Duran Duran are fast approaching their 50th anniversary as a band, and Nick Rhodes has given an extensive interview with The Independent that reveals one or two things you never knew about the debonair keyboard player and his new romantic colleagues.
First off, during the mid '80s, when Duran were on the verge of splitting, Mick Jagger played a role in convincing them to stay together. According to Rhodes: “Mick looked at me and said ‘You know you really do need to stick together, that is your future.’ He was right because it could all have fallen apart at that time.”
And whilst some of his colleagues – most notably John Taylor – have had their battles with drugs, Rhodes was apparently always abstemious. “It never appealed to me much,” he says. “My mind moved too quickly anyway. I can never slow down so the last thing I wanted was a pile of drugs. I tried some and it didn’t suit me. I am also somewhat of a control freak so the idea of taking something when you don’t know what is going to happen is thoroughly unappealing. I have been around plenty of it and seen the effects.”
Even in his mid-60s, Rhodes is still rocking the new romantic look: he still dyes his hair blonde, uses eyeliner ( “I like the routine of it. I can look in the mirror and go ‘he looks a bit tired.’ Stick a bit of eyeliner on and you can hide it all!”) and the idea of wearing jeans fills him with horror - “To me jeans are just laziness. I don’t like the cut.”
So it’s somewhat incongruous to discover in the piece that this poised, stylish individual has a geeky side to him in the form of a large collection of cheese labels. This sounds like the sort of nugget Smash Hits really should teased out of him at some point during the 1980s and doesn’t – if we’re honest – fit our preconceptions of the man. He did apparently inherit it from his dad, though: “He’d even done them by the weight of the cheese and the colours - there was something about it that was rather fabulous.”
Rhodes is the only member of Duran Duran who has been there continuously since their formation in 1978. The band completed a round of European festival dates in Switzerland two weeks ago and have a break now before another set of dates in October, which includes a Halloween show at London’s O2.
