Duran Duran Thrills Fans at Terminal 5 in New York City
I was standing in the photo pit at Terminal 5 with a cluster of other photographers, in front of thousands of screaming fans—John Taylor roughly seven feet away—when I realized my skirt was inside out. A new emergency backup camera, purchased in a panic after my favorite died an hour earlier, was slung over my shoulder. The hours leading up to this had already included a flat tire, ticket shenanigans, and an assortment of other small disasters.
It had not been a good day.
I’d only managed to slip into the photo pit five minutes earlier, dripping with sweat and anxiety-ridden, but even I couldn’t ignore the excitement for Duran Duran’s first New York City show in four years. On the other side of the barrier, thousands of fans were practically vibrating with anticipation, including Ruth Hartley. She’s seen the band 15 times and still showed up at 12:15PM to line up so she could stake out this square foot of prime real estate.
“You gotta be right in front of John,” she told me, beaming.
Ruth was standing next to Carla Armstrong, who had flown from Los Angeles to see the show. Her job as a flight attendant has taken her to Duran Duran concerts all over the globe. She and Ruth were chatting animatedly so I asked how long they had been friends. “We just met,” Ruth told me. The front row was filled with new friendships. Someone a few feet behind them yelled at me, “It’s like being 15 again!”
When Duran Duran appeared on stage, it was easy to get caught up in the 1984 of it all. Around me, women screamed with the same abandon they once had, men wearing eyeliner grinned like they’d been waiting years for this exact moment, and three stories of people danced as best they could considering it looked like the venue had been oversold.
It might have felt as though we had all dropped out of a copy of “Teen Beat”, the band that took the stage wasn’t the same twenty-somethings who had recorded, “The Reflex”. They opened with the moody title track of the newly released, Paper Gods”. It was produced by Lady Gaga collaborator, Mr. Hudson, and managed to be both morose and danceable.
The James Bond theme, “A View to a Kill”, was next up and in my peripheral vision, I noticed a couple excited jumping up and down as the opening notes played Greg and Susan Rentko have been married 27 years and in that time, have seen the band eight times. “We’ve loved Duran Duran as long as there has been a Duran Duran,” Susan explained.
All evening, as I talked to people packed into the venue, I kept hearing different takes on the same line: “I’ve been a fan for decades.” Linda Vitelli and Jennifer Gentile embodied it perfectly. They’ve been friends since they were seven and fans for nearly as long. They’d driven in that morning from Rockland Center and laughed as they told me how, back in the day, they used to call each other every time the band appeared on MTV.
They moved easily between the MTV hits everyone grew up with and their new material. “Pressure Off,” the lead single from Paper Gods, was a clear high point. The irresistibly danceable “Last Night in the City” earned an equally enthusiastic response.
I worked my way up to the rooftop bar to get a brief respite from the heat and humidity before the band returned for the encore. While I sipped on a much-deserved cocktail – it really had been a very long day – I watched a group of Brazilian tourists chatting animatedly nearby.
I was curious as to why they were here watching the show on a closed-circut television instead of inside watching live. They didn’t speak English, so I phoned my Brazilian neighbor, Emma—bribery by way of a nice bottle of wine very much implied—and asked her to translate my question. A minute later, she translated Fabiana’s answer – after failing to fight their way through the crowd for a fleeting glimpse of the band, they’d retreated to the relative peace of the rooftop and its flickering feed.
Why hadn’t they just left all together? The phone was passed back to Fabiana and over her friend’s laughter, I picked up the words, “ficando louco”. Huh?
Emma was still laughing when I got the phone back. “She says her husband is still inside going crazy!”
I left the cool of the rooftop and worked my way back inside to watch perennial favorites, “Girls on Film” and “Rio”. From the third floor balcony, I watched a sea of Fabiana husbands, all still jumping around, going crazy. Their enthusiasm was so contagious, I almost forgot about my crappy day.
Almost—right up until I noticed my skirt was still inside out. Sigh. I was going to need another cocktail.
