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Precisely because at that point, the New Romantic was virtually unknown outside it's london base. As John noted, on paper Duran Duran did seem to fall into this new musical geure, and whether they did or not, if it could help generate interest in the band, then use it. In the wakeof punk's disintegration, there was almot a musical lull, at least in the press' eyes. Everyone was searching for the next big thing, and to prod things along, the press were quick to jump on anything new. The kids in the clubs were looking around for something to latch onto as well. "Looking back at it now," Rhodes muses, "I think really what New Romantic was about, was a style movement that came out of punk rock and glam rock. Running alongside glam rock was techno-rock, triple alburns, concept alburns, flying pigs." So, we're talking Pink Floyd. "Exactly, and Yes and all those groups; the punk movement was against all that. They were fans of T Rex, Bowie, the stylized glam rock, but nobody was that keen on ELP, it was a reaction against people who could play like virtuosos. It was more we can play three chords, stand up onstage, and everything's great. What we did was take that ethic together with the electronic music of Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, and all that disco stuff as well, and mixed it in
with glamrock. "All that together is what resulted in the New Romantic ethics I suppose
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And I think our music was greatly away from nearly everybody else, other than the punk side of it, which was there with the likes of Depeche Mode, but perhaps not so much so with some of the others."It's important to remember that contrary to the movement's later appearance, New Romantic did spring directly out of punk. People like Steve Strange, who opened London's first New Romantic club, had begun in the punk scene, as had Boy George. The scene had close ties to some of the gay community, which further fueled the sense of style and flash. It was only later that the media's perception would twist New Romantic into an "anti-punk" backlash. And it was that later vision of New Romantic that Rhodes felt rightly that Duran Duran needed to stay well away from. When the packaging started becoming more important than the content, the New Romantic Movement quickly sailed out of the serious musical current, and began drifting towards the shoals of fad-dom.
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