“I don’t think we really messed with ‘Hungry’ much it was mostly David pumping it up. “It’s not that he changed it hugely he just brought everything into focus for radio in America,” Rhodes says, adding that he does not believe they recorded new guitar and keyboard parts on “Hungry Like The Wolf,” but they did add some vocals on the last verse of the title-track “Rio,” and possibly guitar on a different track.

He also found that the new producer was extremely respectful of the work the band had already put into the project. He remembers guitarist Andy Taylor was there for much of the time as well, while Le Bon was “in and out,” as were the other two members. Kershenbaum recalls the keyboardist stating that the band members were in awe watching what he was doing during the remix, relating, “We had no idea what it was we were just watching it.’” Rhodes acknowledges that he was absolutely fascinated and sat beside Kershenbaum like a student. The producer remembers the band as young kids at the time, and recently, during the making of a documentary, he and Rhodes reminisced fondly about that period (including getting their food at Greenblatt’s Deli, according to Rhodes). Soon, he and the band found themselves in the Mix Room at Cherokee Studios, Los Angeles, working with in-house engineer George Tutko on the facility’s Neve console. Can you listen to it and see if you hear some things you can do to it?” Perry put on “Hungry Like the Wolf” and the producer soon spotted aspects that could be enhanced for the American market, like placing some different effects on Simon Le Bon’s vocal, as well as adding guitars and keyboards, and making the track punchier overall.

Kershenbaum had just returned to Los Angeles after wrapping up Joe Jackson’s Night and Day for A&M in New York, when he received a call from Capitol Records VP of A&R Rupert Perry asking him to come down to the Capitol Records Tower so he could play him something.Īs Kershenbaum recalls, he arrived and Perry said, “Look, I’ve got this group they’re doing very, very well in the U.K., but we’re just not getting any traction here. When the option came up to remix some tracks from the Rio album- and specifically ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’-our reaction was, ‘I understand, because your radio is so different from ours.’ Our original version, which still gets played all around the world, sounds great on radio, but it didn’t have that big FM sound.” Duran Duran co-founder Nick Rhodes, right, and producer David Kershenbaum in Los Angeles, March 2022. “So when I came to America, I was amazed at the sound of radio. It wasn’t just us I think a lot of the artists and engineers and producers used to use this little speaker. Of course, we had stereo speakers and the big monitors in the studio, but in the center of the desk, right in the middle, was one little Auratone speaker, and we always used to check our mixes on that because we knew it would be right for Radio One. “They were mixed on an Auratone speaker, which was a small square, a very simple speaker. “It seems ridiculous to think about it now, but we mixed our first and second album-which had the song ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’-for British radio,” he continues. because our main national station, Radio One, was still broadcasting in mono! “But when I listened to radio in America, I realized this big FM sound was very different than the sound in the U.K. “The first time I came to America, in 1981, we’d made our first album, and the single ‘Planet Earth’ was out and later ‘Girls on Film,’ both of which did okay on a college and cult level in America, but neither of them became big hits,” he recalls. Capitol Records executives couldn’t understand the disconnect between audiences.ĭuran Duran founder and keyboardist Nick Rhodes says that he actually did understand, as there was a real disparity in musical tastes at the time, which he explains in a chat from his home in London via Zoom. charts, but sank without a trace in the U.S. Much like the band’s 1981 self-titled debut, producer Colin Thurston had helmed Rio released in May 1982, the album rose to Number 5 on the U.K. The success came after a year of the band’s music not getting radio play in the States, even as the group was scaling new heights of success at home. The body parts in question belonged to producer David Kershenbaum, whose remix of “Hungry Like the Wolf”- and indeed the entire Side One of the group’s sophomore album, Rio-ignited the British band’s ascent up the American charts in 1983. Photo: Andy Earl.įor Duran Duran, a different pair of ears and hands provided the turning point for its career. Duran Duran, circa 1982 (l-r): John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, Andy Taylor.

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