How Duran Duran ruined my world (and still secretly rocks it)

While poking around the internet on a lazy afternoon, I came across the VH1 online box set of Duran Duran videos. Interspersed between the videos are commentaries from band members. I think I was 11 when I first fell in love with Duran Duran, and I’ve never looked back. Well, I have, hence the perusing of online nostalgia, but you know what I mean.

I almost never come across a woman who lived consciously through the 80s that doesn’t remember this band. Love them or hate them, they were everywhere. You couldn’t pick up an issue of Teen Beat or Tiger magazine without staring at one of their handsome mugs. Thank God.

Duran Duran were responsible for shaping, in large part, my view of the world outside of Rensselaer, IN, my hometown. Rensselaer is a small town in the middle of farming country, population severely limited. Here are the details, for anyone interested in seeing what living a version of “Footloose” was like: http://cityofrensselaerin.com/.

You can fill in the details of small town life with your own imaginations. (Think loads of boredom, peppered with cruising down main street and hanging out at the tennis courts with wine coolers.)

Anyway, to make a long story short, I was a bona fide dork. GEEK. I wore glasses and fit into ‘pretty plus’ size clothing. I sucked at gym class, won the 7th grade math award, and I pretty much thought I’d go to my grave without ever having been kissed. To me, the world of Duran Duran videos were OZ. I may as well have been wishing to be Dorothy, whisked away in a storm to the heart of New York or London, to battle the evil reigning fashion models for the heart of John Taylor. (Oh, sure, I went through a ‘Simon LeBon’ phase, who didn’t? But, it didn’t last. My eyes and tiny preteen heart stuck like glue to John.) Instead of ‘Over the Rainbow’ I had ‘Save a Prayer’. (Needless to say, it took me awhile to figure out what a one-night stand was, but they made it seem romantic.)

Here’s a peek at why they were so exciting:

So, what did I do? I got it into my head that to have a good life you had to be or have these things: be model pretty, have oodles of money, live in a big city, travel to exotic places outside of the U.S., and have a rock-star boyfriend. Smarts and a sense of humor? Well, they might help you get there, but let’s face it – people only say they want intelligence and someone to make them laugh after they’ve experienced a bad or boring fling with a vapid, but gorgeous, person. And by 7th grade I had already learned the cold, hard truth: being smart was not going to get me a boyfriend. Period.

Anyway, flash forward a million years, and I’m living in New York City. Duran Duran is basically responsible for almost every decision I made until the age of 28. Why lie? Here’s the proof:

Which is me trying to look sexy/angry on a photo shoot in St. Maarten in 1995. Or how about this:

Get a load of those SHOES! Wow. Or, doing my best Rio impressions:

I spent the better part of my youth figuring out that life is definitively NOT a Duran Duran video. First off, New York was great, but not all that cheap. Secondly, being a model was fun for awhile, but not all that glamorous (maybe the 1000 models who have actually made it big would disagree with me). Third, while I came THIS CLOSE to actually meeting John Taylor before a solo gig in 1998 while I was also working as a reporter (I still have the taped phone conversation, where I desperately tried not to gush), I never dated a rock star. Or any stars, actually. A lot of bankers and business types, but no stars.

In other words, it took me a long time to recover from my love affair with Duran, and the rest of the 80s if we’re completely honest (I’m still holding out for my Sixteen Candles birthday cake with Jake scene). But, in the long run, I’ll probably always have a tiny shiver when I hear the first chord of one of their songs. Shit, I dated British guys exclusively throughout the 90s, in part so I could hear the Duran accent. (I’m sick, I realize.) And, truth be told, there’s nothing really wrong with the occasional hit of Duran Duran, it keeps me young-ish and sexy. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Duran Duran is, for better or for worse, part of the soundtrack of my life and the birthplace of my wanderlust for life outside of the borders.