NICK RHODES

Nick Rhodes (born Nicholas James Bates on June 8,1962) is the keyboardist for Duran Duran. Rhodes and singer Simon Le Bon are the only members to have been with the band throughout its 29-year professional career (beginning in 1980). Furthermore, Rhodes is the youngest band member and the only member that has been with the band since its creation in 1978.

He has also released albums with Arcadia in 1985 (a Duran Duran side-project), as well as The Devils in 2002 with Stephen Duffy who was the singer of Duran Duran when they formed in 1978.

Early history

Nick Bates was the only child of well-off parents, the owners of a Birmingham toy store. In 1978, Bates left school at the age of sixteen, and founded Duran Duran with his art school friend John Taylor. At about the same time as the name Duran Duran was chosen for the band, he decided to change his name, allegedly due to being taunted by classmates with the moniker "Master Bates", to Rhodes after the Greek island. He attended Woodrush High School in Hollywood Birmingham.

As the band coalesced into its final lineup in 1979-80, Duran Duran started playing at a local Birmingham club called "The Rum Runner". The club owners became the band's managers, and Rhodes began working at the club as a disc jockey.

Contributions to Duran Duran

The band achieved rapid success, and Rhodes was a driving force throughout. An unschooled musician, he loved experimenting with the sounds his analog synthesizers were capable of, but shied away from the "novelty" sounds of some other early synth bands. The distinctive warble of "Save A Prayer," the keyboard stabs of "A View to a Kill," and the string sounds of "Come Undone" and "Ordinary World" are some of his most recognizable creations. He also popularized the Crumar Performer on the early records.

Rhodes was also quick to recognize the potential of the music video, and pushed the band to put more effort into their early videos than seemed warranted at the time (before the advent of MTV). His contributions to the band were sometimes underestimated by contemporaries and critics. Barely twenty when the band hit major stardom, he cultivated an androgynous and sometimes flamboyant image, wore heavy makeup, and changed his hair colour at whim. As the band "grew up" in the public eye, however, Rhodes's intelligence, determination, and incisive dry humour became well-known to fans and fellow musicians. He is known as the holder of the Duran Duran flame and in fact owns the rights to the Duran Duran name.

By the late 1990s, Rhodes had begun writing lyrics for Duran Duran, as well as music. His digitally altered voice is heard on the title track to the 1997 album Medazzaland.

In 2001, the original five members of Duran Duran reunited to record new music; see Duran Duran for details.

Record production

Rhodes studied production techniques while in the studio with Duran Duran, eventually helping to mix several tracks on the Rio album, and was a co-producer on many of the band's later albums.

In early 1983, he discovered the band Kajagoogoo and co-produced their debut single Too Shy which became a UK no.1 (prior to any of Duran's singles reaching no.1).

Rhodes and Warren Cuccurullo wrote and produced three tracks for the Blondie reunion album in 1996; the tracks were not used, but one song called "Pop Trash Movie" was later recorded by Duran Duran for the 2000 album Pop Trash.

In 2002, Rhodes co-produced and played additional synthetizers in nine tracks of the album Welcome To The Monkeyhouse by The Dandy Warhols. In 2004 he produced British-based pop group Riviera F for their debut EP International Lover, published on Pop Cult/Tape Modern (Rhodes & Stephen Duffy’s label).

Side projects

With his bandmates Simon Le Bon and Roger Taylor, Rhodes formed the side project Arcadia while Duran was on hiatus in 1985. The band had a moody, keyboard-heavy sound, far more atmospheric than Duran Duran (or the hard rock of the other Duran splinter group of 1985, Power Station). The band scored a major hit with "Election Day" and the band's only album, So Red The Rose, went platinum in the US but was less successful in their native UK. The band never toured and was dissolved when Duran Duran regrouped in 1986.

Throughout the 1990s, Rhodes worked on a side project called TV Mania with Duran bandmate Cuccurullo. They created a self-described "social junk culture triptych opera" composed of music, dialogue, samples, and "found sound," and hoped to make it into a Broadway play. The music and packaging have reportedly been finished, but they have not found a label to release it.

In 1999, Rhodes reunited with Duran Duran's original vocalist, Stephen Duffy, to create new music based on some of the earliest Duran music the two had written together. The result was the album Dark Circles, released under the name The Devils.

Also in 1999, Rhodes had a small guest appearance (in voice only) as a Canadian bomber pilot in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.

Personal life

Rhodes met Julie Anne Friedman (heiress to the Iowa, USA Younkers Department Store fortune) at a yacht party while on an American tour in 1982, and married her on 18 August 1984. They have one daughter together, Tatjana Lee Orchid (born 23 August 1986). After a brief separation and an attempt to reconcile, they filed for divorce in 1992. Since his divorce, he has been in three long-term relationships. He dated British photographer/filmmaker Madeleine Farley from late 1992 - November 1999. From February 2000 - July 2001, he was romantically linked to American model Mary Gray. He dated American actress/model/artist Meredith Ostrom from July 2001 - February 2009. He also had a brief relationship with British Socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson (from November 1999 - February 2000).

Rhodes became enamoured of the art world early in his career, making friends with Andy Warhol and The Factory crowd, and attending exhibitions worldwide. At the end of 1984, he released his own book of abstract art photographs called Interference. Many of the photos were displayed at an exhibition at the Hamilton Gallery in London.

Rhodes became a vegetarian in 1988, following an incident where he was cutting into a rare steak and blood spurted onto his shirt.

Rhodes's father, Roger Bates, to whom Nick was very close, died in 2008. Duran Duran's July 7, 2008 concert at the Birmingham NIA was dedicated to Nick's father.