NYLON - October 2007 - (Page 106) pink). The occasion for all of this hullaballoo is that the band are previewing tracks from their upcoming album, Red Carpet Massacre—and while it’s been quite some time since a Duran Duran release has created much buzz, this is different: This album features several tracks on which the band collaborated with Justin Timberlake and Timbaland. Mind-blowing? Why, yes it is. Red Carpet Massacre almost never happened. The band actually completed an album last year, slated to be called Reportage (“It was good,” Roger tells me, a few weeks after the preview party, “but it was never going to set the world alight”) when guitarist Andy Taylor quit the band—only three years after all five original members had reunited for the first time since the mid-’90s for a rapturously received tour and not-so-rapturously received album, Astronaut (which, according to John “was the best record we could make at the time, given the fact that we were still only speaking to each other in words of one syllable or less”). Faced with the legal entanglements that might ensue should Reportage be released, it was shelved, It’s a warm summer evening in a jam-packed loft several stories above the and the remaining members decided to start over again from scratch. West Side of Manhattan. People are milling around restlessly, waiting for Serendipitously, it was at this time that a long-talked-about opportunity the main event. Mickey Dolenz, in a festive fedora, is sipping a luminous came along—to lay down some tracks with Justin Timberlake and green cocktail near the bar; like everyone else, he’s looking a little sweaty. Timbaland, who the band had met at the VMAs, where they discovered Then an elevator door slides open on one side of the room. Voices are they shared a mutual love for each other’s work. lowered to whispers, and there’s a wave of height-shifting as everyone tips “We were huge fans of Justin’s first album,” Rhodes says. “I think it on their toes for a better view: Duran Duran have arrived. was about as perfect as a pop record can be. And I loved what Timbaland Simon Le Bon—tall, thin, preternaturally young-looking—leads the way, had done with Missy Elliott in the past. It just seemed like a good fit for us. then lupine, rakish John Taylor, platinum blonde Nick Rhodes, and shyAnd then we all happened to have a few days in New York to get together eyed drummer Roger Taylor. They wear tailored suits and flash dazzling and see what we came up with. It was the first time Timbaland had worked white smiles as they gladhand their way around the room, graciously posing with a band, but we instantly clicked.” for cellphone-camera photos with usually reserved music industry types The infectious, funk-flecked slide and stomp of “Niterunner” and (to my enduring shame, when introduced to Le Bon for the first time, I “Skin Diver” offer compelling proof: The songs bear the unmistakable mutter something that sounds like “Suffle mump fur” and turn shocking earmarks of Timbaland and Timberlake’s musical mojo, yet they are still distinctly, wonderfully Duran Duran, overflowing with the frothy, hook-laden romanticism, sly sexual innuendo, and quirky wordplay of the band at UNTIL THE END OF TIME Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, and Duran Duran? Sounds like a party to us. By April Long. Photographed by Mari Sarai
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