I admit it, for that brief sliver of time between girlhood and the raging rebellion of heavy metal I joined the legion of fans completely devoted to the worldwide phenomenon of Duran Duran. My bedroom was wallpapered with a collage of magazine glossies and full-size posters, and I bore my adoration publicly on my D2 key ring. Roger Taylor’s bulging biceps are wholly responsible for my life-long preference for drummers and Simon LeBon – well, I hold him liable for a bevy of unwholesome thoughts. However, given the mountain of merchandising; videos, jewelry, board games, magnets, bandanas, drink coasters, buttons, mirrors, and books (and that’s just what I found on a recent jaunt to Ebay), my collection and interest was nothing more than a healthy funneling of early pubescent sexual desire.

Predictably, my attention was eventually drawn to living breathing boys and new genres that expressed my emotional moment. But much like my first kiss, or the first boy who looked in my eyes and called me “Beautiful”, I always gave them credit for being the impetus, the awakening if you will, of my enduring connection with music. I tucked them away with old love letters, growing slightly embarrassed by my predilection as the years rolled by and fickle pop culture history reduced them to nothing but five very pretty footnotes.

Fortunately, they’ve seemed to stage a gradual return: first with the VH1 “Behind the Music” episode, then a series of box sets and Greatest Hits packages. Last year, the band announced a reunion of the original five members, and Nick and Simon participated in The Dandy Warhols latest album. Finally, MTV bequeathed them with a Lifetime Vanguard Award, the group launched a small club tour, EMI/Capitol released a DVD, and Duran fans everywhere rushed to let their secret out of the closet.

When Keri, my college friend who shares my checkered Duran Duran past, told me she had won a sound check meet and greet with the famed band, I was horribly ecstatic and conflicted. The gawky girl with braces and oversized glasses was running through the room screaming at the top of her lungs while the writer pouted at being excluded and the music insider issued her usual strong anti-idiot message. It’s a painful fact that a female fan is often just a groupie, and a woman journalist is one with credibility unless proven otherwise. No way in hell I was skipping the proceedings, I was simply stymied about appropriate behavior.

Plagued with memories from the only other occasion when I met someone I really admired and could conjure no more than one word responses, I grew a bit frantic. While the utterances had been identifiably English, I’m confident his perception was either of indifference or lobotomy recovery. As the vent for my neurosis, the man in my domicile assured me I would appear perfectly competent and even professional, but honestly, what does he know? He never has to suffer a bad hair day!

I consoled myself with my favorite red stiletto-heeled boots and the novelty of my heated seats while steering against the fierce winds and bitter blowing Ohio snow. Attempting to mentally rehearse possible verbal exchanges, I rejected the obvious fan to celebrity platitudes, dismayed to discover an otherwise void of invention or impression in my usually over-abundant brain. Apparently the Music Writer in me was still angry at being denied. Rather than panic, I experienced nothing but an overwhelming yearning to emerge from the encounter with no obvious psychological scars – or my name on a pending international restraining order.

Ninety minutes before the doors were scheduled to open and already at least a hundred people clogged the hall and entryway. Adults, old-school Duran Duran fans with careers, mortgages, bald spots and children swarmed and multiplied while Keri and I loitered around the radio station table waiting for our cue. We spoke little except to remark about the growing crowd, and after nearly an hour, I began to wonder if our promised face time would come to fruition at all. (I was also questioning the wisdom of wearing the aforementioned boots.)

I suppose it goes without saying that we received a number of suspicious and slightly hostile glances when we finally were herded through the Passes entrance. The couple ahead of us wondered how the staff would handle those with tickets, fearing a return to the very end of the already substantial line, while the women behind us grilled a radio station employee about being notified if they won the canned food drive’s proffered tickets and backstage passes. Neither had cause to worry: the tickets were scanned in advance and – well, let’s just say that nobody checked for tickets once you were in the main door.

Our group of twenty promptly flocked to the bar before hustling into the deserted concert hall for our private preview. Fearing an overactive bladder, I let Keri buy me a Pepsi, and even then still wished for a breath mint (Had to leave my purse in the car, didn’t I?). Hearing my name called, I spun around to find Karlene and Ed, manager extraordinaire and guitarist/singer of 2nd Half, respectively (Re-acquaint yourself here and here), which caused a train wreck of sorts between my life identities and my Freudian expressions of Id and Ego. While I totally dig all the folks connected to our latest U-Rock Award winner, I was more a little embarrassed to be found exercising my inner teenage girl. Karlene’s admission that she was ousted from her last Duran Duran concert by Security for “hiding in the bushes and stalking the tour bus” put any and all fears to rest. The fan fiction penned by my junior high classmate and I just seemed irrelevant by comparison.

With no fanfare they appeared; five guys I once spent inordinate amounts of time thinking about, gazing at, listening to - they walked onto the blandly house-lit stage, picked up their instruments and began to play. Their civilian attire revealing their ordinary humanity, we were left to gawk in varying degrees from the empty floor at the alter egos of our collective reverence, tittering “Is that John?”, “Roger looks so GOOD”, “I think I’m going to have a heart attack” and “Alright, so when I’m nervous I drink fast!” (Yeah, that was Keri who drained her Pepsi in record time). Seamlessly they flowed through four songs, one brand spanking new, before exiting stage left only to emerge a hiccup later on the main floor.

Excited murmurs broke out, and two women nearly swooned when John Taylor approached them with an outstretched hand. Already split into smaller groups for photos with the band, the radio crew urged the proceedings forward at the behest of the venue security, soon to be overrun by the over-exuberant concert go-ers who had finally overflowed the entryway and were now stacked impatiently in the lobby. In fact, the situation was so dire that members of the first group were chastised for interrupting the traffic flow by asking for autographs. I realize the pressure everyone was under, but considering the significance of the moment for these people, some allowances could, and should, have been made. But I digress.

Caught in the chaotic cloud of the moment, I complied with the station employee’s insistent directive, and casually and apprehensively closed the distance between myself and the near mythical subjects of my youthful pining, all the while painfully regretting my always incorrigible hair’s inability to behave.

My gaze made contact with the uber front man.
“Hi” I said softly and more out of reflex than any genuine attempt at verbal discourse.
“Hi” he answered politely.
Fucking Brilliant.

Carefully I took my place at his side, turning toward him when the photographer commanded us all to “move closer”, but maintaining a hair’s breadth between us to preserve what small amount of sanity I had remaining. Focusing on nothing but presenting a dazzling smile to the camera so I wouldn’t spend the rest of my life saddled with a horrible depiction of my only encounter with the object of my first sexual fantasies, I had the errant realization that by moving my left hand slightly upward I could obtain a perfectly delicious sample of his ass. Not that I would ever entertain such a notion (sober anyway!) but the idea that the opportunity had presented itself was amusing indeed.

Peripherally I saw his head swivel so I mirrored the gesture. He spoke to me, and all my internal rustling ceased. My lungs and heart, even the blood in my very veins was silent. I was only conscious of his cool clean breath tickling my nose and cheeks, and his cerulean eyes. Let’s face it folks, I’d gone to sleep many a night dreaming about those eyes! We exchanged words, which I won’t share here lest you think I’ve completely crossed the line into DSM-IV territory, but through it all I was dimly aware of multiple flashes capturing the moment for posterity.

Our gaze broke when the urgent radio publicist called for a personnel switch, and I was left momentarily stunned, one in a handful of occasions in the span of my life. More than wordless, I found no thought at all in my head as I plodded away, my synapses firing only when Keri swam into view.

Immensely reassured that my surroundings were coming back into focus, I turned my attention to the group being photographed. There was Karlene front and center, a six year old on Christmas Day grin plastered across her already attractive face. I was buoyed by her unfettered enthusiasm, then completely delighted when she began to throw her arms around each of the members in turn, extracting a brief but significant hug.

“You attacked them!” I teased upon her return.
“Hey, I’ve waited twenty years for this!” she insisted.

There’s the rub. The chosen twenty, the packed-house horde streaming through the front door at an alarming rate, the faithful fan community members who travel across the country - we all waited for the cycle to complete itself, and the following ninety minutes were our reward. Like Gods on Mount Olympus they posed, and we raised our arms and our voices to the heavens in admiration. With their words we sang, with their music we danced, and at their command we gladly supplicated. Their power rose through the room with a contagious frenzy, leaving in its wake each fan’s memories and dreams, fragmented and sharp but with a clarity long forgotten. It was then, and it was now. It was optimism and opportunity, and it was the realization that those ideals never really die. For that brief time we were reminded that magic is real, that music is life, and that for some, the words Star and Charisma seem wholly inadequate.

Their spirits renewed, people exited the venue to eat, drink, laugh and even fuck. I spent the hour-long drive listening to their reeling and frantic cell phone reports to the DJ and feeling both energized and unfulfilled. Having been at Score! Music for years, I’ve grown accustomed to having access to those I find intriguing, and the inability to satisfy my curiosity is at once exasperating and alluring. Stripped of my identity as a writer, the label of GROUPIE looming blackly over my head like a circling bird of prey, Fan Me was aimlessly lost. I forgot to be myself, to have ‘my’ moment – and believe this, the Real Me would’ve made those sexy red boots proud!

Contrary to some opinions, Duran Duran is not cashing in on nostalgia, nor are they five has-beens looking for one more day in the sun. They’re amazing musicians with an even more dazzling live show and an approachability that keeps their fans loyal. In other words, they’re everything rock stars should be. I’m in love with them all over again, and I’m stone cold certain I’m not alone.

Duran Duran Official Site
Official Duran Duran Fan Community

Photos by Keri Sugerik. See More Live shots here