Gig review: Duran Duran

Published on Friday 17 July 2009 00:31

DURAN DURAN **** EDINBURGH CASTLE

The rain finally let up during the second song of Duran Duran's set – this being Hold Back The Rain, from their Rio album.

Appropriate, because this, like any Duran Duran show, was an evening of grand gestures. They've always been an odd proposition, these ageing 1980s pop idols.

Too silly to be taken seriously, but not quite silly enough (and too laddish) to be camp, their music is somehow both clever and hamfisted at the same time. Last night, for example, Simon Le Bon and co took the stage to the ominous music from A Clockwork Orange, then launched straight into Wild Boys – fitting, in the sense that Wild Boys is like A Clockwork Orange rewritten by a boisterous 12-year-old.

They are, frequently, capable of pop brilliance, smartly and seamlessly segueing 2007 song Nite Runner (fun for them to play, no doubt, although it left the 40something fans who came to hear Rio scratching their heads) into a 20-minute medley of older hits – Notorious, then I Don't Want Your Love (with a dash of Prince's Sign O' The Times), then, once Le Bon had strapped on an acoustic guitar, Save A Prayer. Enormous fun, brilliantly played.

They are also capable of unforgivable crimes against pop. We were, thank heavens, spared their infamous cover of Public Enemy's 911 is a Joke, but not their rockin' version of Grandmaster Melle Mel's 1983 hip-hop classic White Lines.

The sight of a middle-aged white man in a waistcoat shouting "freebase!" while punching the air is about as surreal as British pop gets.

That said, there's something oddly heroic about the way Duran Duran unapologetically pursue whatever musical whims they feel like from hip-hop and funk to synthpop and R&B (recent years have seen them working with Justin Timberlake and Mark Ronson).

They are not cool, and don't appear to care, but their live show is a masterclass in pleasing themselves and their audience at the same time. They played Ordinary World and Rio, obviously, but they also squeezed in Election Day, by mid-1980s Duran offshoot Arcadia, and the downbeat Do You Believe in Shame, a surprisingly poignant song from little remembered album Big Thing, keeping the goodwill of the crowd the whole way. You'd have to be a hard-hearted snob to leave a Duran show not admiring their chutzpah, even if Simon Le Bon's taste in hats is a little harder to love.