Wild Boy
My Life with Duran Duran
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Beschreibung des Verlags
The first member of Duran Duran to write his memoirs tells the full story of the excesses, glamour and excitement they lived through in the 1980s.
When 19-year-old Andy Taylor returned from his band's tour of military bases in Germany and saw an advert in Melody Maker in April 1980 asking for a 'live wire guitarist' to audition in Birmingham, he saw his chance. Even he could not have predicted what happened next. The group, Duran Duran, released their first single, 'Planet Earth', ten months later and soon became the biggest band since the Beatles. Emerging in the post-punk era, Duran headed the New Romantic movement and with their stunning videos and style consciousness, they set the trend for the consumerist 1980s. Popular with everyone from rockers to Princess Diana, they had a string of massive worldwide hits such as 'Rio', 'The Reflex' and 'A View to a Kill'. They won Grammys and an Ivor Novello award among many other things.
By Live Aid, in 1985, they were at their very pinnacle of success - and then the band began to fall apart. At the centre of it all, giving the group its musical pulse, was lead guitarist Andy Taylor. In this revealing and raw memoir, Taylor recalls the highs and lows of an unbelievable period where the squeaky clean facade hid the truth of wild partying as five young men took just about every opportunity that was offered to them.
Andy Taylor's story is of an era when MTV was new, the media allowed superstars to get away with lots and rock stars knew how to party like there was no tomorrow. Wild Boy is a book that millions of fans of Duran Duran around the world will want to read to know the full story of what really happened.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sincere though slight autobiography, Taylor, guitarist for the 1980s pop band Duran Duran, delivers an extended backstage look at the band's rise and fall. He includes an album-by-album look at how the band, which combined glam fashion and keyboard-driven synthpop with outrageous (and expensive) videos featuring exotic locales such as Sri Lanka, became synonymous with early MTV. Taylor discusses sometimes underplays the band's outrageous drug and alcohol habits much of which was better covered in MTV's 1999 Behind The Music segment. He is clearly aware that the band's "materialistic image" was a key part of London's transformation in the 1980s into a city where "it was a dominant part of popular culture to aspire to be successful." The frustrating part is that his attempts to put Duran Duran into a wider musical perspective are far too infrequent, and his own story can't quite carry the narrative.
