Star 94 hosts Duran Duran at W Atlanta Downtown hotel

1980s MTV icons Duran Duran is now in its fourth decade making music and the Duranies are still swooning.

They will be at Center Stage tonight and it sold out quickly. They deliberately picked smaller venues simply to guarantee full houses. In the past, they’ve performed in much larger theaters such as Chastain and the Tabernacle.

The band’s new album “All You Need is Now,” which evokes a bit of their 1980s sound, came out last month. To promote it, lead singer Simon Le Bon and guitarist John Taylor did a Q&A/mini-concert for Star 94 listeners at the downtown W Hotel today. Three AJC writers of a certain age all showed up to cover this, including my Peach Buzz colleague. Redundant? Well, yeah. But we have different readers, right?

Of the original members, four out of five are still with the band. Andy Taylor is gone again while drummer Roger Taylor and keyboardist Nick Rhodes took the afternoon off. Cindy Simmons, one of the Star 94 morning hosts, said John was the “love of her life” as a child and she was tempted to wear a huge John Taylor button from her childhood. She resisted.

Le Bon’s funniest line was about how the fans today are different than those 30 years ago simply because they drink a lot more. At a Hartford, Conn. concert, he said it was a sea of “inebriated cleavage.” Not that he’s complaining.

When a fan asked if they remembered receiving a package from her 28 years ago while working on the “Seven and the Ragged Tiger” album, John joked that the box itself was so memorable, it inspired their song “The Reflex.”

Courtesy Atlanta Journal