Pop fans will be wishing Andy Taylor well after the former Duran Duran guitarist revealed he is suffering from cancer.
ChronicleLive reported how the 61-year-old had opened up on his four-year battle with the disease which forced him to miss teaming up last Saturday with his former band mates in Los Angeles at the star-studded Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony. Read the full story here.
Hailing from Cullercoats, North Tyneside, and a one-time pupil at Marden High School, Andy began playing guitar at 11, before going on to be part of one of the biggest pop bands of the 1980s. Duran Duran were the pretty boys of the so-called New Romantic scene, with a string of hits that included Girls On Film, The Reflex, Save A Prayer, View To A Kill, and Rio.
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Their dandyish clothes, coiffured hairstyles and lipstick didn’t really endear them to the boys, but they were massively popular among the ladies. The band comprised three Brummies - keyboardist Nick Rhodes, bassist John Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor; singer Simon Le Bon who met the others while studying at Birmingham University; and Andy Taylor who gave Duran Duran just the hint of a rock edge.
At the height of the band's popularity in 1983, 22-year-old Andy embarked on a business venture on his native Tyneside. Many of a certain vintage who enjoyed partying in the era of big hair and padded shoulders will remember it well.
In early December that year, the Chronicle reported: “Pop star Andy Taylor is coming home this weekend to fulfil a long-standing ambition. He is to officially open a new wine bar in Whitley Bay. It is to be called Rio after Duran Duran’s million-selling single of the same name.”
The new venue on the town's North Parade would open in a three-storey building that had been home to a restaurant called Alice's. The invitation-only opening of the sea-front bar hit the headlines as hundreds of baying female fans waited for a glimpse their idols in bitter winter weather.
We reported: “Andy and Roger Taylor (no relation) were first to arrive - in a white Rolls Royce. Schoolgirls formed a solid block and scrambled to touch their heroes. Police picked the pair off the ground and half carried them through the crowd. Screams brought out drinkers from other bars on Whitley Bay’s sea front to watch as the girls mobbed heartthrob Simon Le Bon”.
Rio, on North Parade, became a hugely popular haunt for 1980s revellers and, for a while, Whitley Bay rivalled Newcastle as THE place to enjoy a night out. Running the bar, however, wasn’t all plain sailing for its pop star owner. Plans to extend it in 1984 were blocked after locals complained about noise from the premises.
And the following year the Chronicle reported on an even more bizarre problem. “Panic broke out at the Tyneside wine bar owned by Duran Duran’s Andy Taylor when someone freed man-eating piranha fish from their tank,” we revealed.
“Bar staff at Rio rushed to rescue the fearsome fish, which eat human flesh, by scooping them into pint pots from between the feet of horrified customers. No one was bitten, but a few customers received an unwelcome soaking when 200 gallons of water in the tank gushed out. A vandal is thought to have smashed the giant tank by swinging a bottle against the glass as a prank.”
If the 1980s were Duran Duran’s heyday, the band is still active 45 years after they first teamed up. There have been wholesale line-up changes. Andy Taylor quit the band in 1986, rejoined in 2001, before leaving for the last time five years later. As a musician and producer, he has also worked with Power Station, Rod Stewart, Robert Palmer and Belinda Carlisle, among others.
Rio remained a regular drinking destination for some years before finally being sold. For a while the bar was known as Aruba. Today the building plays host to an award-winning Turkish restaurant called Turknaz.
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