GOLD FM – Melbourne – Breakfast radio show [Australia] – air date Mon Feb 27 or Tues Feb 28 TBC

WSFM – Sydney – Breakfast radio show [Australia] – air date Wednesday Feb 22nd

Newcastle Post – Newspaper, entertainment supplement [Australia]

OK Magazine [UAE]

The National newspaper [UAE]

Gulf News Newspaper [UAE]

Dubai Eye radio station [UAE]

Dubai 92 Radio [UAE]

Expatwoman.com [UAE]

Now, 31 years on, four of the five original poster boys for the New Romantic movement – Le Bon, Taylor, Rhodes and Roger Taylor – are still very much in the game, touring the world and promoting their 13th album, All You Need Is Now (2010). For me, the thing that matters is that I got to gush on the phone with Simon Le Bon, telling him how I saved up my allowance and begged my parents to let me watch their show at the Singapore Indoor Stadium – on a school night, too.

He laughed: “If that was the last time you saw us live, then I better see you up front and centre this time round! You’ll be amazed at what we have in store for you.”

Critics have been saying that this is Duran Duran’s best album in years. How does that make you guys feel?

I am really happy that they feel that way about it. You know, we got used to having some bad reviews in the past (laughs), but you got to take it with a pinch of salt. We know from the fans that this album has come down really well. It’s great that people say nice things about you. That’s the bottom line of it.

Is it then important to work with new blood like Mark Ronson or Ana Matronic from Scissor Sisters, to keep you guys going?

For us, I think it’s important to work with … a person with an overview. It doesn’t matter if they are new or they have been around for a while. As long as they have an overview and a sense of direction, and a sense of control of where things are going, I think that’s important for us. And Mark is very, very good at that. And when it came to Ana Matronic and Kelly, they are very much the case that the songs will benefit having the duets on them. And Mark said, “I think I can get these people.” And he made the phone calls, and they were there!

We love the fact that it sounds like the Duran Duran we all know.

I’m glad you feel like that because if that’s the case then it means the project was successful in that way.

Do you worry about Duran Duran becoming its own cover band, seeing that everybody will expect the old hits?

I think we’re very aware of that. And it’s a really big reason why we put the energy into going to make a new album, to be honest. If we wanted to just cash in, we could just go out there and play a greatest hits tour for the rest of our lives! And I bet people will come and see us as well. But it wouldn’t give us the same kind of thrill. We would be afraid that our art would die off through lack of use. I think it’s important to keep that writing alive. And to keep exercising those muscles. Because if you don’t, they will just go away.

What’s the secret to your longevity?

I think we’re clearly passionate about music. We get on with each other. And we have this respect and affection between the four of us. That’s important. It’s a great job, we love doing it. Nobody is forcing us to do this. We’re only doing this because we want to. And we’re good at it. We haven’t stopped learning. That’s the thing: We try new things out. We try new ideas. We experiment. And while you’re still learning, you’re still developing. And that’s something exciting about you I think.

Knowing what you guys know now, what would you have said to yourselves when you first started out?

Well, there was a bunch of deals that I wouldn’t have signed, if I had the knowledge I had know. But basically, I think I would have said, “Relax! It’s going to be okay. Don’t struggle. Don’t fight. It’ll be alright.”

You guys are known to mix things up while you tour, so what can your Singapore fans expect now?

We’ve got a lot of hits that we’re going to play. After that whole conversation about the greatest hits tour, there is no way we can go out there and not play “The Reflex” and other songs like that. And we got the new album, which dictates the whole style of the show and we like to throw a few surprises in. To give them something they’re not expecting.

Any sneak peeks you can share?

I’m not a sneak peeker! (Laughs) I don’t do sneak peeks! You got to come see us to get a peek! (Laughs)

Duran Duran perform on March 10, 8pm, at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. Tickets at S$98 to S$228 from Sistic. For the unexpurgated interview, visit Poparazzi (http://blogs.todayonline.com/poparzzi).

It has been said that it is always a mistake to meet one’s heroes. In Patti Smith’s “Just Kids,” I’ve done exactly that. But believe me when I say to you, that in this case, it is no mistake. The focus of the story is on Patti Smith’s life with artist and pioneer photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, between the years 1969 and 1975 when, for the most part, they lived together in Brooklyn and New York City. All with the bare minimum of photographs to keep the images of Patti and Robert in mind; to remind you that it all really happened.

I do admit, I have a problem with autobiographical works in general. The faintest whiff of self-aggrandisement or hubris, and that’s it… I’m off, thank you very much. That is what put me off books like Aleistair Crowley’s trumpeting “Autohagiography”, and Gregory David Roberts’s excruciating “Shantaram.”

But Just Kids is so different. There is a real humility in this story which comes across in the absolute honest simplicity of the narrative. Really, this is the ‘plain English style’ at its most effective, its most emotionally impacting. But “Just Kids” is also poetry, that is, totally un-selfconcious poetry. Poetry, not in fancy language or ideals or concepts, but in the bricks and stone of the city; poetry in the depth of her love and compassion for Robert “his green eyes, his dark locks… his voice above the gulls, the childish laughter, and the roar of waves. …the boy who loved…” He is of course, from the first page to the last, a beautiful, doomed tragic hero.

It is just honest. At times, it can seem mundane, and you love it all the more for it – living on the street around Union Square; whitewashing the “agressively seedy” first apartment in Williamsburg, “the oven crammed with discarded syringes”; sitting in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel – but this is the lyric of two lives. This is the stuff which condenses into poetry inside your head as you read, the same way that water vapour condenses into wingtip vortices when airliners move through the heavy air.

But of course, these are really momentous events in momentous times. The New York of Max’s Kansas City, of CBGBs. The New York of Rock & Roll legends such as Janis Joplin, Andy Warhol’s Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix & Allen Ginsburg, to name but a few who appear in the pages.

Towards the end, I began to see glimpses of the Patti Smith who is more familiar to me when, for example, she says “I flung my jacket over my shoulder, Frank Sinatra style. I was full of references. He was full of light and shadow.” This, on the photo shoot with Mapplethorpe which would deliver an enduring punk icon to the world, i.e. the cover of the album “Horses”. And this: “but the images of racing Cockettes and Wild Boys would soon be transmuted into the vision of a boy in a hallway, drinking a glass of tea.”

Please, do read “Just Kids”; I finished the book four days ago and now, as it resonates within me, I’m beginning to realise how truly beautiful is the gift that Patti Smith has given to us all.

SLB, February the 20th 2012. London

“Just Kids” on Amazon.com

April 28th Brasilia, Brazil/Nilson Nelson/on sale February 27th

April 30th Rio De Janeiro, Brazil/Citibank Hall/on sale March 5th

May 2nd Sao Paulo, Brazil/Credicard Hall/on sale March 5th

May 4th Buenos Aires, Argentina/Luna Park/on sale March 5th

May 8th Santiago, Chile/Espacio Riesco/on sale March 3rd

Please see the Duran Duran tour page for on sale links

Please visit the Duran Duran Fan Community at Duranduranmusic.com for pre-sale dates/times.

For John Taylor, bassist with English pop institution Duran Duran, those cultural blinkers mean that some of those he encounters still think he’s living in 1982, when the group was ascending to MTV-sponsored teen hysteria.

”Someone asked me recently about hot spots and I laughed,” the 51-year-old says. ”My idea of a hot spot is a really cool vintage record store, or a modern art gallery, or a rare-book store. If I can find all those three things within walking distance of the hotel while on tour, then that’s truly a hot spot. If they’re open late, with a good coffee bar nearby, then it’s a very hot spot.”
Taylor, along with his band mates – vocalist Simon le Bon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and drummer Roger Taylor (no relation) – has lived through every age of pop infamy. The hyperventilating fans, whirlwind romances with models and drug dalliances are distant memories, and the current reality off-stage is somewhat less exotic.

Speaking from Liverpool during a successful British tour, he talks about being ”part of a blended family”. He has a 19-year-old daughter from his first marriage, as well as 21- and 23-year-old stepchildren from his current wife, Gela Nash, co-founder of the fashion label Juicy Couture.

”That’s really challenging,” he says. ”For kids to become themselves they have to work through whatever it was that mum and dad did. In my case, they have to figure out why dad took so many drugs and along the way we may have to try a few out.

”I wasn’t able to convince my daughter to go to university. She said to me, ‘What are you talking about, you never went.”’

Taylor jokes that he has a bachelor of arts in pop music sensibility, having studied in the pubs, clubs and record stores of Birmingham, the economically depressed Midlands city that was a cultural hotbed of punk fervour, electronic experimentalism and disco chic in the late 1970s. Influenced by Roxy Music records and the Clash’s disdain for music business orthodoxy, Duran Duran became emblematic of the early ’80s, pursuing a pop aesthetic hungry for experience in the wider world on hits such as Planet Earth, Girls on Film and Rio.

With their glossily risque video clips from tropical climes, Duran Duran were part of a new English generation taking pleasure in consumption. They didn’t miss a beat until 1986, when exhaustion slowed them down, but where contemporaries such as Spandau Ballet or Culture Club fell silent, Duran Duran have proved surprisingly resilient.

”If you’re in the creative fields and you make a name for yourself doing a certain thing in a particular way, how that way evolves is quite tricky,” Taylor says.

Low points included 1988′s Big Thing, their first commercial misfire, or the woefully misjudged 1995 covers collection, Thank You. But in 1993 they had a pair of hit singles in Ordinary World and Come Undone, which suggested a gloriously melancholic maturity.

Midway through the past decade, their early records became a key reference point for ’80s revivalists. ”I remember my stepdaughter saying to me a few years ago, ‘Oh my god, they played Duran Duran all night at this club I was at – how crazy is that?”’ Taylor says. ”And I’m like, ‘So, how did we sound?’ And she says – as only your child can – ‘Not bad.”’

As rock stars get older they revel in notions of authenticity and experience but pop acts are rarely awarded second or third acts. Duran Duran realised that you have to stay productive and project an air of disdainful confidence.

On last year’s All You Need Is Now, the band sounds bright and relaxed. They are working with producer Mark Ronson, Amy Winehouse’s former key collaborator, who grew up listening to the group.

”Every day that you’re in the studio with Mark Ronson, you feel good about yourself – you don’t feel like an old fart,” Taylor says. ”You can’t underestimate what Mark’s presence does for the group’s esteem. We’ve been targets, for a long time, of a sceptical media over whether we’re valid today or if we should have thrown it in a long time ago. To have somebody like Mark, who clearly knows what is going on, want to work with us was just fantastic.”

Ronson, in turn, had no qualms about pushing Duran Duran to further themselves. When he heard the initial lyric for the band’s current single, Girl Panic, inspired by science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, he insisted they start over.

The video, which has had more than 5 million views on YouTube, casts veteran supermodels Cindy Crawford, Helena Christensen and Naomi Campbell as the members of Duran Duran.

”It looks like a tribute to classic Duran Duran,” Taylor says. ”Everybody knows who we are at this point but a little bit of brand association helps a younger audience get with it.”

■Duran Duran play Rod Laver Arena on March 19. ticketek.com.au

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/music/enduring-duran-20120210-1sguf.html#ixzz1m8BP0b6n

Courtesy The Age/Australia

“Hello Amanda, If any thing it more likely works the other way around. One of us will see a piece of art that could inspire a song. This was true on the new album with “Other People’s Lives” which was born out of an artwork Simon saw at the Tate Modern. I am often inspired by art and photography but usually don’t specifically imagine that something fits with our song after the fact. That said, we are often sent artworks which have been inspired by our songs. It is a circular process. Nick”

“Why, thanks for asking. Yes, ’tis I, nothing to do with Andy Taylor.. Has it really been so long since I sang on a Duran song?.. Who knew! JT”

Band encourages people around the globe to participate in their mission to promote cultural literacy

Duran Duran and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA), a civic-minded nonprofit focused on building an appreciation for and participation in digital culture, have teamed up to create the “Here Right Now” experiment – an online data visualization project inspired by Duran Duran’s new album entitled “ALL YOU NEED IS NOW.”

The band will invite fans to log on to HereRightNow.Org and upload images in response to weekly single-word prompts, chosen directly by the band members. Their goal is to visualize, photo by photo, the different perceptions of common words, ideas, and events from around the world. The project begins by asking fans to share their interpretations of prompts like “Sunrise”, “Information”, and “Red.” The result is a series of narrative postcards, each representing a unique interpretation of a simple, shared idea or experience. The postcards can then be accessed on the site by anyone in the world, and will include information about who shared the image and where they’re located. Fans will also be able to share their postcards on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter using the hashtag #rightnow.

Gray Area Researchers Gabriel Dunne and Nik Hanselmann designed the project by combining location data and user-submitted art, giving meaning to simple, but engaging ideas.

Duran Duran keyboardist, Nick Rhodes, said of the project “The idea evolved from some discussions we’d been having within the band about how to visually represent what different people around the world thought about certain things at different times – what they needed, what they wanted and how that changed over time. So we started looking for a team to help us bring the project to life and were introduced to GAFFTA – who were the perfect partner. We would love to think that perhaps some patterns will emerge, that will tell us something about what people are thinking and feeling – but part of the appeal of this project is that we have no idea what will come out of it. What we do know, however, is that it will ultimately become a shared, global initiative that will be constantly evolving, and that in itself is very exciting to us.”

“When Duran Duran approached us to create a project that allowed fans to share visual depictions of what they were thinking or feeling, we knew we were about to embark on something special. A single image or photograph can communicate an incredible amount without the use of words, and in addition to geographic location, images have the potential to reveal themes on a global level,” said Gabriel Dunne, project lead. “As this collection grows, we will also be encouraging coders to create their own visualizations with the projects public API.”