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Please Please Tell Me Now: The Duran Duran Story

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Please Please Tell Me Now: The Duran Duran Story

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Overview

Lifelong fans and interested newcomers will love this stunning biography of Duran Duran by the bestselling author of Gold Dust Woman and Hammer of the Gods.

In Please Please Tell Me Now, bestselling rock biographer Stephen Davis tells the story of Duran Duran, the quintessential band of the 1980s. Their pretty boy looks made them the stars of fledgling MTV, but it was their brilliant musicianship that led to a string of number one hits. By the end of the decade, they had sold 60 million albums; today, they've sold over 100 million albums—and counting.

Davis traces their roots to the austere 1970s British malaise that spawned both the Sex Pistols and Duran Duran—two seemingly opposite music extremes. Handsome, British, and young, it was Duran Duran that headlined Live Aid, not Bob Dylan or Led Zeppelin. The band moved in the most glamorous circles: Nick Rhodes became close with Andy Warhol, Simon LeBon with Princess Diana, and John Taylor dated quintessential British bad girl Amanda De Cadanet. With timeless hits like "Hungry Like the Wolf," "Girls on Film," "Rio," "Save a Prayer," and the bestselling James Bond theme in the series' history, "A View to Kill," Duran Duran has cemented its legacy in the pop pantheon—and with a new album and a worldwide tour on the way, they show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Featuring exclusive interviews with the band and never-before-published photos from personal archives, Please Please Tell Me Now offers a definitive account of one of the last untold sagas in rock and roll history—a treat for diehard fans, new admirers, and music lovers of any age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306846083
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	06/28/2022
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	360,016
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Stephen Davis is America's preeminent rock journalist and biographer, having written numerous bestsellers on rock bands, including the smash hit Hammer of the Gods. He also collaborated with legendary musicians Levon Helm and Mick Fleetwood on their autobiographies. He lives in Boston.

Part 1

Duran Duran 3

Nigel in Birmingham 7

Nights in White Satin 11

Shock Treatment 15

The Wasp 19

Blondie at Barbarella's 22

John Taylor; Dada in Birmingham 25

Art College Band 29

Nick Rhodes: Duran Duran's First Lineup 34

Part 2

Farly Girls on Film 39

Roger Taylor: Feel on the High-Hats 43

John Taylor: Moving Out of the Toy Shop 48

The Rum Runner 51

Dare to Win 56

Andy Taylor: The News from Cullercoats 61

Andy Taylor: Switchblades and Tire Irons 64

Andy Taylor: Stylish / Powerful / Inventive 68

Andy Taylor: Don't Bore Us 74

Part 3

Simon Le Bon: A Magical Day 79

Tomorrow Belongs to Us 84

Breaking Glass 89

New Romantics 94

Part 4

Unique Sound 103

Top of the Pops 109

Film on Girls 113

These Kids Looked Like Us 117

Duran Duran on the Road 122

The Prince of Pop 128

Part 5

Call It Paradise 137

The Road To MTV 143

I'm Lost and I'm Found 146

The Road to Rio 151

Dancing on the Sand 155

Fate in the Marina 161

Bloody Munich 166

Sound of Thunder 172

Part 6

Like Punk Never Happened 177

Riot in Times Square 182

Diana's Delight 188

The Mencap Fiasco 193

Ragged Tigers 198

Duran Duran into the Arena 203

"Lardo" Speaks 207

Part 7

Middle Class Heroes 217

Shattered Glass 223

The Wild Boys 230

Not "Rio" 236

The Power Station 241

That Fatal Kiss 246

Arcadia vs. the Power Station 251

Live Aid 255

Part 8

Drum 265

The Powder Station 269

Commercial Suicide 274

Burning the Ground 281

Duran Duran Fights for Life 286

Ordinary World 292

Dilate Your Mind 297

Most Wanted 302

Part 9

Pop Trash in the Year 2000 309

Hollywood Goodbye 317

Old Romantics 322

Save a Prayer 327

The Kindness of History 334

Author's Notes 337

Index 343

From the B&N Reads Blog

Page 1 of

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/21/2021
Veteran rock biographer Davis, who has written about Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, Jim Morrison, and Stevie Nicks, among others, turns his attention to Duran Duran, the English New Romantic synthesizer band that topped the charts from 1981 to 1985. Basing his account on interviews with the five-man group, he expertly chronicles their early lives and discusses the band's formation within the social context of Margaret Thatcher's England. Davis demonstrates the impact on Duran Duran of David Bowie and the funky Nile Rodgers—led group Chic, explores their relationship with pop artist Andy Warhol, and documents how MTV aided the band's meteoric rise to fame. The author describes a blur of studio sessions, mobs of rabid fans, and worldwide concerts, including Live Aid, the benefit for famine victims on the African continent. Davis also addresses the gradual unraveling of Duran Duran's "Fab Five" amid nervous exhaustion, depression, and drug abuse; and covers band members' spin-off groups Power Station and Arcadia and the group's reunion in the 2000s. VERDICT This lively, engaging work captures the initial adrenaline rush and eventual stultifying downward spiral of a band that helped define early eighties rock. Highly recommended.—David P. Szatmary, formerly with Univ. of Washington, Seattle

Library Journal

2021-04-13
A history of the quintessential video band, from its New Romantic roots to the nostalgia circuit.
Duran Duran came together in the late 1970s when the band mates were still teenagers, enchanted by Roxy Music’s musical and sartorial style, Chic’s disco-funk, and the nascent British synth-pop movement. Soon they became the house band at the Rum Runner, a dance club that was Birmingham’s answer to London’s New Romantic ground zero, the Blitz. Once singer Simon Le Bon arrived with a notebook stuffed with abstract, earnest lyrics, they developed a formula that got them halfway toward being the dominant dance-pop act of the early 1980s. The other main factor, of course, was MTV. Informed that the new cable channel was tired of rote performance videos, the band delivered ambitious clips filmed in far-flung locales (“Hungry Like the Wolf” in Sri Lanka, “Rio” in Antigua) and became superstars. Multiplatinum success brought them mansions and a glamorous social circle; keyboardist Nick Rhodes became close friends with Andy Warhol. But it also delivered a harsh backlash and cocaine habits that left the band in disarray for years to come. Veteran rock biographer Davis, best known for his 1985 Led Zeppelin biography, Hammer of the Gods, cobbled this book from interviews for a band autobiography that never came together. While he delivers some interesting details about band gossip and chart action, he rarely comes off as enthusiastic about his subject. Aside from some insights into the band’s early songs and perfunctory attempts to braid the band’s rise with Thatcherism, he's content to chronicle record releases, tours, breakups, and rehab stints, only more speedily after the band’s mid-’80s peak. If the band’s music deserves a critical reassessment, Davis isn’t interested in exploring the matter.
A disappointingly bloodless bio of a band all but defined by flash, color, and the “fervor” of their devoted fans.

Kirkus Reviews

Please Please Tell Me Now: The Duran Duran Story

Please Please Tell Me Now: The Duran Duran Story

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