The previous year, Chris Kimsey had been credited with helping Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to rediscover their mojo on his latest collaboration with The Rolling Stones.
#DURAN DURAN LIBERTY TV#
An early appearance from future Saturday night TV staple Tess Daly in its biker-clad video is arguably more notable. Unfortunately, his attempts to whip Durannies into a frenzy (“This’ll pick you up, let’s go”) are hampered by a non-event of a chorus and the kind of tinny organ riff you’d expect from a Jive Bunny mastermix. Le Bon is on fine form, at times replicating the swagger of the era’s essential pin-up Michael Hutchence and at others the full-throated howling of The Cult frontman Ian Astbury.
That’s little surprise considering opening track Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over) was chosen as its lead single. The quintet didn’t even bother touring the record and appeared to further show their disdain on triumphant follow-up The Wedding Album, with Love Voodoo’s lyrics (“The queen of sensuality/ You shelter me from liberty/ It’s nothing short of piracy”) interpreted by many as something of a self-effacing jab at its predecessor.Īnd although Liberty became their highest-charting UK album since 1983 No.1 Seven And The Ragged Tiger, it nosedived out of the Top 40 within a fortnight and was the first Duran Duran LP that didn’t spawn a UK Top 10 hit. And although Simon Le Bon still has a “lot of fondness” for the album, Duran’s frontman acknowledges that it didn’t always have the group’s utmost attention. John Taylor, in the midst of his drug addiction at the time, has freely admitted that his hash oil habit is the only thing he can remember about its recording. “John and I have one thing in our whole oeuvre we feel we really got wrong, and that’s the Liberty album.” Yes, 1995 covers LP Thank You may have been treated like a crime against not just music but humanity in general by much of the press, but in a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, it was Duran Duran’s oft-forgotten sixth studio effort from 1990 that Nick Rhodes cited as the band’s ultimate misstep.Īs the ever-present keyboardist infers, he’s not alone. But does it deserve its status as the black sheep of the Brummies’ discography? Now 30 years on from its release, Jon O’Brien takes a look back at the unloved LP. Duran Duran’s sixth album Liberty was slated by critics, flopped in the charts and was quickly cast aside by the band itself.