For the members of Duran Duran, the early '80s must have been like waking up in a dream that just kept getting crazier and crazier.
"Our video's on MTV?"
"Our song just went to #1?"
"Our album sold a million copies in a week?"
"We just sold out every date on our world tour?"
"They want us to do the next James Bond theme?"
Most bands would consider themselves fortunate to experience even just one of those career-defining events, but, for Duran Duran, all of those things happened in rapid succession, no doubt giving the five members a feeling of invincibility and a belief that everything they touched would continue turning to gold.
Eventually, though, watching every conceivable dream you ever had as a struggling musician come true must get to be a real drag. Heads swell, egos clash, and the next thing you know, you're Genesis circa And Then There Were Three.
For Duran Duran, the much-needed break from one another that came after the success of Seven And The Ragged Tiger seemed to only make matters worse. While Andy and John's more rock-spirited side project The Power Station led to two more Top 10 singles, including a cover of T. Rex's "Bang A Gong (Get It On)", Simon and Nick's Arcadia met with less enthusiasm from the fan base and gave them a glimpse into their future that they chose to ignore.
By the time they reconvened as Duran Duran in '86, drummer Roger Taylor could not be convinced to take part, choosing instead to putter around his palatial English country manor while the band resorted to legal maneuvers to force Andy to take part in the new album sessions, it soon became clear that he did not want to be there. Rather than allow the atmosphere to become any more toxic, the band finally gave him his walking papers.
Everything about the album was, quite frankly, depressing; from the songs that seemed to only exist for the sake of propelling a waning commercial juggernaut to the storm clouds and dour expressions that graced the album cover. What happened to the technicolor yacht races, man?
Having been a fan of the band since procuring a copy of their Nite Romantics EP back in '81, even I could see that the wheels had gotten entirely too wobbly by the time "The Wild Boys" was tacked onto the Arena live album, which, itself, smelled like a cash-in.
And let us not forget the band's hasty, under-rehearsed reunion for Live Aid that culminated with Simon Le Bon's "bum note heard 'round the world".
While Notorious was deemed a success, it crawled to gold status rather than galloped and, for the first time in their storied career, the name "Duran Duran" began closing more doors than it opened so, in 1988, the band decided a stylistic change was in order and went to the clubs in search of inspiration.
That inspiration led them to make an album influenced heavily by Chicago house music.
Ah, but what a difference two years makes in the fickle world of pop music.
Had they done this two years earlier, when Chicago house was at its apex, and with Nile Rodgers, whose music had formed the foundation upon which Chicago house music was built, perhaps they'd have positioned themselves as innovators instead of trend chasers.
Down to one Taylor and still reeling from the recent passing of producer Alex Sadkin, the once-confident band began sessions for Big Thing unsure of what the future held. By the time the album was completed, it dawned on them that the name they'd worked so hard to build into a household name might actually hold them back.
Under the pseudonym The Krush Brothers, the band released "The Edge Of America"/"Lake Shore Driving" single to radio stations in hopes that listeners would judge the music on its own merits and, in doing so, come to accept this new, "improved" version of Duran Duran.
The band went so far as to play a few gigs under the name as well, but the grand experiment was quickly shelved after the response to the single was lukewarm at best. The songs featured on the Krush Brothers radio-only single weren't so much abandoned as buried at the end of Big Thing.
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