It made me take a long hard look at myself. After our American tour ended I decided to dump the two bottles of wine nightly and opted for more sleep. We had about three weeks to rest and prepare before we were due to start recording the album, and once again I began to feel cautiously optimistic about the future. After the initial uncertainty about whether or not Sony would want to go ahead with another record, I felt we’d been given another great chance to shine. On
Astronaut
we’d been chasing our tails by trying to make an album that fitted the times, instead of leading the way by doing our own thing. This time around Sony said they wanted a rock album with some edge. Edge of where? I wondered. All our edges were now well rounded. I’d always favored a more rock-led approach, and I felt we were regarded as a serious rock band when we played live, but some people might feel that our recorded material gave less emphasis to rock.
John made it clear he wanted to play a big part in the production of the new album—initially he was obsessed about getting the
New Musical Express
onboard to support us. I wasn’t so sure. I have a friend in Ibiza, Andy McKay, who runs an indie rock venue, Ibiza Rocks, which promotes the Who’s Who of the
NME
indie world. Some of the best shows I’ve ever seen have been there, but I knew it would be a stretch for us to appeal to that audience, even for the most art-school version of Duran Duran.
“We’ll never fit that format. Things have changed since you left the UK,” I reminded John. “The
NME
never supported us before and they are even less likely to now.”
JT was ever the romantic and still believed we could do it, but I balked at the thought of being labeled Old Romantics, which is probably how the
NME
would have perceived us. There’s a big clue there in the name, John—
NME
stands for the
NEW Musical Express
! But if we made an edgy, alternative record and we went back to the root of where we came from, I was convinced it would be a cool place to start from. So initially, our second Sony album had nothing to do with the big commercial tricks that it later became associated with. The original plan was simply to make a record that would appeal to our fan base, something people would recognize for the songs and sounds associated with our original lineup. I reasoned that this could be the last record we would ever make, and we had a real opportunity to do something special. Eventually, we all agreed that going back to basics was our best course of action, so there was a positive quota of optimism as we prepared to commence recording. It later turned out to not be that simple because we made the classic mistake of trying to work without the balancing effect of a good producer, something we’d always had during the early eighties, throughout the period of all our best-selling records.
All we needed now was to decide on a venue for recording. Someone came up with a breathtaking plan (which was never fulfilled) to do it aboard a superyacht owned by Paul Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft. He had a $450 million vessel equipped with everything you could possibly want, including its own sound studio.
“You are welcome to use it and all you will have to pay for is your food and your catering,” we were told.
We planned to pick up the yacht in Florida and then sail it down to Brazil in time for the carnival in Rio. Here we go again, I thought, yachts, fun . . . and parties! Everything was in place, and we even got the technical specifications of the studio sent over to us, but sadly the plan fell through at the last minute due to the boat becoming unavailable.
It didn’t matter too much because we were soon offered an equally attractive alternative in the form of a $25 million mansion in San Francisco that belonged to Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf. The couple had asked us to appear at a charity event they were organizing in Las Vegas with Barbra Streisand, Robin Williams, and Celine Dion. We’d told them we didn’t think we could make it because we were due to go into the recording studio, and we were once again thinking of renting a place in the south of France.
“Look no further,” they responded. “You can use our home in San Francisco instead and turn that into a recording studio!”
It was an offer too good to refuse (along with being on the bill with Babs), so we accepted with the quid pro quo being that we agreed to attend the charity function in Vegas. Andre and Steffi weren’t living at the house at the time, so there would be plenty of room for all our gear, and we were promised the complete run of the place for three weeks.
We were all looking forward to the trip, even though we only had a short break, but unfortunately the mood was soured when we had another row over money. Back in the eighties, anything we made after the Berrows had taken their cut had been split five equal ways, but now Nick and Simon argued that they were entitled to more because they had the most time served in the band. But did that “time served” really have such a positive effect on the Duran Duran legend? I tried to see their point, but it was always my understanding that I’d eventually be brought back up to parity. I had several blazing rows with our management about it. I felt that the input from Roger and me over the last five years had been crucial to help the band to the point where we were grossing millions of dollars on the road and Sony wanted to pick up a second album. At the same time, I was beginning to question what sort of percentage our management were taking from us, as I’d understood that the amount would be reduced after we’d grossed a certain amount of money from being on the road. So here we were, five years into our reunion, and still arguing about who got paid what.
WHEN
we arrived in San Francisco we found the property we were staying at breathtaking. Andre and Steffi had clearly not spared a penny on the decor. The mansion was set in its own sumptuous grounds on a hillside across the bay from the Golden Gate Bridge. It was surrounded by some of the most expensive real estate in the world and it enjoyed sweeping views of Alcatraz down in the bay. I think it was a good job Andre and Steffi weren’t around, because we soon turned the place into one big rock-and-roll recording party. We hired a professional chef and he turned out to be someone who had his own posse of mad friends from San Francisco. They all descended on the place on the first Sunday evening that we were there. The party just seems to find us!!!
Bloody hell, how are we going to get through this for the next three weeks?
I asked myself.
There were CCTV cameras located throughout the grounds. I remember standing in the kitchen early one morning with John as we watched a hilarious scene unfold on a TV monitor that was trained on the gates. There were two women who’d been guests of our chef friend, and they’d clearly been partying through the night. I didn’t think it was a good idea to give out the code to the gates to any of the guests, so they were in the process of climbing over the wall. Here we were in one of the most heavily policed parts of America, and there were guests clambering over the gates at 7 a.m. to leave the party! I’m sure Andre and Steffi would have been horrified, but thankfully none of the partygoers caused any damage, and we had cleaners who came up to the house each day to make sure we kept it shipshape.
We soon settled into a working pattern that was reasonably productive, although we could never quite finish what we were trying to do. In the past we’d had solid producers like Colin Thurston, Alex Sadkin, and Nile Rodgers, who’d helped to organize the band whenever we were recording, but on this occasion we were going it alone. In my opinion it was a mistake, because no matter how good an artist you are, you need the input of a producer because it’s impossible to be objective about your own work.
Prior to leaving for San Francisco, I’d sat down and relistened to all the classic albums by David Bowie, because he’d been one of the roots of my inspiration when I was younger. I’d started writing material in different keys to what you’d normally use in order to make things sound a bit edgier. John, meanwhile, seemed determined to take center stage, and I noticed that he began to act more and more as if
he
was the producer by trying to coax the best out of Simon. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be working, and the vocals refused to flow. We got bits and pieces in the bag, and I was heavily involved in writing a great deal of the material along with Simon. The creative process was something that the two of us had worked on together, but the guitar often sounded a bit too loud, and at times it seemed to overpower Simon. By the time our three weeks had passed we didn’t have any songs completed, so we were supposed to meet up again in London soon afterward. I was disappointed as I felt we’d lost the momentum.
I spent the next few weeks with Tracey and our children revisiting some of our favorite haunts from when we’d previously lived in California. You could feel the conservative tide that had swept through America since our time there, but Tracey still regarded it as a home away from home. We looked up lots of old friends and it should have been a very nice time, but the problem was,
none
of it felt very nice to me. I’d stopped drinking and doing any of the things that affected me negatively, but I was still feeling very, very low. I still had trouble dealing with the loss of my father, and it struck me that most of my natural family back in Newcastle were now all dead, apart from one cousin. All my aunts and uncles who’d shared those long summer singsongs with my grandparents were all gone. Of course I had my own wonderful family now, but it still felt as if someone had cut the rope to my old life because there was nothing left back in Newcastle where I came from. It was a strange feeling, as if I was adrift six thousand miles away in California.
BY
the time we prepared to reconvene in London, there had been no progress in the vocals department and it was now November. With hindsight it now seems obvious that we were heading for trouble. I was worried that we were moving too fast toward releasing the new album when we didn’t have sufficient vocals in the bag. I poured out to everyone in the band. “Does anybody honestly think it’s much fun having such an unplanned and incoherent schedule?” I asked.
Roger agreed that although the songs sounded great, it was very disappointing there had not been any progress with the vocals. Like me, he thought it was pointless to create any more backing tracks until Simon had nailed the existing tunes. There was also talk of trying to crank things up by tying the new album to a motion picture. I could see the potential in this, but I felt it was a very big idea to add to the proceedings at this stage. I again outlined to everyone my worries about our lack of direction and my fears that we were in danger of going ahead too early with the album. Looking at our recent record and ticket sales, I argued that we had to be realistic about the fact that we might not be able to shift anywhere near what we needed to ticket-wise if we went out too early.
I expressed my fears that the timeline being predicted for the release of the new album was not enough to accommodate our task. If we fucked up, we’d face an early bath, I warned. What we needed was finished songs, which we didn’t have. Even Nick, so often my adversary, was willing to concede up to a degree that I had a point. He subsequently agreed we needed to be careful not to lose momentum or miss deadlines. Roger, shrewdly, added that until our existing material had reached its full vocal potential, if we did any more backing tracks all we would create was an “illusion of progress.”
WE
did some more recording in February 2006, and this time John seemed more determined than ever to take on the role of producer. It wasn’t something that he articulated openly to us but he once again started taking center stage at every opportunity. I often wonder at what point in his day he decided to grab the bullshit by the horns. I agreed with his need to be positive, but it was overdone.
“Just drop that bit in here, Charlie, and do it like this,” John would command Simon.
JT’s enthusiasm was frightening at times, considering the quality of the material, and a more reluctant rather than petulant Le Bon would go with the flow. I guess working closer to John was some relief for Simon from me or Nick, however misguided it was. I think deep down John might have been trying to compensate for the fact that he’d missed out on a lot of the creative process in the eighties because he’d been so blitzed all the time. He was stone-cold sober now, but much as I love him to bits as a person, he’s no producer. It was something that he’d never done before, and none of us seemed to be reacting positively to it. Nick has an ear for hearing when something is right and has a clinical way of getting things correct, but he seemed to have lost patience with Simon, and they no longer seemed to have a strong creative relationship.
So it was amid growing pressure that we found ourselves at Sphere Studios in London, which consisted of a big studio room, a drum room, and a lounge. By now I’d finished about twelve tracks as best as I could, but I felt there wasn’t much melody to any of them. I was in the lounge watching the TV news when I realized I’d been sitting there for the last three days doing nothing apart from listening to John go over the same old things with Simon every time the studio door opened. It was costing us £3,000 a day in studio fees (even though by now I had my own studio in Ibiza) and yet they still seemed to be gardening up a hill. We’d spent £9,000 after three days and I was sitting around doing nothing hour after hour, having played enough guitar parts for about three albums. We needed a producer badly, and I wanted to stop the group from making a costly and irreversible mistake, as we were already heading well over our $450,000 budget to record the album.
“That’s it. I’m out of here,” I said.
“Finished for the day, AT?” I remember a sarcastic voice saying to me.
No, my friend, I am off back to a free bed and my family while you work this thing out. I don’t and never have written lyrics. But I have a wife and four kids at home and they really do need babysitting, so that’s where I will be. Additionally, you know that I have the studio at home where we can work for free at anytime, so let’s cut the costs and get away from this very unproductive environment.