Duran Duran keeps on dancing
by George Varga
Keyboardist Nick Rhodes talks about music past and present, and how his band came close to collaborating with Miles Davis
Duran Duran and Miles Davis?
To some, it might seem almost preposterous to mention the iconic jazz trumpeter and the dance-happy English rock band in the same breath.
Yet, to hear Duran Duran keyboardist Nick Rhodes tell it, the two once came close to working together in New York.
âI did meet Miles very briefly and I asked him to play on one of our songs, on our (1986) album âNotorious,â and he was completely up for it,â Rhodes excitedly recalled. âHe was going to play on (the song) âSkin Trade,â because we wanted a trumpet solo.â
So what derailed this unlikely collaboration, which could have profoundly boosted Duran Duranâs credibility (or that of any other band)? Blame âNotoriousâ producer Nile Rodgers, the co-founder of the pioneering disco group Chic.
âI told Niles Iâd just met Miles and it would be so great to have him on our record,â Rhodes continued.
âNiles said: âI canât do that.â It wasnât that he didnât like Miles, itâs that he found him rather volatile and because (Miles) was known to carry weapons.â
When Duran Duran plays here Saturday at Harrahâs Rincon Casino, the 33-year-old band will be armed with 14 studio albums worth of material.
The group will also be bolstered by an unexpected surge in its coolness quotient. Credit for this goes both to Duran Duranâs longevity and the fact that the band, which soared to MTV-fueled stardom in the early 1980s, played earlier this year at such tres hip music festivals as Coachella in Indio and South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.
âWe grew up in a very particular time in the 1970s, when music was pretty extraordinary, Rhodes, 49, recalled. âWe had glam, punk, disco, all kinds of amazing music. What we didnât have was the Internet. If I was forming a band now, it would be very driven by the Internet.â
But not, he stressed, by the current craze to achieve instant (if fleeting) fame, sans skill or effort.
âWhen we started, you didnât think about being famous,â Rhodes said. âYou thought about writing a song, performing and having a career, if you were good enough âŠ. If becoming famous was a byproduct of it, fine, but it wasnât part of the whole ethos right at the beginningâŠ
"People arenât spending enough time as a band, learning to play together, coming up with original concepts and trying to change things. What they are trying to be is to be like everybody else, and I find that part of it a little discouraging.â
courtesy SignonSanDiego.com
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/sep/29/duran-duran-keeps-dancing/