MD: Did you have your hands in any of the programming, or did you leave that all up to the programmers? “Hey why don’t you try this” or “just do that on the hi-hat” or “hit that cymbal….” So I like it to be nice and quiet with just me and the producer or engineer. Roger: Initially we’ll jam as a band, get all the changes and the structure of the song, and then I’ll record my parts when no one else is around. MD: How do you prefer to record your tracks? And it’s very relaxing sometimes you don’t have to worry about tempo, you can just get dig into the groove, you know you’re always going to be on exactly the right tempo. So I’m fairly comfortable with that live. Nick is always running sequences, and I’ve always had to keep in time with what he’s doing. There’s a whole box of tricks going on there.Īnd I’ve always played to a click on stage. This is the first time I’ve got a full sit-down electronic kit that triggers samples. I’ve always combined electronics into my kit. Roger: Yes, but I’ve moved a step further by actually playing a whole kit rather than just pads. MD: That’s similar to what you’ve done in the past with the Simmons pads. I’m also experimenting with using triggers on my acoustic kit. So I’m actually playing the original samples from the album. I also took samples from the album and put them into a Roland sampler, and I’ll trigger them. I have my Tama acoustic kit set up in front of me, and I’ll play some of the songs very organically on that “real” kit, but I’ve also got my V-Drum kit to my left, which is a full TD-20 setup. Drum-wise, it’s a mixture of programmed drums, with a V-Drum kit, and quite a bit of organic drums. Roger: Thank you, that means a lot coming from another drummer. MD: I like how you incorporated all this live. I think that’s another thing that was very attractive to us: We could feel that moving more into our direction. And if you listen to Justin Timberlake and Nellie Furtado’s last CD, they were kind of moving into a new wave area, with a contemporary edge to it. But we’ve moved into a more experimental area, and I think the new album had to be very different from Astronaut. The last album, Astronaut, was all about the five original band members getting back together again, and the album had to kind of represent that original five. We always like to push the boundaries a bit we don’t like to get stuck where we were. I know for a fact that he’d love to work with Coldplay. He mentioned that he wanted to move away from just hip-hop and start producing some more rock bands. MD: You might have even taught him a thing or two…. We’ve used drum machines and programming in the past, and always mixed it with live instruments, so it was fairly familiar territory for us. But we have a history of working with dance producers and working with the technical side of things, so it was actually quite a good fit for us. I think he’s just used to programming all the tracks for an artist and delivering the finished piece of music. Roger: It was a very interesting experiment, because I don’t think he’s ever worked with a full band before. MD: How was it working with Timbaland on the new record? But let’s begin our visit with Roger talking about that great new album… Of course, the second set featured all Duran Duran’s classic songs, and that’s when the crowd really went nuts. Typically, all the shows were wildly successful, especially considering that the group opened with a set comprised entirely of material from the new album-a bold move for any band. MD caught up with Roger Taylor while he was in the UK rehearsing for a string of Broadway concerts to debut Red Carpet Massacre. (“Rio” topped a global AOL survey for the Best Music Video Of All Time.) They’ve also won two Grammy awards for their music videos. After all, the band-keyboardist Nick Rhodes, singer Simon Le Bon, bassist John Taylor, and drummer Roger Taylor (guitarist Andy Taylor decided to bow out for this one)-have been on the cutting edge of contemporary sound since making their debut twenty-nine years ago.ĭuring the past three decades, the group-who People magazine once crowned “the prettiest band in rock”-have placed twenty-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, placed thirty singles in the UK Top-40, and sold more than 85 million records. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, and Nate “Danja” Hills signed on to co-produce Duran Duran’s latest CD, Red Carpet Massacre.
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