AFTER BEING ONE OF THE FIRST MAJOR ARTISTS TO RELEASE A HALLOWEEN ALBUM LAST YEAR, DURAN DURAN HAVE EXPANDED DANSE MACABRE VIA A HOST OF NEW SONGS AND A BOXSET FULL OF SPOOKY ARCANA. IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, NICK RHODES REVEALS HOW DURAN’S BACKING SINGERS HAVE BEEN PROMOTED, HIS THOUGHTS ON CONTACTING THE DEAD… AND A HOST OF PROJECTS THE BAND ARE JUGGLING IN BETWEEN BRAND NEW SONGS.

JOHN EARLS

© Stephanie Pistel

Halloween just got even spookier. While most artists go for a Christmas album, Duran Duran decided to corner the market in Halloween music when they released Danse Macabre last year.

In becoming the Mariah Carey of vampire costumes, their 16th album reached No.4 in the UK, keeping up an unbroken British run of Top Five albums since Paper Gods made No.5 in 2015. Releasing two expanded versions – featuring various new songs – seems an obvious idea a year later. Obvious to everyone except Duran Duran, that is. “We didn’t specifically set out to do an expanded version, I promise you,” insists Nick Rhodes. “Everything about this record has been completely unexpected and spontaneous. I really didn’t see any of it coming.”

When Danse Macabre was originally released in 2023, Duran explained to Classic Pop how a last-minute show on October in Las Vegas the year before had led them to make it a Halloween-themed concert. As Rhodes says now, “Everything about Danse Macabre has expanded from there.”

The new editions’ extras fit with the original album’s remit of covers, spooky reworkings of existing Duran songs and brand new tracks. So the regular expanded version has a superbly disco cover of ELO’s Evil Woman which could have shimmied straight from Notorious; new instrumental Masque Of The Pink Death, which acts as a prologue to the album; and a fresh and sinister version of New Moon On Monday.

Duran have dabbled in expanded versions before – they did boutique editions in association with luxury album makers The Vinyl Factory – but really Danse Macabre is their first full-on entry into a world that’s commonplace of artists revisiting albums a year or so later.

The idea intrigues their keyboardist, who is effectively Duran’s man for a big idea. Settling himself into an armchair at his home in West London, Nick considers: “I’m proud to date from a time when you’d buy the vinyl of an album and that was it. When I look at all the records I consider great, people think about the tracks that were on their original release, in the original running order.”

Rhodes is honest behind the reasons for expanding Danse Macabre, saying: “We’ve entered a completely different phase for an artist’s chronology, because it doesn’t matter what you release now. I still favour an album – and that’s the first version of Danse Macabre. However, with this new version, we thought: ‘Hmm, there are a couple of other tracks we’d like to do that could become available.’”

With physical singles and thus B-sides having been killed off, does an expanded edition’s bonus tracks replace what would have once been B-sides? “Completely!” beams Nick, with the air of a teacher getting a gold star answer from his pupil. “That’s exactly what has happened. Artists should put out whatever they feel. Some now like to put out three hours of music, which I rather feel could be edited down to 40 minutes. But it’s up to them.”