The return of the ’80s playboys

No, of course I didn’t watch the whole of tonight’s broadcast of The Brits. Don’t be silly. After all, not only would I completely fail to recognise Beyoncé or Alicia Keys if either of them sat next to me on the bus, but I’m also of the opinion that The Darkness are a sure sign that we’ve all gone so far with the knowing irony that we’ve finally come out the other side and are now applauding the plain awful.

I’m obviously missing out on something, but frankly I don’t care. As part of my slow and grudging acceptance that I’m due to reach the age of (oh, good grief) thirty-three at the end of July, it’s time to accept that I’m simply too old for the Brits. I am gradually turning into the subject of that old comedy sketch about your parents watching Top of the Pops. These days, I’m the sort of person who would probably tell a gangsta rapper that it’s actually spelt ‘gangster’, and advise him that he would have learned to spell properly if only he had stayed at school rather than hanging out in the hood with his homies. Or something.

However, the age factor (for want of a better term) was also the reason why I decided to keep The Brits programme on in the background, at a reassuringly low volume, whilst I did other more useful things. Yes, you’ve guessed - it was only so I could catch the performance by Duran Duran, as they received their special award for services towards upholding the glossy fairytale of the champagne lifestyle during the 1980s. Would it - heaven forbid - seem like the heady days of 1984 all over again?

I was never a huge Duran Duran fan, but they were an almost constant presence on the radio and on the cover of Smash Hits during my formative years, so I wanted to see what the reunited original line-up were like now, simply for old time’s sake. Sad, isn’t it?

And, er, I suppose I should also confess that Nick Rhodes was the focus of one of my first youthful pop star crushes. It was all in the way he stood so ice cool and composed behind his rack of keyboards, and the fact that he carried off wearing make-up far better than the rest of the band.

After watching their ten-minute greatest hits set, I think I can sum up Duran Duran’s performance in one word. Terrible. Simon Le Bon, never the greatest pop singer, sounded like he was in physical pain and flailing around to find most of the notes. Roger Taylor, the drummer who went off to be a farmer (it was farming, wasn’t it?) looked permanently shell-shocked, which is understandable if he’s spent the intervening years with only a herd of cows for company. John Taylor was at least making a valiant attempt to pose in an ’80s rock-star style, but it looked vaguely embarrassing - and long hair doesn’t work on a man of his advancing years. Andy Taylor was utterly unconvincing in his bargain basement attempt at being Keith Richards. And Nick Rhodes … well, difficult as it is for me to accept, the truth is that the formerly lovely and somewhat effeminate Nick appeared to be disguised as an aging drag queen. Oh, the horror.

Of course, it’s not all about the image and the looks (except that, in the case of this particular preening bunch of fops in their heyday, it was almost entirely about the image and the looks). Even the members of Duran Duran get old. So I could have forgiven them everything else if only the music had been worth listening to. But it wasn’t. All I could hear was the sound of shiny, glistening ’80s pop being made over - or done over in a pub car park, to be more accurate - into a lumbering rawk noise.

This was the sound of middle-aged men deciding that squealing, twiddly guitar solos are a sign of how much they mean it (man) and how talented they have supposedly become as musicians, rather than the sound of mascara’d men with cheap synthesisers who have just discovered a new preset that goes “wheee-oooo!” and happen to know a couple of old Roxy Music riffs.

From now on, I think I shall be avoiding any ill-advised ’80s band reunions if all they’re going to do is wreck my childhood memories in such a cruel and heartless way.

Aside: Gosh, that Justin Timberlake sounds ever so camp when he speaks, doesn’t he? Who knew?

Related link: Whilst writing this entry, I was desperately trying to remember the source of the hugely inappropriate Duran lyric about someone being as “about as easy as a nuclear war”. After a search in Google, I discovered the offending item on a site that is a perfect example of a ‘labour of love’ - the kind of website you never actually realise you need until you accidentally happen across it. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the A - Z list of Songs About Nuclear War from the Eighties. Hmm, how handy.