Eponymous? It’s a lovely word, isn’t it? And so seldom used. But this is what you have here Duran’s Duran’s first album, Duran Duran. An album by Duran Duran, called Duran Duran. Neat eh? And not at all unimaginative.
Perhaps pressing home their neo-romantic faithfulness to their sci-fi roots, Duran Duran released the shiny, bright and nimble wristed Duran Duran to a faintly suspecting public in 1981. Bouffed up nicely by pirate-shirts, jodphurs, cravats, bandanas and wonderfully silly haircuts, it was a debut that was to launch a thousand similar vessels. But no one did the New Romantic thing more consumately than these boys, even if the likes of Visage and Human League could have claimed (and quite reasonably) to have got there first. But whilst being the vehicle of their success, the entire New Romantic baggage has since obscured their genuine worth. As swashbuckling provocateurs of changing sensibilities, Duran Duran were peerless. As musicians, they were pretty damned close also.
From the fat, meaty and sizzling hi-fat static of Roger Taylor’s drum pads and mini toms to the unfaltering modulation of Nick Rhode’s swelling, emotive key-pads – they were a really great band forged out of equally great composite parts. John Taylor’s slap and pull bass lines may have been a little unsteady and a little trebly at times but they were never boring. Likewise, Simon le Bon may not have been the best singer in the world but it always seemed that his sweltering vocabulary of new-romantic imagery would always yield something profound. And this, the band’s debut album, captures the moment at which they clearly become aware of it themselves.
The pure joy and excitement of this realisation is evident in the heady swirl of ‘Careless Memories’ and the sheer confidence of ‘Planet Earth’- with it’s guttural, android and near perfect basslines, the synth hooklines and Le Bon’s insistent and rallying fashion-cries. ‘Anyone Out There’ proved they could provide simple but memorable tunes and ‘To The Shore’ suggested their capabilities extended well beyond. Wordy, dense and dripping with glittery honey-dew, ‘To The Shore’ proved just like ‘The Chauffer’ and the ‘The Seventh Stranger’ did on subsequent releases that Rhodes and Le Bon had much artier fields to furrow.
It is however, the classic hedonism and excess of tracks like ‘Girls On Film’ that truly delight. The pumping rhythm section, the chopping guitars, the exultant chorus, the scantily-clad females in the video – pure class and a defining moment when it was realised that middle-class white boys could make the transition from publand to clubland without breaking so much as a sweat.
Something no doubt helped by the appalling dayglo bandanas….