Categories
Live Reviews Music

Duran Duran host a carefree party

Curating the lineup for a day-long family music event like BST Hyde Park can’t be easy. You don’t want 10 soundalike clones of the headliner. But you also don’t want anything too out there either. It’s a balancing act that, on paper, Duran Duran have got all wrong. Sure, Nile Rodgers, who helped revitalise their career in the mid-’80s, makes sense. But what about a soul singer with roots in jazz, gospel, and classical? Or a Norwegian artist always described as “ethereal” and “Enya-like” by lazy writers? Or, least of all, a sweary post-punk band with song titles like Lady Eggs and Greasin’ Up For Jesus? It’s not exactly what you’d expect in the same postal code as Ordinary World.

Categories
Interviews Music

Duran Duran are still wild boys

Simon Le Bon vividly remembers Duran Duran’s last visit to South Africa in 1993.

“We arrived on the day that Chris Hani was shot in his own driveway so it was quite dramatic and very sad,” he says on the line from London. “There was a lot going on. I remember there were big protests and marches all through the streets of Cape Town when we were down there.