John Taylor and the return to Italy of the Duran Duran: “Music is the great unifying force”

Duran Duran has loved Italy for at least forty years. Participation in Sanremo with the siege of the fans and the broken ankle of Simon Le Bon. Enzo Braschi in the early evening at Drive in of Italia 1 in the role of the Paninaro who shouts “Wild Boys!”. I will marry Simon Le Bonthe book and the film. Even a newspaper called Wild Boys. It can be traced everything back to 1985, authentic Annus Mirabilis in the relationship between the band and our country. A love and a popularity that, albeit with physiological drops, have continued to the present day and who promise to renew themselves on the occasion of the four Duran Duran concerts scheduled for next summer: on 15 and 16 June at the Circus Maximus in Rome, 18 at the Levante Fair of Bari and on June 20 at the Snai San Siro Hippodrome in Milan.

From the attic of his home in Wiltshire, John Taylor answers the questions of Rolling Stone on the live activity of the band and on the imminent Italian tour.

This summer you will play the Circus Maximus, a huge Roman circus that in antiquity has come to contain up to 300 thousand spectators. Some scenes should have turned to us Ben Hureven if the production did not get permission. Is there something different for you when you play in such a big place?
Yes, it's different. When there are such big events, our goal is to make the public live an epic experience, in which everyone feels a sense of brotherhood, unity, the pleasure of being together. Just twenty years have passed since we played at the Circus Maximus during Live 8. I also like to play in small places, but it's a completely different thing. In this moment in the history of the Duran Duran the public for us is very important: the fact that there is all these people who come to see us after following us for so long is almost a religious experience, and we often do not play in such great places. It also seems to me that it is very nice for the public to be with us in such an event. Together with sport, music is a great unifying force, able to gather many people in one place.

At the Circus Maximus you will play in front of an audience of seats. How do you feel in these cases?

The energy is different. When the public is sitting, you pay more attention to what happens on stage. It's a bit like looking at a game, but it's not that you don't have fun. If we do our job well, those who come to see us stand up and dance anyway. Indeed, it also has a little more space because it is not all piled up, since there is no pit.

Almost forty years ago, in 1987, you took a tour in the stadiums. You were only you, Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes, with the band of Notorious. Is there any special moment that comes to mind of your past Italian tours?
That tour in the stadiums was memorable. It was an important moment for the three of us. The band came from a difficult moment, we were trying to reinvent ourselves and that was a transition period: we had to get used to working without Roger and Andy. So that tour offered us the opportunity to do something different. I also remember when, always in 2005, we played for free in Rome at a sponsored event. Maybe he was in a square, I don't remember well (Piazza San Giovanni, NDA), but from the stage I saw people as far as loss. It was one of our funniest concerts ever. I also really like going to Sicily, in Taormina there is an incredible place (The Antico Theater, NDA) where it is always nice to return to play.

This year exactly forty years have fallen from your participation in Live Aid. What do you remember about that day?
My God, it was a crazy experience. First of all, at that time the Duran Duran were divided into two. There were the Arcadia in Paris (Simon Le Bon's project, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor, NDA) and Power Station in New York (John and Andy Taylor with Robert Palmer and Tony Thompson, NDA). Two factions with two different philosophies, and Duran Duran were like two. Each of us worked on one of the two projects, separately, and we found ourselves in Philadelphia for the live AID. I never happened to participate in such an epic thing. For its meaning and for the amount of talent on those two stages. It was interesting for us because in the early 1980s it can be said that we were part of an avant -garde of young bands who passed on MTV and on the radio. We, Madonna and others we brought this music to the live AID, where Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin were also there. That day there was an extraordinary mix of genres, everyone wanted to be there. And then it was played simultaneously in Philadelphia and London. It was a day to remember, that I think he changed the 80s and the perception of what music was able to do. This change did not necessarily go to Duran Duran.

In what sense?
We were part of a movement that somehow defined the early 80s. There were fashion, art, technology, sexuality and gender fluidity. All these things have contributed to defining the Duran Duran scene: our music was also a crossover of all these elements. The live AID instead concerned the global awareness of a humanitarian emergency and artists such as U2, Sting or Peter Gabriel have helped to create a movement in this sense, and to make it grow. For me, the pop culture of the 80s is divided into two: before the live AID and after the live AID. Maybe I'm wrong but my perception is this: it was a watershed between two different ways in which the world of music has contributed to pop culture.

Is there a song that you particularly like to play live?
Ordinary World. It is a song that always knows how to surprise. We and the public. It is a piece that has come unexpected. At one point it was clear to everyone that we knew how to write a pop-dance song, just think of Girls on Film, Hungry Like the Wolf, The reflex or The Wild Boys. We knew how to shoot a pop melody out that it was Groovy. But be able to do Ordinary World It was lucky. It is the Zeitgeist, being tuned with the society of a certain era, not only with yourself. That song has become a hymn on the concerns you have when the time comes to grow. He spoke to our audience: we and they were no longer children. With Ordinary World We sang what it means to be human, and how music can sometimes help find a meaning to the human condition. When we do it in our concerts, it is as if we asked the public to stop for a moment to think of all those who are unable to live the experience that we are all experiencing together at that moment.

Are there others that do you particularly like to play?
I feel similar sensations even when we do Like Ungonewhich comes from the same album: a piece that tells of a person who looks in the mirror with older eyes. Our music from the early 80s looks to the world with a boy's wide open eyes. In a naive way, if we want, as if he said: Wow, what a beautiful life. When instead we were working on Wedding album We started making songs from the point of view of those who reflect on the meaning of life, and on what you need to get by, because life is not all parties and machines.

In Italy your best known song is perhaps The Wild Boys. Perhaps because it was your hit at the moment of your first, great peak of popularity in our country.
I know, I know. Many don't know what the origin of that piece is. At the time we worked with Russell Mulcahy, Australian director we met for the first time working on the video of Planet Earth. At the beginning of the 80s it was a point of reference for us: he brought us to Sri Lanka for the videos of Save a prayer And Hungry Like the Wolfand then to the Caribbean for that of Rio. He was working on a real feature film, based on the novel Wild guys by William Burroughs. It is a classic underground book, not the easiest of the books. Russell had shown to Simon and to me the drawings he had created for the project, for which he was looking for funding. We then wrote a song that could act as the theme for his film. The latter in the end was not made, but in the video of the song, especially in the long version, there are many of Russell's ideas, of which we have used. I really like the idea that our piece came out of such an artistic and underground source.

I Duran Duran in New York in 2023. Photo Press