Duran Duran on stage at American Airlines Center June 10, 2023. (Rich Lopez/DV)
A full house of baby boomers and Gen X-ers were reliving their MTV heyday — but so was the large audience of millennials and younger who were not there with their diehard parents. The mix of fans was broad but all danced and sang to Duran Duran’s biggest hits while appropriately appreciating the band’s newer but lesser known music. But Saturday night’s performance wasn’t really about going back. Duran Duran performed these hits with the energy of new releases and powerful energy that made them sound just as fresh as they were decades ago.
Nile Rodgers and Chic opened the night but a late arrival by 7:45 p.m. to the venue and they were already gone. Bastille then kicked off the night’s second opener. The band, led by the dynamic frontman Dan Smith, set up the audience for the upcoming headliner. With its dance pop hits and a band of multi-instrumentalists, the band’s solid set was engaging enough to keep going for another hour and the audience might have been fine with it.
But when it was Duran Duran’s turn, the roars were apparent from the floor seats to the highest tiered rows. The four original members – Simon LeBon, Nick Rhodes, Jonathan Taylor and Roger Taylor stepped onstage as if to say “We’re here” and had the audience in their grip.
A slow opener of “Night Boat” was only a tease for the onslaught of hits that dominated the setlist. “Wild Boys,” “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “View to a Kill” and “Notorious” followed sounding as fresh as ever with LeBon’s very intact voice and the players leaning into the D2 sound.
The band would drop in later singles like “Anniversary” and “Careless Memories” as well as a random and unnecessary cover of Rick James’ “Superfreak,” but the hits unsurprisingly were the draw and Duran Duran served them all (well, the biggest ones at least).
Moodier tunes like “Come Undone” and “Ordinary World” held so much power that kept the audience standing, but all bets were off when the dropped hits like “The Re-Flex,” “Girls on Film” and even the abrasively sounding “White Lines.” The band finished their one and only encore with an audience sing-along (groan) of “Save a Prayer” before ripping apart the place with a thunderstorm performance of “Rio.”
As a frontman, LeBon was a curious personality. He engaged and danced and high kicked but his aloofness was on high, but perhaps that’s part of his appeal. He kept the band and the audience enraptured with whatever he did onstage. Rhodes stuck to his icy cool nature he’s had since the band’s heyday and it still works while Jonathan Taylor was working side-by-side with LeBon with personality and never failed to remind that he is a badass bass player.
–Rich Lopez
1.) Jonathan Taylor Thomas was on Home Improvement, JOHN Taylor is in Duran Duran.
2.) There is nothing “groan” about an audience singalong to “Save a Prayer”, that’s what we do on that song.
3.) Careless Memories came out in 1981, Anniversary came out in 2021. Don’t think they both count as “later” songs.
Let’s have some minimal research or fact checking done for future articles .
Absolutely agree! Check your facts. And saying Simon was aloof is absurd! He’s very engaging and charismatic!
When Simon Le Bon, the lead singer tells the AAC crowd that he feels this will be the best performance/audience so far on the Future Past tour only in a few songs into the concert. Stays on stage a few minutes longer arms raised ‘More Joy’ as the rest of the band has left the stage signaling the end of the concert.
That’s not being aloof.