A View To A Thrill – Celebrating Duran Duran’s Title Song by Marc Hernandez

Now, that might just be a coincidence as it did originate from another film, but in interviews to promote the song both John Taylor and singer Simon Le Bon talked about seeing Bond at the cinema during the Sean Connery years.

2. Their Bond song was written and recorded in the spring of 1985 in collaboration with John Barry when the band were at the height of their popularity. They were without a doubt one of the worlds most popular groups at the time, being one of the few British acts since The Beatles to ‘break America’ which earnt them the nickname ‘The Fab Five’ by the British press. The song that emerged combined the groups contemporary sound with John Barry’s trademark musical motifs. The lyrics contained suspense and intrigue, clandestine meetings at nightfall, a fatal kiss,

talk of the whole earth opening wide and a mystery ‘gaping your side’ ( at least if you believed the lyrics printed in Smash Hits magazine). The only pre-Internet way to decipher hard to hear chart hits.

During 1985, the band had been on a hiatus after a gruelling recording and touring schedule from 1982-1984. The five band members were involved in two side projects. Arcadia – an art-house pop group  ( Le Bon, Rhodes and Roger Taylor) who recorded an album in Paris and ‘The Power Station’ a hard pop-rock-funk supergroup (formed by John and Andy Taylor in New York) with Robert Palmer on vocals and Chic drummer Tony Thompson). Their debut single ‘Some like it hot’  from their self-titled album had a music video featuring transgender model Caroline ‘Tula’ Cossey who’d appeared as an extra in ‘For Your Eyes Only’ during the pool scene at the villa of Cuban hitman Hector Gonzales. (The song would also feature in another big film of 1985 starring Chevy Chase – ‘National Lampoon’s European Vacation’ during a dream sequence set in a nightclub.)

3. A View To A Kill was released on 6 May 1985 as a 7″ single. In a glorious piece of graphic design it had the familiar ‘Double D’ Duran Duran logo modified on the sleeve to include a 007 inspired gun barrel. The song became a massive global hit, a number one in 7 countries and a top ten hit in every country it was released in with the exception of France (number 11) and New Zealand (number 13). Most importantly it became the first ever theme song from a Bond film to top the charts in the USA when it spent two weeks at number 1 of the Billboard Hot 100 in July.  (In the UK it had peaked at No. 2, criminally kept off the top spot by Sister Sledge’s ‘Frankie’.) In the MTV video age Duran Duran had become renowned for their ground breaking music videos. These accompanied a succession of hits that catapulted the group to international stardom across the globe. Shot on 35mm film and often in far flung exotic locations they almost became mini-movies in their own right. The one that they made to promote ‘A View To A Kill’ being no exception. Filmed on location in Paris at the Eiffel Tower the 4 minute promo is a spy style escapade with the band revelling in their respective roles and intercut with scenes from the Bond film.

Drummer Roger Taylor sits in a surveillance van controlling a ‘flying’ video camera, Simon Le Bon in a French beret and Walter Gotell like raincoat has a personal stereo that houses a detonator. John Taylor acts as tourist before activating a machine gun on the coin operated Eiffel Tower binoculars, Nick Rhodes plays a fashion photographer snapping a girl on film, and most intriguing guitarist Andy Taylor channels his inner Mr Magoo to become a blind accordion player.

4. On 22 May at the films world premiere in San Francisco the band arrived to be greeted by hordes of screaming teenage fans (something not seen at a James Bond premiere since the heyday of the Sean Connery films of the 60s). In London at the Royal premiere on 14 June the band met Prince Charles and one of their most famous fans, Princess Diana. The bands reputation as her favourite pop group in the eighties led to the NME music magazine half-jokingly refer to the group as ‘Diana Diana’.

5. In the early hours of 14 July 1995 Duran Duran played at the Philadelphia leg of Live Aid – The benefit music concert for Ethiopian famine relief that became one of the defining events of the 1980’s. They were introduced to the stage by Chevy Chase wearing what looked like a pair of John McEnroe’s white tennis shorts (possibly the ones he refused to wear at Wimbledon the previous summer in favour of a blue pair that breached the clubs all-white sports wear policy). Infront of 90,000 people in the stadium and over a billion watching around the world Duran Duran began their 4 song set with what else but ‘A View To A Kill’. Earlier that week it had reached No 1 in the US charts. (Their 2nd no 1 in the states). Their performance that night is mainly remembered for one specific moment  …Simon Le Bon’s voice cracking on the final ‘that fatal kiss is all we need’  towards the end of the song. Le Bon later said it was the worst moment of his career but if look beyond it (the main differences to the studio version are John Taylor’s bass is a lot more prominent in the live mix and Andy Taylor’s guitar parts which replace a lot of the studio based snyth chords and he incorporates his guitar tremolo arm at various stages. (After the fatal sound of Le Bon’s bum note, Taylor leans his hand on the tremolo as if to try and deflect your hears from what’s just happened!)

6. In August 1985 ‘Now that’s what I call music 5’ a compilation of recent chart hits was released in the UK with Duran Duran’s ‘A View To A Kill’ as the opening track. The Power Stations ‘Get it on (bang a gong), a dirty great wailing, gnashing and crashing cover of the TRex classic could be found on side 2 and I remember playing the double-cassette to death over and over, rewinding it to the point where the tape eventually warped and unspooled.

7. A few months after their Live Aid performance, in October Arcadia released ‘Election Day’ their first single which came complete with a spoken word avant-garde interlude by guest vocalist Grace Jones who sounds like she’s talking in esperanto.