The Albums That Saved Us: Rio Duran Duran

Listen to The Albums That Saved Us: Rio Duran Duran.

Welcome to The Albums that saved us. This week’s album is Rio by Duran Duran. 

The quintessential 80s album, the quintessential 80s videos that helped put MTV on the map, and the quintessential 80s band, at least until about 1985. This year is the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Rio album, and it’s certainly one of the albums that saved us.

Though those MTV videos put Duran Duran on the map in the USA, they started small in Birmingham England of 1978, founded by school friends Nick Rhodes and John Taylor, getting together around their love of Bowie and Roxy Music. Eventually, the band would say they wanted to be a blend of punk and disco, Chic and the Sex Pistols. 

The name of the band came from the 70s camp space opera Barbarella, starring Jane Fonda. The character's name in the film was actually Duran’d Duran’d...drop a couple of Ds, gain a couple of Ds.

“Barbarella? Yes Mr. President?” “Find Duran’d Duran’d…”

Interestingly, the first Duran gigs were actually in a club called Barbarella’s, with a drum machine. 

Some members came and went before they pulled in funky disco fan drummer Roger Taylor, who clicked well with bassist John Taylor. Eventually, they’d get up to three Taylors in the band, none of them related. Maybe Taylors are the Smiths of England? The Joneses? 

Perhaps they could have been The Taylors, or Taylor Taylor, or Taylor, Taylor, Taylor. Taylor...? Taylor...?

The third and final Taylor, rocking session musician Andy Taylor, came along via an ad in Melody Maker magazine. A couple of singers later, Simon Le Bon waltzed in in leopard pants clutching a notebook of poetry that would form the basis of many of Duran’s early songs. 

The band was now a unit and based at the Rum Runner club, where they worked in various roles, rehearsed, and played shows at night as pioneers of the “new romantic” scene. They didn’t coin the term, but put it into their early hit and first single “Planet Earth.”

“Some new romantic looking for the tv sound…” All the Duranies listening now are saying “switch it up!” If I have to tell you...

Duran was always an artsy and visual band. Model good looks, snazzy dressers from their mom's blouses to military-style, to Antony Price colorful suits, all the while pushing the boundaries of audio and visual. They changed hair colors so many times, early on I thought they had different line-ups. 

From the start they were a visual band, and blended music with film in music videos, pushing the boundaries in more ways than one. They wanted to get beyond a music video of a band playing a song, and tell stories. Their early on long-form video for Girls on Film was racy, softcore porn banned by the BBC, pushing the song into their first top ten hit, and helping their first album debut at number three on the British charts.

Duran Duran were on a roll, and the Rio album came out in the spring of 82. It entered the English charts at number two, and singles like Hungry Like the Wolf and Save A Prayer were top ten hits. The band and their management had decided they needed to be part of this MTV scene, and push what the channel was playing, and hopefully break the US market.

The band traveled to Sri Lanka and Antigua between tour dates to film several music videos, some of which probably never saw airplay on MTV, but the Indiana Jonesesque Hungry Like the Wolf, the sweeping temples and beaches of Save a Prayer, and the beach yacht fantasy of Rio would get constant airplay on early MTV. Other lesser-known videos shot during the same period included "Lonely in Your Nightmare" and "Night Boat" featuring a creepy zombiefest storyline set on a deserted island.

I’m sure my intro to Duran Duran was via one of those ubiquitous videos that seemed to play so much on MTV. Obviously the storytelling in the videos stood out, but there was something about the style of the band and the songs that really grabbed me. It was a prolific time for the band too, and they seemed to not only be all over MTV but all over the radio as well.

Not only were the videos iconic, but the Rio album cover is likely one of the most recognized album covers from the 80s, whether you were a fan or not. The cover art was from a painting by Patrick Nagel...Nagel? Nay-jel? An artist well known for his almost art deco art featuring women, with a very 80s feel, even for the time. The 80s DURING the 80s.

Upon release in the US, the album didn’t do well. Originally it featured the same mixes as on the UK release. In the early 80s 12 inch singles, extended versions, and dance versions were big at the time for the clubs. The band had been working with producer David Kershenbaum on dancier sounding extended versions for the clubs. Soon after the collected remixes were released on an EP called Carnival including versions of "Rio", "Hold Back the Rain", "My Own Way", "Hungry Like the Wolf", and "New Religion".

Perhaps the “new romantic” style wasn’t going over well with the US audience. The new romantic style was very British. The band thought the dancier versions might go over better with the US audience, and pushed for a US re-issue of Rio with the Kershenbaum mixes, and brought him back in to remix more of the tracks. The new mixes featured a dancier, rocker sound, with heavier drums and additional percussion at the forefront.

“Most of these go to ten...This one is different...it goes to eleven…”

“Why not make ten ONE louder?”

“But...this one goes to eleven.”

The band seemed like it was pumping out music, videos, and releases because it was. The band also released the first “video album” of its time, featuring the videos from the Rio album, and their debut album Duran Duran. Soon after they also re-released the debut album in the US, with the newly added track “Is There Something I Should Know” which became another hit for the band, keeping them at the forefront.

Duran Duran’s Rio album has had a long-lasting legacy to this day. According to Wikipedia, “In 2000, Rio was ranked #98 in Q magazine's "100 Greatest British Albums". In 2003, it was listed at #65 in the NME "100 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2004, CMJ ranked it as #1 in their "Top 20 Most-Played Albums of 1982". In 2008 it was ranked 24th best British album of all time in a joint HMV Q poll. It ranked #95 in Pitchfork's Top 100 Albums of the 1980s and is included in the list 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. In April 2013, Rio was voted number 3 in BBC Radio 2's Top 100 Favourite Albums of all time.”

I do want to talk about the production on this album for a bit, especially the drums. So back in the 80s, albums were recorded much differently than they are now, in the digital age. In the analog age, you’d have many tracks recorded on tape that would literally have to be pieced together. The Rio album is a very layered album. Obviously you’ve got bass and guitar, vocals, and keys, backing vocals, drums, and percussion. Singer Simon LeBon would record multiple vocal tracks and in essence harmonize with himself.

Duran Duran is one of my favorite bands of all time, particularly the Rio era. Roger Taylor has always been one of my drumming idols, and a huge influence. I used to watch him play in the music videos and on TV appearances. This story is for another episode, but I played Roger in a Duran Duran tribute band called Rio for a couple of years. I’ve studied the music of Duran Duran and in particular the drumming of Roger Taylor. 

Roger was largely a funk drummer and favored a dancy sound. Duran Duran was very influenced by disco and in particular Chic. Chic’s drummer was Tony Thompson, a very heavy funk drummer who would not only play on Chic’s hits, other disco hits, and hits from the 80s as well. He was also the drummer for the Power Station Duran Duran spin-off that featured Robert Palmer on vocals, and John and Andy from Duran on bass and guitar. Eventually, Michael De Barres had to step in on the first Power Station tour, when Palmer pulled out.

That disco dancey drumming often featured a cross high hat playing style, so you’d hear a chick-a chick-a chick-a sound. Now let’s go back to our recording. So Roger has talked about recording the early albums in interviews back then and more recently. Back on those early albums, each drum was individually recorded and then pieced together. Then Roger would go back in and overdub cymbals, percussion, high hat. He’d do a rock high-hat track and usually a cross-hand dancey high hat track as well, and also record accents on roto-roms and his Simmons electro toms. Now in the digital era, part of a drum track can be recorded, snipped, and dropped in digitally. In the early 80s, if you were laying down a drum track for a 5-minute song, you played that drum part for 5 minutes. 

The other members had their contributions obviously. John Taylor has always been an underrated bass player, and his bass playing really stands out on the Rio track. Andy Taylor was a rock guitarist, Nick Rhodes punctuated with keys and synths, and dressed with style, while Simon featured his interesting almost whiny vocal style and poetic lyrics. The girls...and some boys loved it!

So let’s get to the Rio album. Now, for those listening, and I hope you were, When Rio was released in May 1982, it featured nine tracks mixed from the original master tapes. Six months later, a second version of the album was re-released in North America that replaced many of the original mixes with remixes by producer David Kershenbaum.

What I want to focus on is the Rio Deluxe Edition released in 2015 because it’s so expansive, and covers the US and UK variations along with single versions, remixes, and even some early demos.

Let me say, at least to me, Rio is an album where every track is strong. There’s a little variation here and there, but it’s a cohesive album full of great rockers, ballads, and more. Plus it’s got a good beat you can dance to.

The album opens with Rio, that funky danceable track we’ve talked about. Rio was kind of meant to be an ode to the US and the band breaking in the US. The mythology of the iconic video and even the album cover tie into the mystique of this song. Is it a girl in the song? Is she the girl from the album cover? Is the girl from the video Rio? The track really highlights the musicianship of the band, with the funky drums and bass, the sweeping keyboards, Andy’s guitar, and Simon’s odd lyrics that rarely make sense. Frequent Duran saxophonist Andy Hamilton is featured here as well, adding a lot to the track. “Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand, just like that river twisting through the Rio Grande…” Truly one of the great 80s songs, and one of Duran’s tops.

Next out is My Own Way, which was also a single, featuring a very different version with an almost orchestral keyboard track throughout.

Things slow down a bit with the ballad Lonely In Your Nightmare. Good track, and also one of the videos from the Sri Lanka trip thought not one of the more well-known videos.

Things pick back up with Hungry Like the Wolf, an 80s classic, quintessential Duran with rocking guitar, pounding drums, epic electro, and roto tom overdubs that really accentuate the track. And the video is epic. There are a few different versions of this track with the aforementioned varied drums, heavier drums, more moans, less moans. Is that Rio moaning at the end? The laughter at the beginning and the moaning at the end were actually performed by Nick’s girlfriend at the time. Who knew?

Hold Back the Rain was one of the tracks with a few different versions between the UK and US, with slightly different arrangements, drums, and even lyrics. It features some nice percussive accents from Roger, like bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump! “Andy, help me hold back the rain!” 

From here, the album takes a bit of a moodier turn.

New Religion is described in the Rio liner notes as "a dialogue between the ego and the alter-ego", which is reflected in the chorus, where two conflicting voices sing on top of each other.

Take another chance boy, carry the fight, you can take 'em if you're fast

(Don't know why this evil bothers me?)

So didn't I say if you're holding on you'll be laughing at the last?

(So why are they trying to follow me?)

I get along fine with them friends of mine but you have to make a choice

(How many reasons do they need)

You're singing out of tune but the beat's in time and it's us who make the noise

(I might just believe this time)

I’ve always kind of lumped Last Chance on the Stairway in with Lonely In Your Nightmare. Good tracks that fit on the album, a little more on the ballad side.

Save A Prayer is the iconic love song, and part of the Rio troika of Rio, Hungry and Save. Perhaps the most Sri Lankaesque of the videos, featuring long walks on the beach, Hindu temples, linen outfits, and live shots of the band, and fans with lighters held high. Sounds like my Playboy profile.  And remember, ‘Some people call it a one night stand, but we could call it paradise…”

The album closes with the epic dark horse The Chauffeur. I agree with the fans that think this is one of Duran’s best tracks. It’s moody and grey and mean and restless. It almost doesn’t fit on the album and may have fit better on Duran’s first album. It’s a dark sweeping track. These are among LeBon’s most poetic lyrics, and he’d written this as a poem before he was even in the band.

And watching lovers part I feel you smiling

What glass splinters lie so deep in your mind?

To tear out from your eyes with a word to stiffen brooding lies

And I'll only watch you leave me further behind

The Chauffeur also includes the very Duranesque phrase Sing Blue Silver, which would be the name of the film chronicling the Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour, when Duran were quickly ascending to being the biggest band in the world. This is another steamy video, which doesn’t feature the band at all. It’s an artsy black and white piece featuring two women in lingerie, one is the chauffeur. They drive and dance topless in a parking garage. More Duran softcore art-porn for early 80s boys and girls. 

Hey, it was tough back then! Some of us just had Girls on Film and The Chauffeur!

From here, the deluxe version of Rio includes remixes of several tracks. My Own Way is the extended remix from the Carnival EP, and Rio, Lonely In Your Nightmare, Hungry Like the Wolf, and Hold Back the Rain are from the Kershenbaum mixes for the US re-release.

We also get some nice demos that had been previously unreleased, and called “The Manchester Square Demos.” These were recorded in August 1981 and include Last Chance on the Stairway, My Own Way, New Religion, and the excellent b side Like an Angel, which should have been on an album. Interestingly, I believe the demo version of My Own Way features the only time Simon’s recorded dropping an F-bomb in the lyrics cuz...he does it his own way.

Next, we get some non-album singles and b sides. The studio version of Like an Angel is here, a rocking live version of Careless Memories from the tour for the first album, and an acoustic version of The Chauffeur. Also, there’s the 7” version of My Own Way, featuring that orchestral feel.

Next, we get some of Duran’s Night Version remixes including My Own Way, Hungry, Rio, and New Religion. Basically the night versions are extended mixes, with different extended openings and ends. 

Obviously Duran toured extensively for this album and got bigger and bigger as they toured the world. They wasted little time and then recorded Seven and the Ragged Tiger, and toured again. From there they released a live album, the Wild Boys single, a James Bond theme in a View to Kill and then stumbled their way through a set at Live Aid after not rehearsing for months until the day before. 

John and Andy had already ventured off to do the Power Station, and Nick, Simon and for a bit, Roger decided to counter with the artsier, moodier, more theatrical Arcadia. Where Power Station was a heavier funkier alternative, Arcadia was closer to Duran but with more keyboards and instrumentation. I always thought Arcadia SHOULD have been a Duran album and is the best album Duran never did.

Duran Duran was on a break and didn’t come out of it well and rested. Power Station toured with a different singer than Robert Palmer as we’ve mentioned. Arcadia didn’t tour. Partway through Arcadia, Roger quit the band. Soon after the Power Station tour, Andy quit the band. 

Simon, Nick, and John soldiered on and put out the Nile Rodgers of Chic produced pseudo funky and white boy soul Notorious with Steve Ferrone on drums, and Warren Cuccurillo on guitar, Cuccurillo would stay with the band for several albums and tours.

Duran honestly struggled with their own legacy and identity for years, trying many different styles that often didn’t fit, straying too far from the approach and sound perfected on Rio. They had a slight comeback in the early 90s and a couple of hits that had been missing for them in Ordinary World and Come Undone. It seemed Duran didn’t really get respect back until 2010 came around, and Mark Ronson saved them with the All You Need Is Now. He brought the band literally back to their old sound and recording style, and it worked. They seem to have been riding a nostalgia wave since then.

Rio is arguably Duran’s best record. For me, other standouts are the first self-titled album, Notorious, and the 2010 savior All You Need Is Now, surprisingly good for a late in their career band. I was never a huge fan of Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Good tracks, but overall bloated and over-produced for my tastes.

I’ve seen Duran Duran live several times. They put on a good show. Their Strange Behavior Tour for the Notorious album was my first concert! I saw them a couple of years later on the Big Thing tour. Decent show, but truncated versions and medlies of hits didn’t really do it for me. Years later I’d catch them on the Red Carpet Massacre tour. Fine show. 

I was lucky to see them in a smallish club in LA called The Mayan, supporting the All You Need is Now album and a live webcast experiment with David Lynch. This was my favorite time I’ve seen them as I was so close. 

I also saw them play in Costa Mesa, at the fairgrounds, fantastic show, and setlist with some nice gems thrown in. I think we got Election Day, Skin Trade, and Do You Believe in Shame. I can’t remember if this was at the end of the Red Carpet Massacre tour or the All You Need Is Now tour. Sorry.

Unfortunately, I sever saw them with the original lineup that reunited in the early 00s.

Duran Duran is a band that wears their influences on their sleeves. Obviously you will see some Bowie and Roxy Music in them. Also, look for some hints of Japan as well. Chic was a huge influence. Listen to Le Freak and you can almost hear the seeds of Duran Duran.

Duran Duran has influenced a ton of bands through today. The Killers are big fans, as are My Chemical Romance. Also, look at bands like Franz Ferdinand and Scissor Sisters for influence.

Duran really took me back to their influences. If you like Duran, listen to Bowie, Roxy Music, and other glam music. You should also listen to Chic if you’re interested in Duran Duran. Also check out The Power Station, especially the debut album, and of course Arcadia’s So Red the Rose, again, should have been a Duran Duran album, and the best album Duran Duran never did. And they have the best James Bond theme in View to a Kill, and that’s not bad.

So that’s my take on...Duran Duran’s Rio album.

Let me know if you’ve got anything to add, disagree, or whatever...

Thanks for listening to the Albums that saved us and thanks to Anchor for helping me get started. Visit my sponsors, and if you’re inclined to donate to help the cause, maybe I’ll buy a record or something…

Find me at hashtag albumsthatsavedus

Email me at [email protected] with feedback, criticism, ideas, albums or bands you want to hear or talk about.

Join the conversation on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/albumsthatsaveduspodcast/, and there’s a Facebok group as well.

On twitter at https://twitter.com/albumsthatsaved

On Instagram at Instagram.com/albumsthatsavedus

On TikTOk at tiktok.com/albumsthatsavedus

 On You Youtube at albums that saved us.

Have any album suggestions, bands you want to talk about? Let me know…I don’t know what’s coming up next week, I haven’t decided yet.

If you like Albums That Saved Us, please also help spread the word. Share the links, tell some friends, call in, and leave a comment or question...see the option in Anchor.

We’ll see you next tiiiiiiiiimmmmmmmmeee!