Highlights from John Taylor’s September 2010 Katy Kafe

John Taylor of Duran Duran... oops, he did it again.

John Taylor is excited… so I’m excited… and you should be too. JT is showing a lot of enthusiasm for this new album, and I must say it’s all sounding pretty good.  It could just be that there’s more to actually talk about now, but to me, this latest Kafe somehow felt more sincere and focused than the one in June. Here are the highlights:

• As of, well… now… the album is called All You Need Is Now. John says “we’re all feeling that one.”

• Duran Duran “really nailed the album” in July. JT is going back to England in another week or so to finalize things, but he’s really “excited” and “ecstatic” about it. He spoke of “really feeling the spirit of the band and the four of us.”

• The new album is “so much better than Red Carpet Massacre and Astronaut.” (This makes me cringe, but whatever.) John says, “It’s the album that people who love the band have been waiting for for years.”

• The eleven tracks on the album “will make for great live music.”

• Duran Duran have chosen an artist to create the cover artwork, and artist name Clunie Reid whose work Nick discovered at the Saatchi Gallery. You can check out her recent work  here, which I think looks very intriguing. As JT says, “it’s going to be pretty fucking out there.” Cool.

• Katy busted out with another song title, Leopard, which JT seemed surprised to hear is her favorite from the album.

• John says their recent cover of Boys Keep Swinging is “a really nice sort of step towards the album. (Yay!) He says they’ve even talked about playing it live, saying “we’ll have it somewhere in the set.”

• Regarding tour plans, John said that it is possible that there might be something besides South Africa “in a capital city” before the end of the year, and that “big plans are being made.”

• There was a lot of talk about the reissues. John said that he “has had a spiritual experience with the band and their music over the past few months,” some of which seems to have been spurred on my listening to the Seven and the Ragged Tiger reissue. That part sounded great, but I could have done without the “EMI have done a fantastic job of the reissues” bit. Anyhow, he spoke of his involvement with the Big Thing reissue, which primarily seemed to be the chance to restore the original version of Drug.

• John spoke quite a bit about Notorious, which we will be exploring more in depth here later in the week. Stay tuned for that. Oh, and they are planning a reissue of Liberty.

• The conversation ended on a more predictable note with chit-chat about JT’s favorite TV shows (Mad Men, Modern Family, Rubicon, and anything on TMC) and his favorite movies of late (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Kids Are Alright.)