❚ ON THE ROPES is a serious issue-led strand on BBC Radio 4 in which veteran interrogator John Humphrys talks tough to somebody in the public eye. This morning he discussed bi-polar disorder in depth with the flamboyant and charismatic popstar, Adam Ant now aged 56, who at one stage in his later life “would have gone to prison for a long time”.
Humphrys — “The man who dominated the pop scene in the early 80s was [20 years later] a burned-out husk locked in a mental home with people who, he said later, wanted to be dead. Adam Ant, did you want to be dead at that time?”
Ant — “It wasn’t really wanting to be dead. It was really that I felt dead, I felt I was encased in a Dante-esque purgatory. It was worse than hell. I can’t describe how terrifying it was, knowing you are in control of your faculties and being told you’re not.”
Adam Ant in 1981: in his glam-rock guise as Prince Charming, a heroic highwayman based, he says, on the film stars Errol Flynn, Marlon Brando and Clint Eastwood
Ant talks throughout in a low soft voice, but his views are heartfelt. He said he disagrees with the use of the term bipolar disorder and insisted: “At this point I don’t need medication… I am always passionate. I’m not hyper. Onstage I’m an athlete. That doesn’t make me nuts or paranoid.”
Afterwards, he was criticised for some of his blunt language, especially for saying: “I was put in a nuthouse and it is a nuthouse — it is worse than Bedlam.” His descriptions of life in care are graphic. “The only thing they are concerned with is polishing floors and making sure you take your medication… It’s like the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but there isn’t a cute nurse there being jokey and you’re sedated. I want the prime minister to know that takes place and it’s wrong.”
❚ TODAY AT A PRESS CONFERENCE Adam Ant confirmed 11 concerts for his Blueblack Hussar tour of Britain from May 16 in Brighton to June 4 in York, plus a screening of the 1981 Prince Charming Revue on film, plus live Q&A at the Coronet Theatre in Elephant & Castle on May 11.
In today’s Press Association video interview (below) at Chelsea football club’s Stamford Bridge stadium, Adam Ant announces the tour with his new band, The Good, the Mad and the Lovely Posse, based on the series of preparatory small gigs over recent months. He says: “It’s time for a little bit of real rock and roll — there’s too much sampling and karaoke going on.”
He also says that his sixth studio album, Adam Ant is the Blueblack Hussar In Marrying the Gunner’s Daughter (an old naval term for corporal punishment in which sailors were flogged), has been postponed until 2012. His own website says: “So, apparently this tour will not be to promote new material”. Adam tweets Mar 30: “I would like to say… Its not my fault the album got pushed back… there are reasons which cant be disscused [sic] at this time.”
❏ Posted April 1 by music-news.com, below — 12-minute interview backstage after the midday showcase Under The Bridge on March 29 “I don’t want to do downloads. [My new album] is not for earplugs or mobiles. If you’ve got kids, you owe it to them to play them a vinyl disc in their lifetime because once they hear it they will never get over that experience… I don’t like the people that invented the internet — it encourages children to sit in a room, not move, look at a screen and get fat. And noone cares. I do. I have a daughter. I want real records for real people.”
❚ 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.”
Spandau Ballet in 2009: answering our questions at their reunion press conference
❚ EVEN AS A UNIQUE CD COMPILATION of Spandau Ballet’s landmark hits is set for massive free distribution with The Mail on Sunday next weekend, Duran Duran announce a global concert live online at YouTube only days later, along with their own album release on CD. It could be the 80s all over again when the two arch-rival bands vied for the title of leaders of Britain’s New Romantics movement. So which veteran band will score the bigger hit in 2011?
Duran Duran earlier this year: US and European tours, plus a live concert stream. Picture courtesy duranduran.com
Spandau’s special-edition CD features 12 tracks — half, including True and Gold, are remastered from their originals, with six live tracks coming from their show at London’s Sadler’s Wells in 1983, including the club anthem Chant No 1. The cover-mounted disc will be delivered free across Britain with every copy of the MoS, presumably because its marketing director expects Spandau to boost the paper’s circulation well past its average of 1,924,589 copies. Last Sunday Gary Kemp recalled the 80s for MoS readers: “It was madly competitive as we were all tribal. Duran Duran wanted to be more successful than us, we wanted to be more successful than ABC, or Culture Club, or Duran themselves. We spurred each other on.”
Meanwhile today, Duran Duran announce that David Lynch — fabled director of the movies Eraserhead and The Elephant Man — has been enlisted to direct a live DD concert to be streamed online on March 23/24 to launch the second season of Unstaged, a music series sponsored by American Express and Vevo. Amex has pushed this internet venture to team breakthrough artists with influential filmmakers using interactive social media as the outlet (full details at Billboard).
During a Facebook Live chat from SXSW John Taylor admitted that how Lynch intended to video the show was still a mystery but “we know it’s not going to look like any concert film has looked before”. Audiences around the world will be able to switch between the director’s high-definition main stream and alternate “Lynchian” artistic viewpoints when they tune into YouTube on Wednesday in the US at 10pm EDT / 7pm PDT — which is Thursday at 02:00 UTC. The concert will also be rebroadcast for the UK on YouTube at 7pm on March 24. (Check here for regions where Unstaged will be viewable live. The Los Angeles concert will then remain online for a month.)
Can Duran attract a bigger audience than Spandau’s 2million Mail readers? With their US tour starting this week, DD’s comeback album is released in the US as a physical disc next Tuesday. The video of its title track All You Need Is Now has scored 629,689 views since it was posted on YouTube on Dec 20, so it’s anybody’s guess how many fans will tune in for the live webcast. What’s yours?
WHAT THE RIVAL BANDS SAY
Talking up the imminent free CD, Spandau Ballet told last week’s Mail on Sunday what the tracks meant to them…
John Keeble: Dublin sound-check as Spandau’s Reformation tour kicks off 2009
Martin Kemp “We gave Instinction to producer Trevor Horn who really turned it on its head. It became a monster.”
Steve Norman on Lifeline “We knew we couldn’t stay an underground band for ever – the mainstream pop charts beckoned and we knew we had to deliver. Cue smiles and kisses to camera!”
John Keeble “Only When You Leave was the lead single from the Parade album as the band established a more rock-based edge. It opened doors to a new group of fans and gave me the chance to rock a bit harder on the drum kit.”
Tony Hadley “Sadler’s Wells was one of the best venues for us. It was an intimate gig and perfect to showcase tracks from our album True, such as Foundation – a slice of white soul-boy funky pop – Communication – a great upbeat number – and Pleasure, which really captures the essence of the era.”
Nick Rhodes: last November's video for the comeback single, All You Need Is Now. Courtesy duranduran.com
Over in the States, Duran founder and keyboardist Nick Rhodes discusses the David Lynch webcast with Billboard today:
“The stranger it is, the more beautiful it will be. What appeals to us very much about working with David is that we like the way he thinks about things and how he’s always gone out on a limb to make things different. He works completely outside of the system, and that’s what we try to do. I think the combustion between us and David should create something that nobody’s ever seen before, something mysterious and magical and surprising.”
❚ THE MOST DISTRESSING news footage of the day is this prolonged aerial sequence as an NHK news team pursues the grim rampage of the tsunami crossing the coastline of Japan to devour the farmland beyond. Nothing so visceral and horribly mesmerising has unfolded effectively in real time since 9-11 when we watched the wretched victims inside the Twin Towers trying to escape the flames.
Here the flying camera witnesses the murderous progress of the tsunami through the Fukushima district after being triggered by an enormous undersea earthquake 80 miles offshore. A series of ferocious 20-ft high waves surge up the beaches to grab burning houses, boats and cars, shred them and speed all in a waterborne avalanche across the fields. We watch a river being engorged and surmounted within seconds, while the captive boats and swirling sludge career on towards motorists and pedestrians who we can see from above will be next to be consumed. It is heart-rending.
All along the seaboard, villages have been flattened, railway trains swept away, an oil refinery reduced to a hellish inferno, and you know thousands must be dead. Then came an eye-opening video, as if more proof were needed of the sheer might of water. The news footage below was shot at street level in Kesennuma City in north-eastern Japan where the camera operator risks joining the furious black torrent thrusting lorries and debris through the streets with incredible speed and force. The only course of action when a tsunami is announced is to head inland for high ground as fast as you can. Worth knowing when we, as fortunate observers of today’s horrors, take our next holiday anywhere in the Pacific.
The Arahama area of Sendai, Japan: satellite photos taken a year ago and yesterday by GeoEye. At the New YorkTimes website you can move the blue slider to and fro to appreciate exactly how uninhabitable is the wasteland left by the tsunami
❚ HAPPY 30th ANNIVERSARY to Planet Earth. On March 5, 1981, Duran Duran made their first appearance on the nationwide TV show Top of the Pops, a vital consequence of their debut single hitting the UK Top 40. Along with Spandau Ballet and Visage, Duran were the third British band to confirm the gathering force of the New Romantic movement, and TV’s pop flagship was to showcase a rush of new bands as springtime blossomed. Duran’s strongly contemporary electronic style is attributed to producer Colin Thurston, who had co-engineered David Bowie’s “Heroes”, and on his death in 2007 John Taylor paid tribute to Thurston as “a major catalyst for the 80s sound” which he was to reinforce on the band’s first album. “Without Colin’s depth of vision, we would never have become the band we became.”
Simon Le Bon: live on video at the Rum Runner in 1980
In the Planet Earth video mix above we see original footage of DD performing in 1980 at the Rum Runner, home of Birmingham’s then underground New Romantic scene.
The futuristic and stylish official video, shot later in a studio by director Russell Mulcahy, has been spliced in, all overdubbed with the audio track recorded at EMI’s Manchester Square studio with lyrics refreshed opportunistically to include the line Like some New Romantic looking for the TV sound (available as the Manchester Square Demo on the debut Duran Duran album remastered in 2010). One of Duran’s earliest songs, Late Bar, completed the B-side of the single released on Feb 2, 1981. An alternative arrangement of Planet Earth was also released on a 12-inch extended remix as what DD called a “night version” for the dancefloor. The single spent 14 weeks in the chart, peaking at No 12 in late March.
Among comments at YouTube, Jeremy Thirlby, musician and school friend of Nick Rhodes, points out that the dancers we see during the filming at the club were “drafted in actors” because for some reason “most regulars were excluded”! Unknown to everyone at Birmingham’s Rum Runner the very week when Duran were being filmed in July 1980, London’s ITV station was to air its 20th Century Box documentary about the Blitz club house band, Spandau Ballet. Bang! This was the starting gun that signalled the record-industry race to sign up the first of the New Romantic bands.
New Romantics in full fig at the Rum Runner in July 1980: note the tell-tale moves in the Planet Earth video, such as the Ballet sway at 1:20, crucial handpasses at 2:18 and Pierrot’s wonky head at 3:06
➢ 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
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❏ 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
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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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