We always liked an element of fantasy in our songs. I think some of the most beautiful songs are undoubtedly written from experience and are quite straightforward that people can relate to them. But a lot of my favorite songs have been written from more of a dream perspective and if you take something like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" -- which is one of the Beatles' greatest masterpieces -- and a lot of David Bowie's lyrics were much more abstract but also very visual. Bowie particularly based a lot of things on aliens and star-men.
Growing up with that sort of view in the '70s has always been very much part of our whole perspective. Certainly our first couple of albums had several songs that were leaning much more towards sci-fi than perhaps reality. We've always tried to keep one foot in that world. To me it's the world of imagination and I don't think one should ever try to limit the sphere and spectrum of the imagination. So it's very much part of Duran Duran.
Visually we always looked to sci-fi and '60s and '70s movies, and things that have a certain futuristic style. I'm a huge fan of director Stanley Kubrick's movies, particularly 2001 which is still one of the most stylized movies ever made. I also was a big fan of THX 1138, which I saw very early on and even then I realized how incredibly cool it was for a low budget movie; and how cleverly it had been done to look like it certainly cost a lot more. It was such a great idea. I've always admired people who have unique ideas and aren't afraid to put them out there and do something new.
We do like to continually develop our sound -- which is one of the rules in our manifesto from day one -- that we would never allow ourselves to get stuck in a rut. We always think of Duran Duran as an art school project. And every time we do a new album we think, "Okay, what can we do next?" We don't try to think about what we've created over the last few decades, or what we should do. We just break it all down and do what we want to do. With this album it sort of happened almost by default.
We had been talking with the producer Timbaland and Justin Timberlake for a few years, and they had wanted to work with us. And we said, "Yeah that's great," but you never think those things are going to happen with everyone's busy schedules. But somehow the opportunity arose last year while we were finishing our album that we had been working on for a year, and we got into the studio with Timbaland. It was such an exhilarating experience. We got three songs done within five days which we loved -- "Nite Runner," "Skin Divers," and "Zoom In" which are on the new album. Then we figured we hadn't finished our album, but started a completely new one. Justin had been in town and came in to work on "Nite Runner," among other tracks. It was a very different journey for us as a band since we don't usually collaborate with other people on that level.
"Zoom In," incidentally, is about an avatar in Second Life. We're going to launch a universe sometime later this year in Second Life which is quite spectacular. But that's taken a long time and a lot of work. It's hard playing God. [laughs] I don't think we realized how much detail we wanted to put into it.
Are there any plans to do a music video for "Zoom In" considering its take on gaming avatars and virtual worlds?
I'd love to do a video for "Zoom In." Oddly enough we're just putting together some footage because we're playing for a couple of weeks on Broadway to launch the album. So I'm putting together a lot of the visuals for the screens on stage. For "Zoom In" I want people to be inside the Duran Duran world which hasn't launched yet. So we're making the video for the screens for the live show inside the virtual world we'll have in Second Life. It's quite interesting how you do it and key all the shots and how to develop it. We've built our own city that's got a lipstick tower that goes up through the clouds, as well as cable cars, black swans, a telecommunications tower, a spa and a beach, of course. There really is so much stuff in there. We have an underwater nightclub that's actually an alien spaceship that landed underwater and seemed to be in the perfect spot to place a nightclub. [laughs] So I'm very excited about the live show footage. If we do a real "virtual" music video for the song I think that one could be spectacular.
To learn more about Duran Duran, visit their official Web site here. Also check out Duran Duran on MySpace to listen to new music tracks from Red Carpet Massacre.
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