Duran Duran’s Halloween concerts have become the stuff of fan lore since they staged the first one in Las Vegas in 2022. An album, Danse Macabre, followed in 2023, mixing new songs with reinterpretations of older material and covers of of tracks with a suitably spooky theme.
Last year they performed a ‘sound and visual ghoul fest’ at Madison Square Garden in New York, but this is their first one in England, in a city with which they clearly seem to have an affinity. Manchester’s spectacularly appointed, 25,000-capacity Co-op Live, neighbouring the Eithad Stadium, is virtually full and many seem to have got the memo about this being a party, with some devilishly impressive costumes on show.
The band themselves, plus backing singers Rachael O’Connor and Anna Ross, camp things up for all they’re worth, arriving onstage dressed like the cast of a Hammer Horror film and launching into the eerie Nightboat from their self-titled 1981 debut album. Before the funk-rap of Danse Macabre singer Simon Le Bon enquires of the audience: “Have you come to dance or have you come to die?”
Inevitably, the biggest cheers are reserved for their greatest hits, starting with Hungry Like The Wolf, during which the band are joined two female dancers raunchily attired as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, and continuing with A View To A Kill.
Le Bon, warming to his role as impish ringmaster, asks if anyone in the audience is from Coventry while introducing their relatively faithful cover of Ghost Town, originally recorded by fellow Midlanders The Specials. But it’s the lithe renditions of their own tunes Union of The Snake and Notorious that get the audience up on their feet.
Super Lonely Freak melds Duran Duran’s Lonely In Your Nightmare to Rick James’ funk classic Superfreak, and they show their love of disco with Cerrone’s Supernature.
Things get darker with the moody Shadows On Your Side while Friends Of Mine, exhumed from their first album, is one of the evening’s exuberant highlights.
There’s ticker tape, pyrotechnics, bubbles and big screen razzle dazzle. During the Siouxsie and the Banshees song Spellbound, a dancer in witch’s costume saucily stirs a wicked concotion in a cauldron; Rachael O’Connor relishes her moment in the spotlight singing Spooky; then Le Bon dons an incongrous pair of antlers and druid’s robe for Confession In The Afterlife and Secret Oktober.
The fun continues with ELO’s Evil Woman – dedicated by Le Bon to all the “evil women” in the house. By Planet Earth and The Reflex, the band are on a roll with the singer jokily announcing each band member as characters from horror movies and history – although the mild-mannered Roger Taylor might wonder what he’s done to deserve being introduced as “on drums, Adolf Hitler”. Le Bon awards himself the name of “Doris”.
During Girls On Film and Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer, guest musician Victoria De Angelis, of Italian Eurovision winners Måneskin, has a ball pulling shapes with fellow bass player John Taylor.
They encore with a blazing crowdpleaser Wild Boys – complete with a female fire-eater – before throwing the Halloween theme out of the window with the perky yacht-rock of Rio.
As the band exit the stage to loud applause, John Taylor pauses at his microphone to express his gratitude. “Manchester has been with Duran Duran since 1981. We f***ing love you, thank you,” he declares. Same time next year, then, chaps?
Courtesy Yorkshire Post
