The song is supposedly about the intersection between the conscious and the subconscious, with the latter gaining a surprise advantage with a late surge. When it was written, Duran Duran had already achieved worldwide fame beyond any reasonable human necessity. I was late to the party (see last post), and it wasn’t until the band had plunged into an eddy of drugs and glamour that I caught on. I only heard what was played over the small town radio station on the school bus on the way to school. I had never seen the videos. I had never read the tabloids. It was only the music for me.

When “The Reflex” hit, it transformed my summer. When “The Wild Boys” hit, I made my way to the record store. It was my first ever purchase. I bought three cassettes: Rio, Arena, and Seven and the Ragged Tiger. Seven especially was what I was after. I experienced my first thrill of ownership, and the sanctity of the package. I caressed that cassette J-card and memorized its folds. I drank in the smell of the plastic and cherished the nuances of blank tape at the end of side two and the series of high-pitched tones announcing the Dolby XDR (Expanded Dynamic Range). It was the same thrill Morrissey must have had when he bought his first record (a Sandie Shaw 7″ perhaps?). But this was all my own.

I’m too embarrassed to center this post around those first few months, because I didn’t know what I was listening to, and my tastes were crude. I actually liked a lot of the live Arena versions of the songs better than the originals. My interest grew, and naturally I sought out others who shared the fever. I started hanging out with a few girls at my school, Betsy, Heidi and Robin, all of whom sported badges, t-shirts, and suitably dyed locks. They introduced me to teen mags, lyric books, rumour and gossip. I was giddy, yet at the same time I felt uneasy. This wasn’t the other world I had heard in the music. This was pedestrian.

My subconscious had been tapped into, and I was looking for a cryptic rendering of what that meant. What I got was stories of screaming girls, wrecked cars, and yacht races. Success fell upon the members of Duran Duran before they ever had a chance to grow up. Under the direction (in my opinion) of the goal-oriented Nick Rhodes, the group dedicated itself to excellence in both musicianship and fashion. The fashion part has stumped many in the audience. Hordes of zombies took to it like moths to a flame, while anyone fancying themselves a “thinker” (members of the critical establishment especially) was self-righteous in indignation. What both groups missed was the music.

The music is textured, colorful and evocative. Evocative of lens flare, dark chambers, strobe-lit back rooms in the mind. Ennui 1980s style. I didn’t like to acknowledge it at the time, but the truth was the lads were flush with success, unprepared, cramming in as many shags and lines of coke as they could fit in a single sitting. I think they knew fame was fleeting. I think they lived in denial. I think they forged ahead, and I think they tried to find that one single moment when the belief that it wouldn’t end overshadowed the essential human dilemma of mortality.

Duran Duran recorded the demo for “Union of the Snake” in the south of France, where they rented a hideously huge mansion and partied nightly in their efforts to follow up their last album (still regarded as their best), Rio. At this point they were preposterous individuals. At least Rick Wakeman’s visions of world tours on ice were routed in noble intentions of serious achievement; Duran Duran on the other hand wanted spectacle for the sheer sake of having said they could. They flew in a real tiger for the album’s photo sessions, but the smoke bombs spooked it too much and it wouldn’t pose properly.

All the same, they were human beings, fallible and gauche. A sense of hysteria was setting in, as the human beings realized they couldn’t live as gods forever. Seven and the Ragged Tiger is an insane album, full of torrid dreams and mad screams. “There’s a fine line drawing my senses together and I think it’s about to break.” Or from another song: “Shackled and raised for a shining crowd / They want you to speak but the music is louder than all of their roar / And the heat of the planet’s core.” Yegads, why bring the flippin’ planet into it? Also from the same song (“Shadows On Your Side”): “Scandal in white on a tangled vine / With everybody to say that you’re having the time of your life / When your life is on the slide.”

Having experienced only the ascent, Simon Le Bon knew instinctively that privately, a “slide” is inevitable. The “union of the snake” was a creepy crawly portending slide that threatened to bring the whole party crashing down. The snake lived in the back corners of the mind, where Simon and the lads had tucked away that knowledge of mortality. “Give me strength, at least give me a light / Give me anything, even sympathy,” Simon’s subconscious mind pleaded.

I was young, too, when I first heard these songs. I didn’t understand the knowledge of death then and I understand it only slightly better now. But Duran Duran’s music, in spite of the humans behind it, served for me as a channel to the unknowable networks of the subconscious and the fine line that hovers over us all.

Duran Duran: Union Of The Snake
Duran Duran: Secret Oktober (Original B-side)
Duran Duran: Union Of The Snake (The Monkey Mix)