Andy Taylor is an outspoken English guitarist of 35-years experience, currently living in Ibiza, Taylor has lived & recorded in all four corners of the globe, often citing that creativity makes you “restless, unpredictable & anti-social”… “You need a streak of Gypsy in you for this record business gig & if you don’t like spending a lot of time indoors, often in a room without daylight, then become a bell-hop”.
He’s also a singer, writer [both types], producer, studio owner & engineer, plays most of the instruments on his current album which he is now producing as an independent artist, however aside from the many “strings to his bow” – Andy is best known as a member of Duran Duran, The Power Station, as well as a solo performer. with a musical career that has taken him around the world and through the twisted maze of the music industry many times over, playing guitar, writing and producing for the likes of Robert Palmer, Rod Stewart, The Almighty, Thunder, Love & Money, Gun, Paul Rodgers, Belinda Carlisle and many more.
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More recently from 2001-06, Andy spent 5-years with a reformed Duran Duran, ill-fated’ maybe predictably so, but the band shone on many occasions, playing 6-sold-out nights at Wembley on what transpired to be the largest UK tour of the bands career. This to Taylor was testament to the fact that Duran Duran were an invention of their own design & when the mighty five were on the same page the rest spoke in volumes.
A Geordie from Cullercoats, Andy first picked up his instrument when he was eleven years old, playing with local bands and producing one by the age of sixteen. Soon he was touring England and Europe with several bands, honing his craft and paying his dues at working men’s clubs and air force bases. Then as Taylor puts it, in April of 1980 “I made that fateful train journey down to Birmingham.” Answering an ad in Melody Maker for a live-wire guitarist, Andy walked into a club called the Rum Runner and Duran Duran was born.
It was in this club that Duran Duran’s epic rise to fame began. The scene was all about fashion and music, particularly the dance and disco beats pulsating across the pond from Studio 54 in New York. Taylor and his bandmates fused this heat of 12” cuts with punk and electronic to create the New Romantic sound and giving birth to the Night Versions concept. It’s the underlying influence of the 12″ mix… Edwards & Rodgers, Giorgio Moroder … it’s all part of the matrix which continues to shape Taylor’s music today.
Andy continued to innovate, forming Power Station with John Taylor, Robert Palmer, and Chic’s Tony Thompson. The super group burst forth with top ten hits such as “Some Like It Hot” and “Get it on (Bang a Gong)” extensively touring and even playing Live Aid, where Andy stormed the stage with both Duran Duran and Power Station.
Robert Palmer recruited Taylor for his own Riptide album in1985, along with Thompson and Power Station producer Bernard Edwards of Chic, the disco roots still strong and vibrant. As Andy recalls, “It was an extraordinary time, everything we were associated with just flew off the shelves. As well as being the opportunity to express a major musical statement, it was also astatement against label demands.
As Duran Duran spiralled into a free-fall, Taylor hooked up with ex-Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones and began collaborating on his first solo album, Thunder, in 1987. In the meantime, Andy recorded the hit single “Take It Easy,” the theme song for the movie American Anthem and “When the Rain Comes Down” for the Miami Vice II soundtrack. Also during this time, he co-wrote and produced Rod Stewart’s platinum album “Out of Order,” delivering Billboard hits with “Forever Young,” “Lost in You, and “My Heart Can’t Tell Me No.” This was followed up with a second solo album, Dangerous, released in 1990. Andy then focused his boundless energy on producing full time, working with London rockers Thunder and other successful UK bands. He then returned to Los Angeles to write and produce tracks for the second Power Station album “Living in Fear” and Rod Stewart’s “A Spanner in The Works.”
In 2001, Taylor reunited with the other original members of Duran Duran to record their first new music together since 1985. “Astronaut” showcased Taylor’s heavy guitar blended with the synth hooks of the classic Duran Duran sound. The first single, “Sunrise”, was an instant classic, reaching No.5 in the UK and the album reached No.3 (#17 in the US). Months prior to the album’s release, the band played their largest ever UK tour in the spring of 2004, followed by a world tour in 2005, including Asia, Europe, and North America, and a performance at Live 8.
“I often wondered who would “crash & burn first, probably me, but we could hardly get the “rocket out the pocket” at this point, the precarious assumption, that we were in good working order, was clearly niave & not much is going to buck that reality”…
EXCERPT FROM BIOGRAPHY…
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I’D gone back on the road with Duran Duran in America after my father’s funeral. For a while I thought that I’d dealt with the grief, and I hoped that I would put the disappointment of Astronaut behind me.
The summer of 2005 saw our old friend Mr. Geldof organise Live 8. I was interested to see what the chemistry would be like between Geldof and Simon, because there’d been some bad blood between them during the nineties over Paula Yates’s affair with Michael Hutchence. Geldof knew that Simon and Hutch had been good mates for years, and he phoned Simon up and furiously demanded to know whether or not Simon had known about Paula’s affair while she was married to Bob.
I wondered if there was any potential for further fi reworks, but in the end we opted to play at the Rome leg of the show and don’t think they ever came face to face.
The day itself was a bit of a nightmare. Our management had a row with the promoter behind the scenes over something or other, and at one point we threatened to pull out.
Our performance eventually went ahead but Live 8 felt strangely subdued compared to the original Live Aid in 1985. Afterward, we had to rush off to play at the Roskilde festival in Denmark the same evening, so the travel arrangements were very hectic.
I nearly got stranded in Denmark thanks to a mix-up over the air tickets. Additionally there was a lot of fraying around the edges with other band members, and JT lost it after the Roskilde festival—totally lost it. The European tour had been up and down, which refl ected in sales, and we had struggled to sell out certain markets, so I guess all this had taken its toll on John and he just erupted. He did the same song and dance I had run through in Germany he previous winter: he just lost his temper about nothing in particular, uncontrollably sober.
FURTHER EXTRACTS FROM WILD BOY – LIFE IN DURAN DURAN
