The hardcore New Romantics were definitely all about the clothes, cosmetics, travel and showing off as a response to grievous, turbulent times, Steve Strange, Spandau Ballet, Wham! and Duran Duran preferred the dolled-up posing in pampered cliques inside VIP sections of exclusive nightclubs. Some groups could float, sometimes self-consciously, sometimes serenely, between those two camps – Human League, Japan, Depeche Mode, ABC – and others occupied a more purist, thoughtful zone, advocating mental glamour – Gang of Four, New Order, Associates, Magazine, the Smiths. Another consequence was more theatrical, with dandy tabloid-labelled New Romantics looking back longingly over the spiky heads of the harsher, angrier punk to the showy costumes and window-dressing camp of glam, where pop stars looked like pop stars. One consequence was an experimental sonic elaboration of punk's ideological spirit and aesthetic vision but a rejection of the safety-pinned visual cliche this became known as post-punk. Music magazines turned glossy, gossipy and colourful, requiring new sorts of decorated fairytale cover stars, a backlash against the hifalutin' weekly inkies containing thousands of intense words about Cabaret Voltaire.Īll new pop then made by those interested in being the latest thing had to be influenced by punk, if just the look, the clothes and the expression. Things were intellectually and spiritually tightening up inside the iron grip of Thatcherism, and at the same time loosening up economically and socially. Duran Duran arrived only a few years after punk transformed the idea of what rock could be, in a Britain dragging itself out of the bruising, disorientating 70s. To understand them you need to understand the times. They were perhaps more Sweet crossed with Abba – a classically cheering formula for the flashy, revivalist entertainment required by an Olympic Games opening ceremony. (Wanton English energy and brazen processed disco, an interesting formula I may have stolen when working with Frankie Goes to Hollywood, my personal chart retort to Dreary Dreary.) Duran Duran, though, sounded forced, lacking the subversive swagger of the Pistols and the transcendent swing of Chic and leaving behind an embellished melodic sludge. They fancied themselves as not so much the made-up boy band they clearly were – the pretty one, the chubby one, the moody one, possibly the talented one, etc – but as Peel-listening pop conceptualists mixing the Sex Pistols with Chic. I hated them from the point of view of a rock critic taking pop seriously, even when it was just for fun. And, of course, they are mates of James Bond, if merely the plastic Roger Moore model, sealing the "international-symbol-of-Britain-whether-we-like-it-or-not" deal when two Beatles are dead and Adele and Coldplay are too extreme, and when most of the world has no knowledge of PJ Harvey and Arctic Monkeys, let alone Siouxsie and the Fall.īut I hated them, in the 80s. ![]() ![]() Duran Duran created a soundtrack to the Diana years and carry with them the glory and burden of those years in much the same way Vera Lynn does for the war years. That's one reason why it's apt that they have been selected to be the English pop act marking the opening of the Olympic Games, a decision that provoked so much hand-wringing last week. You could see Diana as the female member of Duran Duran as Cilla was the female Beatle. ![]() ![]() (Writing such a piece now, I would call them, among other things, Seb Seb or Lordy Lordy.) Even then, they resembled the freshly minted Princess of Wales you could see where her look as a fan derived from, certainly her hair, eyeliner and posing genius. I used different names for them, my favourite being Diana Diana.
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