Hi Katy,
This question is in my mind for some time now. Probably, someone of the band remembers and has an answer.
Well, we all know that some cover-songs that Duran Duran recorded didn't make it on the album THANK YOU. Really would like to know if these titles (which I've heard of) can be confirmed and on which stage (demo or finished) they had been dropped:
"Heart Of Gold" (Neil Young) - "This one was pretty much completed, though not mixed. It has a decent vocal and a well developed backing track. It didn't seem to fit in with the other tracks we had and there was also a simple version of "Needle and the Damage Done," so we did not want to pursue two Neil Young tracks."
"Jeepster" (T.Rex) - "We liked the idea of a T-Rex song and played around with "Jeepster," but didn't find the right vibe,so there isn't even a version with a vocal. Not sure that we kept anything at all, it was dropped within hours, once we realised it wasn't working."
"We Are The Dead" and "Rebel Rebel" (David Bowie) - "There is a very sparse backing track for "We Are The Dead" in existence, but no vocals. Warren really liked the idea and actually, in hindsight, it may have been a better choice than "Diamond Dogs." We never recorded a studio version of "Rebel Rebel," but we did play it in our live show fairly regularly during one of the tours.
And I also read on the John Jones website ( http://johnjones.com/duran/DD1.html ) that they did an Alice Cooper song, which makes me really really curious which song that could have been.
"We thought we could do an interesting version of the Alice Cooper song "Elected." Nick created a basic backing track, but we never really got around to trying out vocals. It probably still exists in the vaults, but it was only ever a skeleton."
-The Band
Question from Ansgar