From doing Power Station, it was like, it's the same guys, but it doesn't sound like them. When we were in Duran, the labels and management wanted more Duran stuff so they could sell it.
I discovered that it was a lonely world being a solo artist. Then I started working with another solo artist, Rod Stewart, and he used to tell me how lonely he was!
I don't think you need a record deal to write songs. You don't need any other reason than you want to do it. It's a far cry from why some people do music today. They make it to order, which is pretty horrible.
I thought it would be weird if Duran Duran came back but didn't have a great song the whole world could sing. That's one of the things that drives us.
I've got about two more albums of material. I have an absolute ton. So out in the Wilderness somewhere are a couple of albums.
If you were looking at where you would like your career to go, then you would have to cherry pick The Stones. People love coming to see them. They are it, they are the most definitive rock n roll band ever.
It was fairly evident that nobody wanted to do this as a one-off thing. It's too big a part of our life to do it quickly and dispose of it.
It was mind-blowing. It was a small place with 2,000 standing-up tickets. It's great to have your band back and working and playing again, people have been so generous.
Melodic songs that people can relate to has always been our thing.
Music is escapism, its entertainment.
Rock n roll is what I would die for, but I love music and I love exploring, taking the challenge of playing, writing or singing... or producing.
Some of those songs, you really have to bite them. You challenge yourself, you challenge the audience, you do something different. People weren't expecting it.
The five of us don't know how to exist in any other way. We are an ambitious bunch, I guess.
The great thing about the Internet is that it allows people to find and consume music.
The thing about Duran... that gives you the ability to bring all that opportunity back into your life.
There are very few guys you meet in your life that you can work with, but the five of us just know what the other guys are thinking and where we fit.
This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don't sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.
Those were the days, you know. It's an English thing; as soon as it's gets to 6 pm, you have to go and have a drink. We used to stick to that religiously.
To passively get up and play a bunch of old songs wouldn't have really motivated us. So we are bringing the new material into the set and it goes down really well.
We did some shows in Japan and a few shows in the States and it just went kinda crazy. We thought, OK, let's do some more!
We didn't just want to go out and do that whole greatest hits thing.
We felt if we didn't have new material in us and we didn't have a real reason to exist, then we probably wouldn't have done an 80's revival thing. We are very conscious about the fact that's what we are as a bunch of people.
We had a huge audience, we sold truckloads of albums. If we do something that's cool, people will listen to it. If we don't, we would be selling people short.
We have been in the fortunate position where we can hold off until the right scenario is there for us to do our work.
We play a long show, and you can't beat yourself up too much over it, as physically you just kill yourself. It was always good fun on the road and it still is.
We recorded a bunch of the shows because they were the first shows we'd done back together. We wanted to have a memento of them.
We wanted to get back together. We spent the last year and a half or two years before we got back on the road just writing.
We wanted to get everyone back focused on the fact we are playing live again. It really does sound great.
We were very young in Duran, and to get pushed in a corner can be very difficult to get out of.
We've kinda been watching the business fall apart and have been wondering how to take care of our business and make sure it doesn't get affected.
We've never actually stopped talking. We all saw each other-there wasn't any great divide. There were no big walls or barriers to get over.
Whatever you do musically, even if you don't understand it at the time, it is a reflection of where you are at.
When I look at the early Duran stuff, you can hear the early club vibe from it, you can hear where we were at as people.
When you are younger, you are running on that pure naive adrenalin, you don't have any real responsibility aside from making sure you get there and play. And there's usually someone there to help you do that!
When you don't have a record label and you have been on your own as we have, you can look at all these other ways you can get in touch with other people and get music out there again.
When you get back out again like we are, you want to get as many people as possible back in touch with what you are doing.
When you get pigeonholed doing a certain thing is one of the things that destroys people's souls in this business.
When you have such a huge past, a big background as we have, you can play off that-a lot of people do. But we felt we wouldn't have a legitimate future unless we put something new together.
You always get bootlegged, and they sound crap.
You can't do some of the things you used to do. I suppose you have to go at a gentler pace. I mean, God help us, you can't sit at home being a Vicar or anything.
You want to have stability in the commercial aspect of your operation.
I am not in the habit of taking baritones to supper.
You can share a link to this page with your friend!