SDE: Chris, tell me how your career got started?Ĭhris Kimsey: I’ll give you a little background. Record company incompetence? Band in crisis? What was going on? Chris Kimsey sat down with SDE at the very spot the album was recorded (Olympic Studios) and explains what went wrong and talks through most of the songs on Liberty… It was home to no major hit singles, and even worse, it delivered the first Duran Duran single that wasn’t a top 40 hit in the UK (‘Serious’ peaked at 48). The result would be Liberty, a disappointing record artistically, that was also a commercial disaster. Kimsey was a very experienced and successful producer, having worked with acts such as The Rolling Stones, The Psychedelic Furs, Killing Joke, Marillion – to name but a few. Greatest hits were all well and good, but EMI wanted a new studio album – apparently, ready or not – and renowned producer Chris Kimsey was brought in to help deliver this. On the face of it, nothing much seemed ‘wrong’, but the maturity and quality of ‘Do You Believe In Shame?’ (the third and final single from Big Thing) didn’t reach beyond the band’s fanbase (peaking at number 30 in Britain) and the creative mash-up that was ‘Burning The Ground’ (issued to promote the 1989 Decade compilation) stalled at number 31. Indeed, when ‘I Don’t Want Your Love’ from 1988’s Big Thing peaked at number four in the USA, but stalled at number 14 in the UK, they didn’t panic and the next single ‘All She Wants Is’ restored some chart credibility and did enter the UK top ten, peaking at number nine.
DURAN DURAN LIBERTY FULL
It was their first long-player of the 1990s and the first with an official new line-up that saw drummer Sterling Campbell and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo confirmed as full members of the band.ĭespite falling album sales (platinum LPs, became gold and then silver) – and a suspicion that perhaps they were now a band out of time – up until that that point Duran Duran had still bullishly managed to deliver a top ten hit from every studio album they had ever released – either in the UK or America. Thirty years ago on this very day, Duran Duran released their sixth studio album, Liberty. SDE talks to Chris Kimsey about Duran Duran’s ill-fated 1990 album “I don’t mind dealing with pressure – I can help people with that pressure – but I can’t help people write brilliant songs if they’re not there.” – Chris Kimsey