Rio Quotes

“But what was true then - and remains true now - is that nobody came close to replicating Duran Duran‘s actual Rio sound. “When I hear things like ‘Hungry Like The Wolf,’ it doesn’t sound like anybody else,” says Roger Taylor. “When I hear that coming on the radio, it can only be Duran Duran.”
― Annie Zaleski, Rio

“The bassist hadn’t left England until he joined Duran Duran, and in 1981, he saw some of the world’s biggest cities: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and Berlin. “It was extraordinary. And yet when we came back to Birmingham, the idea of exotica - and exotic travel - was Rio…basically we’re all suburban English kids that really are not well-traveled at all - have just traveled the world in extraordinary way. We go back home and we’re still dreaming. We’re still dreaming about a place far away - and the idea of that escapism.”
― Annie Zaleski, Rio

“But Rio begins, appropriately enough, with the title track which Le Bon Wrote as “an homage to New York, really - to America,” he said in a 2011 interview. As with many of his lyrics, however, inspiration first came from another place: a comely Birmingham restaurant server…”I took that home and put it together with all my wonderful feelings about being on tour in America. The song started off with a girl from Birmingham - but it became about the entire United States, from the mountains in the north down to the Rio Grande.”
― Annie Zaleski, Rio

“John Taylor says, “That first album was created very quickly, but we barely knew each other. And I think that Rio was much more about ourselves responding to each other, and the experiences that we were having, rather than what was going on outside us.”
― Annie Zaleski, Rio

“Says John Taylor, “One of the most important things about this record is the way the lyrics were being expressed. I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone else that was writing lyrics the way Simon was writing at this time…They’re these super pop songs that have really bizarrely dark, lyrical messaging that somehow seemed to work.”
― Annie Zaleski, Rio

“There’s no politics in our music,” John Taylor told the New York Daily News in 1981. “We think it’s irresponsible to preach to young, impressionable people who, if you told them to go throw a brick at Parliament, would. Music should be entertaining.”
― Annie Zaleski, Rio

“At one point, Le Bon perches on the bow of the yacht, his hair billowing in the wind as the boat speeds along, the leader of a pack of handsome, carefree young men heading towards a bright future. This particular shot became one of the most indelible images of a 1980s.”
― Annie Zaleski, Rio