Summer Hits

Not much exciting news in the heady world of Smash Hits*-pop in the summer of 82, although this John Taylor cover , full colour Nick-pic and an interview with Duran Duran breaking the U.S. will have pleased many.
But fear not. Apparently in September there will be bringing exciting new albums from the likes of Simple Minds, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and many many more!

.. for the record the number one single was Dexy Midnight Runners' Come On Eileen, which has proved to be a 'classic' of the 80s, with their Too-Rye-Aye album also doing well at no. 2. Sadly, Fun Boy Three's attempt at the summer market fared less well peaking at number 18.

* thanks, as ever, to Brian's tireless Smash Hits archive published fortnightly on flickr.

I love 1982 ..... sort of

Regular readers will have noticed, perhaps with some disappointment, that LiM hasn't bothered to continue the tradtional 30th anniversary "I Love.." series as we did with 1980 and 1981. Possibly because as a matter of fact we don't love it much, or at least not as much as the previous 2 or 3 years, musically speaking.
That said, there was still some great new pop music being made and sold albeit a kind of 'second'wave' of new music with a bit more shine to it, thus lacking the gritty appeal of earlier post-punk/new wave tunes.

Duran Duran were a typical example - the short-lived "new romantic" (sic.) trend with the band and its music, influenced by both Bowie and Oxfam alike, developed into the smoother, smarter version of the Birmingham band, which would in fact bring them out of the clubs and into the big wide world. Their second album Rio was released thirty tears ago this month.
The transient single My Own Way at the turn of the year was a logical progression from their 1981 debut although Girls On Film from that album had already shown the way ahead. The 80s were going to be sexy. The first new single from '82, Hungry Like the Wolf, mixed pop-friendly guitar riffs, soft electronics and of course the catchy vocal lines making it a worthy figurehead for the album. The seminal Save a Prayer released some weeks later would take us nicely through the warmer months, thank you, while the album's title track would serve both as summer holiday soundtrack and memory-jerker for the chillier months ahead.
Whatever you think of Duran Duran there's no doubting the fact that they were very much an emblem of their time - the "who gives a damn" attitude of pop against a backdrop of rampant Thatcherism, the Falklands War and a brand new Princess for the People, perhaps unsurprisingly a "Durannie" herself.

Duran Duran - Planet Earth

I Love 1981 - pt. 3
Although relative latecomers to the "new romantic" hit-makers clique, after Spandau Ballet, Visage, Ure-Vox et al, Duran Duran were always poised to become one the biggest sensations of 1981 and indeed for much of the decade and beyond. After undergoing many Beatles-esque personell changes, the band first got on to the intercity from Brum to London in 1979 to make their first demo tapes for EMI. Simon Le Bon soon ousted the dourly named Andy Wickett as lead vocalist in 1980 (although Stephen Duffy was famously their first vocalist) and thus the Duran Duran formation as we know it was born.
Much clubbing and a support slot to Hazel O'Connor ensued before they finally got round to recording their material proper in London in December 1980. "I remember two things about recording "Planet Earth". Staying in a horrible hotel in Fulham where I got very sick, and John Lennon dying", recalls John Taylor.
Planet Earth as a single finally saw the light of day in February 1981. Although Duran Duran were already causing quite a stir with a full page feature in NME and Richard Skinner Radio 1 sessions, bizarrely Duran's first scheduled television appearance on Feb 24th was cancelled because of Prince Charles and Lady Diana's engagement announcement (Princess Di would confess her love of the group some years later). On Feb 27 Noel Edmonds' Multi-Coloured Swap Shop broadcast a performance of Friends of Mine and Girls on Film. By the time they finally made it to TOTP, boosting Planet Earth's trajectory into the charts, they had already begun their first national tour.

Wherever they performed, be it on Cheggers Plays Pop or at Leicester Polytechnic, frilly blouses, sorry, shirts and floppy fringes abounded with Le Bon's flamboyant style as lead vocalist perhaps slightly giving them the edge over the rather more dour rivals Spandau Ballet.

Oh yes, the track itself was also good too, with it's well-balanced mix of proper guitars (including John's bass much to the fore) and rock-drums, with Nick Rhodes' electronics sweeping to and fro to make it sound 'modern'. It also had the catchy 'bah-bah-bahh-bah bah bah bah-baaahh' sing-along bit which made it excellent radio, club and live gig fodder, and the line "I saw you making patterns rhyme like.... some New Romantic looking for the TV sound" was at once an auto-celebration and a tongue-in-cheek stab at the genre.

That said, the single reached a relatively modest no. 12 in the charts, held back by such significant top-tenners as Shakin' Stevens, Kim Wilde and, er, Tony Capstick And The Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band. The follow up single Careless Memories fared even less well, just scraping into the Top 40 in May.
But there were even better times to come...

Floppy fringes at the ready ..

...for seminal New Romantic band Duran Duran release their debut eponymous album this week in remastered, expanded, extra-tracked, DVD-added format. As well as the debut in it's entirety on CD1 you'll get an extra CD with unreleased demos, remixes, Radio 1 session and all that plus DVD with TOTP, OGWT and Swap Shop performances and two naughty "uncensored" Girls on Film video. Gotta be worth the 18 quid...

Here's the Durannies back in the good old days before yachts and sun-tans when the Brummie-boy-band were considered 'experimental' enough to go on The Old Grey Whistle Test: