Simon Le Bon and John Kearns chat about the band’s fans, upcoming shows and new remix album “Hot Star Mixes”

Duran Duran are in busy mode right now. Of course they are a band who rarely post an ‘out of office’ status but 2026 is shaping up to be yet another very active and successful year for Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor and Roger Taylor.

With a series of tours, the release of Free To Love (with its irresistible Top of the Pops homage video) and of course the incoming Hot Star Mixes remix album of that song, it’s fair to say that the band are keeping the fans on their toes. Also, few artists can boast of being immortalized in a Royal Mail stamp collection (philately will get you everywhere!)

Now there are further show dates on the horizon including The O2 Arena Belfast on October 18th, shows in Paris and Madrid and, of course, the band’s annual Halloween extravaganza – taking place this year in London.I caught up with Simon Le Bon and found him in super enthusiastic form – especially about the Belfast show.

“Out of all the dates coming up I have to say I am very excited about coming to Belfast,” Simon beams.

“We haven’t been for such a long time and the crowd there is absolutely incredible! I remember our first Belfast show and thinking how amazing it was (we’d been going for about seven years before we finally made it to Northern Ireland) but I thought, ‘wow this is incredible’, maybe because we hadn’t played there before… but then when we went back it was even bigger and absolutely amazing! So, I’m expecting the most fun and the most excitement this time too.”

I have no doubt that the NI fans will relish the challenge of giving Duran Duran the warmest and indeed the loudest welcome of the tour.

In fact, Duranies the world over are fiercely loyal and fervent and have been for decades. That lengthy devotion and sense of fan community is not something that escapes the band’s frontman.

“They are incredibly loyal, aren’t they!?

Every time we rock up at a show, we do see a lot of the same faces and over the years they must have got to know each other. I mean they organise trips together and have become good friends… sometimes we’ll see them outside the rehearsal studios and the hotel. We definitely have a strong sense of them being a community and there are a few who really have been with us from the very start.”

Those fans will of course have their set list wish lists. When dealing with a band who have such an enormous back catalogue, the conundrum of piecing together the set list jigsaw is always something that requires careful handling. While this writer would be furiously scribbling Late Bar, The Valley, Girl Panic and Sin of the City onto the list, Simon reminds me of the importance of playing those ‘almost compulsory’ songs.

“I think we have a rough idea in the back of our minds all the time and then if someone comes up with something we consider it… but there are some songs we just have to play.

I mean we can’t not play Rio or Hungry Like The Wolf and there are a bunch of songs like that, like Ordinary World and Come Undone.

There are some that are not as compulsory as those… we might want to slot in Invisible, and Free To Love is obviously our most recent single so we have put that in.

Then also we might say to ourselves, what about something from Notorious that we haven’t played in ages.”

Free To Love: The Hot Star Mixes album is released at the end of this month and fans will be delighted to know that there are a variety of formats including vinyl editions.

“It’s an exciting project for us actually,” Simon enthuses.

“It’s kind of a way of getting the most out of the song Free To Love, especially since we haven’t put out an album in a long time. There is such a wide range of different styles on there. I mean if you play the Trixie Mattel mix alongside the Harrison one there is such a different point of view sonically. I find that very exciting and, of course, the Alisia remix was the first one we had done actually and she was recommended to us by Nile Rodgers.”

Free To Love: Hot Star Mixes is released on various formats on October 30th.

Courtesy XS NOIZE