Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran

by Andy Taylor
Grand Central Publishing, 324 pp., $26.99

“I had always said I wanted to be in a band like AC/DC, but fortunately I was either astute enough, or skint enough, to join Duran Duran!” Andy Taylor stiff-arming some serious downstroke on the Power Station’s 1985 cover of “Get It On (Bang a Gong)” contextualizes the Duranie’s Angus Young nod as anti-heretical. In fact, by the time the author and his bassist bandmate John Taylor larked with Chic power source and its Midas touch – drummer Tony Thompson and sonic whip Bernard Edwards – along with veteran UK soulman Robert Palmer, Duran Duran was dead. Except Live Aid. Too bad the Fab Five weren’t on speaking terms. “It would be the last time we played together for almost two decades,” writes Wild Boy Taylor in his prologue. Duran Duran’s millennial reunion, which included a wild night at Austin’s Bass Concert Hall, ended no less diva, Taylor again the first to exit the original English fivepiece. By then, diamond-priced wine rather than cocaine ruled the tours, though not the industry; future music mogul Danny Goldberg netted Taylor $2 million for his 1987 solo debut, Thunder, a crunchy collaboration with Sex Pistol Steve Jones. “That was where Duran Duran came to life,” theorizes Taylor in his well-mannered, paced, and structured memoir, “the crossover between the Pistols and Chic: guitar music with a disco beat.”

This article appears in December 5 • 2008.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.