STACK #195 Jan 2021

FEATURE MUSIC

helped launch the band Stateside, and The Fab Five boast a star on the Hollywood (not Birmingham) Walk Of Fame. Australian director Russell Mulcahy was responsible for some of Duran Duran’s other memorable film clips ( Hungry Like The Wolf, Rio, The Wild Boys ...), many of which were shot on 35mm film in exotic locations: the Sri Lankan jungle, Antigua beaches, onboard a luxury yacht – a travelogue of aspirational imagery. Through their videos and lifestyles, Duran Duran were selling a fantasy. “With Duran it was a bit like being a tourist with a big camera,” Mulcahy tells during the excellent Duran Duran: There’s Something You Should Know doco (2018). “I had very much a cinematic vision, they had a vision with their music, and the manager had a vision of like, ‘Let’s make it big and stand out from the rest.’ We just wanted to raise the bar...” BC

band, as far as we were concerned.) Directed by Godley & Creme, the raunchiness of this video (which is pretty tame when compared to the likes of Cardi B’s WAP ), eclipsed this song’s original intention, which was to shine a light on the exploitation of fashion models. The music video was filmed a couple of weeks before MTV launched

Princess Diana shaking hands with Nick Rhodes - keyboardist in her favourite band Duran Duran - at a music gala in London, 1983

in the US (August, 1981) and Kevin Godley explained, “We were very explicitly told by Duran Duran’s management to make a very sensational and erotic piece that would be for clubs, where it would get shown uncensored just to make people take notice and talk about it.” MTV added an edited “day version” of the clip – with nudes removed – to high rotation, but the BBC banned it altogether. Duran Duran welcomed – and capitalised on – this controversy; any publicity is good publicity, right? MTV readily embraced and

as soon as the Electronic Dream Plant (EDP) WASP was launched in 1978 – commented. (Fun fact: Another 1981 single release, Freeze-Frame by the J. Geils Band, also utilises shutter sounds at the start of the song.) Few will forget the first time they clapped eyes on Girls On Film ’s accompanying film clip – the first extended music video ever made – which features topless women mud wrestling and artistic depictions of sexual fetishism. (There weren’t nearly enough shots of the

Continue reading about how ex-choirboy Le Bon found his musical soulmates, gushings from fanboy Mark Ronson, and this seminal album’s ultimate ascent; the full feature article is online at stack.com.au!

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