‘Tonight United’ received its live debut on 14 September at the O2 Birmingham Institute Rodgers choppy, cut-and-paste reworking never sounds particularly fluid live and I can’t relax, because I’m always worried something will go wrong with Nick Rhodes triggering all those studio samples and sequences and half the song will disappear! All classic Duran Duran tracks of course, but I always feel that while Nile Rodgers may have done them a big favour when he remixed ‘The Reflex’ in 1984 – delivering a number one hit as a result – they pay the price in the live environment. The band opened with ‘Invisible’, the rather good first single from the forthcoming new album before delivering a triple-header of ‘The Reflex’, ‘Notorious’ and ‘A View To A Kill’. His history with the band goes back well over 15 years, but he’s never officially been ‘in’ Duran Duran, so it was just another day at the office (niche Wet Wet Wet joke warning) for the ‘Graeme Duffin’ of the band. A saxophone player and two female backing singers were the other contributors on stage. Instead, the reliable Dom Brown returned. In terms of guitar duties, there was no sign of Blur’s Graham Coxon who contributed to their forthcoming album Future Past and has recently joined Duran Duran on stage for various promotional duties.
Simon Le Bon looked dapper in white trousers and jacket (on the first night) and with Nick Rhodes manning his synths at the rear and the two Taylors (Roger and John) taking care of the rhythm section, this was the ‘four-fifths’ version of Duran Duran we’ve been familiar with since Andy spoiled the reunion party by departing in 2006. Duran Duran played their first shows in the UK to a paying audience for nearly five years this week, as they dusted off the cobwebs and warmed up in their hometown of Birmingham for their headlining slot on Sunday at this weekend’s Isle of Wight Festival.
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