Gig review: Duran Duran at First Direct Bank Arena, Leeds
The Birmingham veterans play up the pure pantomime of a copper-bottomed post-new wave catalogue that still stacks up with the best of them after so many years.
Eighties-pop survivors seen dime-a-dozen these days – but few can lay the claim to such rarefied endurance as Duran Duran might do.
Not many groups captured the post-new wave zeitgeist quite like the Birmingham veterans did amidst their halcyon eras, bridging the disparate colours of Roxy Music, Chic and the Yellow Magic Orchestra to screaming fangirls across the Atlantic Ocean; fewer still have preserved commercial vigour as an enormo-dome draw that can count Beck, Korn and Sabrina Carpenter amongst their eclectic admirers too.
Nevertheless, they roll into Leeds with the odds stacked against them. The twin onslaught of Storms Austen and Boelo have battered West Yorkshire with frigid wave upon wave of wind and water, felling trees and roofs throughout the city; it is just about all the First Direct Bank Arena can do to stop itself toppling over onto the A64(M) beneath it.
Inside its confines, the steam is practically rising from the concrete bleachers as fans battle to dry both up and out.
It is a crowd that needs to be conducted – and in Simon Le Bon, they have a frontman who remains unfailingly game for any challenge. Strutting out of the darkness, wreathed in a gold lamé jacket, he only needs to flick his hips around the pop-art colour of Is There Something I Should Know? to have 10,000 punters eating out of the palm of his hand.
Encouraging hollers for The Wild Boys, and howls for Hungry Like the Wolf, he plays up pure pantomime from start to finish – and judging by his grin, knows exactly how to play folks like a fiddle too.
Such attitude only works with both the band – and the tunes – to back up such confidence, of course, and Duran Duran still pack plenty of them in their arsenal.
A View to a Kill remains a copper-bottomed Bond theme after so many years; Ordinary World may lay serious claim to status as the quintessential proto-Britpop ballad; Planet Earth still rockets off with a serious rubbery surge.
Bassist John Taylor still brings sheer funk to The Reflex, and cuts loose with a gleeful disco-riff take on Electric Light Orchestra’s Evil Woman; Nick Rhodes lets his keys do the heavy lifting on a terrific Save a Prayer.
“Were you feeling wild tonight, Leeds?” Le Bon offers before a climactic Rio. Ultimately, the weather can’t stop an affirmative yes.