Duran Duran

The Book of British Hit singles and albums has unveiled their annual list of the “Top 100 most successful acts of all time” in December 2005 and Double Duran rank at # 55 (Erasure at # 67 respectively).

Simon LeBon, Nick Rhodes and the three Taylors (and they aren´t relatives at all) John, Andy and Roger became known as the “Fab 5” and are a household name all over the world.

Their career was somewhat shortlived when one considers that they first hit it big in 1981 with their “Girls on Film” video and single release and followed it up with a string of hits and arena shows and tours, producing classic material like “Hungry like the wolf”, “Wild Boys”, “Is there something I should know?”, “Save a prayer” and the 1985 James Bond movie hit “A view to a kill”.

Then it was all over – Duran Duran were no more.

The 1985 album “Arcadia – So Red The Rose” which consisted of LeBon, Roger Taylor, Nick Rhodes and a number of big industry names as special contributors like Sting or Roger Waters, is an exceptionally great album and produced the hit: “Election day”. To this day it remains one of my favourite albums and on a whole I´d say that Nick Rhodes was a real inspiration on me as a keyboarder. Around the same time John and Andy hooked up with the Ex – “Chic” Drummer Tony Thompson and vocalist Robert Palmer to produce the even more successful “Power Station”.

It all eventually died down and Duran Duran carried on without Andy Taylor and Roger Taylor and although “Big thing” produced another two hit singles they never reached their original strength.

1993s “Ordinary World” became a surprise hit and their biggest hit to date but the follow up album “Thank you” didn’t sell well.

More albums followed without much impact and then the word got out that the Fab 5 meet up again and re-unite.

2004 release “Astronaut” who saw the original line up in well over 20 years is a smasher simply because this line up is able to create magic.

Their reunion tour was a never ending one and we can expect more from them in the future.