Secrets they could tell: 30th Anniversary of Wild Boys!

This week marks the 30th anniversary of Wild Boys.  I actually had to do the math before typing that, because it doesn’t seem quite right. That said, it didn’t feel right when we celebrated for Rio, either.

Katy spent some time chatting with John Taylor about the conceptual origins of Wild Boys. I loved hearing the story from his perception.  Here it is if you haven’t checked it out yet:

We’ve all seen the video for Wild Boys, and even for the 80’s, it was a very decadent, over-the-top video. The video felt more like a movie to me, which is explained when you realize it was done more like a trailer as a vehicle to sell an idea for a movie to a studio.  John explains how expensive and indulgent it all seemed, and that at the time – the goal was to be as conceptual and as large as possible.  (Everything was bigger in the 80s, I guess…)

John also speaks of how crazed he was at the time, how things were at their peak in Duran Duran, and from hearing him talk – it strikes me just how out of control things really were. I get the feeling the band was really dragged from one thing to the next without allowing for any time to really process. I know I couldn’t have handled it, if it were me.

One last little tidbit from his chat with Katy is really in regards to the current album they are (hopefully) finishing up in the studio.  We all know they’ve been working on this album for the last couple (three if you count that first year as they were in the studio on and off), and I don’t think it’s wrong to characterize the recording of this album as perhaps more difficult for the band to zero in on what they really wanted. I don’t know if it was genuinely a difficult album to record, or if it was just a process of settling on the right direction for them…or something else entirely.  But I think that towards the end of his chat with Katy, as he mentions that each of the songs he truly loves to play live night after night were truly hell to record – and that he needs to remember that as they enter the final lap with this next album, one can truly see how trying the process has been, at least for John if not the others. With any luck, we’ll soon be able to hear the final product of their efforts soon!

-R