In November of 1986, I was living away from home for the first time, and I was nursing a broken heart. These two events had created a shift in my soul. I was bereft and miserable, and prone to totally illogical behavior. It was pretty ugly....and then came 'Notorious'
The title track had already been released in October, and I liked it right away. I totally loved the rhythm and the lyrics and it remains one of my favorite Duran Duran songs.
(30 years on, and I've never gotten tired of it)
"Who really gives a damn for a flaky bandit?" hit home to me for reasons having nothing to do with Andy Taylor leaving the band. To me, the line reminded me of the boyfriend who had broken up with me one week after I left for college. This was the same boyfriend who a month previously had been telling me how much he loved me...a 'flaky bandit' doesn't just have to be the guy who steals your money...he can steal your heart, too.
But my favorite line in the song (in fact, one of my favorite Duran lyrics ever) is:
'Fools run rings to break up something they'll never destroy'
Not only does that line symbolize Duran Duran's perseverance through the 'Notorious' era, it also represents how they have withstood 30 years in the industry and keep coming back even though they have been counted out more than once.
I read the reviews, and more than once, some high fallutin' (read: snobby) music-writer type mentioned how Duran Duran's fans might get confused by "Notorious". They claimed that the more 'mature' sound and funky rhythms might be too much for us to handle, and that in the end we wouldn't understand the record.
Seriously?
The album may have confused the critics, but I don't think I've ever met a fan who was confused by it at all. I'll bet that like myself, a lot of us fans were raised by parents who lived through the classic Rock and Roll era of the 50's and 60's. I was quite familiar with the rhythms of funk and R and B. The critics loved assuming that because we liked Duran Duran, it meant that we didn't (and couldn't) have any other musical experience. The critics assumed that just because we had all screamed our way through 1984, they thought that we lacked the ability to open our minds and just listen....they figured we couldn't let the music speak for itself.
Just because I was a Duranie, they assumed I was a dope.
Yes, 'Notorious' sounded different than 'Seven and the Ragged Tiger' but then 7ATRT had sounded different than 'Rio'...and 'Rio' had been different that their debut album. i was beginning to realize that that's the way Duran Duran albums were always going to be...and I found it exciting...and not the least bit confusing.
This is a killer album.
It is full of lyrics and feelings that meant something very special to me then, and they mean a lot to me still. The first time I listened to it, I actually cried. I know it's corny, but I can admit it. Lyrics like "Hell hath no fury like a young girls ego" made perfect sense to me and my broken heart. "Hold Me" was simple in it's message of how a relationship can make you feel inside. Obviously, a song called "So Misled" was easy to understand in my emotional state of that time.There are so many lines and lyrics throughout the whole album that resonated with me, and at the time it made me feel as if Duran Duran had written and recorded that album just for me.
There's no way I can possibly describe all of the lines and lyrics that moved me, so I won't even try. However, I can't finish talking about 'Notorious' without mentioning "Proposition"
"Proposition" is the closing track on the record. The first time I heard it, the very first time, it made me cry.
The song begins with the lines:
"Bring back that child she said, spare me the price of freedom.
Cold is my baby's head, blown by the wind of reason"
I felt instantly that this song was about pregnancy loss. That is not something that I had yet to experience in my life, although it would happen to me later on. I knew that Simon and his wife had been through it, and the rest of song seems to reflect all his feelings about that event. It is a heartbreaking set of lyrics, and yet the music of the song is as tough a song as they have ever done, and the line: "When all your pride is dead, you must be scared instead" really sums up the whole song.
In 2003 when I actually went through pregnancy loss myself, I went back and listened to 'Proposition' about twenty times. While I had always imagined I knew what the song meant, I had never had the experience to go with it. The power of a song to heal is quite magical, and this song instantly healed me. Now of course, I realize that this is a Simon LeBon lyric and that for all I know it's actually about something completely different. That is entirely possible. But the great thing about music (like art) is that it can mean a hundred different things to everyone. So for me, "Proposition" is about grief and loss, and when I need it I can go back to it over and over and it makes me feel better.
"Notorious" is a very personal record to me, and it will forever be engraved in my brain and in my soul with the events and heartbreaks of 1986 and 2003.
And that's a good thing.
Maya Garcia
