Fact #135638
When:
Short story:
Duran Duran plays its first live date, at Birmingham Polytechnic, Birmingham, England, UK, Europe, to an audience of ten people.Full article:
Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran) : I left school when I was 16, John had just done his first year at art college. I'd known him since I was nine years old, and the two of us had always been interested in music. I'd been going to concerts since I was about 10.
The first concert John went to was Mick Ronson at Birmingham Town Hall and I was with him. We'd always thought about music a lot, going through that whole punk thing, but we never did it at school or had any training. It was just like a dream we had, to want to do something in music.
Then John opted for the idea that if you go to art school, something good will come out of it, and I just left school because I didn't want to continue learning how to pass exams. At that stage, we were both free and suddenly decided we should do something about it.
We were both seeing these punk groups and it was inspiring for us, because here were 16-year-olds who could hardly play their instruments, just getting up on stage playing in groups.
We both decided we wanted to be guitarists. God knows why. At that time I couldn't possibly have afforded a synth until a thing called the Wasp came out - it was a cheap, plastic synthesizer, but I loved it. I wish I'd never sold mine.
THE FIRST GROUP
John had met Stephen (Tin Tin) Duffy at college and he was also interested in music - he'd written some songs with terribly pretentious titles like "So Cold in Eldorado" - so we thought he must be our man! He played bass, so we tried to form a group. I'd had enough of guitars by this point, but John was still playing it. I thought this synth looked great and I got together all the money I could from working odd jobs and I bought the Wasp plus a cheap rhythm unit that had bossanova, foxtrot, and rhumba on it. And we thought we had a group.
I put stickers on the Wasp for the different notes, ABCDEFG and so on, because you could only play with one finger at a time on it anyway. It had a touch-sensitive metal keyboard.
So I started learning, fiddling around with it, making sounds, and I got some tape machines and added a mixer later. I was fading these things in and out over the music, all terribly obscure. There was also slide projection and stuff and Simon Colley was the other guy who joined us. We auditioned him - he was a clarinet player and we figured a clarinet player would be really good!
(Source : interview with Johnny Black)
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The first concert John went to was Mick Ronson at Birmingham Town Hall and I was with him. We'd always thought about music a lot, going through that whole punk thing, but we never did it at school or had any training. It was just like a dream we had, to want to do something in music.
Then John opted for the idea that if you go to art school, something good will come out of it, and I just left school because I didn't want to continue learning how to pass exams. At that stage, we were both free and suddenly decided we should do something about it.
We were both seeing these punk groups and it was inspiring for us, because here were 16-year-olds who could hardly play their instruments, just getting up on stage playing in groups.
We both decided we wanted to be guitarists. God knows why. At that time I couldn't possibly have afforded a synth until a thing called the Wasp came out - it was a cheap, plastic synthesizer, but I loved it. I wish I'd never sold mine.
THE FIRST GROUP
John had met Stephen (Tin Tin) Duffy at college and he was also interested in music - he'd written some songs with terribly pretentious titles like "So Cold in Eldorado" - so we thought he must be our man! He played bass, so we tried to form a group. I'd had enough of guitars by this point, but John was still playing it. I thought this synth looked great and I got together all the money I could from working odd jobs and I bought the Wasp plus a cheap rhythm unit that had bossanova, foxtrot, and rhumba on it. And we thought we had a group.
I put stickers on the Wasp for the different notes, ABCDEFG and so on, because you could only play with one finger at a time on it anyway. It had a touch-sensitive metal keyboard.
So I started learning, fiddling around with it, making sounds, and I got some tape machines and added a mixer later. I was fading these things in and out over the music, all terribly obscure. There was also slide projection and stuff and Simon Colley was the other guy who joined us. We auditioned him - he was a clarinet player and we figured a clarinet player would be really good!
(Source : interview with Johnny Black)