Nick Rhodes
Nicholas James Bates, keyboardist for Duran Duran, was born in
He and
his art school friend John Taylor founded the band in 1978; at about the same
time as the name Duran Duran was chosen for the band, Nick decided to change his
name, for "aesthetic reasons", to Rhodes (possibly after the Rhodes
piano, or his hair, which was vividly red at the time). Rhodes and singer Simon
Le Bon are the only members to have been with the band throughout its 25-year
career.
After
leaving school at 16, he worked as a DJ at a local
The band
achieved rapid success, and |
His
contributions to the band were sometimes underestimated by contemporaries and
critics. Barely twenty when the band hit major stardom, he cultivated an
androgynous and sometimes flamboyant image, wore heavy makeup, changed his hair
color at whim, and spoke with a deep, deceptively lazy
An
unschooled musician, Rhodes loved experimenting with the sounds his analog
synthesizers were capable of, but shied away from the "novelty"
sounds of some other early synth bands. The distinctive warble of
"Save A Prayer", the keyboard stabs of "A View To A
Kill", and the elegant string sounds of "Come Undone" are
some of his most recognizable contributions. His arrangements were rich,
multi-layered, and unique, and although he has continued to explore the
cutting edge of digital synthesizer technology, he has an enduring love
for the analog synths of his early days, using them even on albums
released in the 2000s.
|
In early
1983, he discovered the band Kajagoogoo and produced their debut album
"White Feathers". He jokingly said he would never do so again because
their hit single "Too Shy" was the song that bumped Duran's
"Hungry Like The Wolf" out of the #1 spot on the
He
met Julie Anne Friedman (heiress to the
|
Rhodes
became enamored of the art world, making friends with Andy
Warhol and The Factory crowd, and attending exhibitions worldwide. He once
described a highlight of this period of his life as "buying a Picasso
on my American Express card". At the end of 1984, he released his own
book of art photographs called "Interference", many of which
were displayed at the Hamilton Gallery in |
|
With
his bandmates Simon Le Bon and Roger Taylor, Rhodes formed the side
project |
Since
the early nineties,
Rhodes
and Cuccurullo also wrote and produced three tracks for the Blondie reunion
album in 1996; due to shifting label politics, the tracks were not used, but one
called "Pop Trash Movie" was later recorded by Duran Duran for the
2000 album Pop Trash.
By the
late 1990s,
In 1999,
he reunited with one of Duran Duran's early singers, Stephen Duffy, to create
new music based on some of the earliest Duran music the two had written
together; the result was the album Dark Circles, released under the name The
Devils.
In 2001,
the original five members of Duran Duran reunited to record new music; see Duran
Duran for details.
In 2002,
* extracted from Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia