Duranalysis: Careless Memories

“Careless Memories” was one of three singles released off of Duran Duran’s 1981 debut album. While the other two, “Planet Earth” and “Girls on Film,” were big hits for the boys, this one sputtered and went nowhere. This is a shame, as it’s one of their best, darkest, angriest songs. Of course, the other songs were helped up the charts by their sexy, iconic videos: “Planet Earth” has lots of stylish New Romantic weirdness, and “Girls on Film” has lots of bare breasts. “Careless Memories,” on the other hand, just has Simon hurling tulips around a white room. No wonder it couldn’t compete.

Nick has referred to “Careless Memories,” which was directed by Perry Haines and Terry Jones, as “the worst video we’ve ever made.” I don’t know about that, Nick, have you watched “A View to a Kill” recently? Nick’s claims to the contrary, “Careless Memories” isn’t wretched. Quality-wise, it’s indistinguishable from a lot of the videos that came out during this time, which makes it disappointing only by the lofty standard the boys would soon set for themselves.

We open with a scene of the boys driving around. Simon sits in the front seat, while John and Roger and Andy are wedged together in the back. There’s nary a glimpse of Nick, and the universe is just a little less dazzling and glamorous in his absence. Roger and Andy whisper and snicker to themselves. They’re probably gloating about how they’re the only Durans in this video who didn’t get stuck wearing flouncy white peasant blouses.


Next to them in the back seat, John looks mighty pleased about something. John, we’ll find out later, has reason to look pleased.


Wow, they all look like adorable little puppies here. They’re so young!

In a stark white apartment, we see a fleeting glimpse of a lovely dark-haired woman -- Simon’s girlfriend, it seems -- walking out the door. Simon is feeling very dramatic about this turn of events.


Actually, you know what he’s doing here? You know the line in the song that goes “…but it always takes so damned long before I feel how much my eyes have darkened”? He’s feeling how much his eyes have darkened. No, really. That’s what he’s doing.

Keep watching. It gets worse.

There’s not much plot to this video, so it’s padded out with lots of performance footage. Dig the way Simon dramatically poses with finger guns when he sings the “Fear hangs a plane of gunsmoke…” line.


Back to Simon’s apartment. Roger and Nick sit at a table and look over a sheet of photographic negatives. Nick! At long last, Nick! Oh, man -- they all look really, really young in this video, but Nick, the baby of the group, is practically embryonic. Aside from the performance footage, Nick spends most of his scenes either partially or entirely hidden behind Roger. This marks the first and only time in Duran Duran’s thirty-year history that Nick will be stuck in Roger’s shadow.


The plot, such as it is, thickens: On a city street, Simon’s girlfriend secretly canoodles with a leggy bassist. Heh. John, you dog. No wonder he was looking smug in the opening scene.


Simon sits on the couch in his apartment and angrily shreds a letter written on pink stationary into tiny pieces. While he emotes in anguish in the foreground, the rest of the band sit at a table behind him, having themselves a fine old time while ignoring Simon’s latest personal drama. Andy talks on the phone, John looks smug, and Nick and Roger still pore over those all-important film negatives. Simon flings the shredded pieces of the letter onto the coffee table, just as he sings the lyric, “On the table, signs of love lie scattered…” This is the most painfully literal video ever.

In a fit of pique, he yanks a bunch of pink tulips out of a vase and hurls them around the room.


It’s a fair guess the pink letter is from his girlfriend, who’s obviously breaking up with him. It’s also a fair guess that she left out the part about how she’s been seeking comfort in the arms of a leggy bassist, or Simon would be hurling those tulips at John. Actually, that might have perked this video right up. Some vigorous Duran-versus-Duran fisticuffs could’ve sent this video hurtling into the realm of the awesome, especially if it had then degenerated into a hair-pulling, chair-throwing, vase-smashing, multi-Duran brawl.

But no. ‘Twas not to be. Simon throws tulips around. The rest of the boys continue to pay him no mind.

Yeah, it’s kind of a dorky video, huh? At least Simon appears to be having a good time. If he’s embarrassed by any of this nonsense -- the tulip-hurling, the finger guns, the super-dramatic emoting -- he sure doesn’t let it show. Just to make this all about me for a moment: Whilst sorting through my worldly goods last week in preparation for a cross-country move, I came across a box of dusty, decaying VHS tapes of my old appearances on Talk Soup from when I worked on the show in the late nineties, back when staff members got routinely dragged in front of the camera because the E! network was too cheap to hire real actors. While this could be exciting and glamorous, it all too often turned into a grim exercise in ritual humiliation. I recall one episode in which I was forced to wear frozen turkeys on my feet (it was our Thanksgiving special, natch). It wasn’t an especially hilarious sketch to begin with, and no, I did not soar above the material. This is because I am not Simon Le Bon. You could stick a pair of frozen turkeys on Simon’s feet, and he’d sell the crap out of them without a trace of embarrassment or self-doubt. Born performer, that Simon.


Ah, there, see, he’s whipped out his special "Fear hangs a plane of gunsmoke" finger guns again. Never change, Simon.


My fierce admiration and respect for Nick is not going to stop me from mocking his outfit here. Within a few short years -- months, really -- Nick would evolve into a sleek, stylish fashion icon with the magical ability to wear any awful garment (his nubbly pink princess-sleeved sweater in the “Reflex” video springs to mind) and look like the most glamorous pixie in the room. At this early stage, however, the kid’s not quite there yet. Notice how in the performance footage Nick and John are dressed almost like twins (frilly white blouses paired with billowy white pants tucked into ankle boots), but while tall, willowy John looks catwalk-ready, tiny, fragile Nick looks like he just stepped out of the pages of Elfquest.


Some may disagree, but to my way of thinking, it is never a good thing to be compared to an Elfquest character.

Back at the apartment, the guys are still sitting around the table. Andy still yammers on the phone; John still looks smug. Everybody’s still ignoring Simon’s mad burst of tulip-hurling. And Roger is still blocking poor Nick. Nobody puts Nick in a corner.


Bereft from being dumped, Simon flings open the door of his apartment and walks out into the sun while singing, “I walk out into the sun, I try to find a new day…”


…which is immediately followed by, “But the whole place, it just screams in my eyes.” See? His eyes, they’re screaming.


Yeah, it’s probably for the best that Duran Duran quickly dropped this business of having their videos serve as line-by-line reenactments of their lyrics. Wild Boys, for example, would have been very, very different. I’m just picturing Simon pantomiming his way through, “Your telephone’s been ringing while you’re dancing in the rain…”

In the backseat of the car, Simon’s girlfriend tries to nuzzle with him. He’s either asleep, or ignoring her, or is just being an ass. In any case, he blows her off.


So she shrugs and turns toward the other window seat, where John appears to be perfectly willing to join her in some nuzzling.


Simon pops into his apartment one last time to drop to his knees in the doorway and shoot off more super-dramatic finger guns.


And… scene!

That’s the original version of the video. There’s also a slightly less dorky version in which some of the cheesier moments have been replaced with added footage of Simon walking down a flight of stairs. Wow, the boys just loved doing alternate versions, didn’t they? I’ve seen two versions of “Wild Boys,” two versions of “Union of the Snake,” three versions of “Girls on Film”… Counting various Easter eggs, Duran Duran’s Greatest DVD, which features a compilation of their best-known videos, contains a staggering five different versions of “New Moon on Monday.” (Curiously, there seems to be only one “A View to a Kill,” which is a video just screaming out for some judicious re-editing.)

But! Here’s a very special “Careless Memories” bonus! It’s the animated video the boys whipped together in 2004 to display onstage while performing the song in concert, in which cool anime (Duranime?) versions of the boys wage war against ninjas, UFOs, robots, Godzilla, and, er, the EMI building. The animation is a little on the cheap side, but still, it’s plenty awesome.


Oh, sure, the lyrics of “Careless Memories” aren’t really about a ninja massacre, but all the same, doesn’t this fit the song’s angry, urgent mood better than some dreary fluff about how Simon’s girlfriend maybe secretly prefers John? Viewer warning for copious amounts of animated blood (as in, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood), but if you’ve ever wanted to see Simon wielding a microphone stand like a samurai sword, or sweet-natured Roger slaughtering a ninja with a cymbal to the brain (and come on, who hasn’t wanted to see that?), this is going to be right up your alley.
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Duranalysis: Arcadia’s The Flame

It’s The Nick and Simon Show, with a surprise appearance by John!

Brief spurt of backstory here, for those who aren’t hip to this whole Arcadia business: In 1984-1985, at the peak of their wild success, the Duran Duran boys briefly split apart into two separate side projects: John and Andy teamed up with Robert Palmer and Tony Thompson to form The Power Station, while Simon, Nick and Roger banded together as Arcadia (Roger, ever the neutral party, also performed on some Power Station tracks). The differences between the two groups are most eloquently summed up in this excellent recent interview with the boys, in which it’s established that Arcadia produced “the most pretentious album ever made,” whereas Power Station produced “the most cocainey album ever made.” As I’ve always been far more pretentious than cocainey, I’m partial to Arcadia. Also, their videos were better.

Roger didn’t appear in any of Arcadia’s videos; in fact, by the time the video for "The Flame" was shot in 1986, Roger had already left Duran Duran, with Andy following him out the door shortly thereafter. “The Flame” was directed by Russell Mulcahy, the man responsible for Duran Duran’s huge, awesome, epic monstrosities (“Wild Boys”) as well as some of their lesser-known gems (“Night Boat”). This falls into the latter category. It’s a fun, fluffy trifle of a video -- it’s a little Rocky Horror Picture Show, a little Agatha Christie, and a whole lot of Nick and Simon being hammy and adorable. Damn good song, too. Let’s get to it:

Ooo, opening titles! Fancy! Yeah, I should warn you, much as with “Night Boat,” my screenshots are going to be pretty muddy. The more obscure the video, the longer the odds of finding a crisp, clean copy anywhere.


On a dark and foggy night, Simon and his girlfriend approach a mansion. A sign reading “BEWARE” hangs on the gate; Simon checks a slip of paper to confirm they’re in the right place. Simon is in full-tilt geek mode: glasses, curly hair, sweater vest, bow tie. His date, while cute as a button, is a far cry from the sultry, sophisticated minxes who typically slink about in Duran Duran videos. For starters, she’s wearing an orange tie-dyed sundress. It’s as awful as it sounds.


They bumble their way inside the mansion, bumping into doors and tripping over their own feet while gawking at their opulent surroundings. Established: They’re dorks. The lavish dining room is populated with the usual assortment of grim-visaged servants, crusty old gentlemen, dowagers in funny hats, and glamorous blondes. First and foremost amongst the glamorous blondes is the extra-pretty, extra-petite lord of the manor. Hi, Nick!

Oh, this is worth seeing: After spending most of the previous year hanging out on the super-girly side of the androgyny spectrum, Nick has undergone yet another metamorphosis. He’s chopped off the luxurious mane of jet-black hair he sported for much of his Arcadia phase and peroxided the bejesus out of it, and it looks fantastic.


Quick comparison study: This was Nick’s starting point. When Nick gives himself a makeover, he doesn’t muck about.


While Nick’s guests regard the newcomers with disdain, Simon and his date fumble around the dining room and act like rubes. A dowager hands Simon a glass of wine (note how he’s interrupted every time he tries to take a sip). When his date drops her handkerchief, Simon bends down to pick it up… just as an archer pops in through a window and riddles the wall with arrows right where he’d been standing.


Simon seems mildly affronted by this blatant attempt on his life, but mostly takes it in stride.

Still marveling at the posh surroundings, Simon’s date stumbles against the wall, which swivels open and sucks her into darkness. Simon looks vaguely confused by her vanishing act, but before he can investigate, he’s distracted by the pair of gorgeous blondes -- Nick and his elegant female companion -- who are now reclining in armchairs in the library attached to the dining room.

Forgetting all about his date, he heads off to join them. The creepy servants watch him and whisper amongst themselves; the glowing eyes of a painted portrait follow him.

By the way, Simon will continue to forget about and/or ignore his date for the rest of the damn video. Simon is a terrible boyfriend.

In the library, Simon loiters by the fireplace and tries to look casual. Nick and his companion seem amused by his attempts to fit in with the cool kids. When Nick yanks a lever beside his chair, the entire mantle swivels around, and Simon disappears, just as his date vanished earlier.


He finds himself on a moving train. Being a plucky sort, Simon is unfazed. He hands his still-untouched drink off to a random lady and bops his way through the train car. I envy Simon’s ability to dance around while walking without looking like a complete jackass.

Nick, disguised in a trench coat and hat, hastily slinks into a compartment and scrunches down to avoid being spotted by Simon.


…You know, it’s very difficult to suss out the whole Nick-Simon dynamic in this video. Do they know each other? Nick has been doing a bang-up job of snubbing Simon up to this point, but now he’s secretly following him? Odd.

Back to the dining room, where everyone, Nick and his blonde companion included, is now seated around the table. The dowager who handed Simon her wine at the beginning furtively passes a small bottle to one of the servants. While it’s not completely clear, I think we’re meant to assume she poisoned Simon’s drink earlier. For reasons unknown, everyone’s trying to murder Simon. Except for Nick, who doesn’t seem to care overmuch whether Simon lives or dies.


Simon emerges onto the balcony running around the dining room and, while Nick and his glamorous blonde look on and snicker, swings down from a rope conveniently dangling from the ceiling. Any old loser could take the stairs, but that’s not the Simon Le Bon way.


Simon overshoots the dining room and crashes through the patio doors. Very calmly, Nick rises from the table, flings open the doors, and releases the hounds on Simon. All of this seems very natural, actually. Hell, at this stage in his career, Nick was probably releasing the hounds on overzealous fans who trespassed on his property on at least a weekly basis.


While the hounds chase Simon about the courtyard, Nick opens up a closet. Out pops the lovely John Taylor, who is brandishing a contract.


Various YouTube commenters have already plucked all the low-hanging jokes involving Nick and John and closets, so I’ll just skip over all that and get to the point of this scene: Apparently (i.e. “according to Wikipedia”) John’s contract is a reference to the legal wrangling the band went through with Andy to get him to fulfill his obligation to work on the Notorious album. I have no idea whether this is true (Wikipedia, you know), but I love the idea of the boys throwing a quick “suck eggs, Andy!” moment into this video.


Anyway, a somewhat mauled and bedraggled Simon climbs onto the roof of the mansion to escape the hounds. He crashes through the ceiling, where he lands on top of a woman in a bathtub, which then crashes through the floor and lands in the dining room.


Simon brushes himself off and plops down at the table beside Nick’s blonde. A blowpipe extends from a wall-mounted tiger’s head and fires a dart at him; Nick calmly reaches over and smashes Simon’s face into his bowl of soup to save him. The dart strikes the butler hovering behind Simon.


Having thus saved Simon’s life (and doomed his butler in the process), an unruffled and implacable Nick sips champagne. This is probably the best video ever for exploiting Nick’s strange, contradictory aura of benevolent malice (malicious benevolence?). I have no idea what’s going on in this video, or who’s trying to murder Simon, or whether Nick is a force of good or evil, and you know what? I don’t care. I’m just enjoying the show.


Blinded by the soup, Simon stumbles around the dining room. Nick twists a dial, which opens a trapdoor. Nick’s mansion is awesome. Simon tumbles through it and lands in the basement.

Nick, ever inscrutable, whips out a blindfold and ties it onto his glamorous blonde. Hmm. Nick and blindfolds go pretty well together.


If you watch a bunch of Duran Duran videos, it’s only natural to start idly speculating about Nick’s sexual habits (…that’s not just me, right?). Luckily, Nick’s former longtime girlfriend Madeleine Farley helpfully weighed in on that very topic in an interview: “I had a pair of couture fangs surreptitiously made for him -- the dentist and I were in cahoots. He'd always wear them in bed, and I'd have on my six-inch Manolos.”

Couture fangs, people. Couture fangs.

In the basement, Simon staggers past a fuse box and gets zapped by bolts of electricity.


This shorts out the lights upstairs. Everyone from the dinner party arranges their chairs into a circle and sits in the dark while a freak storm blows open the patio doors and send the curtains billowing.


Simon rejoins the party. Simon’s date, you’ll be glad to hear, is amongst the assembled guests, so she didn’t meet some kind of unspeakable fate at the start of the video. No, Simon doesn’t pay her a lick of attention.

Nick and Simon and the blonde stand in the center of the circle of chairs. Everyone in the room simultaneously collapses into a lifeless heap; only Simon and Nick and the blonde get back up on their feet. It’s deeply strange, but for all I know, this might be a typical evening’s entertainment at Casa Rhodes. Look, everything I’ve ever heard about Nick suggests he’s both glamorous and weird, and that’s how I prefer it. If it turns out he spends most of his evenings playing computer solitaire and microwaving Lean Cuisine entrees, I don’t ever want to hear about it.

Simon, Nick and the blonde tromp out of the mansion hand in hand, having apparently formed some kind of weird, fabulous, sexy ménage à trois.


The video ends on a “To be continued..?” title card, which, sadly, is nothing but a tease. Following this, Nick and Simon joined back up with John and continued on as Duran Duran, and the strange world of Arcadia and this video was abandoned forever.
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Duranalysis: A View to a Kill

Back in 1985, when I was young and the world was dazzling and new, I thought Duran Duran’s video for their hit single “A View to a Kill,” the theme song for the James Bond film of the same name, was really, really cool.

As it turns out, I was mistaken.

The video was directed by Lol Creme and Kevin Godley, who were also responsible for the boys’ extra-sleazy 1981 “Girls on Film” video (and who, performing as the pop duo Godley & Creme, had their own big hit in 1985 with “Cry” -- you remember, “You don’t know how to ease my pain…” In the realm of weird Duran Duran-related music trivia, this is right up there with Nick Rhodes producing Kajagoogoo’s “Too Shy”). The “View to a Kill” video features the Duran Duran boys as a quintet of gorgeous, glamorous spies who swarm around the Eiffel Tower and try to kill each other. Conceptually, this is a goldmine. The execution, however, is… problematic.

I should be clear: It’s not a disaster. In fact, there’s some pretty good stuff here. Overall, though, it’s a little lame and a little smug, and it isn’t clever enough to support the smugness. The video is interspersed with scenes from the film -- specifically, the sequence where Roger Moore’s Bond and Grace Jones chase each other all over the Eiffel Tower -- cobbled together to make it look as though the Duran Duran boys are interacting with the Bond characters. Fun concept, but it doesn’t quite mesh.

The video opens on a catering van (“Chez Tayloire,” geddit?) parked at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Roger, who is sitting in the driver’s seat, teleports himself into the back of the van.


Yeah, Roger can teleport. Just shrug it off and move on. We’ve got a lot of material to cover, and if I stop down to scrutinize every last example of nitwittery, we’ll be here all day. Anyway, he’s got a cool super-spy control room set up in his van, featuring lots of big, clunky artifacts of Eighties tech.

Aw, no! What have they done to our fresh-faced, adorable Roger? Sure, it’s just the unflattering lighting, but he looks haggard and unwell. Not long after this video came out, Roger quit Duran Duran and went into semi-reclusion until he was coaxed back into the spotlight some fifteen years later; I’m not suggesting that seeing how ghastly he looks here drove him into hiding, but it surely couldn’t have helped his mental state.


Roger sends a camcorder sailing out of a hatch on the roof of his van. It flies up the side of the Eiffel Tower and hovers in the air, monitoring the action on the upper decks. I will not be discussing the special effects in any detail. They haven’t stood the test of time; I’ll just leave it at that and move right along.


Simon leans against the wall on one of the observation decks and listens to his Walkman. With his striped shirt, white trench coat (collar popped), and beret (tilted at just the right jaunty angle), he looks like a million francs, the world-famous pop star disguised as a secret agent disguised as an everyday French tourist. All he needs to complete the image is a glass of red wine and a pack of Gitanes.


John saunters around the deck, trying to look casual and doing a terrible job of blending in with the other tourists. John is really, really beautiful. Has anyone ever noticed this before?


In strolls Andy, who is sporting dark glasses, a white cane, and a monstrous mane of gigantic, snarled, ratty hair. I’d say the hair was just to lend credence to his role as a spy disguised as a blind accordion player, but I’ve seen the video for “The Reflex.” Hair aside, I don’t want to bag on Andy (I say blithely, having just bagged on Andy), because he’s kind of awesome and hilarious here. When he has something concrete to do in a video, instead of just being The Guy Hanging Out in the Scaffolding (“Union of the Snake”) or The Guy Making Awkward Small Talk With Nick (“Hungry Like the Wolf”), he can steal scenes away from his glamorous show-pony bandmates.


Speaking of glamorous show ponies… Andy throws a covert glance over at fashion photographer/spy Nick, who is snapping pictures of a gorgeous model. At this point, we only get a tantalizing glimpse of Nick’s hair (spiky, streaky) and makeup (smoky), but it all looks very, very promising.


John skulks around the observation deck and watches through a telescope as Roger Moore and Grace Jones get into a big shootout on the upper deck. Gunshots ring out, but the tourists thronging about the tower don’t seem to notice. Yeah, this is sort of what I mean about the film footage not meshing well with the video footage.

From his super-awesome control room, Roger sends up three more cameras.


Simons whips out his Walkman. Inside, instead of a cassette, there’s a little control panel with the word “HELICOPTER” flashing at the top. Simon pushes a button, and we see footage from the movie of a helicopter crashing and exploding in an arctic area. So Simon’s just loitering around the Eiffel Tower, blowing up stuff halfway across the world. Simon is a menace to polite society.


Roger picks up his enormous phone and mutters something in a foreign language to Simon, who receives the message over his Walkman headphones.


Roger, honey, please take a hot bath and crawl into a warm, soft bed. You’re scaring me.

Oh, wow. We finally get our first up-close look at lovely Nick, who is giving directions to his model while not-so-secretly snapping photos of Grace Jones and Roger Moore. This was worth the wait. A 1985 People magazine article on the boys describes Nick’s makeup job in this video thusly: “plum blush, black eye pencil and liner by Clinique and coral lipstick by Christian Dior.” Details are important.


Simon whips out his Walkman again and uses it to blow up a blimp that’s floating over the Golden Gate Bridge, and really, I still don’t have any idea why he has to do this from the Eiffel Tower.


From his control room, Roger gets on the phone and barks orders to Nick, who receives them through an earpiece. Much as this video makes me wince in parts, I dig the idea of shy, enigmatic Roger turning out to be the shadowy behind-the-scenes mastermind of Duran Duran.

(I recently browsed through some reviews of Steve Malins’s unauthorized biography of Duran Duran over on Amazon -- one reviewer complains that the book contains “…too many weird descriptions of Nick Rhodes as some kind of alabaster-skinned alien.” While at first this seems like a very valid and reasonable criticism, after watching this video, I’m not sure one can ever make the point too many times about Nick looking like an alabaster-skinned alien. A very pretty alabaster-skinned alien.)


Nick then starts secretly photographing John. Presumably Nick is following Roger’s orders, but really, if I spotted someone who looked like John Taylor and I had a camera handy, I’d probably start snapping away, too. I gravitate toward pretty things.

John inserts coins into the slot at the base of the telescope. A gun barrel slides out. He swivels it around and starts firing up toward the top of the tower, where Roger Moore and Grace Jones are still battling it out. Oh, dear. Whose brilliant idea was it to arm Duran Duran? This will end in tears. John manages to shoot down one of Roger’s cameras, which he seems far too pleased about.


Let’s sort out some loyalties: Simon and Nick are taking orders from Roger, and John, if he’s aiming at Roger’s cameras, is definitely their foe. And Andy? Why, surely he’s nothing more than a harmless blind accordion player! Andy looks around in apparent confusion as tourists scurry in panic at the gunfire.


Nick snaps a photo of Andy. Bad move. Andy, who is very plainly Not Really Blind, spots Nick and goes for the kill.


He plays his accordion, which turns out to be an Accordion of Death. When Andy presses a special red button, Nick screams in pain. His camera glows ominously, then explodes in a burst of flame, killing him.


Oh, Andy.

Sheesh. Nick might’ve been an enemy spy, but after all, he was just taking a few harmless snapshots. It’s not like he was blowing up helicopters and blimps, Simon. Murdering Nick -- tiny, pretty, glittery Nick -- is beyond the pale. It’s like stepping on Tinker Bell (here, my literate and high-minded sister would be quick to point out that, in the original J.M. Barrie books, Tinker Bell was a vicious and vindictive little sprite. I maintain the analogy still holds. Despite his dainty appearance, Nick has always seemed like the Duran most likely to wreak terrible vengeance against anyone who crosses him).

I feel like I just watched a Duran Duran snuff film. Oh, sure, there’s been a Duran body count in other videos -- all the boys except for Roger meet a bad fate at the hands of zombies in “Night Boat,” and it’s up in the air whether Andy and Nick make it out of the exploding underground fortress alive in “Union of the Snake” -- but this video marks the sole foray into the disturbing realm of Duran-on-Duran violence.

And Andy has never looked happier.


Andy packs up his accordion and triumphantly saunters off over the final chords of the song. There’s still twenty seconds left in the video, but do yourself a favor and stop watching right here. It’s just better that way.

…Still watching? Okay, let’s get this over with: A beautiful blonde strolls up to Simon and tugs on his arm. “Excuse me. Aren’t you..?” she asks. With an unsettling mixture of smug and goofy, Simon responds, “Bon. Simon Le Bon.”

Ugh.

It gets worse. Simon glances down at his Walkman and sees that it’s now flashing “EIFFEL TOWER.” He grows alarmed (in a goofy way), but there’s no need for panic -- on a rack at a souvenir kiosk at the base of the Tower, a postcard of the Eiffel Tower explodes. Fade out.

I repeat: Ugh.

After that, I need a quick palate cleanser: The official Duran Duran website has some gorgeous behind-the-scenes video of their cover shoot for this month’s issue of L’Uomo Vogue, in which the boys, minus prodigal-son Andy, wear sumptuous tuxedos and loll about on a four-poster bed at the Duke of Northumberland’s majestic estate. Nice work, if you can get it.



It’s been thirty years since the boys first rose to worldwide prominence, and time has been kind to them: Roger has transitioned gracefully from looking like someone’s super-cute brother to looking like someone’s super-cute dad, John still has those killer cheekbones, Simon is rocking his new beard, and there’s still more than a little of the alabaster-skinned alien about Nick, who, naturally, managed to snag the shiniest, flashiest tux for himself. I would expect nothing less.
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