{"id":727,"date":"2015-07-08T10:31:50","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T18:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/?p=727"},"modified":"2023-03-07T06:35:03","modified_gmt":"2023-03-07T14:35:03","slug":"duranalysis-duran-duran-on-kulture-shock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/morganrichter.net\/blog\/duranalysis-duran-duran-on-kulture-shock\/","title":{"rendered":"Duranalysis: Duran Duran on Kulture Shock"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I came across\u00a0this fascinating cultural artifact\u00a0recently on YouTube: It\u2019s an interview with Simon and Nick from October 1984 for a music news show called\u00a0Kulture Shock<\/em>, which apparently aired on Tyne Tees Television in North East England. There\u2019s not much of an online record for\u00a0Kulture Shock<\/em>; after doing some hunting, I could only scrounge up a whopping total of four relevant search results. There\u2019s this video, there\u2019s\u00a0a performance by Duran Duran of \u201cGirls On Film\u201d<\/a>\u00a0circa \u201981 or \u201882, back when Andy had shock-white hair and everybody favored those blue-and-white striped shirts, there\u2019s an interview with the members of UB40, and there\u2019s a performance by UB40. That\u2019s it. While there\u2019s an obvious explanation for the lack of an electronic trail\u2014not everybody held onto grainy VHS copies of local television programs for thirty years before uploading them to YouTube, more\u2019s the pity\u2014I prefer to think\u00a0Kulture Shock<\/em>\u00a0catered to a very selective pop-culture niche and, indeed, only produced episodes that focused on either Duran Duran or UB40. Because that would be kind of awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The interviewer is the late English television personality Paula Yates, whose path would cross with the Durans several times throughout her short life. Two years after this interview, Simon would serve as the best man at her wedding to Live Aid cofounder Bob Geldof; nine years later, she\u2019d leave Geldof for Simon\u2019s close friend, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence (Simon wrote the song \u201cMichael, You\u2019ve Got a Lot To Answer For\u201d on Duran Duran\u2019s Medazzaland album specifically about Hutchence). Following Hutchence\u2019s 1997 death from suicide, Yates died of an overdose in 2000; her daughter, writer\/model Peaches Geldof, died of an overdose as well in 2014. All that bleak, gutting future tragedy is tough to reconcile with this video, in which Yates is carefree and vibrant, sitting in a rowboat on the French Riviera while chatting and giggling with a pair of beautiful, bubbly young Durans at the height of their fame. Tempus fugit<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Enough melancholy contemplation on the ephemeral and oft-tragic nature of life. On with the interview! Nick and Simon are in Saint Tropez for the First International Music Video Festival, which took place from October 8-11, 1984, just a couple weeks before the release of \u201cThe Wild Boys.\u201d John, Andy, and Roger are nowhere in sight, which makes sense; at this time, John and Andy were already occupied with their side project, The Power Station, while Roger, who\u2019d grown increasingly disenchanted with mega-celebrity during the grueling\u00a0Sing Blue Silver<\/a>\u00a0tour earlier in the year, was presumably off somewhere having a polite and unassuming nervous breakdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interview takes place in a rocking rowboat beneath overcast skies on a blustery fall day. Despite his heartfelt and much-discussed hatred of boats*, Nick seems to be totally game for this nonsense. He looks pale and fragile and cold as hell, swaddled in some kind of weird black, draping, asymmetrical garment, but he\u2019s good to go. In fact, he seems downright chipper about the whole ordeal, even though their dinky little boat really is rocking and pitching like crazy. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen him smile this much.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Simon is wearing a jaunty beret, which was something he did often during this time. It works for him. Dude can rock a beret. Not many men can say the same.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Duran<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Paula asks them about their feelings on the festival. Naturally, they\u2019ve got opinions<\/em>. Nick: \u201cI think the thing is, this year the actual competition is a farce.\u201d Nick\u2019s pronunciation of \u201cfarce\u201d is a thing of glory: \u201cfaaaahce.\u201d<\/em> I envy Nick\u2019s ability to convey both world-weary boredom and blistering outrage with a single syllable. He continues: \u201cBecause there\u2019s videos in it\u2026 \u2018Bohemian Rhapsody\u2019 by Queen is in the competition. I mean, it\u2019s, what, nine years old or something. I mean, it was great nine years ago, maybe, but\u2026\u201d A billion Freddie Mercury fans are shooting you dirty scowls right now, Nick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simon agrees, pointing out that the judging process seems \u201cincredibly arbitrary\u201d, as most of the judges are competing as well. Nick quotes one of the judges, who told him that, out of a scale of twenty, \u201cI marked everything six, unless there was a dwarf in it. Then I marked it seven.\u201d Ah, so I see \u201cSafety Dance\u201d was competing. Excellent. Yeah, I love \u201cSafety Dance\u201d, but if I were judging a music video festival, I\u2019d probably give that video about a seven on a scale of twenty, too.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Men<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

(Lest you think Nick and Simon are being too critical here, rest assured their impressions were correct and the festival was indeed a disaster. Per Billboard<\/em> magazine, August 31, 1985: \u201cLast year\u2019s St. Tropez Video Music Festival not only drew complaints due to a disorganized schedule and an overloaded and overly complex jury, but saw at least one company go bankrupt and the majority of firms participating in the event go unpaid for their efforts.\u201d Whoops.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While on the subject of music videos, Paula asks them about their own glamorous, exotic videos. \u201cWe got that slagging for it,\u201d Simon moans, referring to the critical pushback they received for filming in far-flung locations like\u00a0Sri Lanka\u00a0and\u00a0Antigua. Chalk this up to another prime example of Things From the Eighties That Make No Damn Sense in 2015: It\u2019s\u00a0crazy<\/em>\u00a0that Duran Duran got so much crap for: a) flying to exotic locations to film videos, and b) ponying up huge chunks of cash for those videos. Pop stars making videos that depict a decadent and expensive lifestyle? Who\u2019d ever heard of such a thing? To put this in context, Duran Duran\u2019s 1984 \u201cWild Boys\u201d video, which was notorious at the time for being the most expensive video ever made,\u00a0is now only the\u00a0twenty-eighth<\/em>\u00a0most expensive video of all time<\/a>, and that\u2019s with the cost adjusted for over thirty years of inflation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paula wonders if the criticism has inhibited them\u2014as a result of the outcry, are they more cautious about making ostentatious videos? Simon cheerfully replies, \u201cI think it\u2019s made us more pretentious, if anything.\u201d Bless you, Simon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the subject of\u00a0their infamous \u201cGirls on Film\u201d video<\/a>, which was banned by MTV, Nick tries to take a moderate approach: \u201cIt was tastefully smutty,\u201d he claims. Paula calls bullshit on this: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t!\u201d She lets him off the hook far too soon, which is a shame; I would\u2019ve loved to hear Nick\u2019s attempt at defending the, uh,\u00a0tastefulness<\/em>\u00a0of that video: \u201cIt was classy! The nice ladies dumped\u00a0French<\/em>\u00a0champagne over their bare breasts after slithering crotch-first along that pole covered with shaving cream!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Paula reminds them they also ran afoul of MTV more recently: The network demanded alterations before airing their video for \u201cThe Reflex<\/a>.\u201d Nick: \u201cThere was a silhouette of a nipple that I spent about three days looking for on there, and I couldn\u2019t find it.\u201d It\u2019s at 1:25, Nick. The silhouetted nipple is at 1:25. I\u2019m not sure how you had trouble finding it, since it\u2019s one of those things you simply can\u2019t\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0see, like Simon\u2019s armpit hair in the \u201cPlanet Earth\u201d video.<\/p>\n\n\n

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All this talk of nipples segues into a broader discussion of the Puritanical nature of Americans. As Simon puts it, \u201cAmerica seems to have gone through a much bigger Victorian period, which lasted a lot longer as well, than England ever did \u2026 You go to places in America like\u2026 it\u2019s called the Bible Belt, and it\u2019s really stiff, and like, rednecks who go around bashing up anybody who doesn\u2019t look like a good god-fearing human being.\u201d Paula gets straight to the point: \u201cDid you get smacked?\u201d Simon immediately replies, \u201cWe didn\u2019t go there!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huh. Didn\u2019t they? Did Duran Duran somehow manage to tour the\u00a0United States\u00a0without dipping their pale English feet anywhere below the\u00a0Mason-Dixon line? Let\u2019s take a quick glance at some tour dates from 1984\u2019s Sing Blue Silver tour, cribbed straight from\u00a0the band\u2019s official website<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n