francis

What matters is that they have been a great source of inspiration for numerous artists, who have cited them multiple times. Just to name a few: Marilyn Manson, Beck, Smashing Pumpkins, Barenaked Ladies, Dandy Warhols, The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Korn, Garbage, Gwen Stefani, Wycleaf Jean, The Orb, Pink, Limp Bizkit, Lostprophets, Sugar Ray, Goldfrapp, Dido, Strokes, and Scissor Sisters. These are just the most famous names of artists from various genres who have paid tribute to the Birmingham band on more than one occasion, not limiting themselves to simple statements of admiration. They don’t seem like a boy band to me, do they?

Romanticism was brought to the music scene thanks to Duran Duran, and I’m not just referring to their music videos. The fact that they were handsome boys does not in any way undermine the validity of their musical proposal; it’s no coincidence that when they were a phenomenon among girls in Italy, the quality of their albums was starting to decline.

Don't be misled by the fact that in Italy they had a success comparable to that of today’s boy bands: in the early '80s, Duran Duran completely revolutionized the aesthetics of pop music with historic music videos (in addition to those filmed in Sri Lanka, how can we not mention Girls On Film and Planet Earth?) and their songs were anything but "frivolous." They conveyed the romanticism of Coleridge and (above all) Byron to the masses, which I don't think is a trivial matter. A song like The Chauffeur seems to me anything but a boy band ditty, unlike "Light My Fire"... and Morrison, after all, wasn’t he just an early teen idol?

Call me crazy, but I find their influence on pop music to be, if not on the level of the Beatles and the Velvet Underground, then almost there... a lot of '90s bands paid tribute to Simon Le Bon's band, with Smashing Pumpkins leading the charge, and they continue to do so even today.

Mmm...I would say no. In terms of intellectual honesty, I would choose Duran Duran a thousand times over the Doors.

And what’s wrong with Duran Duran? They are a band that marked an era.

No, I'm not joking: I love new romantic, at least until 1984, when the downfall and commercial decline began... it was one of the few movements in the twentieth-century pop culture that was closely linked to a literary imaginary, representing it not only conceptually but (above all) aesthetically.

Duran Duran are legends.

Even the legendary Duran Duran have influenced entire musical generations, and they are one of the most cited bands by artists who have little or nothing in common with each other (Beck, Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson, Korn, and the list goes on). However, if someone wrote a page about them similar to the one I wrote about the Doors, I’m sure they wouldn’t find all this grimacing indignation. This already says it all… It’s easy to do like Scaruffi, who targets the Beatles, the easiest target to unleash all the frustrations of a failed flower child, while almost no one points out, for instance, that it’s not true at all that the Doors weren’t looking for sales success, because after this debut album, Morrison's band released records that were brazenly aimed at commercial success. It’s true that we shouldn’t generalize, but an age gap won't deter me from thinking that behind the Doors phenomenon, there was a lot of fluff and sensationalism not dissimilar to what was built up ten years earlier, for example, for Elvis Presley, who at least had only the ambition to be an entertainer. I mean, for instance, I adore Bob Dylan, but I equally think that an album like "Freewheelin", if it weren’t for the beautiful lyrics, is nothing but an unlistenable, tedious folk album from start to finish, poorly played and even worse sung.

The truth is that regarding '60s rock, our generation grew up without having the right to express anything other than exaltation, praise, and idolization. We agree that it was perhaps an irreplaceable period for modern music, but why can't we allow ourselves to judge it as well? Is it really just an age issue, like when that idiot san-xo accused me of writing about records I hadn't "lived"? Because if someone writes that Coldplay are a shitty band, that opinion can be easily accepted, whereas if, for example, I say that Deep Purple make me want to puke to the nth degree, those filthy hippies, boring and repetitive, depending on where I say it, I risk being lynched? And then Samuele Bersani already said it in that song, "I already know you'll play the Doors, oh no, put on the Bolero!". Since I can't quote Wilde and Morrissey, let me at least quote Renzo Arbore: "Meditate, people, meditate."