Duran Duran Seeks Fresh Domination of Planet Earth
British pop legends Duran Duran, which enjoyed a string of hits in the 1980s, wants to convert a new generation of “Duranies” during a worldwide tour announced on Thursday.
Duran Duran’s business manager David Ravden told Reuters the band had almost finished a new album, which it is planning to release early next year and will follow with a worldwide tour.
The band, which has sold more than 60 million albums in the last 20 years and reformed last year, has not signed with a record label, but Ravden said negotiations were under way.
“We are talking to and are in negotiations with a number of major record companies, but I cannot name them,” he said.
The news will be music to the ears of devoted Duranies who kept the flame for the idols of the New Romantic movement burning through hundreds of fan clubs from Moscow to New Zealand to Taipei.
Although often ridiculed for their stylized videos and penchant for eyeliner and pixie boots, more than 50,000 Internet pages are devoted to Duran Duran. Even Britain’s late Princess Diana once gushed that they were her favorite band.
While the original band members — singer Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, Andy Taylor, John Taylor and Roger Taylor — once graced the bedroom walls of countless teenage girls, they are not the young bucks they once were.
But Ravden was confident the five, now in their 40s, were in good shape to take on their younger pop rivals in the battle for a new generation of fans.
“Obviously when you are 20 you are invariably slightly slimmer that when you are 40. But the labels we have met have commented on how good everyone looks.”
Duran Duran formed in 1978 but did not achieve great success until after they recruited frontman Simon Le Bon, who is married to model Yasmin Le Bon.
The band shot to fame with albums such as Big Thing, Rio and Arena in the 1980s but a line-up change and changing music tastes saw it fade into relative obscurity in the 1990s.
The original members came together for the first time 15 years in 2001 to record an album.
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