Simon Le Bon has a mischievous twinkle in his eye. We’re in the penthouse suite at The London West Hollywood, with the Sunset Strip laid out below us like a roadmap of debauchery. Just a few doors down is The Roxy, where Duran Duran made their Los Angeles debut in 1981. Our bird’s-eye view takes the dandyish 67-year-old frontman back to that tour, and the first time the new wave pioneers found themselves on a hotel rooftop in this city. “We got kicked out of the Riot House,” he smirks. “Have you heard that story?”
As Le Bon tells it, he was innocently taking a swim on the roof of the infamous rock star haunt when the band’s then-guitarist, Andy Taylor, decided for a jape to fill a cleaner’s bucket with pool water and tip it over the edge towards unsuspecting diners many floors below.
The band’s keyboard wizard Nick Rhodes, 64, picks up the tale. “We got unceremoniously removed from the hotel by seven armed police officers,” he says, raising his eyebrows beneath his shock of platinum blond hair. Le Bon makes it clear the incident didn’t cramp their style. “We moved to this little place which looked like a spaceship from The Jetsons,” recalls the singer. “And it was so much fun it was ridiculous.”
Duran Duran have carried on having ridiculous amounts of fun pretty much ever since. The band – Le Bon, Rhodes, bassist John Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor – have sold more than 100 million records since forming in Birmingham almost five decades ago, and are still dreaming up fresh hits. Their latest single, the disco-fuelled ‘Free to Love’, features legendary Chic guitarist (and longtime Duran Duran collaborator) Nile Rodgers and is a fan favourite at the residency in Las Vegas they’re in town for.
“We always play to a packed house in Vegas,” says Le Bon approvingly. “People go there for fun, and we fit into that very well. Our manager told me off for calling us a party band, so I’m not going to call us a party band…” He glances around theatrically before adding in a stage whisper: “But we are!”
It’s no surprise that Vegas has embraced Duran Duran: the band have had a long and very much reciprocated romance with America. It began on that first visit at the start of the 1980s, from which they returned to England inspired to write some of their best-known music.
“The Rio album is really based on that trip, the excitement and the energy,” says Rhodes. Le Bon agrees: “Lyrically it gave me so much to write about. I knew we were going to have a massive love affair with America. That’s really what the song ‘Rio’ is about. I just invented a girl and gave her the name Rio, and that was it.”
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