Simon Le Bon
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Simon John Charles Le Bon (born October 27, 1958) is the lead singer and lyricist of the pop band Duran Duran. He was born in Bushey, Hertfordshire, England and was raised in and around London.
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[edit] Upbringing
Le Bon was a member of the local church choir from a young age, but was also trained as an actor. Simon went to Pinner County Grammar School, the same high school that Elton John attended some years earlier. He appeared in a few television commercials and also in several theatre productions. He worked on a kibbutz --an Israeli collective community.-- in the Negev desert in Israel in 1978, and then returned to England to attend drama school at the University of Birmingham before meeting the fledgling band Duran Duran.
[edit] Duran Duran
Duran Duran had been founded by childhood friends John Taylor and Nick Rhodes along with singer/songwriter Stephen Duffy in 1978, but Duffy left a year later, convinced they weren't going anywhere. The band had been through a long succession of lineup changes since, but had recently settled on a guitarist and drummer and built a powerful pop sound flavored with disco, funk, and electronics, built on a solid rock rhythm section. All they needed was a charismatic singer with a distinctive voice.
Le Bon's ex-girlfriend Fiona Kemp (a barmaid at the Rum Runner nightclub where Duran Duran was rehearsing) introduced him to the band in May of 1980, recommending him as a potential vocalist. As band legend has it, he turned up for the audition wearing pink leopard-print trousers, as well as with a notebook that had a large collection of poetry he had written, some of which would later become tracks on the early Duran Duran albums. After listening to the songs the band had already composed together, Le Bon spent some time fitting one of his poems ("Sound of Thunder") to one of the instrumentals, and found they had a good match. Le Bon agreed to "try [Duran Duran] out for the summer"; within six weeks the band was playing steadily around Birmingham and London, and a national tour supporting Hazel O'Connor led to a record deal with EMI Records in December. Le Bon never returned to his acting career.
The band's first album, Duran Duran, was released in 1981, and they quickly shot to fame as part of the New Romantic movement. Three more albums followed in quick succession: Rio (1982), Seven and the Ragged Tiger (1983) and Arena (1984). Each album release was accompanied by heavy media promotion and a lengthy concert tour. By mid-1984, the band was ready for a break. Duran Duran's only other work that year was an appearance on the 1984 Band Aid charity single, "Do They Know It's Christmas".
[edit] Family
That year, Le Bon wooed the young fashion model Yasmin Parvaneh after seeing her face in a magazine and phoning her modelling agency to track her down. They married on December 27, 1985 and Yasmin Le Bon has gone on to enjoy a supermodel career of unusual longevity-- more than twenty years. After suffering two miscarriages, the couple had three daughters: Amber Rose Tamara (b. August 1989), Saffron Sahara (b. September 1991) and Tallulah Pine (b. September 1994).
[edit] Yachting
While Duran Duran was on hiatus in 1985, Le Bon drew media attention when his maxi-yacht Drum lost her keel and capsized during the Fastnet race, just off Falmouth, along the southern coast of Cornwall. Before being rescued, Le Bon and other crew members were trapped underwater, inside the hull, for forty minutes. Despite the accident, Le Bon and Drum went on to participate in the 1985-1986 Whitbread Round the World Race, coming in third overall in elapsed time. Le Bon and his partners eventually sold Drum; the events surrounding Drum and the races were chronicled in a 1989 movie entitled Drum - The Journey Of A Lifetime (ISBN 6301334159).
Twenty years after his accident, in 2005, Le Bon made public his desire to race again. During a touring hiatus in August 2005, Le Bon again raced Drum in the Fastnet race, borrowing the vessel from her current owner to participate, and raising funds for the RNLI charity. Unfortunately, Le Bon had to leave the race unfinished, as light winds were slowing Drum (and Drum's competitors), and would have delayed the boat's arrival at Plymouth, interfering with Le Bon's obligation to perform in Japan at a sold-out, 60,000-seat show. [1]
[edit] Arcadia
Before Duran Duran reunited, Le Bon formed the band Arcadia with fellow Duran Duran members Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor. Arcadia released only one album, the multi-platinum So Red The Rose (1985), and the band never toured.
[edit] Duran Duran again
Following the departures of Roger Taylor and Andy Taylor, Le Bon, Rhodes, and John Taylor continued on as Duran Duran, recording and releasing Notorious (1986), Big Thing (1988), Liberty (1990), but the band's success had begun to wane in the late-1980s.
Duran Duran had a resurgence in popularity in 1993 with The Wedding Album. Several months into the intensive concert tour supporting this album, Le Bon suffered from strained vocal cords, and the tour was postponed for six weeks while he recovered.
In 1995, Duran Duran released the covers album Thank You, and Le Bon had the chance to cover some of his favorite artists, (Jim Morrison, Lou Reed, and Elvis Costello), but the album was severely panned by critics from all quarters. That year Le Bon also performed Duran Duran's 1993 hit "Ordinary World" with opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti during a "Children of Bosnia" benefit concert for War Child. Le Bon described the event to Jam! Showbiz thus: "If you're talking about name dropping, he's one of the biggest names you could drop, Pav-The-Man."
When bassist John Taylor left the band in 1997, Le Bon and Rhodes remained as the only two members who had been with Duran Duran from the beginning. The successive two albums without any Taylors, Medazzaland (1997) and Pop Trash (2000) were not commercial successes.
In 2001, Duran Duran's original five members reunited to record a new album, "Astronaut", for Epic Records. "Astronaut" was released worldwide on 11 October 2004. The album was preceded by the single "(Reach Up For The) Sunrise", their first UK Top 10 single for a decade.
[edit] Solo excursions
While Le Bon has been in Duran Duran for the band's entire history, he has also dabbled in solo outings. In 1985, for the Whitbread Round the World Race, he contributed a song entitled "Grey Lady Of The Sea" and narrated a video of that year's race called Drum (1987). Grey Lady Of The Sea was released as a single in Japan in 1988.
In 1989, for Jonathan Elias' Requiem For The Americas project, Le Bon contributed "Follow In My Footsteps", with The Bangles' Susanna Hoffs on background vocals. The track was released on 7" single in Italy that year.
In 1998, along with friend Nick Wood and wife Yasmin, he set up SYN Entertainment (Simon Yasmin Nick) in Tokyo, Japan. Having first conceived the idea in 1988, Le Bon is currently described as SYN's "Founder and Chairman", while Wood is "Founder, President and Creative Director".
In 2000, SYN Entertainment founded SYN Records which has released a number of compilations, some of which have included contributions by Le Bon. Another solo track, "Dreamboy", was featured on the SYN-released soundtrack to the Mario Van Peebles movie Love Kills.
Also in 2000, SYN co-executive produced the Duran Duran album Pop Trash along with Nick Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo's side-venture TV Mania.
In 2005, Le Bon participated in the Live8 concert in Rome with Duran Duran.
In October 2005 Dutch trance DJ Ferry Corsten released the track "Fire", with vocals by Simon Le Bon. It was a remix of the lesser known Duran Duran single Serious, from the album Liberty. (full credits: Ferry Corsten feat. Simon Le Bon - Fire (Flashover remix), on Flashover Recordings)
In late 2006, Simon became a member of Shinzou Sound, and took part in the Japan-based online manga project, 'Synesthesia', by co-writing the theme song 'Nobody Knows' along with Nick Wood. Shinzou Sound is a group of creative collaborators specializing in manga, music, web design, and popular culture. They joined forces with the simple concept of merging their talents in an effort to deliver the new entertainment of music and manga in an innovative way. Exclusive songs, inspired by the manga story were commissioned from international and Japanese DJ's, and the story was launched in fortnightly episodes on the Net, with the individual songs available free through iTunes Japan.
[edit] Trivia
- Le Bon attended the University of Birmingham at the same time as Blancmange lead singer Neil Arthur. This fact came up during a Smash Hits interview of Blancmange done by Chris Heath. According to Arthur, Le Bon recognized his old university classmate immediately upon running into him backstage at a Top Of The Pops taping, and the two met up for a drink and friendly chat.
- As a teenager, he was a next-door neighbor to actor Derek Fowlds.
