[John Taylor goes track by track on the band's new release "All You Need is Now"; keep checking back to the blog section for the latest installment ]

Track two: 'Blame The Machines'.

This album being Dom Brown's first real introduction into the Duran Duran songwriting method, 'Blame the Machines' must have given him a few sleepless nights. Originally conceived as a 'killer riff' track, the chord progression was built around a nifty guitar part Dom had brought in. Where is that riff now, we ask ourselves? In the North London studio we decided to track it differently, and I turned to playing the bass part on a keyboard. Everyone liked that as it gave the song a strong flavor that was different, and perhaps more Duran, than the 'killer riff' idea. The music then sat still for a while, in a siding as it were, a track that everyone liked the sound of, but could give no name to, no subject.

The title came from one of Nick's and my silly games, the idea being, 'What would we call our offshoot electro ensemble?' The answer was 'Blame The Machines', which Mark loved. The lyric idea followed up on that, basing it on a story in the Herald Tribune about a German driver who was killed when his GPS sent him the wrong way up a freeway off-ramp. Blame the machines indeed.