Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Art in your home can instantly transform your space and bring you joy. Saatchi Art makes it easy for you to discover and buy one-of-a-kind art that you'll love. Whether you're looking to complement your home decor, fill a blank space on your walls, or start an art collection, you can find the perfect piece for your specific style and budget at Saatchi Art. Go to SaatchiArt.com today to bring the beauty of art into your home. Plus, listeners get 15% off their first order of original art with code ROB.
That's 15% off at SaatchiArt.com. S-A-A-T-C-H-I-Art.com. Ever wish your favorite TV show had twice as many episodes? Everyone knows that feeling. And so does Discover. Everyone wants more of their favorites. That's why Discover doubles another favorite thing. Cash back.
That's right. Discover automatically doubles the cash back earned on your credit card at the end of your first year with Cash Back Match. Now that's a real crowd pleaser. Everyone knows how it ends. Double the cash back. See terms at discover.com slash credit card.
When you're at the top, the pressure is such that you almost don't want to live there. Nobody really wants to live there for long. So you're going to parachute down from that one way or the other. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Literally. Thank you for taking the time out of your life to spend some time here. John Taylor from Duran Duran is here today. That's right. I said it.
Duran effing Duran. Come on. I lost more girlfriends to this guy in the 80s probably than anybody else. Probably. And yet, I remain a fan. A huge fan. And these guys are killing it today. Listen, there's nothing I love more than an 80s icon who's still killing it in 2023. All right, let's get at it. John Taylor.
Good morning. Good morning. How are you? How you love? How are you? Yeah, great. Great. Nice to be on your show. Oh, thank you. I was tempted to call you the mayor of Montecito, but... Oh my God. Are you in Montecito or are you in Santa Barbara? I'm in Montecito. I mean, right now I'm in Santa Barbara, but I've been here for almost 30 years. I love it. I mean, we come up to San Ysidro. That's our getaway. I love that part of the country. It's just...
that part of the state. It's beautiful. Isn't it? Yeah. Where do you spend most of your time these days? Well, you know, LA's base. Yeah. You know, that's where I go back to. But, you know, the band, the rest of the band all live in London. How come you're the only one who escaped? I mean, I got the lucky. Am I wrong? It takes a commitment, I think, to say, nope, uh-uh.
Yeah, it does. I mean, you know, actually my first wife, I got to credit her. She got me out of there. She got me to LA 30 years ago. And, you know, she had, strangely enough, I mean, I've been to LA a number of times on tour, never got a taste for it at all. Never imagined it would be a place that I'd want to live. But my first wife, Amanda, she...
her grandmother had lived in, like, look out, Mountain, Laurel Canyon, her whole life. And so Amanda introduced me to that part of the city and I was like, wow, this is great.
And, you know, and I started making friends. I was thinking of you. I was thinking of Cassian Elwes. You know, he was one of the first friends. He and Priscilla were two of the first friends that we made when we got in there. And we got a nice friend group going. And I just had a baby. I was joining these Daddy and Me groups. And, like, everybody was in the film business but me, you know. And thank God because, you know, I can only imagine how challenging that is. So, yeah.
I don't know, just steadily. I got sober in LA and I just, I don't know, I just got locked in. It's just that the rest is history. It's a great place to go back to when you've been on the road for a while. You know, it's, uh, I, uh, oh yeah, I used to, um, when my oldest was six months old and I'd take him on a stroller on hikes, I would pass Amanda with, with Atlanta and
on the way up the trailhead and she'd wave and Atlanta was, so Atlanta's how old now? 32. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah, she's living in New York. She's, you know, she's got a life. She's, she's a good girl. That's amazing. That's, yeah. Uh,
By the way, I was just listening to the new Dance Macabre. I'm in the studio, a proper studio right now. So I was like, you know what? Let's put it on. Let's listen to this thing. First of all, I love the notion that this album is a Halloween-themed. Also, the artwork is cool, although nobody looks at albums anymore. It's so sad. Nobody gives a shit. They just hear the songs.
Very cool. I want to get it. I was like, should I, should that be my tattoo? That, that sort of red skull or whatever it is. Like, that's pretty sick. I could put that on, I could put that on my body. I think it's, I think it's a, it's an old English. I think it's Hogarth. I think I got the feeling it's like an, it's taken from like an, you know, old English artwork. It's, um,
Yeah. I think I know what you're talking about. It's definitely got a thing. I think that's what it is. It's got a vibe to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, we did a gig. We did a Vegas show on Halloween last year and decided to turn it into a Halloween extravaganza and we've been full drag. I mean, you know, everybody was so excited. I've been doing Halloween, you know, in America for many years. I was like, okay, you know, yeah.
But, you know, then it led to some song choices. And I think we played seven or eight cover songs. We went through this long list of like this Halloween mixtape. And we're like, oh, yeah, we could do that. And, you know, and there were certain, you know, Talking Heads, Susie and the Banshees, The Specials. Yeah. It's like, yeah, why not? You know, and the way that we...
we have typical Duran Duran way of doing things. If we're going to just play a song live, we can't just play it live. We've got to go into the studio, record it. Everybody's got to figure out exactly what they're playing. And then we play it like that on stage. So now we've done the show. Everybody had a good time. And we're sitting on some really cool recordings of these seven or eight cover songs. So then we're like, well, maybe we should put these out. I think I said something like, we should have this on Spotify tomorrow. Yeah.
And Nick said, I don't know, maybe it should be an album. And then he proposed taking a couple of older Duran songs, like Waiting for the Night Boat, off the first album and sort of repurposing it for this Halloween project. Then we've got essentially an album. And then really like 11th hour, we're about to deliver it. We've got the artwork. And somebody says, how about a new song?
So we had five days before our UK tour started in April, we went into the studio in London and we got three new songs. Wow. So those added into the mix create a fairly unusual blend of old and new and so relatively effortless. Usually making our albums are just torture. It's like two years of your life gone. This was relatively easy. We mixed it while we were on the road.
And yeah, and every time I say, yeah, we've got a new album coming out in October, I'm like, really? We do? And it's album what? Number, it's like eight, something crazy. Is it 18? Is that possible? No, that can't be. No, I don't think it is, but I'm not counting, Rob. I mean, like I could get lost in that. Oh, look, we've been told it's number 16. Okay, 16. Sweet 16. That's not nothing. No. That's not nothing.
I mean, look, you and I both survived our teen magazine phase and we're still here. Yeah. I think we probably, I think you and I shared a cover or two of 16 Magazine. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Teen beat. Teen beat. I think it's, there's, I don't know who came up with the look first, you or me, but we definitely had, I think we were sharing, did you, yeah, you had earrings at some point. You must have, right? Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I did. I did. I never did the diamond stud, did you? No, I was dangly, which by the way, the kids today tell me that is really a bold choice.
Right. Yeah. I mean, I like the, you know, the ring. I think I had a gold ring. I'm not a big jewelry guy, to be honest. I mean, I've kind of like, I've kind of got a thing going on at the moment, but typically I've never really been a big, in fact, I just lost my freaking wedding ring down a plug hole in a backstage area. And it's not the first one to go either. But yeah, I don't know. I've never been a
I've never really been a big jewelry guy. Who were your sartorial idols? Who were, like, when you were growing up? Well, Brian Ferry, I know you were a big Brian Ferry guy, right? Well, Roxy Music. You know, when Roxy Music first came along, I mean, they were so exotic. And they were kind of raunchy but loungy at the same time. It was like satin, leather, animal prints. You know, it was everything. And, you know, it's hard...
I mean, any guy can look at Roxy Music 1.0 and go, ooh, that's a look I wouldn't mind wearing. I mean, Bowie obviously did extraordinary things with clothes, but you couldn't really see yourself in it. Punk was really the big turnaround because...
Because when particularly the Sex Pistols and The Clash came along, they had very, very particular looks that anybody could copy. In fact, you know, a couple of the boys we were talking last night about,
Simon was saying, yeah, I had my mom stitch some zips into a T-shirt. And she's saying, why are you putting zips into the T-shirt? I mean, we were all tearing our clothes and safety pinning them back together. And The Clash did this sort of Jackson Pollock-inspired thing where they splattered paint all over these secondhand clothes. And anybody could do it. So you could get in. It wasn't like looking in Vogue and seeing what was –
cool. It was just like, it was easy. Everybody could do it. DIY. Jonesy's a longtime good friend of mine. And I know you guys had a super group, Steve Jones and the Fox Pistols. Yeah. You've had so many different iterations of groups. And obviously, you can't, you know, Duran is its own thing. But what's been the most fun? Or they all have something special to offer? Because I think Duff and Jonesy
touring with those lunatics. Yeah. It must have been beyond belief. Yeah, but you know, you say that, but I mean, I mean, I mean, Duff, I mean, I remember he and I, we flew up to Seattle together and we reached into our bags on the plane and we were both reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. Oh boy. It was like, wow. You know, I mean, actually, Ken,
Duff is a really erudite, really bright guy. And all I knew of him before was I'd watched him, I'd seen Guns N' Roses at Wembley Stadium and Duff did this thing where he would spit and he would hit the back of his head so that the spit just went further than any musician I've ever seen spit on stage before. That was like, when I thought of Duff McKagan, I thought of, oh yeah, he's that spitting guy.
But when I got to know him, what a soul, you know. I mean, he's a beautiful cat, you know. Jonesy, I mean, he...
At that time, you know, I was kind of like, I was kind of worn out with, with Duran and I was kind of worn out with the studio process and all of it. And, you know, I mean, anybody that knows Jones, he knows how funny he is, you know, and he's, he's actually like, he's like a musical old school kind of comic, you know, the way, you know, he'll do funny walks. He'll do anything to like,
bring down the temperature in a room to make people feel comfortable. And so working with him in the studio was really good fun. And I needed that. I needed that experience. It was also like we would go on stage and
We started out at the Viper Room, and we'd do a bit of Planet Earth, and I'd sing, I don't know, 60 bars of Planet Earth. And then we'd stop, and then we'd go into bodies of Nevermind the Bollocks. And the kids were just like, what the fuck? Exactly. I mean, it was brilliant getting to surprise people like that. And then it kind of became, then we got a deal, we made an album, and then it started to feel...
it started to feel a little bit like the thing that it was supposed to be a break from. And yeah. And then, you know, I mean, you know, it was a wonderful experience and, you know, and it really helped me, you know, find my groove again. But, you know, Duran is like now, you know, we're so kind of, yeah,
you know, we sort of surrendered to each other in a way. And we're, we're really, I think we're really bringing out the best in each other right now, you know, and it isn't always pretty, you know, we challenge each other, but you know, you need to be challenged. I go, or I do. And, um, and I feel like that's, that's all I need to be doing. You know, I don't see any more, any more side bands in the future. Yeah. But you never, but you never know. Yeah.
All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel. ♪
Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton honors membership required for 15% discount terms and conditions apply. What's it like to write or to do a James Bond theme? I think yours might be one of my favorite. In terms of, by the way, they've all been pretty sick. When you think about it. Totally. Like how have they killed it every fucking time? Every time those James Bond themes are insane. Yeah.
Well, isn't it, you know, it's interesting if I think about music from the sixties and the early seventies that I, that I love, you know, and I think about the Beatles and Bowie and James Brown, the Rolling Stones, whatever, you know, and then I'm like, oh yeah. And that Bond thing, Diamonds Are Forever. Oh yeah. And that Bond thing, Goldfinger, you know, they're like, they're anomalies, you know, but amazing pieces of music. And, and,
You know, when we did A View to a Kill, I mean, man, I got to know John Barry. I got really close to John. John Barry, the composer John Barry? Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. He's my all-time, all-time, all-time favorite composer. Yeah, no, I mean, he's awesome. And, you know, it was tough. Again, you know, it was a tricky –
There was a lot of personalities in the room that had to be navigated, but we knew there was a remit even then, right? There was a remit. I think that there's James Bond themes have to be sexy, they have to have drama, and they have to be cool.
And, you know, and I think since Duran, it's almost become like a song contest. It's like an every three year triennial song contest. And you're right. Everybody that does it does something interesting with it. I did a podcast on Bond music a year or so ago, which caused me because I would always say if anybody asked me, I'd say, yeah, yeah, I love the early, I love the John Barry stuff.
but actually listening to almost everything, you know, the later, the later, uh,
I kind of like all of them because it's really the kind of music that I like to listen to. And, you know, Billie Eilish, you know, she and her brother talked about it in their documentary. And they were saying when they were approached, you know, they kind of immediately knew what they wanted to do because just for fun, as a writing exercise, they would say to each other, let's write a James Bond song.
So, you know, there is, I mean, whether you're Adele or, you know, whomever you are, you kind of, you kind of know what it means when somebody asks you to do that. You kind of know where you're going to go with it. It's just, and live and let die. Yeah. Live and let die is a Bond theme. Absolutely. They kind of end up standing on their own in, in terms of an artist's career. And you go, no, no, that was a Bond theme. Oh, was it? Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah.
And also, the other thing, you missed one other criteria, which is amazing, is pretty much the title of the movie has to be the title of the song, or at least have it mentioned. That's not easy. Well, yeah. And to this day, we are forever grateful that we didn't get a Quantum of Solace. What would you do? What would you do?
You know, it wouldn't be easy. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll tell you, you'll appreciate it though. I, I, this, you know, I, I met, um, I was dating a girl at the time that had been in Octopussy and I was at, I was at a party in London at Langham. Oh yeah, of course. Oh yes. Oh yes. And Cubby Broccoli was there. Oh what? The man. Yeah. I said, you've got to introduce me. Yeah. Right. You've got to introduce me. And so I sat down with him. What a lovely man, you know, and I, you know, and we talked and he said, come, come and see me tomorrow.
So I went to Eon Productions, which were in South Audley Street in Mayfair then. His Rolls Royce is parked right outside. Big, big Rolls Royce. Of course, Cubby was a big guy with a big desk. And, you know, couldn't have been nicer. And sits me down. He says, I'm going to get John Barry on the phone. And so he gets John on the phone from New York. He says, John, I want you to meet John Taylor from Duran Duran.
I want you to work with Duran. I want you guys to write the theme song together. And John was like, well, I don't know. I have nothing to know about that. And Cubby was like, I want you to make this work, John. You know, it was an offer he couldn't refuse. And then we were off. I mean, it was... And, you know, it's...
It's a great ride working with those guys, you know. Yeah, it was great. Great experience. Yeah, you guys did it. You worked that title in. A view to a kill. I mean, my only experience was that I did a... It might have been the same year. I did a movie called St. Elmo's Fire, and they had to work the phrase St. Elmo's Fire into... Yeah. And David Foster, I think I've told this story before, but it makes me laugh every time I tell it. David Foster, who wrote the song...
had another song that he'd written as like a sort of inspirational Canadian national anthem about a guy who wheelchaired his way across Canada to raise money called Man in Motion. And that was the name of the tour. He was the Man in Motion.
So he just put the songs together. He just, and literally, if you listen to the song, it's like, I'm a man in motion, St. Elmo's fire. Like not even an attempt, not even, not even an attempt to make it anything about the movie. It's the best though. John Park. He's a bit of a genius though, isn't he? Oh, yeah.
There's actually a nerd fact. There's a song by Brian Eno called St. Elmo's Fire on his third solo album, Another Green World. It's one of his greatest songs, and it has a Robert Fripp solo that is considered by many Robert Fripp fans to be his finest hour. It's fantastic. Really? Okay, I'll make a note of that. Someone who's listening, make a note for me. I had no idea. I love that. I was going to see...
Brian Ferry at Albert Hall. The only time anyone's ever canceled a show 20 minutes before. And I love him. He's a great guy, but he had vocal issues and I just never got to see him yet so far. But that was... I saw... Did you see Bowie in the Canary Suit era?
The Let's Dance yellow canary suit. Yeah. I saw him in the south of France, Fréjus. Oh, amazing. Which is this Roman amphitheater, beautiful, beautiful venue. And I saw him, I think I saw him in Sydney, right? Like, you know, six months later on that tour. Yeah. That was amazing. Look, you and I have been blessed to see
the Titans, but like, I feel like every once in a while, there's a moment where an artist, uh,
is in the... I don't know if it's just the fact that they're in the zeitgeist at that moment in such a big way or if it's something about them. But, like, I have friends that saw The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl and they swear they had auras, visible halos. And Bowie, when I saw him in that canary suit, was much the same. It was like, oh, this is...
something above and beyond just being a big rock star who's having a moment. It was, it was unbelievable. I'll never forget it. Yeah. I mean, I mean, the thing about Bowie was that he had this run of albums in the seventies, um, that like every album was a challenge to his audience. You know, he, he kept moving it forward. It was like he was, he was, uh,
he could not stay still. He had to keep moving the art forward. And just as you've wrapped your mind around Diamond Dogs, he did Young Americans. And just as you'd come to terms with that, he'd do Station to Station and so forth.
And, but what I like about David more than anything now is when we can, when you consider and I, and anybody that's starting out in business and wants to put their music on YouTube, like their first demos, I say, look at what Bowie did, you know, in the sixties. I mean, he was in so many different bands. He had so many different haircuts. He tried so many different styles of music. I mean, he was so hungry for success, but, but,
But he didn't arrive fully formed. It seemed that way. You know, in 1972, you know, a lot of people talk about Bowie performing on top of the pops and playing, singing Starman. And he had this hair and these clothes and this sound. And, but, you know, it took him a long time to get there. It took him sort of eight solid years of trial and error, really, you know. And so by the time it came, he was, you know, I mean, he was, uh,
You know, he was a professional. You know, it wasn't his first merry-go-round. How much of that is... It's funny because when I think of that, just being a devil's advocate a little bit, I go, how do you have that same experience? But then also go, I need to be authentic to who I am because there's only one you, right? Do you know what I'm saying? It's like... Yeah. But, you know, Beau, if any...
artist, rock star has ever been referred to as a man of many faces. It's Bowie. It's him, right. You know, and, you know, he went through his folky phase, you know, he went through his mod phase, you know, and, you know. So it's not, it's not a calculated thing, I think is what you're, it's,
Well, it's not calculated, but I think he went to New York for his, you know, and he met Andy Warhol and he kind of got into the war. And then, then the Warhol crew all came to London and he, he got to hang out with them. And, you know, his, his wife at the time gave him that incredible haircut, you know, and then he met Mick Ronson. And I was always a huge fan of Mick Ronson, you know, Mick was like one of the great unsung heroes of, of seventies music in a way, because he,
Not only was he one of the greatest guitarists, he was one of the greatest arrangers. And he, you know, Bowie was the jewel, but he provided the settings that he hadn't quite had up to that point. On the tour that you're on now, Nile Rodgers is on tour with you or makes appearances? That's so sick. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you roll up to the show and you hear Sheik playing, you know. No, come on. Oh, no. And the thing is that they're tight like...
I don't know. Like I imagine Duke Ellington band would have been in the, in the fifties, you know what I mean? I say to everybody that comes to our show, I say, you've got to get there in time to see Chic because you're not going to see or hear anything like that again. They sort of, they, they belong to that old, you know, go back James Brown, Parliament Funkadelic, those tight R&B orchestras that just, you know,
You're just, you're never going to see again, you know, and they've got an incredible songbook and they can turn on a dime, you know, they, you know, it's, it's wonderful. Niles, you know, we first met in 82, I think it's, um,
In New Jersey, we were opening for Blondie and Niall had just produced Debbie's solo album. And we'd always credited Chic from day one, actually, that Chic had been an inspiration to Duran. And so Niall was aware of that. We met and we just became friends.
great friends really and we've made and we've managed to stay friends you know it's it's really wonderful to have a relationship with somebody well there is no other nile but but it it's a really it's a beautiful thing it's um yeah and we're lucky to have him on the road with us i mean sometimes we're like yeah maybe i mean we've been touring with nile off and on you know for four four years now you know they're unbelievable fantastic i mean i was just watching um
a documentary where he was talking about how he came up with the Diana Ross song, I'm Coming Out. And which by the way, for sure has the coolest, funkiest guitar drum fill intro. Yeah.
Yeah. But it just goes on and on. Yeah. When you look at his stuff, it just goes on and on. I mean, they got so much done. It's crazy. I mean, so many side projects that they had on the go. I mean, their catalog is amazing.
I love Tony Thompson. I did a project with Tony, the sheep drummer. He was incredible. And Bernard is my main man, bass-wise. It was his playing that really led to me picking up bass. I listened to it. And like so many great players, Niall and Bernard, they're deceptively good.
Simple. Everybody thinks they can play like Niall. You know, it's just like, but actually he's playing chords like you will never, I always say Niall's forgotten more than I'll ever know. You know, he is playing the most intricate Miles Davis chords and he's doing it in an incredibly funky way, straightly.
extraordinarily musical. If you're ever fortunate enough to find yourself, if you're a musician and you find yourself in a room with him, just get real close. That's what I do. I just get real close to him and just try to stay up with him. And suddenly I'm playing my best. He's wonderful. ♪
All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel. ♪
♪♪♪
I'm going on a Steely Dan binge at the moment, where I'm watching every behind the scenes of those two guys who are so flippin' funny and belligerent and hilarious. Love them, love them. But back to the Stones, I mean, you know, a few months ago, we got, you know, I heard this rumor that they were in the studio with Paul and Ringo. Oh, what? And I was like, wow. Well, I think, I think...
In the end, it was only Paul, right? And Paul is on the new album. But that, you know, that's something I want to see. That's some interplay. That's a YouTube clip that I would definitely, you know, I would definitely make time to watch. I'd be very, because, you know, that is, as a writer, you know, he's,
equal to Mick and Keith. I mean, and how many people, how many musicians could you say that of, you know, and he's not going to keep quiet. He's going to be pitching in with his, well, what if you sang the third Mick, you know, I mean, it'd be quite interesting to see, you know, how that went down. And I thought that was a genius move because, you know, everybody was talking about that, you know, I mean, you know, you can't, I mean, Mick is extraordinary. I actually, I love Mick.
the theme for Slow Horses that he wrote and that he sang. I don't know whether you've heard that. He's a great vocal stylist. And I also think, Simon and I were talking the other day, he's, I think, the most underrated vocalist
songwriter alive today, you know, because we, because when you think of Jagger, you just think of the Jagger. You think of him on stage doing his thing, you know, but those songs he's never written. I don't, I feel like he's never written a bad lyric, you know, all his lyrics and even like the B songs, you know, on albums like, you know, it's only rock and roll or black and blue. They're all cool. You know, they're all interesting. It's never nonsense. You know, and even, even in the hits, remarkable, even the hit, the, the hits that are these iconic songs,
You just, they're in our DNA. When you just think about the lyrics, they're in, you can't always get what you want. Yeah. It's insane. Yeah, yeah. And on and on and on. I'm a huge Mick guy. Huge. I saw them at Old Shella.
Yeah, I did. Did, were they great? Were they great? So I'm not crazy, right? I'm not crazy. Cause I've seen them a lot over the years, but I was like, wait a minute. This is great. Yeah. Who's your favorite, um, pop bass? Well, you already said so it's, it's, um, from chic. Yeah. And he turned me on to James Jameson, the Motown guy. Um, and you know, and, um, you know, the Philly soul guy, Ronnie, um,
um i mean you know there's not i mean you know contemporary bassists i mean we've got vicky from maneskin on this new record and i think right now she is like what she's doing for electric bass she's turning like a whole generation of girls particularly uh onto electric bass she's a force man and you know i met those guys uh and um
I was at a party and I'd met the drummer once before. He's like, oh, the whole band are here. You must meet us. You know, this is so-and-so and so-and-so. And I meet the singer and the guitar player is super sweet. And this is Vicky. She's the bass player. I'm like, what? And like, you're the bass player. Oh, my God. You know, she's such a she's a pistol, you know, and sweet, but like sexy and charming. And so we're talking about bass and, um,
Who's your favorite bass? Who was your bass inspiration? You know, she's like Tina Weymouth. I'm like, wow. Yeah. Tina Weymouth. Of course. So like, you know, so like Duran, we're doing Psycho Killer. I'm like, I got to get Vicky on this. So, you know, Vicky, she flew up to London and, and came and played on the track. And, and she was just,
She was so professional and so sweet. And, you know, so I actually think, again, she's doing wonders for electric bass right now. She's out there selling it, you know, to a lot of young kids. Psycho killer. What a great...
Um, any Oingo Boingo in there? No. Cause I, I'm always like there when I think, I remember their amazing Halloween shows. I must've gone to a 5,000. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a thought. I mean, we never really got them over, over the water. Uh,
You know, I think that I probably was aware of Danny Elfman as a, you know, as a composer. And then somebody said, yeah, he was in a band called Oingo Boingo, you know, and that's kind of how I came to them. Dead Man's Party. Dead Man's Party for me, the ultimate. It's...
It's so insane. I mean, the thing of what he did there and then went on to write so many scores. I've had him on the show as well. He's great. What are your next dates? Are you off for a couple of weeks or are you back out? No, I'm in D.C. for a couple of days. We play here on Wednesday. Then we're kind of into the last lap. We go up to Kentucky, Detroit, a couple of shows in Canada.
And then we finish in New York on the 22nd, Atlantic City on the 23rd. And then we're done really with this touring cycle. And I don't know. I don't know when the next show will be. We're talking about summer next year, outdoors, festivals. I mean, it's fun to do festivals. You know, we never used to do those back in the day. But Europe particularly, you know, it's a way of reaching people.
you know, audiences, people that probably wouldn't come to see you if it was just a Duran show. The loudest I've ever heard a crowd. Been to a lot of things. Super Bowls. Every account, without a doubt, Duran Duran,
It was a show in Connecticut I came to. Must have been 86. Is that possible? Hartford Civic Center. Yes. Hartford Civic. Loudest I've ever heard. Because, you know, girls have that ability to put it into an octave. It's like a jet engine. I'm surprised you're not deaf. I'm surprised you guys aren't deaf.
Yeah, I'm lucky. I don't know. But, you know, I love volume. You know, I make everybody around me crazy with volume. I can listen to music loud all the time. Yeah, that was... I'll never forget it, man. That was... What do you... Do you have...
When you look out at young bands coming up and you see them go through the natural phases and the natural evolutions, like you're the outsider, then you break in, then you're accepted, then you're the gold standard, then you have a fallow period and they're over and then there's the comeback. And it's the same cliched trajectory, really. Yeah.
for anybody if you're lucky enough and talented enough to survive. Everybody has. I don't care who you are. There is. Do you ever just sit back and go, yeah, I see what's next. I see how this is going to go. Yeah. I mean, to your point, I think there's even a self-sabotaging that can happen because...
When you're at the top, the pressure is such that you almost don't want to live there. Nobody really wants to live there for long. So you're going to parachute down from that one way or the other. And I think it's just at that point, then it's can you pick up...
when you're outside of the Zieggeist, I know exactly what you mean by that. Because, you know, for our, you know, for the first three or four years, we were surfing. We were like, we were, without even thinking, we never gave a thought to what's hip or cool because we were just in it, you know? And then you kind of like,
you know, you know, then you, you get out of it and you take a break. Somebody has a kid, somebody gets married, you know, you spend your money, put your feet up and then you're like, oh, and then you get back in the bus and you're like, well, wait a minute. Where's, where is hip now? You know, and then you kind of chase and then you kind of chasing it for a while, you know, and you're just trying to write a song like that one, you know, why can't we just, you know, and then, you know, if you're lucky, you can kind of,
Like for us, it was the song Ordinary World that just like, we didn't set out to write a song that would speak to our audience, these kids that had gone away, got married,
you know, had kids five years later, they hear ordinary world and it speaks to them the way that planet earth and girls on film spoke, you know, or spoke to them five years earlier. Right. You know, and that was like, Oh my God. I mean, we were like into the nineties. Yes. You know, you're into your second decade and that was massive song. And I think that, you know, again, Simon and I were talking after the show, we were talking about Diane Warren, you know, who,
She'd written that song with Ferreira Smith, you know, and there was a time where people were saying, you know, you should get Diane Warren to write a song for you, you know. And we just kind of held out, you know, and we just figured it out for ourselves, you know, and we just, we never, you know, we just, we've always had it.
Well, we haven't always, but when we've needed to, we've had a tremendous sense of possibility within each other. And I've gone and written songs, been in the studio with enough other musicians and writers to know that these guys, the potential for doing something great with these guys is enormous.
is as likely as anybody. That they're hungry, that there's sensibilities. We feed each other really well, particularly when it comes to writing music. We're all passionate. We all take it seriously. We have to have
There has to be an adult in the room. You know, there has to be a producer, you know, whether it's Niall or Mark Ronson or Errol Alkin on Future Past. There has to be somebody, and I'm sure you find this with directors. Sometimes, you know, we can get, we can get, we've been doing it a long time. You can get self-conscious about it.
can I really do this? Is this really me? And sometimes you need somebody outside to say, no, you can absolutely do this, you know? And, and, and, you know, we're like, oh, great, let's go there. You know, sometimes it really helps. Well, almost always it helps to have somebody outside reminding you who you are and what you do, you know, better than anybody. There's a reason why you got to be who you are. And it's tricky because, you know,
you've got an audience that would, to some extent, would have you do remakes of the hits forever. Right. You know, but that producer sort of stretches that. But if they're the right producer, they're fans of the band, or they at least understand the DNA of the band, and they can see, they see the possibility that remains in it, you know. So we're lucky. We're lucky we've got great producers that we've worked with over the years. That's the most important thing.
choice for us but like the new song the songs on the new hour on dance macabre you know we got ben hudson in for two of the songs he worked on paper gods with us and nile came in and wrote black moonlight with us so you know we're really lucky and i think people enjoy coming to the studio with duran for a couple of days couple of days a couple of days nobody wants to be in for years yeah we can get we nobody likes getting lost in the weeds you know what i mean it's like
Yes. But sometimes, you know, you've got to go through, sometimes you've got to go through those phases. Well, the new album is sick. It sounds good. And by the way, it sounds good loud. I think it needs to be played loud.
Yeah, I'm all for that. I mean, we still have our hearing, so might as well destroy what we have left. Agreed. It was great having you, man. This is so fun. Thank you. It's always a good day when the Durans are in the house. Appreciate it. And yeah, Cass Elway, he's my, I love him so much. I love him. And Priscilla. That was a great time. It was a great time in LA. It was a great time in LA. Really great. I mean, they were like,
I don't know. They, I mean, they, it was like they had a salon. Oh, they did. They were, you know, I met Timothy Leary, you know, at their house. And, and I mean, when they broke up, I mean, I mean, people were like, you know, it was like, what? Yeah. You know, where are we going to, where are we going to meet people? You know, I know where, where will all the Brit expats go in LA? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were, they were great. Their kids are beautiful. You know, they're,
And Cassian, he's just lovely. There's nobody like him. Nobody like him. Total original. There'll never be another. Oh, thanks, man. I'm super excited. So glad you're doing great. It really makes me happy. What a great guy. Great guy. Looks great. Killing it. So inspiring. Really, really inspiring. I'm pumped up. All right. You know what time it is. It's time to check the Lowdown Line podcast.
Hello, you've reached literally in our lowdown line where you can get the lowdown on all things about me, Rob Lowe. 323-570-4551. So have at it. Here's the beep.
Finally got around to watching The Grinder based on all your references on your show and really, really loved it. Loved all the dramatic music, loved how it reminded me of lots of kind of crazy dramas from my youth and all just the excellent cast in there and how you guys all work together. Sure wish there were more seasons. My question is, you've been in so many different movies and TV shows.
Where once in a while, you probably have to learn how to do a certain skill well enough to look authentic. Say, for example, learning how to skate in your hockey movie Youngblood, or maybe, of course, what you've talked about with the saxophone for St. Elmo's Fire. Was there ever something that you had to learn?
where you ended up falling in love with it and it became a big part of your life? That's my question. Thanks, Rob. Oh, thanks, brother. That's super nice. Yeah, so I literally did not even know how to skate when I signed up to do Youngblood. I mean, I could skate, but the wobbly ankles, skating around the ice rink at Christmas, holding hands with a girlfriend, whatever.
you know, skating up to the boards and grabbing on to stop. That was the level of my skating. And I did a super intensive, it was four to six weeks, I forget really, skating every day, power skating coach, weights training, and then hockey coaching. And by the end of it, I could skate pretty damn well. I did all my own skating in Youngblood.
except stick handling, as you know, as a hockey coach, is a whole other level of expertise. So anytime there's any complex stick handling, it's not me. So if you see a puck in the shot, it's not me. Yeah, if you see a puck in the shot, it's not me. And if there is no puck and no stick handling involved, it's me doing the skating. I probably did 80% of the skating in Youngblood, but I did not do that penalty shot. Thanks for the question.
I don't know about you guys, but I am, I'm going to be doing a deep dive of the Durans right now. I got to go get on the treadmill. Got an hour I got to do. It's going to be Duran Duran for a solid hour. Oh, and St. Elmo's Fire. The other version of St. Elmo's Fire, I discovered. It's Robert Fripp's guitar. Let's go. Thanks, you guys. Really, really, really great show. Thanks for being with me. And I'll see you next week here on Literally. Literally.
You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Nick Liao. With help from associate producer Sarah Begar. Research by Alyssa Grawl. Editing by Jerron Ferguson. Engineering and mixing by Rich Garcia. Our executive producers are Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and myself for Team Coco, and Colin Anderson for Stitcher. Booking by Deirdre Dodd. Music by Devin Bryant. Special thanks to Hidden City Studios.
Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally with Rob Lowe. All set for your flight? Yep. I've got everything I need. Eye mask, neck pillow, T-Mobile, headphones. Wait, T-Mobile? You bet. Free in-flight Wi-Fi. 15% off all Hilton brands. I never go anywhere without T-Mobile. Same goes for my water bottle, chewing gum, nail clippers. Okay, I'm going to leave you to it. Find out how you can experience travel better at T-Mobile.com slash travel.
Qualifying plan required. Wi-Fi were available on select U.S. airlines. Deposit and Hilton Honors membership required for 15% discount terms and conditions apply.