“It wasn’t the way of a lot of the 1970s, although many of the artists I liked - David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - all took care with their imagery and their creative vision outside of just the music. “There were a lot of who didn’t like the concept that there was a new way of doing things,” says Rhodes. I think those are the kinds of artists that I’ve been drawn to, that we’ve been drawn to. “To me, I liked music and art when there was something a little untouchable about it, something exotic, something erotic. I remember when Heaven 17 put out their album The Luxury Gap, said, ‘Well, a luxury gap - that’s what Duran Duran sell, this fantasy to people who can’t afford it!’ But I never really thought about it like that,” Taylor continues. “I suppose we were criticized for selling people a dream. We had to find our own mood and our own lane. But from a creative point of view, we would have to go in a different direction - we couldn’t go down the road the Sex Pistols had been down, or the Clash had been down. This was in the wake of the punk-rock thing, and Thatcher. “We took a lot of criticism for that aspirational aspect.
“I think it was just the times, really,” Taylor tells Yahoo. “This is the album that put us on the map - and has kept us there.” “It’s been such an amazing journey, and I think Rio is probably the reason why we’re still getting to do what we do today, basically,” Taylor says. Then it came to the end of the 1980s, and people wanted to close the door on us.” But bassist/co-founder John Taylor is grateful that Rio allowed Duran Duran to eventually establish a career that has lasted well beyond the ’80s, comprising 15 albums and more than 100 million in record sales. “It’s something that’s been a double-edged sword for us, because it was such a powerful record, and perhaps the images from the videos stuck in people’s minds. “I didn’t know what on earth would happen to it, whether it would be a hit or a flop or whatever, but I knew when I was listening to it: ‘Yep, this has got really strong songs on it, and this one just feels right.’” But when we finished the Rio album, I looked around and I knew we’d done something special,” recalls Duran Duran keyboardist and co-founder Nick Rhodes. “Obviously with every new album we make, we always have to believe in it and feel we’ve gone in the right direction. The album, impeccably produced by Bowie/Iggy engineer Colin Thurston, still holds up, from the primal pop of the jungle-love breakthrough single “Hungry Like the Wolf,” to the wistful, whistling one-night-stand ballad “Save a Prayer,” to the harrowing, noir-ish, David Lynch-approved outro “The Chauffeur.” And its sound has been replicated and revered by everyone from the Killers to Mark Ronson to new AFI/No Doubt supergroup Dreamcar. And the nightclub-meets-Club-Med classics contained within were as slick as a Vogue magazine cover or a shiny new lip gloss.īut Rio - which celebrates its 40th anniversary this week, just days after Duran Duran celebrated their long-overdue induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame - was never about style over substance.
Was there ever any album that embodied all things grand and glamorous about the escapist, excessive, exotic, erotic, aspirational ’80s more than Duran Duran’s Rio? The vivid cover art alone - its pale Patrick Nagel creature, with her beguiling cherry ice-cream smile, a sort of Mona Lisa for the New Romantic Age - lent the album instant icon status. Duran Duran’s ‘Rio,’ released May 10, 1982.
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