Gimme a Wristband is pleased to present our first guest post from loyal reader and Duranie, ‘Cat’. She loves John Taylor… a lot… and has been doing it well for a long time now. Here’s the story of how it all started.

John Taylor, snappy dresser and heart breaker.

No, I don’t have a rash… and no, I’m not running a fever.

Although I have been given looks over the years that seem to say that I should be certified.

It all started back in 1981, on a cold March evening, as I sat and watched Top Of The Pops. It was a tradition for me back then, in the days before MTV and twenty four hour TV. My routine never varied; finish homework, have my dinner, wait impatiently for some boring programme to finish, and then… Yellow Pearl would burst out of the speakers, multi-coloured vinyl singles swooping in and out of shot, as a distorted voice said the name of the show.

And then it was on with the music. If you were lucky, you got to see and hear some good artists; David Bowie, The Specials, Visage, Depeche Mode, Japan, Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army.

If not, you had to suffer crap like St. Winifred’s School Choir wittering on about how there was no one quite like grandma. Or Joe Dolce telling you to shadd uppa your face. Or worse still, The Tweets with The bloody Birdie Song. *shudders*

But on March 5th, 1981, my life changed. And so did I.

I changed from someone who had loved all types of bands, switching from liking ABBA, to loving Adam and the Ants.

But I saw Duran Duran on TOTP for the first of many times that night. And I went from just liking music, to being consumed by everything Duran Duran sang, did, wore and said. And while all of the band were extremely easy on the eyes, there was one young man that would be the love of my teenage life. He was dressed in black from head to foot; black shirt, and more importantly, black leather trousers. His hair was burgundy, and those eyes… my god.

Looking back, he made the bass guitar a very sexual instrument, but when you’re ten years old, you don’t think of that. You just focus on the physical aspects in front of you.

And boy, did I ever focus on them.

The room, as I recall, went tunnel vision, my eyes riveted to the vision in black, just to the right of the singer. The camera did pan around, as I discovered later, but back then, it didn’t.

Not as far as I could see, anyway.

That was it.

I was now totally, madly, head over heels in love with the bass player for Duran Duran.

John Taylor.

We all remember doing the same things with any and all John Taylor memorabilia back then.

We reserved the walls directly around our beds for posters and pictures of him. I recall that at one point, my walls were plastered with posters, and I still had to keep some in a box for safe keeping. I kept scrapbooks, trawling through any and all newspapers for the least little article about him.

And I know now, that I was not the only lovestruck fourteen year old who cried into her pillow when he announced that he was getting engaged to Janine Andrews. My heart was broken as I read in the newspapers about how much they loved each other.

Mind you, I wasn’t the only one who cheered when they split up, only for him to start seeing Virginia Hey. At least she got him a cameo in a programme, Timeslip.

The programme itself was awful, but hey… John was in it!

My Duranie friends and I had plagued our parents, begging them to let us stay up late enough to watch it. We sat inches away from the TV screens, ready to hit the record buttons on our VCRs, and squealed loudly when John’s face filled the screen.

My VHS copy of the tape died two years later, the tape worn away from the near constant rewinding.

I started practicing writing my name as, at fourteen years old, I just knew it would be someday.

Mrs. P. Taylor.

Don’t laugh, I’ll bet you did that too.

And then, the fateful day arrived when John stopped being just very gorgeous and cute.

He was now officially… sexy.

Oh yes. The hormones kicked in, and you started thinking about how his hips moved as he played his bass.

How it seemed as if he was grinding against it, a knowing smirk on his lips as he knew exactly what effect it would have on hormonal girls the world over.

You could stare at his pictures for hours, wondering what it would be like to not only have him kiss you, but throw you onto the bed and make mad, passionate love to you. You watched, drooling, as he stalked the stage clad in his trademark leather trousers, and wanted to peel them off.

For me, the summer of 1985 was when John wasn’t just gorgeous, he was now the man who invaded my dreams at night, who sneaked into my mind during the day, who was the catalyst for my sexual awakening.

For my mother’s generation, it was ‘Elvis The Pelvis’, banned from being shown on TV from the waist down.

For my mother in law’s generation, it was The Beatles. John, Paul, George and Ringo who made them scream until they cried, who sang “I’d love to turn you on”, but didn’t necessarily mean with acid.

For the girls of the seventies, it was David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Bryan Ferry.

But for those of us who were teenagers back then, our idol, our very own sex god was John Taylor. He was the yardstick against which all others were measured, and frequently came up short.

However, as with all good things, for me, they came to an end.

For almost twenty years.

Duran Duran slipped from my radar, my musical tastes now moving onto harder, rockier music. You could say that Power Station influenced me. I still squealed when I heard Duran’s music, still felt the old, familiar rush of hormones when I saw John, but they weren’t high on my list anymore.

Christmas Eve, 1991. John Taylor finally got married to Amanda De Cadenet. He was 31, she was 19 and very pregnant.

The following week, the pictures appeared in Hello! magazine. It is a moment in time that is imprinted in my brain, even if I wasn’t as rabid a fan as I was five years before.

John was wearing a black jacket, and a truly hideous floral type shirt. She (I still can’t bring myself to say her name) was wearing a black dress and a pink jacket. And they were holding hands.

I can remember how I’d picked up the magazine, slack jawed in stunned horror. I had always thought he would have married the beautiful girl he’d been with for four years, Renee Toft Simonsen. Instead, he’d married a child, whose sole claim to fame had been presenting a TV show called The Word, their idea of entertainment being a drunk man in his twenties making out with an elderly woman.

To the other people in the shop, I probably looked like I was catching flies. Inside, my heart broke, my inner teeny sobbing hysterically into her pillow. I placed the magazine back onto the shelf, and left.

The intervening fourteen years saw me growing up fast. I became a single mother to a son, and raised him on my own until he was four. I met my long time partner, and gave birth to two more children, a girl and another boy. Nevertheless, my love for Duran and John manifested itself in my baby boy’s name; Taylor.

Flash forward to 2005.

The stars must have been aligned, or someone was telling me to pay close attention.

The first sign was an online discussion I had with a friend who’d been a Duranie at the same time I was. He declared that Simon Le Bon was the sexiest member of Duran, something I pointedly disagreed with. We argued and fought over it. In the end we agreed to disagree, but I was firmly convinced of the truth.

Everyone knew that John was the sexiest member, right?

Another online discussion, another admission that my favourite Duran was John. This time, the bug has hit me, and I google John’s name. And I not only discover that John has his own website, but – miracle of miracles! – Duran are back together!

And so I find myself back in love with the band, and still as obsessed with John as I ever was. The battles he has fought with his addictions have only made me admire him more, the tales told by those lucky enough to have met him make me realise that he is truly a beautiful man.

There are benefits this time around, thanks to the internet.

I find myself surrounded by women, and girls who were still in diapers the first time around, and we have bonded (excuse the bad pun).  We share tales of our children singing along to the new material, and of which member they like. We make plans to keep in touch, to share our vast libraries of audio and video with each other.

But mention John Taylor’s name, or post his picture up on your chosen forum, and there will be grown women still swooning over him, just like they did twenty five years ago.

My name is Cat, and I am proud to say that I have been down with the sickness.

And if there’s a cure, don’t bother giving it to me.

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Never trust the artist, trust the tale. – D.H. Lawrence

Over the past year or so, a pall has been cast over the Duran Duran fan community. Two valuable resources for sharing bootlegs, rare recordings and remixes were abruptly shut down. The first to go was Klaus’ site at www.duranduran.no, and this past weekend, all posts in the Music Room at MarkUK’s www.duranduranproboards.com were removed. Both were vast compendiums of knowledge, history, and musical innovation, noble efforts of the people who tirelessly maintained the sites as well as the countless fans who generously shared their collections with others who appreciated them.

These sites did not cater to piracy or counterfeiting of any kind. I know that MarkUK’s board is moderated very well and did not allow posting of any upload links for material that has been commercially released. It’s been a while since Klaus’ site was removed (and he’s not talking due to a rather fearsome gag order placed on him by the band) but I don’t recall that any official releases were posted there either. Regardless, all of the Duran Duran’s material is covered by copyright, whether officially released or not.  My point here is not to argue the valid legal grounds.

What I am going to argue is that by continuing to shut down communities such as these, Duran Duran are deluding themselves and needlessly punishing their fans in the process. The sharing of live and rare recordings between fans is far more beneficial to an artist than it could ever be of harm. Without a doubt, bootlegs fuel an interest and excitement about the music which results in more sales of the legitimate product, and cries of lost revenue caused by the sharing of bootlegs are irrelevant when the label has no intention or interest in releasing the material.

I’m willing to bet the farm that the same people who download Duran Duran bootlegs have also purchased every one of their officially released recordings. These sites were not for people looking to save a few bucks by downloading something illegally. They were for the dwindling number of hardcore fans of Duran Duran, the deeply devoted few who continue to earnestly line the pockets of the record label executives and to a lesser extent, the band themselves.

My hard drive is chock-full of Duran Duran bootlegs, each one a treasure and beloved for it’s own unique qualities. My adoration of the band grows deeper with every listen. The recordings are full of nuance and memories, whether collective or my own. Sharing them with others opens up new avenues of conversation, discussing thoughts and ideas about the music that might otherwise never come to light. The music may belong to the band, but the experience belongs to the fans… and Duran Duran are stupidly trying to take that away from us.

This is merely another example of Duran Duran sticking their heads in the sand, ignoring the sweeping changes that the Internet has brought to the music industry and blindly refusing to utilize the limitless promotional power of genuine interaction and fan-generated content. Not satisfied to simply shut down bastions of fan interaction, Duran Duran is unwilling to competently manage their own official fan site, which is rife with trolls and devoid of even mildly interesting official content. One could also mention how the band sheepishly stands mute when EMI screws up their remasters and posts a press release which clearly insults the intelligence of their fan base.

Meanwhile, successful artists like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails are embracing the new music business attitude, communicating directly with fans, treating them with respect and providing them with a reason to consume their music and come to their shows. Compare this with Duran Duran’s ego-boosting power trips and fear-mongering and one has to wonder how long this band can survive the swiftly changing tides.

Brace yourselves, because this is going to hurt: Duran Duran’s last album, Red Carpet Massacre, has sold less than 100,000 copies in the US and UK combined, even as they still sit on shelves at $3.99. These alarming figures show that pretty much the only people who bought the album were hard-core fans, the very same people that Duran Duran is punishing by shutting down their dwindling sites of devotion. Biting the hand that feeds you is not a smart move prior to the release of another album with yet another expensive producer and no record label to offer promotion.

This is not a case of Duran Duran’s management being asleep at the wheel… Magus Entertainment is driving the car off of the cliff. If they continue to treat fans like impudent teenagers, it’s going to be tough to salvage what is left of this relationship. At what point will we unite to find our voice and tell the emperor that he wears no clothes?  There’s too much at stake to not consider some tough love, and time is running out.

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In celebration of National Duran Duran Appreciation Day, readers of Gimme a Wristband shared a few reasons why they appreciate Duran Duran. If you didn’t get a chance to post yours on Facebook, feel free to share  in the comments section here… because we appreciate Duran Duran every day of the year!

I appreciate the friendships that have been formed through the love of the band and their music. – Kitty

Personally, I have had a ton of fun on “tour” with my friends! – Amanda

I appreciate their music which moves my soul.  – Michele

Simon haha. Yum yum x – Clair

I appreciate their ability to not repeat themselves…. – Daniel

I appreciate their ability to not repeat themselves…. – Gregory

I appreciate that for the past 25+years they have been the one, single constant in my life. And that gives me comfort and makes me smile. – Mikala

I appreciate them for allowing my creativity to emerge thanks to Simon’s brilliant writing and imagination,which has helped me be more expressive and visual in my poetry and stories. Their incredible videos have helped me see things in a different light than anything I could’ve ever dream of. And most of their music has been the best thing to ever influence my life,so for these long winded events I’ve just described,Thank you Duran Duran! – Byron

Blah,blah,blah,blah,blah…. blah,blah,blah… The only real answer is MUSIC!!! Duran Duran IS music.The greatest ever on this planet. Long live the Kings!!!! – Kostas

Everything. My Mother had the Beatles and Slade, I had Duran Duran. They were the thing that defined my youth. Up until that point music seemed like an endless round of churned-out-of-the-mill dreary nothing-ness (with the exception of Blondie) then along came Duran Duran. They made me sit up and take notice. THIS was how music was MEANT to be. This was what I wanted to be. This was my life. This was the soundtrack to my life. – Lee

I agree with Lee; my mother had Elvis and The Beatles, I was lucky enough to have Duran Duran. They broke through the drabness of the late 70′s/early 80′s Ireland, and bought fun back into music. Because of them, writing became more than a hobby to me, I discovered just how brilliant the likes of Roxy Music and Bowie were. And of course, there was John Taylor; say no more.  – Patricia

happy dd day!!!!!!
you are the best boys!!!!!!!!!!!!!
what I love the most in dd ? JOHN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
their music of course I love when I’m down I listen them or John and I get better…kiss kiss guys!!!! – Nathalie

I appreciate the fact that they have got me through bad times, I’ve made friends through this band, I’ve discovered new music and old music through this band. I appreciate that Duran Duran has made my life a whole lot better. Thank you – Amanda

I certainly STILL appreciate the music, but most of all, I value and TREASURE the wonderful friends I’ve made through mutual appreciation of the band…thank you!!!! – Christina

I appreciated their music wich is by my side since I was 10 years that is 28 years ago,I enjoyed every album every song no matter the charts,you know everybody has a different pint of view about everything so charts for me means nothing I o…nly enjoy the music!!!! another important things is the friends I have from many years and made through the last five years,really awesome people with whom I can share everything,they’re a blessing in my life…..and the last but not the least to have the chance to enjoy DD music with my kids,they know what the band means to me and enjoy it too!!!
THANKS DD !!!!!!! – MariFer

I would like to show Nick Rhodes just how much I appreciate him…..errr..ummm….I mean I appreciate the whole band for their integrity and AWESOME music….*and Nick Rhodes* lol – Anitra

Every rhythm, rhyme and song elicits a fond memory and that is something I will always appreciate.  – Lynne

I Agree with all of you! AND Duran has inspired me in oh so many ways thank you JT, Si, NIck, and RT! I LOVE YOU GUYS! – Sharita

Simply the music and the way it brings people around the world together in appreciation of what IS one of the best bands around!! – Justine

That I’ve been able to experience their uplifting music with so many wonderful people.  – Suzanne

that throught their years their music and laughter and humour and intellect and intelligence and talent has brought me much joy and happiness that saw me through really bad times throughout the years - Shannon

The way their music sings to my soul. – Kirk

It’s hard to choose what I appreciate most about Duran Duran… I’d say it’s a toss up between the way their music makes me feel & the way I feel when I see them play live. Nothing compares. – Lisa

I appreciate how they lift my spirits when I’m sad, make me sing out loud and twirl around, the live shows make me cry and squeal with joy, their music just completes me.  – Laura

If I say Simon Le Bon’s long legs and vexing voice is that bad? LOL! – Denee

This band literally changed my life. They have inspired me, made life more fun and influenced decisions that have taken me down some interesting roads. They are, always have been and always will be my favorite band, and it’s an indescribable honor to do some work for them. – Nathan

Thank you very much Kitty!!! Happy day to you and all duranies!!!
I appreciate everythings about them,they were and are now a big support for me in hard moments,their music help me to smile when I am sad,they are angels for me,no just a band…..They are the best musicians and my favorites forever!!! they taught to me fall in love with the music,and inspire me at all,simply I love them for who they are, THEM!!! – Denisse

Their Music Helped me outa Depression, where no other music could help. where others would depress me, Duran Lifted me totally out of it.
i would not be alive now, had it not been for them.
i Totally adore Duran Duran. – Sandra

February 6 & 7th, 1984 were the most amazing DD concerts I’d ever seen. August 23rd (Taji’s bday) was another great day, when DD received their star in Hollywood….I’ve met the greatest friends and they changed my life for the better. So hard to put into words what they mean to me, but I know all of you out there feel the same! – Eileen

nostalgia, good friends i have met since 2005 because of them, soundtrack of my life. – Shannon

I’m a born again Duranie. i got distracted by Wham! and A-ha when i was 15, now i’m Back to Duran again.
Totally Love John and Simon xx – Sandra

Because tey still all this years, dont never gibve up. And most of their music let us body dance. Let and show ur live Dance, sometimes Cry but always stay alive – Jezebel

For setting my heart, mind and soul aflame, making me laugh, cry, love, think, and DANCE. For trying different things, in music and in style. For taking breaks when you individually needed to, for separating when necessary. Thank you. P.S. And for continuing on. - Nancy

I appreciate them for managing to stay together for 32 years, which is pretty rare in the music business. - Emily

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“… And once again the latest shocking news… A yacht belonging to DuranDuran singer Simon Le Bon has capsized in rough seas. The singer is believed to have been on board.”

Today, we give thanks that Simon Le Bon is alive and well. Take a moment to pause and reflect on what Simon has given us in the last twenty-five years: the lyrics that move us to tears and the dance moves that make us laugh, his sharp wit and generous smiles, and a willingness to share an always fascinating, never waning lust for life. Imagine, just for a brief moment, where we would all be without him.

It’s no coincidence that Duran Duran Appreciation Day happens on August 10. This year, remember that life can be gone in a whooosh.

Snapshot of a diagram from an Italian magazine of the overturned vessel. The arrow points to the trapped Simon and shows how the rescue diver was able to rescue the crew.

Following is an article posted today on gibson.com, thoughtfully written by Andrew Vaughn.

This Day in Music Spotlight: Simon Le Bon Almost Drowns at Sea

Simon Le Bon, lead singer of Duran Duran, was at the height of his fame in 1985 when a yachting disaster almost took his life.

A keen sailor, Le Bon had commissioned a yacht to be built, called it The Drum, and decided to compete in the 1985 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race.

On August 10, 1985, in order to help train the crew and test the boat and its equipment, Le Bon and Co. entered the Fastnet Race, a 608-mile trip from the Isle of Wight to Plymouth in England.

Unfortunately, violent, gale-force weather off the coast of Cornwall, England, threatened the safety of the yacht and crew and the adverse weather conditions caused the 14-ton keel to break away, capsizing the yacht with all 24 members of the crew trapped onboard. Le Bon and his team were trapped underwater inside the hull for 40 minutes. Fortunately, another yacht competing in the race saw what happened and called in the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, who quickly mounted a rescue and everyone was taken to shore by helicopter, safe and sound.

Talking in 2005 to the Sunday Times about the accident, Le Bon said: “One of the crew caught below was drowning. He was right at the back of the boat where all the heavy sails are stowed. When the boat overturned, it took on about half a ton of water and he was stuck underneath the sails, unable to get out. He was terrified. You could hear him screaming. The whole experience, I imagine, comes somewhere very low on the scale of what young men go through when they go to war and face the very great possibility of death.”

Exhibiting a steeliness not expected of guylinered, new romantic pop star, Le Bon and crew spent the next month fixing up The Drum with a new keel, masts and sails and completely replaced the electrics. As originally planned, they took part in the 1985 Whitbread Round the World, where they finished third.

The events surrounding The Drum, the races and the disaster were the focus of a 1989 movie, Drum – The Journey of a Lifetime.

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