Music Monday - Duran Duran!

Jane Turley has sure been a great Blog friend but she gives me a hard time!

So I've decided to give her what she's been asking for. And it's not this..........

A Deep Dark Chocolate Kiss!

This one is for the lovely Miss Jane who's been begging for it!


Simon John Charles Le Bon



There - I admit it publicly! I do like Duran Duran!

But since Jane Turley is such a huge Simon Le Bon fan, I decided to go one step further and help her out with some background information on the pop star!

According to Wikipedia.com, Simon John Charles Le Bon (born 27 October 1958) is the lead singer and lyricist of the new wave band Duran Duran and its offshoot, Arcadia. Le Bon was a member of the local church choir from a young age, but was also trained as an actor. Simon went to Pinner County Grammar School, (Are you familiar Jane?) the same school that Elton John attended some years earlier. He worked as a theatre porter at Northwick Park Hospital Accident and Casualty, and also auditioned for a punk band at Harrow College.

Several interesting facts:

-He worked on a kibbutz – an Israeli collective community – in the Negev desert in Israel in 1978, and then returned to England to attend drama school at the University of Birmingham before meeting the fledgling band Duran Duran.

-Le Bon's ex-girlfriend, Fiona Kemp (a barmaid at the Rum Runner nightclub where Duran Duran was rehearsing), introduced him to the band in May 1980, recommending him as a potential vocalist. As band legend has it, he turned up for the audition wearing pink leopard-print trousers, and carrying a notebook containing a large collection of poetry he had written - all of which would later become tracks on the early Duran Duran albums. After listening to the songs the band had already composed together, Le Bon spent some time fitting one of his poems ("Sound of Thunder") to one of the instrumentals, and found they had a good match. Le Bon agreed to "try [Duran Duran] out for the summer"; within six weeks the band was playing steadily around Birmingham and London, and a national tour supporting Hazel O'Connor led to a record deal with EMI Records in December.

-The band's first album, Duran Duran, was released in 1981, and they quickly shot to fame as part of the New Romantic movement. Three more albums followed in quick succession: Rio (1982), Seven and the Ragged Tiger (1983) and Arena (1984). By mid-1984, the band was ready for a break. Duran Duran's only other work that year was an appearance on the 1984 Band Aid charity single, "Do They Know It's Christmas."

The rest is written in the cryptic pages of music history!

Hope you enjoyed it Jane. We all know what a huge Simon Le Bon fan you are - And that's why I picked this song for Music Monday!

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