John Taylor is pimping a memoir called, In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, and Duran Duran. More than twenty years ago, I stood in line, in the rain, outside of Tower Records on Newbury Street in Boston and waited with what seemed like one million other fans to see/meet/greet/kidnap the band as they promoted Big Thing. Twenty years ago, I felt long in the tooth, shy, embarrassed that these people, this band, still pulled at my heart strings so. So imagine my surprise when, watching Nigel John Taylor, Gemini, bass player of one of my favorite bands of all time, Duran Duran, talk about his memoir on the Today Show (the Today Show that I'd abandoned since their wack-assed hatchet job of Ann Curry) I felt my heart sink to my stomach and had tears well up in my eyes.
Hey, I just met you. This is crazy. No, seriously. John Taylor was, for me, the beginning and the end in 1982 to 1984. It's easy for me to joke and tease my young self now. To the outsider it seems like the usual boy-band craziness-- screaming girls, undulating en masse to a band of semi-talented pin ups who in a very short span of time rake in money, fame, excess, until said screaming girls grow up and tire of them, moving on to something new. I will argue to this day that Duran Duran was one of the most underestimated groups in terms of songwriting, musicianship, and influence, but my connection to them and to John Taylor in particular, was not related to my thesis on their musical achievements and prowess, but on the emotional quality of their songs, the imagery created in their lyrics, that they were art students, outsiders, freaks and geeks, until they weren't. I wanted to get to the "until they weren't."
Watching John Taylor on television I was struck by how well preserved he is. He was elegant in that laissez-faire European kind of way, articulate, charming, humble, grounded. I appreciated his honesty and candor, while at the same time tried desperately to control my inner tween (a phrase not yet coined when I was indeed, "in between") from melting and oozing my heart down to my weakened knees. What I longed for in 1982 when I discovered these chaps from Birmingham, was freedom, release, love, things that my twelve year old self was not experiencing. My life was already scheduled, each day, month, year already planned. I lived in the suburbs. We travelled mostly to see family in other parts of the United States, primarily along the eastern seaboard.
I couldn't imagine finding a place where I could just be myself and be loved and appreciated for that. Where I could discover myself, make mistakes, make a fool of myself without the judgment of my peers. As one of just a handful of black or minority students in my community, I couldn't envision a place where I didn't have to explain or describe myself all the time, or worse, hide my true self for fear of being humiliated or exposed for being different. Unless one has lived the experience of being completely outside the dominant group, it would be impossible to understand just how debilitating and lonely it can be. Add to it an emotionally oppressive home life, where no one talked of their feelings or their passions or anything really, and a desperate New Romantic was born.
The lyrics were poetry to me. The grooves boomed deep into my core, John Taylor's bass guiding the songs to the catchy refrains. I may have called JT my husband or talked about how cute he was every day, but the truth was I just wanted to be included, to be part of a special group. I pinned all my hopes on a distant star, wrote long rambling letters to them about my loneliness, certain that if John Taylor from Duran Duran could validate my existence then I truly had a place in it. It breaks my heart to confess, and yet my longing, my need, my open, bleeding heart became more compassionate, more connected, more alive in being a fan. I saw other countries, people from those places, became interested in poetry, art, music, and the world just by following.
And then this morning, there he was on TV. Pensive and handsome, well dressed, accented, artistic, thoughtful, curious. And there was I--older, wiser, married, a mother, artistic, thoughtful, curious. In that time, John Taylor had become a contemporary. And while my love for John Taylor is unrequited and I never received a single letter in response to my thousands sent, my feelings for the man, for the band, have not changed, though they have softened. I have my own pensive, handsome, well dressed, accented, artistic, thoughtful, and curious European to handle. And with him, I have dreamed about the world, traveled, made a family, opened to all possibility. He might never have found me, had JT not paved the way for him.
(c) Copyright 2012. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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