, although critically successful, had failed to excite the fans.

And the first thing I did was talk to Nick about it. I think there was a couple of options. One was

to just stop or look at going all the way back to the beginning again and putting the original

line up together. Their plan was audacious and risky. After 18 years, could they pull the original

band back together again despite their past differences? If they succeeded, the rewards for

the band and fans could be enormous. I called up John. Nick and Simon and I had lunch. He was ready,

really excited. He said, right, let's call Roger. So I'm here by the pool with Simon and Nick,

we're thinking about getting the original band together again. At that point, I kind of nearly

fell through the floor. I always thought maybe Roger would be a little nervous of putting it back

together. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to really embrace this. So I'll call him back now.

I said, yeah, OK, I'm in. So then there was only Andy and it was a case of finding him.

Andy had moved to the Spanish island of Ibiza, setting up a new home complete with recording studio.

And after 14 years, Warren Cukorillo found himself without a band. I'm sure it must have been

very, very difficult for Warren at that time. But I have to say, he really behaved like a

gentleman about it, whatever his feelings. It was kind of bittersweet for fans that he so suddenly

wasn't in the band anymore. People do have a lot of fondness and gratitude toward Warren

Cukorillo. It was a very unpleasant thing to do to tell Warren he wasn't going to be part of it.

In the five original members of Duran Duran got together to see if they could recapture the old

magic. We wrote a huge amount of songs together. My one criteria was that, well, we have to make

a new album. I don't think that this little band that would be happy trotting out the hips.

Over the next few months, they employed three managers who touted the new recordings to the

major record labels without success. We thought, all we had to do was make the decision that we

were going to get back together and everybody was just going to come with their open checkbooks

and just, you know, and it proved to be very, very difficult.

The last people who were interested in this was the record companies. They finally asked

ex-Erismith manager Wendy Laster to take over the reins.

I felt that we needed to create a demand rather than going knocking on doors.

I wanted people knocking on their doors. Maybe we've just got to take control ourselves

and Wendy suggested that we go on tour.

So we put shows on say. We said, let's do something in Japan.

Welcome back to Japan.

I see you at the Buddha camp, the 11th and 12th.

Sold out in some crazy amount of time.

They just went. Everything went.

And then we added another one, it sold out in another one and another one.

Suddenly we realized that there was an audience out there.

18 years since we were last on stage together.

And there's five minutes to go, so it's been quite a wait.

You want to get on and do a gig really?

It was like this sleeping army just woke up out of nowhere.

Insanity, girls crying, people lining up, crowds outside the hotels, people running after the vans.

They found the same fanatical response in the USA and Europe.

The band had rediscovered themselves and their fans.

We forgot how big the band was I think.

And we kind of built up again until it was like five nights at Wembley Arena.

There were some of the best shows we've ever done.

Go, Don't Fail.

Go, Don't Fail.

The world had sort of come back to them.

They picked the perfect moment at a point where they were once again

as hugely influential as they'd ever been.

You could hear nods to Nick Rhodes' sense all over the top 40 at that point.

The reconditioned Iran-Iran train was unstoppable.

The fans have been quick to express the renewed love for the band

and the record industry who had been slower to recognize their achievements started to catch up.

We started to get good reviews again and we started to get awards from very prestigious

ceremonies. I am so honored that Q has given the lifetime achievement award to my friends

Duran Duran. It was really vindicating for longtime fans to sort of see them get their doing.

I'm the home of MTV, I presented Duran Duran with their lifetime achievement award.

The Brit Awards really meant a huge amount.

For outstanding contributions.

Duran.

Duran.

It was such a big deal and I think that was so important to the reunion.

Now with Sellout Giggs Worldwide and a cabinet full of awards,

the record companies finally came knocking on Duran's door.

I thought it was a pretty natural easy thing to do.

They had all of these gigs, they had this rebirth if you will after 21 years with the original unit.

All we needed was the right record to be able to get them to prominence again.

The band gave the track Sunrise to renowned New York mixer and producer Jason Nevins.

I knew it was something that I could achieve something great with and then I think I kind of

took it to a different place or took it up a notch.

We liked the Jason Nevins mix so much.

We decided to use it as the opening to our show.

The success of the Sunrise single welcomed in a new dawn for Duran Duran.

An astronaut achieved the highest album chart position since the early 80s.

Having toured the album for close to two years, the band decided to keep up the momentum.

Returning to the studio to start recording again.

And we pretty much finished an album.

It was tentatively titled Repotage.

Came up with a bunch of songs that we felt really represented.

Oh, way better than astronaut. This is the real thing.

And when we took that to Sony, they said, oh my god, it sounds like it sounds like days gone by.

And they didn't get it at all.

We needed that really urgent, sexy, vibrant, worldwide beat.

Searching for the elusive hit singles led Duran Duran to collaborate with producers

Timberland and Justin Timberlake.

The first record we did together, that was Night Runner.

Timberland and Justin Timberlake were riding so high at that point

with multiple number one records and to pair them up with an iconic group like Duran Duran.

It's definitely a genius idea.

When we went into the studio in New York with Timberland and Justin Timberlake,

there was only four men's of the band there and not five.

Andy didn't turn up.

So that made things rather difficult.

I kept saying, no, no, he'll be here. He'll be here.

I know what transpired over the next few days was that he wasn't coming.

Andy had missed his flight from Spain due to visa problems.

But Andy's continued no show indicated that something wasn't quite right within the band.

Andy had been becoming more difficult to work with.

Everybody in the band felt that.

It was a ticking bomb that had been ticking for probably a year, I think.

We weren't all going in the same direction. That was clear.

On October 25th, 2005, there was an announcement that Andy Taylor had left the band for the second time.

He continues to live in a pizza and declined an invitation to be interviewed for this remastered

program.

What felt right creatively at the time was to keep going and create a whole new album.

It was like a breath of fresh air and it happened very, very quickly.

And it was a very, very creative period for us.

Suddenly there was this new sound to the record, which everybody was very excited about.

It was very sexy, very swaggy. It was, but it was very different.

The result of these sessions without Andy was the album Red Carpet Massacre released in 2007.

It was John that came in one day and said, I think we should play on Broadway and we should play

the whole album.

The Rand Duran, welcome to New York, courtesy NYPD. Enjoy.

Debuting it on Broadway, what an audacious and arrogant move that was,

they repeated the launch in London's West End.

But despite the theatrical rasmataz and the input from Sfangali producer Timberland,

the album failed to capitalize on the success of Astronaut.

We made a cracking album, but we made a cracking album that the fans didn't want.

But if Duran was disappointing on record, in the live arena, things just got bigger and bigger.

During 2007, they performed twice during the same week at the New Wembley Stadium in London.

At Al Gore's ecological event Live Earth, and before that, the memorial concert to Princess Diana.

We have the greatest pleasure in introducing one of our mother's favorite bands. It's Duran Duran.

She loved the band. I think it was very important that we played it for Diana.

In 2008, the band has awarded the Ultimate Music Video Accolade by MTV Viewers,

who voted the band's legendary clip for their hit single Rio, the greatest video of all time.

Then at a high-profile event in Paris, Duran Duran was to meet one of their biggest fans,

who would now help to shape their future.

I started a band when I was nine, specifically because I wanted to play wild boys at the school

talent show, and I wanted to play bass because I wanted to be John Taylor. It was incredibly

fortunate and important to the career of the band that we played the Smirnoff special.

The idea, which seemed like a really good one to me, was that Mark should create this sort of DJ

Master mix of his favorite Duran moments, and then we'd attempt to play it.

That sort of planted the seeds of working together, and I was sitting in the back of

the car with Mark, and he said to me, you know what, we really like to do the whole album.

I said, I was hoping you were going to say that.

It's almost like a dream pairing with Duran Duran and Mark Ronson since Mark Ronson sort of

exemplifies a generation of musician who wouldn't exist in the same form without Duran Duran.

He's got extraordinary charisma that really makes you want to raise your game.

I think probably what I brought to it as much as my ear is a producer was being sort of like

just an ultimate Duran Duran fan.

Boosted by this collaboration, the band returned to the studio to record their new album with Mark

Ronson producing.

He said, I want to make the album that Duran Duran fans want to hear.

I want to make something that's a bit like Rio.

It was more just telling them not to be afraid to sort of own what they started.

Brought something out in us that we forgot we had.

The time is right for a third wave of Duran's success, and never before has there been so much

evidence of Duran's far-reaching influence.

Groups like Franz Ferdinand and the Killers have a lot more than a little bit that they owe to Duran Duran.

The way they changed the sound of how rock music and pop music and dance music sounded in the 80s

is still vast and people are still trying to catch up with what they were doing back then.

They just wrote some of the best pop songs.

They were a popular band. They wrote popular songs. They made popular videos. There's nothing wrong with pop.

Everybody on your meet is now.

As for the future Duran Duran has never shied away from innovation, opportunities or challenges,

and their focus remains on performing live and the creation of hit songs.

With Duran Duran I don't know when it will possibly end. I thought that maybe when we started

it might last for a few years and then I'd start directing films with 30 years in and

well I still haven't got around to that.

Everybody on your meet is now.

On your meet, on your meet is now.