Stephen Davis - Please Please Tell Me Now: The Duran Duran Story

F orty thousand years from now, a beautiful young woman named Barbarella, fleeing a broken romance, will land her rocket on the planet Lythion and launch into a series of battles against galactic injustice. Shes a sexy twenty-year-old gamine with long blonde hair, golden skin, and impressive breasts. Over the course of her adventures, Barbarella will often lose her clothes, be ravished by hideous aliens, and take erotic pleasure with the hunky spacemen who assist her and her main ally, a one-eyed gnome called Durand.

Barbarella made her debut as one of the foundational mythic characters in a French comic strip by Jean-Claude Forest, often described as the first comic for grown-ups. After appearing in large-format book form in 1964, she was an immediate sensation, selling thousands of expensive volumes in a matter of weeks to readers (and oglers) who wanted answers to the questions posed by the comics second frame: What misadventures, what disappointments in love, have led this girl to wander alone through a solar system far removed from ours?

Soon French intellectuals began to admire Barbarella beyond just her looks, and they even wrote about her critically. From the literary weekly Arts in 1965: Clothes may cramp Barbarellas style, but nudity doesnt cheapen her. She remains mysterious, fragile but invincible. This crafty, wild creature is the archetype of the modern female, in quest of the Absolute. From the Parisian daily Le Monde , the same year: Barbarella represents the contemporary emancipated and independent young woman in a new era of sexual liberation. She controls her own destiny rather than submit to the dictates of men. The mistress of her own fate, she can pick and choose the men she desires.

It wasnt long before international publishers took notice and Jean-Claude Forest began to sell foreign rights to the Barbarella strip. In America, Barbarella was acquired by Grove Press, which specialized in Beat literature and Victorian pornography. In 1965, Barbarella first appeared in Groves quarterly periodical Evergreen Review , making her debut in book form the following year and quickly becoming one of Groves best-selling titles. The story lines were translated into English by Groves senior editor, Richard Seaver, who usually worked with Beat and modernist luminaries like William Burroughs, Jean Genet, and Samuel Beckett.

Next, the prominent Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis acquired film rights to Barbarella, and in 1966, the Hollywood Reporter announced that Americas hottest movie star, Jane Fonda, would play Barbarella. French New Wave auteur Roger Vadim (Fondas husband) would direct a screenplay written by Terry Southern, notorious coauthor of the comic-porn novel Candy .

When Barbarella was released in 1968, Terry Southern and seven other writers were credited with a screenplay that made no sense after the first few campy scenes. Roger Vadims studio sets looked cheap, and the dialogue was pathetic, but even so, Jane Fondas striptease early in the film seemed to bring highly sexed Barbarella to life. The movie was both hailed as a pop art masterpiece and derided as the worst sci-fi picture ever made. Nevertheless, Barbarella was a huge success in Europe, especially in England, where it was the second-highest-grossing film of the year.

T en years later, two teenage boys were watching Barbarella on television in Hollywood. This wasnt in Southern Californias glamour capital but in the suburb of Hollywood, located in southern Birmingham, Englands second-biggest city. The date was October 20, 1978. The BBC was broadcasting Barbarella , and the boysNigel John Taylor, eighteen, and his sixteen-year-old friend, Nick Bateswere entranced.

Nigel and Nick had been friends for four years. They were huge music fans who were extremely knowledgeable about rock bands and new trends, and they were currently forming a band with another friend. None of the teens could actually play musical instruments at this point, but this didnt seem important; with their boyish, androgynous looks and lashings of eye shadow and lip gloss, Nigel and Nick already resembled emerging pop stars of the new wave, New Romantic, post-punk era.

Their current preoccupation was finding a name for their new band.

Earlier that day, the boys spent hours in a pub called the Hole in the Wall, trying to think of names. They had been going to concerts and shows together since 1974, and they were very tuned in to David Bowie, T-Rex, and especially Roxy Music. Later on, they were regulars at Barbarellas, a converted warehouse that was Birminghams main venue for the punk bands coming up from London: Sex Pistols, Slits, the Jam, the Damned, the Clash. Nick strongly suggested that they should call their band RAF, as in the Royal Air Force. Peering at Nick through his thick spectacles, nearsighted Nigel said he thought this sounded a bit naff, or pretentious. Still thinking about band names, they left the pub and went to Nicks house to tune in to Barbarella on the Bates familys big color TV set.

As the movie began on BBC1, the boys tried to make sense of the totally daft plot, in which Barbarella crash-lands on Earth and is taken to meet the president of Earth. Upon her arrival, Barbarella strips off her clothes, and the president explains that an evil scientist, Durand-Durand (played by the veteran comedian Milo OShea), has purloined the Excessive Machine, designed to provide women with supersonic sexual pleasure, thus eliminating the need for men. The president then tells Barbarella that only she can save humankind from extinction. Your mission, the president directs Barbarella, is to find Durand-Durand, and preserve the security of the stars!