Intro
Welcome to New Wave Beat. I’m your host, Jason D’Orazio. Let’s go over Duran Duran’s output from 1984 to early 1986. With Seven and the Ragged Tiger complete, Duran Duran were continuing their whirlwind schedule, touring at large arenas. In late 1984 and ‘85, Duran Duran would release a live album, a couple of singles, and then briefly splinter into two groups. Today I will focus on their two post-Ragged singles, along with the album So Red The Rose by splinter group Arcadia.
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Duran Duran 1984 to 1985
Wild Boys
Arena is Duran Duran’s first live album, featuring eight live versions of their early work, along with the new Wild Boys. It features one of their concerts during the Seven and the Ragged Tiger era, and offers eight tracks due to limitations of what could fit on a vinyl record. John Taylor in his autobiography would lament that the intense crowd noise was mixed down a lot. However, I thought if it wasn’t, the album would sound like a bunch of screaming due to the wild crowds.
Arena contained a sole studio song in Wild Boys. This song has Duran Duran and Nile Rodgers collaborating again. The verses are more minimal with the instrumentation, with the vocals and drums taking more precedence than usual. The chorus has singer Simon LeBon hitting some very high notes. The topic of the song is straightforward. The band are wild boys who refuse to be broken or tamed. The imagery is darker than their previous songs, with a lyric like, “There’s murder by the roadside,” and the line, “There’s blood stain for your pain.” The video invokes imagery of the then-recent Mad Max in the Thunderdome. There are a large group of mutants, or wild boys, in an underground lair. The choreography of these wild boys is more elaborate than in many other Duran Duran and new wave videos. Reportedly, LeBon during filming got stuck under water while strapped to the windmill device that is featured in the video. Wild Boys climbed all the way to number two on the US charts and stayed there for four weeks.
A View To a Kill
In 1985, Duran Duran was tapped to record a theme for the upcoming James Bond movie dubbed A View To A Kill.
Dance into the fire. That fatal kiss is all we need. Dance into the fire.
The tempo of the song starts a little slow then increases to about mid-tempo. The horn-like synth at times sounds piercing, kind of like James Bond’s bullets. The guitar adds to the exciting choruses. LeBon’s vocals exhibit a wide range. This makes for a dynamic sounding song, but it’s just a tad hard for me to sing at karaoke.
The lyrics to View To A Kill are appropriately Bond-esque and continue the dark elements of Wild Boys. I’m not sure if the song is from the point of view of James Bond or a villain, but whoever the character is wants his love interest to join him for high-stakes action and love. For example, “Dance into the fire, that fatal kiss is all we need.” The video has the band in and around the Eiffel Tower fighting James Bond and each other with various gadgetry. It ends with Simon LeBon accidentally blowing up the Eiffel Tower (and himself) in a tongue-in-cheek manner. View To A Kill was very popular, becoming and remaining to this day the only Bond theme to hit the top of the US charts.
Arcadia - Singles
Soon afterward, the band splintered off into two groups. Singer Simon LeBon, synth wizard Nick Rhodes, and drummer Roger Taylor formed Arcadia. Meanwhile, the guitarists John and Andy Taylor joined singer Robert Palmer to create Power Station. I will talk a bit about Arcadia’s album So Red The Rose, as it is closer to the Duran Duran sound than Power Station’s work, so I apologize in advance to fans of the latter. Also, I preferred So Red The Rose because I am more of a synth than guitar person, and Arcadia had Nick Rhodes’ synth flourishes.
Election Day
“Maximum big surprise. Your smile is something you own.”
The intro is about a half-minute long and features a synth workout by Rhodes. Then LeBon starts with the vocals, which hit a high point in the chorus. The song was also a collaboration with Grace Jones, who helps add an ominous air to the song. Her bellowing “You can die!” at the end of the bridge is particularly intense. A saxophone in the choruses is welcome. I think the lyrics have quite a bit of double entendre. The song has some sexual elements to it. For instance, the words, “I pull my shirt off and pray.” Taken literally, it could also be seen as a song about political drama. Finally, it could be autobiographical. A line like, “Because maybe we have more play time than money,” implies that the band members want a break from their hectic schedules. Election Day has a quite stylish video, much like Duran Duran’s output up until that point. It features Arcadia and a lot of ladies dancing in a mostly black and white backdrop. It is an epic at seven-plus minutes. Despite Arcadia being a side project, Election Day managed to crack the top 10 in the US and the UK.
Goodbye is Forever
Goodbye Is Forever was the next single for Arcadia and is a good follow-up to Election Day.
There’s a soaring main four-note synth riff and a more minor raindrop-sounding synth which are quite catchy. LeBon delivers the vocal hooks and inflections in spades. Rogers’ drums are solid, especially right before the second chorus. It is a little light lyrically, but what is there is insightful. It could be interpreted as a breakup song, whether it be with a romantic interest or perhaps foreshadowing the breakup of Duran Duran. Lyrics like, “Caught up in our own barbed wire to set us free,” imply that such a breakup is not totally a bad thing from the point of view of the narrator. The video has a theme of time passing with clocks and calendars moving forward. LeBon and Rhodes are seeing these as they are strapped in moving chairs, and later on a large clock. You could say that they are stranded in time, but they do manage to escape by video’s end. Unfortunately, the Arcadia videos other than Election Day are a little hard to find. Goodbye Is Forever was a top 40 hit in the US, but did not do as well in other parts of the world.
The Flame
The Flame was another single for Arcadia.
“Strays for this precious shining. How do you know?”
It has a female Spanish spoken word section near the beginning, which hooks the listener in quicker than some of the other songs off So Red The Rose. The piercing synth riffs for The Flame sound a little like that for View To A Kill.
The vocal hooks are there, for example, the inflections on words such as flame. The song seems like it’s about the narrator falling for someone that he knows is ultimately bad for him. Lyrics like, “The sinking feeling scares me. Know my weakness, call it Deja Vu,” and the line, “Don’t give me any chance to wander back from this innocence,” hint at this interpretation, and imply that the situation has occurred before for him.
The video for The Flame is pretty funny, and has some in-jokes in it. Simon LeBon, in a nerdy persona, and a date visit a mansion. They sort of remind me of Brad and Janet from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. LeBon gets into various near fatal misadventures at the mansion. Indeed, the video has a murder mystery motif to it. The Flame only hit number 58 in the UK charts, and failed to chart in the US, but it’s a good song nevertheless.
Arcadia - Album Tracks
Keep Me in the Dark
I would argue that the album track Keep Me In The Dark is closest in spirit to their Seven and The Ragged Tiger sound.
“Wait a little longer. Don’t go too far. I wouldn’t lie.”
It has some pretty good synth wizardry on Nick Rhodes’ part, especially in the intro and bridge. As far as vocal range is concerned, LeBon stays near the middle for a lot of the song. The chorus has a repeating vocal riff that I had played for you a little previously. I think the song is about the narrator wanting to learn more about his love interest. I figured that because of lyrics like, “I need your blindfold secrets,” and the chorus that repeats the song title.
Missing
The second side of So Red The Rose, along with Missing, is more avant-garde and atmospheric, and has more guest appearances. The songs are also longer than almost any of their Duran Duran work. Missing finished up side one of So Red The Rose.
“Stumbling out, I made my way towards the open door.”
It kind of sounds like a slower, more avant-garde version of the song Anyone Out There? from Duran Duran’s debut album. The instrumentation is atmospheric and pondering. LeBon repeats the word “Calling” at some point. I think it’s about a lost love who either broke up with the narrator or perhaps passed away. Lines like, “How can you touch me when you’re not really there?” support this hypothesis. Unfortunately, it did not resonate with me as the melody and vocals did not seem to advance as the song went on. Instead, they seemed to meander.
The Promise
The Promise was another single off So Red The Rose. This seven-plus minute opus has some great star cameo power, including Sting singing. Dave Gilmour from Pink Floyd also guest stars with his guitar. The instrumentation is more lush than the other songs on this album. Indeed, the song sounds a little bit like Sting’s early solo work, which I am a fan of. While not as immediately catchy as the other singles off So Red The Rose, it is an underrated song from Arcadia. I think The Promise is about the Western world betraying the Third World. Lyrics like, “And sometimes we make promises we never mean to keep,” imply that the promise is hollow. The promise in this case being a respite from war and other maladies. The Third World is starting to stand up for themselves though, as told through lyrics like, “The hungry make their stand when they’ll stand for no more.” The video, all in black and white, has the band looking at videos of various war and other atrocities being committed throughout modern history. The single cut is a leanar four minutes and 45 seconds, and it did hit the top 40 in the UK. The Promise was not released as a single in the United States, as far as I know.
Fire and Ice
The album track El Diablo, as appropriate to the title, has a bit of a Spanish flare to it. The long intro features violin and flute sections. Nick Rhodes’ synths add to these instruments and a Spanish guitar. Simon’s vocals are more relaxed than the other songs on this album. My opinion is that El Diablo, like The Flame, is about being drawn to a love that is ultimately bad for you. But El Diablo, I feel, is less tongue in cheek, with both its darker lyrics and slower melody. Words like, “She will tear your heart away” and, “El Diablo, won’t you sell me back my soul?” suggest more seriousness.
I did not like Lady Ice at first, but it did grow on me as I began to appreciate its haunting quality. There is a particularly ominous synth about halfway through the song, stronger in timbre than even View To A Kill. The melody is, well, cold and detached, which makes sense given the song title. There are not a lot of lyrics to Lady Ice when measured against the 7:41 running time. My educated guess to the song’s topic is that it’s about a woman who’s growing colder as a result of negative experiences she’s had with men, or the world in general. It also serves as a great winter-themed song. And that’s the last song off the album.
Outro
Looks-wise, the members of Arcadia dyed their hair black and wore smart black suits, and there was also black eyeliner for a little bit of a goth look. While Arcadia never toured, and Power Station toured without Andy and John Taylor, a song from each band made their way onto the tour for the follow-up album Notorious. Duran Duran performed at Live Aid in August 1985, but it would be the last show with the original lineup until their reunion in the early 2000s. Andy Taylor left the band to form his own, and Roger Taylor mostly retired from music. The band did not totally break up, however, and it’s still putting out albums and touring to this day.
And that’s it for Duran Duran, and that’s it for New Wave Beat for this episode. This is Jason D’Orazio wishing you well, and please tune in next week as we’re going to talk about some great songs from 1982. So long!
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Unlocked vault article: Deepdive of Arcadia's So Red the Rose, along with Wild Boys and View to a Kill.