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Buy the Book
Girls on Film
Duran Duran understands.
Talking to Girls about Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for
True Love and a Cooler
Haircut
Rob Sheffield
(Dutton Adult, 288 pages, $25.95)
The 1980s are a lot like Jesus. Underappreciated in its time, the decade went on to quite a life after death. As Rob Sheffield notes in Talking to Girls about Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut, somehow “the Epoch of Bogus evolved into the Apex of Awesome. Who made this decision?”
The decade resurrects on Karaoke night, during cable television showings of the movie sixteencandlesferrisbuellersdayoffprettyinpinkweirdscience, and at eBay, where Atari 2600s, BetaMax tapes, and Members Only jackets can be had by the highest bidder. If you remember the sixties, the cliché goes, you weren’t there. And if you remember the eighties, you might not have been there, either.
“It’s a sign of how 1980s teen culture keeps on resonating — even people who were born in the '90s can O.D. on borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered '80s,” writes Sheffield, a Rolling Stone critic who has become a ubiquitous presence on VH1. “Maybe that’s because it was an era when teen trash was the only corner of pop culture that wasn’t a high-gloss fraud.” Who wouldn’t take Square Pegs over Dallas, The Breakfast Club over The Big Chill, and The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” over any number of lame records by sixties holdovers producing music on fumes during the eighties?
Talking to Girls about Duran Duran is part '80s pop-culture history, part nerd memoir. Because Sheffield’s tales of driving an ice cream truck, studying abroad in Spain, and compiling a 0-14 high school wrestling record are compelling only to his close relatives, memories of teenage suburbia are made bearable by interspersing them with pop-culture history. It is a love letter to the 1980s, postmarked several decades late.
The book posits that Duran Duran is the Rosetta Stone to solving the mystery of women. Sheffield maintains, “Something in the music keeps promising that if I could finally figure out Duran Duran, I would finally understand women, and maybe even understand love.”
Who cares if Sheffield understands Duran Duran, women, or love? He understands the eighties.
The geeky scribe understands that in the early 1980s law decreed that “no female between the ages of twelve and forty could leave the house without a killer headband-and-leotard combo.” He understands the “feeling of expensive mendacity to all the aging baby-boomer dramas, all those sensitive flicks with William Hurt or Michael Douglas or Melanie Griffith backlit with baby oil all over the lens.” And he understands that not only is “Ashes to Ashes” David Bowie’s “most famous video — it’s an acclaimed work of art” — albeit a bizarre retro-futuristic “work of art” that still traumatizes weirded-out viewers thirty years after the fact.
Talking to Girls about Duran Duran’s unforgettable moment dovetails Sheffield’s love of pop with one of the tragic moments of '80s music that goth kids have memorialized ever since with black “love will tear us apart” t-shirts. Sheffield tells of a 1980 conversation between Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside and Joy Division’s Ian Curtis lamenting how their down and depressing music wasn’t making any headway.
“A week later, Ian Curtis killed himself,” Sheffield notes, “and Green began playing disco. Ian Curtis’s old bandmates went disco too, renaming themselves New Order. Green never looked back. As he proclaimed, ‘Fear of pop is an infantile disorder — you should face up to it like a man.’” This flatters Sheffield’s tastes, but, with disco a fad of the '70s (albeit one that reincarnates under other monikers), and The Cure embracing the Joy Division sound and Morrissey aping Ian Curtis’s gloomy lyrics, one could make a more convincing case that Curtis’s, rather than Gartside’s, was the relevant sound of the coming decade. Alas, Sheffield is a man who openly declares that he taped over Meat Is Murder with Like a Virgin.
Confronted with the author’s confessions that he slept under a picture of Morrissey and “used to dream about being the only boy in the Go-Go’s,” the reader finds such lines as, “At nineteen, I had never had a girlfriend,” unbearably redundant. Sheffield, ironically, shows himself as the anti-Duran Duran, the boy the ladies want as friend and not boyfriend and the guy no guy emulates.
Like the decade that he writes about, Sheffield’s book loses steam near the end. Discussions of “cassingles,” “Yo! MTV Raps,” and acid-wash jeans flounders because they marked the coda for the eighties rather than the eighties themselves. And there’s nothing very “Duran Duran” in all that, is there?
Looking for the secret to understanding girls through understanding Duran Duran proves a fool’s errand. Having a number one hit, whether one wears eyeliner and gets a haircut at the ladies’ salon or not, enhances one’s dating opportunities. Wearing eyeliner and getting a haircut at the ladies’ salon, sans the accompanying hit songs, makes one as appealing to girls as a teenaged Rob Sheffield. That’s a lesson the author of Talking to Girls about Duran Duran has yet to learn.
About the Author
Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The War on Football: Saving America’s Game, blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (27) | Leave a comment
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Andrew B| 8.18.10 @ 7:52AM
I graduated from high school in 1980, so I guess I would say the 80's were "my" decade. There is much to be ashamed of about the 80's, alth0ugh, I am proud to admit that I was too much of a WASP to ever wear a Members Only jacket or have a truly awful haircut.
What I think was the saving grace of the 1980's was that it was a clean break from the 60's and 70's. We didn't have the smug, self-satisfied arrogance of the hippies, but also rejected the "Weimar-Republic-In-Quiana" vibe of the 70's. Disco died of natural causes, natural fibers made a reappearance in clothing, and Americans were allowed to feel good about themselves and their country again.
I don't miss shoulder pads, breakdancing or Corey Feldman, but I certainly enjoyed the 80's the first time around. I think I'll skip the replay, however, because we never get that right.
Alan Brooks| 8.18.10 @ 10:03AM
I miss:
Pet Rocks
Fawn Hall
Cabbage Patch dolls
Prizzi's Honor (3 stars)
GavInTucson| 8.19.10 @ 12:14AM
LOL... even better than Cabbage Patch kids was the humorous spin-off (in the form of trading cards)... GARBAGE PALE KIDS!!!!
Remember those? Hilarious.
Landon M.| 8.18.10 @ 10:49AM
The boys of Duran Duran all professed to be straight.
But I recall a beer-sodden night in a NYC bar when one of the prettier Duran boys and I did some mouth to mouth kissing and groping.
Those wild 80s! Those were the days! Lots and lots and lots of free sex.
Alan Brooks| 8.18.10 @ 1:39PM
Sex?? Maybe I'm a little out of it, but doesn't the stork bring children?
Paula the Princess| 8.18.10 @ 1:55PM
Yeah, I remember those days of sexual "experimenting" with guys (mostly guys) but sometimes with girls. Looking back, those days were just too wild for my taste.
My husband also "walked on the wild side (both sides)." We were just saying the other day that we would die if our children knew the sexual encounters we have had. It makes me blush to even recall, and I'm sure there are others on this blog who know what I'm talking about.
Robbin| 8.18.10 @ 3:54PM
No, Paula, I for one don't know what you're talking about.
You may have been a slut, "experimenting" with everything that moved, but I certainly wasn't. And if I knew my husband had "been with another boy," I'd divorce his ass on the spot.
xyztnt77| 8.18.10 @ 5:13PM
Uh huh--nothin shameful in your past, Miss Whiter Than Snow.
I bet you do it under the sheets in the missionary position. I pity your husband.
TG| 8.18.10 @ 8:34AM
I graduated in 1991 so I was smack-dab in the middle of the 80's. What I liked about the 80's was the overall respect conveyed by many (obviously not all) movies and television shows towards a uniquely wholesome American culture. Has anyone understood and respected teenagers the way John Hughes did? (Vanity Fair had a great piece about a year or so ago on Hughes and his legacy). The tone he struck (earnestness and bemused exasperation) really resonated with me. You got the impression that while he saw all of our faults and foibles, he really liked his country and the people that lived in it (unlike certain other people I won't mention).
Most of television was hardly groundbreaking at this time, but it's hard to argue with the quality of many of the sitcoms that aired (Family Ties, Cheers, Cosby etc.). I loved the 80's. But I'm not surprised Sheffield couldn't get girls with a picture of Morrissey on his ceiling.
Le Cracquere| 8.18.10 @ 9:35AM
No proto-Duckies were my friends and I, unlike Rob Sheffield; no, we were the denim-wearing, be-mulleted young metalheads, gaydar-impaired Judas Priest fans who wished we could bag the groupies that Rob Halford was doubtless bagging at the moment. Or at least get one of the Durannie girls to talk to us.
Still, the '80s were certainly something ... for a teenager merely to be alive wasn't bliss, exactly, but we could say in unison with Sam Kinison that "Reagan is president and Clint Eastwood has his own police force." In retrospect, that wasn't nothing.
PolishKnight| 8.18.10 @ 10:58AM
I can't resist. I suppose this article, much like the 80's themselves, allows people to project their own experiences and thoughts onto the medium. You got out of the 80's what you chose to get out of it.
On the other hand, the 60's and later as we reverted today, has pop culture dehumanizing people to feel a need to belong (like reality TV) while stripping away individual expression and experience. Consider the biggest leftist music festival of all time: Woodstock. Aging hippies brag about BEING there but what personal mark did they make? They talk about ABOUT it but not about how they grew and changed.
With the 80's, you remember the time you broke up with a girlfriend and hearing "Time after Time" or "There's always something there to remind me" or a fun B52's song when you felt good. It was about YOUR life and not about SERVING an era.
InLineFour| 8.19.10 @ 11:42AM
Always enjoy your posts, PK. But here we part ways: hearing Cyndi Lauper on the radio or seeing her on mtv back then always triggered my gag reflex.
Still have my Members Only jacket, tho. In gun metal grey leather, no less. Still fits, too.
PolishKnight| 8.19.10 @ 4:36PM
My 80's clothes don't fit me anymore!
OK, I agree. Lauper was a bad choice especially for a man. How about... Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love? I remember the FURY among the feminist set when the models pretended to play their guitars in the background and danced like zombies. One of the greatest pop videos and songs of the 80's... It's hard to feel bad after a breakup when seeing that video!
Seek| 8.18.10 @ 12:39PM
Duran Duran were a minor blip on the Eighties music scene, though one wouldn't know it from all the attention they've received over the years from fans and detractors alike. Far more significant over the long run were/are the Pixies, the Ramones, Patti Smith, the Eurythmics, the Smiths, the Godfathers, the Wonder Stuff, Nick Cave, the Pretenders, Love and Rockets, New Order, Echo & the Bunnymen, My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, Midnight Oil, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and the Cure...oh, Jesus! Anyone but Duran Duran!!
Don't journalists get the big story anymore?
A.G.| 8.18.10 @ 4:36PM
@Paula-- Yuck!
monty.crisco| 8.18.10 @ 2:45PM
Sorry, Seek, but as someone who graduated in 1989, no way can you make the argument that ANY of the acts you listed were more emblematic of the 80's than Duran Duran. For one thing, look at sales. Next, look at radio play. You can make the argument that the Pixies, the Ramones, Patti Smith, the Eurythmics and the Smiths were more "significant" in terms of influencing later artists or were more musically complex (although I wouldn't) but NO WAY can you make the argument that Duran Duran was a "minor blip" on the 80's music scene. That's like saying Van Halen, Def Leppard and Bruce Springsteen were "blips" as well. I don't think I ever even heard a Pixies song on the radio in the eighties (or since!)
Seek| 8.19.10 @ 11:44AM
Nice try.
Duran Duran had a few years in the spotlight during the Eighties -- 1982-84, to be exact -- but they left with little to show for it. They weren't a bad band. In fact, the drummer was excellent. But the fact that they outsold some of the more influential (and better) bands of their time, such as Echo & the Bunnymen or the Cure, says little or nothing about their own level of influence. Who today sounds like Duran Duran? It's a short list.
Record sales are as much a dog and pony show as a real indicator of the music scene direction. The Bay City Rollers actually sold more records in 1975 than Bruce Springsteen. Who's been the more influential of the two since? Boy, that's a tough one to answer.
Class of '85| 8.18.10 @ 2:46PM
Even my Rush/VH high school cover band knew well enough to throw in some Duran Duran songs. It brought the chicks in.
monty.crisco| 8.18.10 @ 4:41PM
The Cure was pretty awesome, though...
Goggles Pisano| 8.18.10 @ 6:33PM
My father graduated HS in 1959. I followed in '84. The biggest difference between our HS days was the music. He loved the pop music of his era. So do I. Music in the '80s? I hated it...
It was all MTV's fault! You could no longer have a hit song without a stupid video for MTV to occasionally insert in between their incessant commercials. Suddenly it no longer mattered what your music sounded like, what was important was how you looked while performing it.
Here in Cleveland we were quite fortunate to have a plethora of commercial-free eclectic college radio stations unafraid to frighten the normals out of their MTV-induced stupor. If they had not existed I would have probably but a bullet in my skull around 1988 or so.
Dick Simmons| 8.18.10 @ 10:30PM
Graduated from high school in 1970 and attended college in the early years of the same decade. The music pre-disco was great, but went through a eight year drought of epic proportions. The Disco-era had to be the worst dressed era since the Civil War with music to match. When techno-pop made its debut, I had to smile. Now too old to really enjoy all the illegal stuff (I was married, holding a steady respectable job and had given up my old vices) I saw much of the eighties music as being great back-ground music on the car radio while I tooled around in my Ray-bans. If I sound a little patronizing, I don't mean to be. The Eighties had it all over the Seventies in music, style, and politics. I guess I'm jealous.
GavInTucson| 8.19.10 @ 12:21AM
Back then, MTV actually played music... all the time! Remember that? Virtually no commercials, and no "shows." It was nothing but music.
These days, there are something on the order of 5 spin-off channels and it seems none of them ever play music. Just lame "reality" shows and such.
InLineFour| 8.19.10 @ 11:49AM
Agreed. Except for The Young Ones.
Decade of Reagan| 8.19.10 @ 2:32AM
The zeitgeist of the 80s will be hard to match.
ZZ Top, Howard Jones, Van Halen, Prince, Phil Collins, Pointer Sisters, Flock of Seagulls, Run DMC, Hooters, Blondie, Cars, Queen, Miami Sound Machine, Mellencamp, Joan Jett, Huey Lewis, Cindy Lauper, Romantics, Robert Palmer, Madonna, Billy Ocean ... all on the same station.
Begin with a misery index, Iranian hostages, etc., and end with unbounded optimism. Fools like Laura Dern crying about fear of nuclear Armageddon juxtaposed against the end of the Soviet bloc in Europe. A B-movie actor who was thought to be both an idiot and a warmongerer bringing an end to the Cold War without a shot and, if memory serves, using force only 3 very limited times in 8 years.
Pro wrasslin' on late night network TV, pre-Scientology Tom Cruise, Caddyshack, Billy Crystal, Moonlighting, Mookie Wilson - Bill Buckner, Magic vs. Larry, Jimmy V., Al McGuire, Da Bearss, Montana to Rice, Homer Hankies, Romancing the Stone, Ferris Bueller, Dirty Dancing, Die Hard, Wes Craven, and Nicklaus at Augusta in '86.
I like the comment about individualism and freedom vs. being part of something. We all were allowed to be who we were, like what we wanted to like, and do what we wanted to do.
PolishKnight| 8.20.10 @ 12:44PM
I'm flattered you like my comment!
I would like to add that it's ironic that the left bashed the 80's as the "gimme decade" and an era of selfishness and gluttony when people were really "finding" themselves and adapting styles from eras past that resulted in the greatest pop era and technological innovation to date.
It's no accident that we've been in "bubble" eras since with "tech" bubbles and later housing bubbles of people getting sucked into get-rich-quick schemes. Remember how the left bashed the Reagan era of wall street greed? Yet, it was the Clinton era tech bubble, and later the Greenspan induced housing bubbles that took our economy down, twice. And the left said nothing about either.
"I got me a car, it's as big as a whale
and we're headin' on down
To the Love Shack
I got me a Chrysler, it seats about 20
So hurry up and bring your jukebox money "
You can't do that in a Prius!