Nick Rhodes

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Nick Rhodes (2005)

Nick Rhodes (born June 8, 1962 in Moseley , England ; maiden name Nicholas James Bates ) is a British keyboard player and member of the pop band Duran Duran . Nick Rhodes is also the only member who has been with the band continuously since the band was founded in 1978.

Life

Nick Bates is the only child of wealthy parents who owned a toy store in Birmingham . In 1978, Bates left school at the age of 16 and founded Duran Duran with his friend John Taylor , whom he had known since high school. At the time the name Duran Duran was chosen as the band name, he decided to change his name to Rhodes for aesthetic reasons. "Nicholas James Bates [...] realized that that was no name for an aspiring pop star."

When Duran Duran got together in 1979/1980 in the line-up that later made it world famous, they began playing in a nightclub in Birmingham called "The Rum Runner". The nightclub owners became their managers. Rhodes began DJing at this nightclub on June 8, 1980, the day he came of age. (Before that he was not allowed to enter the club as a minor unaccompanied.) In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1984, Rhodes said: “I was fourteen, John was sixteen when we met. Neither of us had any brothers or sisters. A common interest in music - in fact we were both crazy about music - and art made us brothers - or sort of. "

Rhodes' role in Duran Duran

Rhodes was only 18 years old when Duran Duran recorded their first album in the winter of 1980/81. He became famous for his androgynous look, wore heavy makeup (when this was frowned upon by straight men in the early 1980s), and constantly changed his hair color.

Although all songs are always given as the composition of the entire group, it was Nick Rhodes who composed most of the melodies.

Rhodes is a self-taught person who has enjoyed experimenting with sounds on his analog synthesizers since the beginning of his career. Particularly noteworthy are his keyboard themes for the songs Save a Prayer , A View to a Kill and Come undone . His arrangements were rich and layered. Although he was involved with digital synthesizers, his love for the analog remained unbroken, and he continues to use the analog synthesizer in this millennium. In the late 1990s, Nick Rhodes began writing lyrics for Duran Duran. Up until this point, the lyrics of the songs came primarily from Simon Le Bon and occasionally from John Taylor.

It was Rhodes who discovered the potential of music video as a new medium before MTV was even launched.

He is the sole owner of the rights to the “Duran Duran” brand.

Rhodes as a producer

Rhodes learned production engineering while in the studio with Duran Duran, helped mix several songs on the Rio album , and became the co-producer of many later Duran-Duran albums.

At the beginning of 1983 he discovered the group Kajagoogoo and produced their first work White Feathers .

Rhodes and Cuccurullo co-wrote three songs for Blondie's reunion album in 1996. However, the songs were not selected. One of these three songs called Pop Trash Movie was later recorded for the Duran-Duran album Pop Trash .

2002 co-produced the album Rhodes Welcome To The Monkey House by The Dandy Warhols . On this album he also played some keyboard.

other projects

With his bandmates Simon Le Bon and Roger Taylor , Rhodes formed the band Arcadia in 1985 . Arcadia's only album, So Red the Rose , went multi-platinum.

In 1999 he teamed up with Stephen Duffy , the Duran-Duran singer from the early days, for the band The Devils , which was founded especially for this project, and recorded the first Duran-Duran demos with them. These recordings were released on the Dark Circles album.

Private life

Rhodes married Julie Anne Friedman (model and actress from Des Moines, Iowa, USA) on August 18, 1984. He had met her the year before, when he was touring the United States with Duran Duran, at a yacht party. The marriage lasted until 1993. They have a daughter named Tatjana Leigh Orchid, born in August 1986.

Nick Rhodes was friends with Andy Warhol and attended exhibitions around the world.

Published in late 1984 Rhodes a book with abstract photographs titled Interference . Many of the photographs in the book were exhibited in the Hamilton Gallery in London.

Due to the influence of the health conscious Cuccurullo, Rhodes became a vegetarian in the early 2000s.

swell

  1. Carver, John (Ed.), Duran Duran , London, 1984. p. 4. ISBN 1-85099-001-8
  2. Interview with the US edition of Smash Hits 1/1989
  3. Duran Duran - The Fab Five . In: Rolling Stone # 414 of February 2, 1984.

Web links