Simon LeBon

Simon John Charles LeBon was born was born on October 27, 1958, at Bushey Maternity Hospital, which is near Watford, England. His astrological sign is Scorpio.

Simon is the eldest of three sons (his brothers are David and Jonathon). His family is descended from the Huguenots--French Protestants who escaped from Catholic France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when they were persecuted by the government of the time. The family originally came from the Normandy area of France. The family's coat of arms can be found on the Huguenot crypt in Canterbury Cathedral.

Simon enjoys having an unusual name (it means "the good" in French). His fellow members of Duran Duran often affectionately call him "Charley", using his middle name.

Simon's father is an executive with the National Water Council division of the British civil service. His mother was an actress before her marriage and now runs a hotel in Florida. Simon terms his family "totally middle class," adding that "it's a very secure kind of background."

One of Simon's earliest memories of his childhood in Pinner, Middlesex, near London, is of being in a stroller and going over this hard, pebbly concrete road and going 'aaa-aaa-aaa-aaa' as it would sound all shaky because of the hard wheels." This early talent for singing was not lost upon his mother, who began sending him to acting classes at the age of five.

However, Simon insists, "I wasn't forced to go to stage school or anything like that. I just did the work because I had a pretty face I suppose."

When Simon was about ten, Mr. Turvey, the choirmaster at Pinner Parish Church, noticed his vocal ability and got him to sing treble (soprano) in the choir. He was one of the choir's outstanding soloists and cut his very first record with the choir, a collection of traditional hymns.

Despite his success in the choir, Simon continued his acting studies. He began to appear in stage productions in London, including a West End (the equivalent of New York's Broadway) staging of Tom Brown's Schooldays. He also starred in TV commercials for a detergent called Persil, for a magazine called Look In, and (as his fellow music superstar Michael Jackson would later do) for Pepsi!

Simon's creative fashion sense was also beginning to show itself, in an amusing way. He recalls now, "The first time I became fashion-conscious was when I realized I was the only boy left at my school still wearing short trousers."

School is a sore subject for Simon. Though it may not seem very likely now, he was not very popular with girls at that time. He didn't even have a girlfriend until age sixteen. Also, although his teachers remember him as highly intelligent, he was never particularly interested in academic topics. When it came time for the A levels (tests that every student in England planning to go on to a university must take), he flunked all but one of them.

After that, Simon did a number of things. He went to art school for a term; he became an apprentice to a printer for a short time; he went to Israel on a holiday and worked on a kibbutz; and he even worked as a tree surgeon for a while.

While he was in art school in 1977, he founded his first band, a punk group called Dog Days. The group only played publicly once, at a dance at school called Harrow Tech, but Simon remembers it fondly.

"It was great!" he grins. "We were bottom of the bill underneath Supercharge, a band called 98th Precinct, and some other art school band. We got turned off because we went on for too long. They pulled my mike out and I went over to somebody else's--it was really funny!"

With this sort of success smiling at the group, Dog Days soon disbanded, and Simon decided it was time to go back to school. He got a job as a porter in a hospital and went to night school to earn another A level.

Upon completion of his night course, Simon applied to Birmingham University for a drama course and was accepted. Soon after that he met and joined up with Duran Duran. (You'll find that story later on).

Simon is considered Duran Duran's poet, and he writes all of the group's lyrics. They are sometimes difficult to comprehend, although Simon admits, "I like to write things which I don't completely understand myself."

Until recently, Simon lived with his father and brother David in the family home in Middlesex. However, his recent engagement to a Canadian model, Claire Stansfield, changed that. They now share an apartment in Toronto and a house in London, and Claire accompanies him on most tours.

"We're the happiest couple in the whole wide world," Simon insists. "But we don't know yet when we're getting married."

Doubtless Simon's marriage will disappoint many of his fans--he describes the letters he receives from them as "very romantic." Many of his admirers, though, say that they are pleased for him and wish him every happiness.

Asked for a self-portrait, Simon responded this way: "Eastern jangles, flashes, jungles, all purple, gold and red, a crimson flag to herald the dawn and from the center of the liquid flame steps the man."

Photo captions: p. 13 "Simon pauses at a tender moment."; p. 15 "Simon compares musical notes with the Rolling Stones' Ron Wood."; p. 16 "I like to write things which I don't completely understand myself," Simon admits to the press."