Was there a point when writing and recording for Duran Duran became particularly dysfunctional?
Oh yeah, many times. A low period for me was around the Liberty album when it was Simon, John, and I in the band with Warren Cuccurullo, who was great, and Sterling Campbell, our drummer at the time. We somehow decided that we wanted to make more of a rock record. This was also the time when hip-hop was the only game in town, certainly in America, and we had techno happening here, and on the rock side you had grunge that was peaking with Nirvana. We didn’t fit into any of those boxes anymore. The 1980s were over, and some people would have been happy to just lock the door and throw away the key with us on the other side of the door. It was a truly difficult period. I think when we were writing, we were searching for something that just wasn’t really us, and that didn’t feel natural to us. We ended up with a few really great songs on the album, particularly a track called “My Antarctica” that was never released as a single, but I think it’s one of the most beautiful ballads we ever did.
