Duran Duran are celebrating 40 years in the music business. A great achievement for a band that’s had high and lows like no other. The Scarborough Open Air Theatre was the location for over 6,500 people to come and adore their heroes. And they didn’t disappoint.
First song was a new one, ‘Invisible’. Taken from the upcoming new album, ‘Future Past’, Simon Le Bon, John Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Roger Taylor and Dominic Brown set the mood nicely before the classics begin in earnest with ‘The Reflex’.
‘Notorious’ follows to really get the crowd going before another new single gets aired in the shape of ‘Anniversary’. ‘Come Undone’ revisits the 1990s until we get the James Bond treatment with the classic, ‘A View To A Kill’. ‘Friends Of Mine’ gets a run out as the devoted Duranies really go back in time to the early days.
‘Planet Earth’ is the second helping from their eponymous debut album before ‘Pressure Off’ from the ‘Paper Gods’ album keeps the momentum going. Le Bon addresses his audience before ‘Ordinary World’, the most apt song on the set list given the extraordinary times we live in. ‘Tonight United’ is a very new song that Le Bon said we would be singing by the end. And he wasn’t wrong either.
The first hour comes to a close with the excellent (Reach Up For The) Sunrise, which everyone did, followed by the cover of the iconic Grandmaster Flash song, ‘White Lines (Don’t Do It)’. The third song to conclude the hour is their own iconic song, ‘Girls On Film’, which combined the Calvin Harris number, ‘Acceptable In The 80s’ in the middle. If any band should know what was, it’s Duran Duran.
The encore brings out Simon Le Bon on acoustic guitar and that can only mean ‘Save A Prayer’. Lots of emotion in the crowd for that before the Lou Reed classic, ‘Perfect Day’ gives a gentile start before it blends into a raucous ‘The Wild Boys’. The show comes to an end with beach balls, confetti and ‘Rio’, the perfect way to end a sensational show.
Duran Duran are showing no signs of stopping and their adoring fans probably won’t let them anyway. But when you sound and look as good as ever, why would you. Stirring stuff from true music
Review by Mark Sharpley
Photos by Paul Dixon
