Duran Duran (L-R): Roger Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Simon Le Bon and John Taylor.
Throughout their career, Duran Duran have always been known for their massive hit songs varying between synthpop, punk rock and dance music. But not often talked about is the dark, moody and Gothic nature of the band’s music throughout their 45-year career: such tracks like “Friends of Mine,” “The Seventh Stranger,” “Winter Marches On,” “Silva Halo” and “Before the Rain” reflected the edgy and haunting side of the British legends that perhaps gets obscured by the more well-known popular songs.
“There was always a darker underbelly to Duran Duran,” says drummer Roger Taylor. “People kind of got blinded by the poppier songs and the groovier songs and the teen following that we had at that time. But we always had songs like “Tel Aviv,” “Nightboat,” “To the Shore,” “The Chauffeur,” of course. It’s been interesting to really tap into that dark side and really have a look at some of the songs that influence that dark side.”
“We were always going to places like Japan,” adds singer Simon Le Bon. “They always said, ‘We love the pop band Duran Duran, but we love the darker stuff a lot more.’ Songs like “Nightboat” always made an impression on people. It’s nice to have some different faces to the band.”
And this is where the band’s new album Danse Macabre comes in: an eclectic collection of Halloween-inspired songs featuring new material, reworked versions of previously recorded Duran Duran songs and covers of other artists’ songs, including Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” (featuring Måneskin’s Victoria De Angelis), which was recently unveiled as their latest single. The catalyst for the new record, which was released this past Friday, was a special Halloween show that the band – whose lineup consists of Le Bon, Roger Taylor, Nick Rhodes and John Taylor — performed in Las Vegas last year.
“Nick is very Halloween-centric,” says Le Bon. “He felt that this was an opportunity to record. We’d done some slightly different versions of the Duran tunes [at the show]. We’d segued “Lonely in Your Nightmare” into [Rick James’] “Super Freak.” We did a version of “Spellbound.” We updated “Nightboat” and some other songs, which are on the album. We thought that we’d actually have an opportunity to come up with a sort of a non-studio written album.”
“Nick’s always been a massive fan of [Halloween],” Taylor says. “We collected together all our favorite darker records. And we all kind of chucked our ideas into the hat and came up with this incredible list of songs by other artists that we had to put our own stamp on. We had such a fun time doing that. Then the first idea was just to record it, and we’ll put it as a live record. That kind of transposed into a brand new album, and re-recording everything and recording some new songs as well.
Not only because of its theme, but Danse Macabre is unique as it brings back the band’s former guitaristsn for guest appearances—Warren Cuccurullo (on the title song and an updated version of 1993’s “Love Voudou” from The Wedding Album) and, most poignantly, co-founder Andy Taylor, who was earlier diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer.
“We really wanted to play with Andy at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [ceremony for Duran Duran’s induction in 2022], and we were really hyped up for that,” says Taylor. “We already had the rehearsal studio set up, and we had the space where Andy was going to come and play. And literally, the day before we started, we got the call that Andy couldn’t make it because of his health. That was a real disappointment. Then we thought the next best thing would be to have Andy come and play on the record. It’s so good to have everybody back on this record. It kind of feels like the family’s in some way coming back together again.”
“Andy Taylor is one of the best guitarists we’ve ever worked with,” Le Bon adds. “There’s no doubt about it. He’s incredible. I went over to Ibiza earlier this year. We only spent two days in the studio, but we got seven tracks in those two days. His creativity is right up there the way it was before. It was fantastic to work with him. It was a real joy for me.”
Ahead of Danse Macabre‘s release, the band unveiled the mysterious and edgy-sounding title track – one of the three new original compositions. “I wanted to write a song about the wildest Halloween party you’d ever been to,” says Le Bon, “with all sorts of stuff going on in different rooms, things that really make your eyebrows curl. But honestly, it’s all about the rhythm, which is why I didn’t even attempt to sing a melody on it. It was much more important to get a really rhythmic vocal, a spoken-word vocal happening.”
“I think the original inspiration for the song was a sound that comes in in the first few bars of the song,” explains Taylor. “Somebody played that on a synth, which was like a very deep, gloomy kind of horn sound. That was the inspiration for this song. We had [producer] Mr. Hudson in the studio with us who helped us with some of the grooves and stuff. The backbone of the song came together very quickly. And of course, it’s great to have Warren on that because he’s got a very serious way of playing. This is definitely more his area. That brought it to another level. And that became the title track.”
The danceable and funk-laden “Black Moonlight” marks another classic collaboration between Duran Duran and Chic legend Nile Rodgers—a track that Le Bon calls a “banger,” saying: “It’s exactly what you’d hope to hear if you knew that Duran Duran was making a record with Nile Rodgers. And it was amazing. We were in the studio – it was basically the first thing we did together. And we said, ‘Oh, do you think we should sort of try and do something else?’ He went, ‘No. This is really good. ‘So many times we throw away the first things we come up with because we think we’re going to find something better further along the line. This time, you’ve got something really good here.’ So we just followed it through.”
“For the first time in a long time, we actually trusted our first instincts, which I don’t think we’d actually done since the very early days,” Taylor says about “Black Moonlight.” “We’ve become more introspective and less trusting of our initial ideas. So Nile kind of led us up this path of just go with, ‘What have you come up with in the next hour? That is going to be the record. That is going to be the song.’ I think that worked really well for us.”
Closing out the Danse Macabre is “Confessions in the Afterlife,” which brings a certain eerie calm to the spooky uptempo nature of the record and also features Le Bon’s most poetic lyrics to date. “It made me sort of think about, ‘Well, what if there was some kind of consciousness after death?’ explains Le Bon. “‘Nobody knows. How would you feel? Wouldn’t you want to unburden yourself of everything that you carried through life? And you’d be able to, and you wouldn’t offend anybody. Nobody would be upset with you. There’s nothing so terrible to say.’ And that was the whole thing came from that—this idea of a kind of moral freedom that you would achieve after death.”
Adds Taylor: “We’ve written quite a few of those, and it’s something that tends to come fairly frequently to us. Those deeper songs with a more reflective lyric, which I think this one is one of those. I think we’d just written “Dance Macabre,” actually, and we wanted something that sounded very different, a very different tempo. I’m a huge Massive Attack fan, and nobody does better slower grooves than Massive Attack’s. So that was definitely the influence in the rhythm section for me. It’s a really, really nice contrast to the other two new songs that we wrote.”
The new album’s theme also gave the band an opportunity to revisit some of their earlier material like “Nightboat” and the very deep cut “Secret Oktober,” the B-side of “Union of the Snake” from 1983. “That’s quite a hard thing is to revisit songs that are loved by so many people,” says Taylor. “I think it really worked, and we’ve kind of brought them more into the now.”
“I’m really pleased with that because, on a personal level, I feel that I was able to really upright the vocal performance,” Le Bon says of “Secret Oktober 31.” “It’s a much, much better vocal performance than was on the original version…I think “Nightboat” is very important because it is so different harmonically from the original version. I’m able to sing pretty much the original melody with a few little inflections to take care of some of the new chords that have been put in there. I’m really proud of that.”
Also gracing Danse Macabre are several cover songs spanning the previous decades, from the Stones’ “Paint It Black” to Billie Eilish’s “Bury a Friend,” which Le Bon also feels proud of. “For starters, it has that amazing drum break in the middle,” he says, “I was listening to King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard who bring a lot of Eastern kind of tonality into their music. And I try to make the verse a little bit more like that and sing in this sort of drop second and drop sixth scale, which is I think they call it ‘hijaz kar.’ That’s where it comes from. And as soon as I started doing that, I felt that we were really making that song our own.”
There are also covers of music from the band’s early 1980s contemporaries such as the Specials’ “Ghost Town” and Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Spellbound.” “One of my favorite shows of all time was seeing Siouxsie and the Banshees when I was 17 in Birmingham,” recalls Taylor. “They played in a very small club called Barbarella’s, which all the punk bands came through. And I remember I stood about six feet away from Siouxsie at the front of the crowd. They were kind of beyond punk. There was something about the Banshees that they were leading the way to the next musical movement, which was post-punk. They were so ahead of the time and so powerful.
“I also saw the Specials very early on,” he continues. “They were very much part of our scene. They came from the Midlands. And they were very much part of the wallpaper of our earlier years. “Ghost Town” is a particularly special song, and I think it’s so different from the rest of their catalog. It was that deeper, slower, reflective piece of music that has always been one of our favorite records.”
While the album’s Gothic overtones are very pronounced, Taylor emphasizes the fun and playful nature of the project. “It’s not all about being dark and gloomy and introspective. We have songs like “Supernature” [a cover of the Cerrone song] on there. We have “Black Moonlight.” So that there are lighter moments on the record. I always feel that it’s quite hard to write a dark up-tempo record—all the darker things seem to be much lower tempo. To try and achieve songs that have groove and the up-tempo feel – but also reflect the darker side – was quite challenging, actually. I think one of the only people that’s ever managed to really do that is Michael Jackson. He was a master of combining the darker side with great groove records. It was tricky, but somehow we pulled it off.”
The new album comes as Duran Duran recently wrapped up the latest leg of their North American tour in support of their previous studio album Future Past. During a performance last month in New York City’s Forest Hills Stadium, they previewed some of the tracks from Danse Macabre including the title song, “Nightboat” and “Super Lonely Freak.” Meanwhile, the band is eyeing touring in 2024. “We’ve already got some offers in,” says Le Bon. “And we like to keep our hand in, we like to keep ourselves show-ready. And the only way you do that is by playing shows. So I’m pretty sure we’ll be back next year.”
