Luckily, we had twigged in rehearsals that he was useless, so we decided to isolate him by putting him on one side near the DJ booth, which was encased in glass. We told him it was for acoustic reasons, and we pretended his sax was being picked up by a microphone, although secretly we had switched it off so the audience would be spared. Nonetheless, when Mike came to do his bit, his girlfriend and all the other models gathered nearby and killed themselves with laughter while he pranced around and made some dreadful noises!
We later met to decide what to do about Mike’s awful sax playing, and we decided we’d gently persuade him that his talents lay in management rather than in the band. At one point it got a bit heated, half the band regarded him as an old duffer who couldn’t play, but some of the others were more relaxed about it. I was against him playing. The way I saw things, the five us all had something special, whereas Mike just seemed to be there for vanity. In the end he saw sense and stuck to management. To be fair to Mike, he and his brother, Paul, pulled off some great stuff for us in those early days, but we were right to put our collective foot down.
The rest of the year flew by, and pretty soon we had a whole string of gigs across the Midlands under our belts. We’d play trendy wine bars and University shows, and we avoided smoky old pubs or anywhere that didn’t come up to scratch. Simon still had a lot of other commitments that we had to work around, and he insisted on pursuing his aspirations as a drama student by going up to the Edinburgh Fringe. He still harbored plans to become an actor, but eventually it became obvious that the band was going to be a full-time occupation. Simon then announced he was dropping out of University. After a while I moved in with him when a room became available in his house. It was a gaudily decorated place with gold taps, which was located near the red-light district in Moseley, so there were always a lot of dope dealers lurking nearby. A lot of the Rum Runner crowd used to smoke dope but Simon never did. I guess he was worried about the effect it might have on his voice. Nonetheless, we used to have some wild times together, and I used the new culinary skills I learned at the Rum Runner to bake some mean-tasting chocolate cakes—with a bit of help from certain resin-based ingredients.
Unlike the other three members of the band, Simon and I didn’t have the support network of our families nearby, so we focused on getting a record deal quickly because we needed one to survive financially. A week’s shopping for us was two plastic bags filled with potatoes and pasta; that was all we could afford. It was a rough area to live in, and since we wore a lot of makeup we had to stop traveling by bus due to all the stick we got from the locals. But if the going got too tough, there were some hard characters down at the Rum Runner who could look after us, including a security guy named Simon Cook. He was a smashing bloke, and his twin brother was a paratrooper who later served in the Falklands War. They were both regarded as martial arts experts at the local karate club, and eventually they came to work for us.
With Simon Le Bon now permanently on board, it wasn’t long before we started to get noticed by the music press as the New Romantic movement gathered pace. Spandau Ballet were always being mentioned in the same breath as us, so we went to see them when they played in Birmingham. We discovered they were a bunch of Cockneys who wore kilts onstage! We invited them back to the Rum Runner, and we were delighted to learn that Simon was taller than Tony Hadley. There was already a friendly rivalry starting to develop between us. Neither band had been signed by a record company at this stage, but I suppose that whenever you get two strong bands emerging at the same time you get a bit of conflict. It had been like that with the Beatles versus the Stones in the sixties, and after us in the nineties it would become Blur versus Oasis. In the eighties, it was Duran Duran versus Spandau Ballet, and we lapped up every minute of it. We also went to see Adam Ant, who was the forerunner of the New Romantic movement, at Birmingham Odeon, and we were very impressed by his live show.
After we’d played a lot of the trendy boutique-style gigs we wanted to turn things up a couple of notches. There was a young agent, Rob Hallett, who became one of the most important young people in helping to form our early career. He was a very nice guy from down South, and before getting into the music game he’d worked with mentally handicapped children. He was a couple of years older than us and he had a slight stammer that used to get more pronounced if he had a drink. It was as if he could think quicker than he could talk, but he was very smart and street-wise. Rob had heard about us, and one Sunday afternoon at three he called us to offer us a cancellation gig that night at the Marquee Club in London after another band had pulled out. We couldn’t wait to get down there, but it was a huge rush. We had to borrow a three-ton truck, and we sat in the back all the way to London. We ended up playing a great set. Rob was seriously impressed.
I remember him telling us, “It all sounds so different, but every song is a hit.” He loved us and soon afterward he told us, “I’ve got another great show for you.”
He offered us a slot opening up for John Cooper Clarke at Hammersmith Palais, and we were only too happy to oblige. He was obviously lining us up for greater things because he invited along Dave Ambrose, an A & R guy from EMI, the famous record label behind the Beatles. Dave had been a member of a band with Mick Fleetwood before he went on to form Fleetwood Mac, and he had signed the Sex Pistols to EMI, so he had been around musicians a hell of a lot and he knew his stuff. Hammersmith Palais was our first time on a really big stage, and we felt we handled it well. Dave was impressed enough that he decided to take a proper look at us afterward by coming on the road with us. We used to tour around in a big Winnebago, and occasionally we’d all have to sleep in it if we were gigging a long way from Birmingham.
The Berrows must have sensed that things were starting to happen. Mike remortgaged his house to get the cash to book us a place on Hazel O’Connor’s Megahype Tour. Hazel had just starred in the punk movie
Breaking Glass,
and she was really big at the time, so we had to pay to get on the same bill as her. I think it cost Mike around £8,000. Hazel had a lot of media currency, which helped create a lot of interest in us, and we started playing to some decent-sized audiences. We liked opening up for a girl band because it meant we didn’t have to compete with another male act on the same bill. It was a smart move that we would later repeat when we toured the States with Blondie. Along with the Berrows, who were like a protective bubble for us at this point, we had a strange instinct for making the right decisions, and our androgynous look (which was heavily influenced by Adam Ant) worked well in front of the softer audiences who were attracted by Hazel O’Connor and Blondie.
Thanks to all the fuss of the Megahype Tour, several other record labels became interested in signing us, including EMI’s rivals, Phonogram. In those days getting a record deal meant everything; it was a huge step up for a band. When more offers eventually started to come in, Phonogram put more money on the table. We decided to go with EMI, because we knew they had a global network and they could launch bands across America. The company was headed by the legendary music industry figure Bhaskar Menon, who’d presided over EMI during the rise of the Beatles.
By the time December approached—just six months or so after I’d first walked into the Rum Runner—we agreed on terms with EMI, and we were due to go down to London to sign the deal. Things had happened incredibly quickly for us. To tell you the truth, we were all still on an enormous high from all the fun and partying in Birmingham, and we hadn’t really paused to take anything in.
We were still on the road, just a few days before going to London, when Nick and I had a huge row in front of Dave Ambrose in the Winnebago. It jokily became known as the Infamous Pork Pie Incident because Nick and I got into a furious bust-up after a few too many drinks, and we ended up throwing pork pies at each other. I can’t remember what it was all over, but it caused a lot of mirth.
Eventually we all made it down to London in one piece to sign the deal. We stayed in a little hotel close to Chelsea Football Club’s ground. During all negotiations, we had insisted that we wanted to maintain creative control of all our own material, rather than let the record company dictate to us (like some bands do). We were in a position of strength, because we had written all our own tunes and we didn’t need the record company to bring in any songwriters. It was an important point, and it meant we retained an awful lot of power for the future. We felt the world was ours for the taking, and we couldn’t wait to start the ride.
For Duran Duran it was a bright new beginning, but a terrible tragedy was about to unfold. We stayed overnight in London on December 8, 1980. Everything was set for a huge celebration the following day at EMI, where many of the senior staff were still on first-name terms with the ex-members of the Beatles. But at the very moment we were about to sign our deal, a quirk of fate robbed the record company of one of its most important artists. I found out when I was just about to tuck into a breakfast of bacon and eggs in my hotel room, and I reached up above the bed to turn on the radio.
“And now over to New York where the shocking news overnight is that John Lennon has been assassinated . . .”
The news shocked the whole world—and it caused enormous upset at EMI. Some of the management at the record label had been there since the late fifties, so they personally knew the Beatles. Although none of us in Duran Duran had ever met John Lennon, he was a huge idol to us all, and our surroundings somehow brought the events in New York closer to home.
“John Lennon was the Arch Beatle . . . He never lost his gentleness or his childlike faith in the power of love and goodness,” said the tribute to him in the
Sun
the next day.
Despite the turmoil, EMI were a very professional outfit. The news didn’t prevent our deal from going ahead, although it obviously cast a pall over things. The label had been itching to sign us ahead of their rivals at Phonogram, mainly due to Dave Ambrose. When things calmed down, EMI gave us a talk about how they would give us the chance to do things in America, just as they’d done for the Beatles a generation earlier. You’ve got to be my age to remember the Beatles, but they defined the times they lived in, and for me the memory of them was still very real. Our two proudest examples of contemporary culture as a nation were music and football, which were symbolized by a copy of the
Sgt. Pepper
album and a photo of England’s 1966 World Cup–winning captain Bobby Moore in a West Ham strip.
EMI were still regarded as the home of the Beatles, and we were contented with our deal at the time. They put up £35,000 in order to fund our first album, plus each of us got a £50-a-week retainer. Crucially, they also agreed to our demands to retain creative control over everything we released. We also hammered out good clauses that guaranteed us a reasonable share of things like radio airplay money from any big hits we would have in the future. It was the Berrows who negotiated most of this deal. The band members also played our part, but this was really what the Berrows were good at—they were strong negotiators (as I’ve said, they were like a protective bubble). It felt strange and unreal to be at the headquarters of EMI negotiating a new beginning at the same time that John Lennon’s death brought to a close a huge chapter in the history of rock and roll.
We didn’t know if it was fate or a bad omen.
Girls on Film . . . and Everywhere Else!
IT’S
Christmas Eve, 1980, and I am about to take cocaine for the first time. It’s not something that I am proud of, but nor am I going to pretend that it didn’t happen. Drug use would eventually play a big part in the story of Duran Duran, and it started here. When we landed our record deal with EMI it seemed like all our dreams had come true, and we were in the mood to party. By the time we arrived back in Birmingham for Christmas we were ready to indulge in our newfound status. Getting a record deal meant everything. We had most of the material we needed for the album from our first few months together at the Rum Runner, and we were confident we’d be in a position to release it early in the new year. “Planet Earth” had been written at the club shortly before we’d gone down to London, and a decision had been made that it would be our first single. “Girls on Film” was always going to be a bigger hit, but the plan was not to release that until we’d established a bit of a profile for ourselves. We already had most of “Planet Earth” recorded, and Nick and I were due to go back down to London together on Boxing Day to finish mixing it.
“In the meantime, we’re going to have a great big piss-up,” I declared to the rest of the band.
We had a gig booked at the Cedar Club in Birmingham. We were determined to turn it into a real Christmas show, followed by a rip-roaring party at the Rum Runner. There wasn’t enough time for me to go back up to Newcastle for Christmas, so I booked into a little bed-and-breakfast hotel near to the station so that I could catch an early train down to the studio on Boxing Day. All our crew came along to the Cedar Club, which was decked out in tinsel and cheap Brummie decor that the Berrows had probably gotten from the local market. The crowd consisted of the usual mix of gorgeous women, outrageous gays, and straight guys wearing makeup. The Hazel O’Connor tour had really sharpened us up as a live band, and at the end of our performance everyone came onstage to join us as we sang a load of old numbers by David Bowie. We were a lot more confident and starting to feel like we were going places, although I got brought down to earth when I popped outside for a smoke and a bouncer refused to let me back in.
“I am actually in the band!” I said, laughing at the idea that I couldn’t get into my own gig.
I was in a great mood that night, and cocaine certainly didn’t figure into my plans when we all piled back to the Rum Runner. There used to be a short driveway outside the club, which was really just a glorified alley where the bouncers used to line up people in a queue to get inside. A guy called Al Beard was in charge of the door and he was very meticulous. As we arrived that evening I noticed there was a battered old VW camper van pulled up on the curb, right outside the Rum Runner. It struck me as a bit weird, as the only people who were usually allowed to a park there were the Berrows in their flash sports cars. They loved to show off their wealth, and in that respect I guess they were the first of a new breed of entrepreneurs who became known as Yuppies.