◼ ONCE IN A WHILE a piece of journalism actually reveals stuff you didn’t already know and a great big penny drops. For its April issue, WSJ., the glossy magazine published by The Wall Street Journal, puts Anna Wintour on its cover (photographed by ex-Blitz Club barman Mario Testino), while writer Joshua Levine explains in thorough detail how her power and financial clout reach far beyond her own editorship of Vogue, which she assumed in 1988.
By mobilising a “fully connected network” of allies and celebrity shock troops Anna shapes micro-economic forces around the world, to become “basically a global brand”, in the opinion of Deborah Needleman, editor of WSJ., “someone whose power extends beyond what she does”. Or as a former colleague who attended corporate matchmaking sessions between fashion’s biggest brands says: “She’s really the McKinsey of fashion.”
When some of New York’s 1,000 targeted stores balked at joining up to her Fashion’s Night Out initiative to rebuild sales amid post-recessionary thrift, she was calling it in from command central — “I’ll get you Sienna Miller at the store, I’ll send you Justin Timberlake!” Timberlake and Miller are among Wintour’s most zealous Hollywood allies. “She understands fashion is a frame of mind, not just the clothes,” Timberlake says. “She’s figured out that all these small moving parts come into play to make a bigger picture.” A year later FNO had become an international event in 16 countries, when Istanbul, for example, logged clothing sales of $2 million in three hours.
At the age of 61, Anna’s globe-trotting, matchmaking and event-planning have not only made her a force among fund-raisers but are fuelling rumours that she is angling for a job in Washington as an ambassador. Indeed, Michelle Obama is one of the first names Wintour mentions when asked whom she most looks up to. Read on to discover Anna’s response…
Duran live on YouTube: a choice of three camera streams and “Lynchian effects” smothering John Taylor’s performance on All You Need Is Now
What’s with the floating heads? Kelis joins Le Bon for The Man who Stole a Leopard
❚ WHAT RUM NIGHTMARES DAVID LYNCH must have in bed at night, but then, he did direct Eraserhead after all. For the best part of two hours, today’s much vaunted Duran Duran live web concert in the Unstaged series kept making you want to hurl virtual cabbages at the screen, enraged by a director whose intent was to obscure the act from view with his relentlessly potty toy-box full of widgets. From 2am UK time till almost the dawn chorus, the band onstage in California had no idea what web audiences in 22 overseas territories (432,000 channel views by 6.30am) were enduring as they pushed on through 18 numbers where musically there was much to enjoy (though Simon Le Bon did lurch badly off-key a couple of times). Two of the guest performers Kelis and Beth Ditto added real pleasure to Duran’s output old and new, as did a medley of Bond themes arranged by Mark Ronson.
The YouTube HD media player offered viewers at their computers a choice of three image sources, but gallingly the director’s cut wasn’t simply an option — it was the main stream. A couple of handheld “fun” cams in the audience searching for alternative shots added nothing whatsoever (one vanished entirely), so you were stuck with Lynch’s hellish visions and flickering ghosts from within his own mental Plato’s cave.
Collision of vocalists: Le Bon and guest Gerard Way during Planet Earth
The trouble with the way-over-the-top “Lynchian effects” was that by shooting the band in broodily gloomy black and white, then adding a light-storm of flashing bleached-out effects resulted in obscuring the musicians for literally 90% of the concert. This utterly defeats the founding principle for televising live events — which was always to give the viewer a privileged close-up vantage point. Not to superimpose a veil of tears. What Lynch added to the often rousing performance in the Mayan theatre, Los Angeles, was a heavy-handed montage (loosely echoing Duran’s lyrics) of old clock parts, bicycle wheels, smoking twigs, flames, sparklers, crashing airplanes, shrunken heads on sticks, BBQ hot dogs, dancing mice, gnomes and the sock fairy.
All of which prompted scrolling comments onscreen from viewers: “I wanna see the boys”, “What’s with the floating heads?”, “This guy is on freaking crack”, “Fatuous visuals”, “Giving me a headache”, “I’m going dizzy” and “Fire Lynch!”
Conclusion: arm yourself with a couple of extra-strong Nurofen Plus if you feel up to catching either the whole concert restreamed for UK audiences at 8pm tonight on Duran’s Vevo channel at YouTube, or opt right away for what look like edited highlights which were already being uploaded as the live show ended. The highlights seem likely to linger online for the next month. But if Rhodes, Le Bon, and the Taylors can brace themselves to view the whole Lynchian farrago in real time — as we had to — they’ll never, ever repeat this kind of laughable venture live. The surrealists played this card in 1930, and won hands down.
Ghost in the machine: the usually high-visibility guest Beth Ditto trapped in a Lynchian spinning jenny during Notorious
Given a roasting: Nick Rhodes gets barbecued during, appropriately, Come Undone
➢ Duran’s official website lists these 22 territories (based on YouTube licensing agreements) which are able to view Unstaged: Argentina, Australia, Brazil , Canada, Czech Republic , France , Hong Kong , Ireland, Israel, Italy , Japan, Korea, Republic of Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russian Federation, South Africa , Spain , Taiwan Province of China, United Kingdom , United States.
❚ ENGLISH-BORN DAME ELIZABETH TAYLOR, one of cinema’s biggest stars, the epitome of celebrity itself, has died in Los Angeles aged 79. As the woman of the age, she was renowned for her magnificent beauty, her fierce independence, her daring and insolence. Her most notable performances are seen in National Velvet, Cleopatra and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — one of 12 films with the great British actor Richard Burton, in his day the highest-paid in Hollywood. Taylor herself was the first woman to be cast in a $1m role, that of Cleopatra, pictured in the epic with Burton on the Time cover, below. He married her twice in possibly the longest-running love story in showbiz, marked by its passion and turbulence.
Taylor won four Oscar nominations between 1958 and 1961, for Raintree County, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer and triumphed at her fourth attempt with Butterfield 8. Of screen-acting she said: “I learned that you had to feel it in your gut, and your guts had to get in an uproar.”
Her own favourite movie was Mike Nichols’s caustic portrait of a car-crash marriage, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966, above, nominated for 13 Academy Awards among which Taylor won Best Actress playing opposite her own husband Burton). Her beauty at age 18 is breath-taking as she plays a society girl alongside Montgomery Clift in the romantic drama A Place in the Sun (1951, below), directed by George Stevens. Beneath that a third clip shows Taylor giving full value as the mystery guest on the CBS television panel game What’s My Line? in 1954. It is a gem.
Rehearsals at the downtown Mayan theatre, LA: David Lynch, Roger Taylor, Nick Rhodes
❚ TONIGHT WEDNESDAY MARCH 23 audiences around the world can tune into Duran Duran’s live online concert in 1080p HD, enhanced by film-maker David Lynch in Los Angeles. It is being streamed live on Wednesday at 7pm Pacific Daylight Time / 10pm Eastern Daylight Time (UTC−04), which is Thursday 2am in the UK (02:00 UTC).
View at the band’s YouTube channel /DuranDuranVEVO where, if you miss the live broadcast, the YouTube blog says you can catch highlights on their channel immediately following the event. The full 90-minute show will also be repeated for UK audiences at 8pm Thursday, according to the sponsor Amex’s Facebook page.
This webcast launches the second season of Unstaged, a music series sponsored by American Express in partnership with Vevo. Guitarist John Taylor said: “It’s not going to look like any concert film has looked before.” He said that viewers will be able to switch between the high-definition main stream and alternate “Lynchian” artistic viewpoints. Lynch insists that he won’t be directing the band themselves, but creating abstract visuals in what he describes as an “experiment”, one where he hopes there will be “many happy accidents”.
Duran’s official website lists these 22 territories (based on YouTube licensing agreements) which can view Unstaged as a live stream tonight at 02:00 UTC:
Argentina, Australia, Brazil , Canada, Czech Republic , France , Hong Kong , Ireland, Israel, Italy , Japan, Korea, Republic of Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russian Federation, South Africa , Spain , Taiwan Province of China, United Kingdom , United States.
❚ UNBELIEVABLE! Not one of the nine amateur vidz posted on YouTube of Duran Duran’s pre-tour warm-ups in the US this week captures tunes from the new album — all are oldies, durrrr. No vidz at all have yet been posted from the tour’s opening night in Thackerville, Oklahoma. Though the band played two gigs at the SXSW media festival in Texas and included five tracks from the new album All You Need Is Now, there’s no sign of any of them on video by close of play Friday. Hence the choice of HoraceScope’s performance vid, above, in excellent HD: the lubricious new tune Being Followed was shot in London at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire recording for Radio 2 earlier this month (Dom Brown on guitar).
Update March 20: first US tour vid of a new Duran tune on YT shows Mediterranea at Winstar Casino, Oklahoma, posted by alyciabear72 — http://tinyurl.com/4gvnkmo
Let’s not forget the big 30th anniversary party: next week is the very same in 1981 when Duran’s debut single Planet Earth entered the UK Top 20 where it was to reach No 12. What better way to celebrate than with the next date on their US tour — the much vaunted concert directed by film-maker David Lynch in LA on Wednesday night US time, so all the more reason to catch its live YouTube webcast at 2am UTC Thursday (repeated 8pm for the UK).
As an eye witness at this week’s Stubbs gig at SXSW, Kitty Amsbry of the American fansite Gimmeawristband reports: “Le Bon’s vocals were top-notch, from the highest notes of Ordinary World to the spiteful snarls of Friends of Mine. The band even managed to look cool while calling themselves to a halt, and taking it from the top again on Safe; showing a serious commitment to quality while still remaining playful. [Echoes here of the nervous Hadley and Kemp on the first night of Spandau’s reunion tour.] Yet for that one misstep, each and every other song, old or new, had the unmistakable charge of being right there in the moment.”
Of SXSW, Time Out North America reported: “Impressively—astonishingly, even—the band still looks cool. Besides immaculately fitted black suits, part of the reason for this is that for all their playboy behavior in the 80s, Duran Duran could actually play and write songs… and still can.”
After the taster-reviews of the nine tracks released digitally before Christmas, a second wave of reviews is now trickling out, though it’s hard to tell whether the additional numbers being released on the 14-track CD next week have been considered. Verdicts are largely favourable, despite some sniffy reservations over three seemingly dud tunes, praise being directed principally to the same seven tracks, the four standouts being Safe, Too Bad You’re So Beautiful, The Man Who Stole a Leopard and Girl Panic!
all you need is now: excerpts from
verdicts published so far…
➢ The musical DNA of the British group’s early sound is hard to miss — Alex Veiga, Associated Press, syndicated across the US
“The album overflows with Duran Duran’s sonic staples: lush synths layered over driving, dance-floor ready bass lines; disco-inspired percussion, frequently accented with Latin beats; and, the high-flying, moody vocals and harmonies. On the funky Girl Panic! the percussion recalls the group’s classic The Reflex. On the title track, a whirring synth drone builds to a sing-along friendly chorus: And you sway in the moon the way you did when you were younger/And we told everybody all you need is now. The Man Who Stole a Leopard might be the album’s standout cut, somewhat evocative of the band’s dark and sexy classic The Chauffeur.”
➢ Not everything is worth making the journey
— Mikael Wood, LA Times
“It’s hard to know why the band bothered adding five new songs to the superior nine-track version of All You Need Is Now that Duran Duran released through iTunes late last year. But with their sleek keyboard lines, trebly guitar chatter and frontman Simon Le Bon’s swooping vocal melodies, taut neo-New Wave gems like Being Followed and Girl Panic! make a strong argument for the lasting utility of these hitmakers’ original formula.”
➢ Duran Duran embrace middle age — Ed Potton, The Times
“Mark Ronson as producer… understands what they do best — spacious pop songs with a bittersweet undertow. The title track, a thrilling blast of grandstanding choruses and wonky synths, will sit comfortably alongside The Reflex and Save a Prayer. It’s in the lyrics, never previously a Duran forte, that Le Bon and Co cast themselves gamely into the contemporary fray. The likeably eccentric The Man Who Stole a Leopard exudes an acceptance of vanishing youth. ‘You were once running wild,’ Le Bon sings (addressing Yasmin?). Now, however, ‘we’ve both been tamed’. Being Followed appears to curse the intrusion of stalkers and/or CCTV. ‘I’ve done things I don’t ever want you to know,’ Le Bon wails.”
➢ The best Duran Duran album for 18 years
— Tom Hocknell at BBC Music
“They have thankfully stopped seeking credibility, and it suits them. Their calling card here is the garage rock of the title-track (if you can imagine a garage band playing alongside Bentleys), which morphs into a soaring chorus reminiscent of Rio. Scissor Sister Ana Matronic slots perfectly into the disco-flecked Safe, an unashamed return to their original sound. They sound similarly well preserved on the slinky Being Followed, and Girl Panic! also mines their new-wave roots.”
➢ Duran Duran have unearthed their missing mojo
— Dave Simpson, Guardian online
“[Producer] Mark Ronson has sprinkled guests like Kelis and Ana Matronic over his postmodern sheen, but the surprise is the quality of the songwriting. The title track and groove-thrusting Too Bad You’re So Beautiful are once-heard, sing-the-chorus pop stonkers.”
➢ Still hungry after all these years — Adrian Thrills, Daily Mail
“The band’s 13th album is much better than most of us could have anticipated. The nine new songs benefit from a diverse cast of special guests. Ana Matronic of the Scissor Sisters adds a seductive rap on Safe (In the Heat of the Moment). New York soul diva Kelis impresses on The Man Who Stole A Leopard. But if Mark Ronson’s input provides a creative spark, the most impressive thing is Duran Duran’s return to form as songwriters. The frontman, to his credit, also supplies some wonderful, multi-tracked vocal harmonies, superbly augmented by Rhodes’ clever electronic prompts and the urgent grooves of the rhythm section.”
➢ Nine songs full of the promise and thrill of 1981-83
— Crispin Kott at Pop Matters
“All You Need Is Now isn’t Son of Rio, but it’s the best album Duran Duran has released since then, a collection that manages what their best material always has, blending art with grand gestures and popcraft. It’s nine songs full of the promise and thrill of 1981-83… This is the sound of time stood still, of a feeling of reckless and sophisticated abandon launched decades forward without skipping a beat.”
➢ Nick Rhodes and Simon Le Bon are incredibly adept pop songwriters — Forest at TRT
“My favourite song so far, Girl Panic!, is the best of all worlds. It’s got that optimistic pomp I’ve always loved about Duran Duran’s brightest tracks, with a chorus that I would love to buy property in. For me, this song is the ultimate cross between Rio and Electric Barbarella.”
➢ A success on many levels — Möhammad Choudhery at Consequence of Sound
“Certainly a commendable effort if for no reason other than it’s the band’s most relevant and listenable record in almost two decades. And though it’s not quite Rio 2.0, Duran Duran’s 13th album does possess many of the qualities that put the synth-pop legends on the map in the first place.”
➢ Choose “View full site” – then in the blue bar atop your mobile page, click the three horizontal lines linking to many blue themed pages with background article
MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2026
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch up on Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
SEARCH our 925 posts or ZOOM DOWN TO THE ARCHIVE INDEX
UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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