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A Day to Remember | ||
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John Taylor – "The Day We Made The ‘Reflex’ Video" "What’s so special about this video is that we got back together with Russell
Mulcahey. He’s the director who did the ‘Hungry Like the Wolf,’ ‘Save
a Prayer,’ and ‘Rio" videos, but not ‘New Moon on Monday’
or ‘Union of the Snake’ because he was making his first feature film in
Australia. |
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| Basically the brief from us was that the ‘The
Reflex’ had to be a live video but that it also had to be a live Duran Duran
video and that means it has to have certain stylization – you know, like the split
screen effect, that slightly conceptual feel and so on. And it had to be stunning.
There had to be a certain je ne sais quoi that other live videos don’t have. We did it in Toronto in Canada. It was about 20 shows into the tour and there was snow everywhere. We were playing two nights – Sunday and Monday – at the Maple Leaf Gardens, which is an ice hockey stadium, the home of the Toronto Maple Leafs! We filmed the concert on Sunday night and made an early start – about nine o’clock – the following morning. I remember it well because I’d done something to my foot. I’m always knocking myself about. I’ve always got something the matter with me. So I had to see a doctor because I couldn’t walk at all and he gave me some pretty heavy painkillers to numb the foot. We went to the stadium and had our makeup and hair done. We have to have it touched up, you know (laughs). I almost forgot to mention that because those are the kinds of things you have to do every day. We had a guy from L.A. who’s a friend of Nick’s and who swans around looking like William Shakespeare. The daytime was basically taken up with filming the close-ups. Like when you see Simon breakdancing - across the stage. And, like, that shot of Simon sweeping across the front of the stage, that was such a complicated shot that it required a complicated shot that it required a special railway line to be built for the camera to travel along. The first 20 rows of seats had to be taken out to do it. We did a lot of close-ups of Roger and Nick then because when we’re actually on stage playing, it’s often difficult for cameramen to get at them. So probably most of the shots of them aren’t ‘live’ whereas most of the ones of me, Simon and Andy are ‘live’ because we’re at the front of the stage. |
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| What was strange was that we were making the video to the new Nile
Rogers remix of ‘The Reflex’ but we’d been playing the album version on
stage for about 40 shows. So we got a bit confused. Especially when it came to that
‘scratch’ part. Everybody went ‘ What do we do now?’ We finished filming about seven when they had to open the doors and let the audience in. We went back to the hotel for a wash and some more makeup and then it was back on stage before 15,000 people. The audience was great. It always is in Toronto. In fact, there are two reasons why we did it in Toronto. First, it was the only tome we had to fit everything in and second, it was the first place that we sold out anywhere close to Britain, Canada is very in tune with new music. Toronto fans are very hip indeed. There’s not a lot of difference in the way they dress from the way they dress in England. There are a lot more guys in the audience though. The blokes are into good white clothes – circa David Live – with short jackets and baggy trousers. The girls are more of a hodge-podge of styles. |
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| When we walked on stage and told them they were being
filmed for our next video, you could say there was much cheering. There was one girl in
the audience who really stood out to me. She’s the one who’s got some tears in
her eyes and she’s really pretty. By the end we were just totally knackered. And we had to go through the whole thing a week or so later in San Francisco where we filmed the whole concert this time for an hour-long film. And, yes, I did my foot in again there. I got 20 stitches from dancing on broken vodka bottles. I had to go to the hospital and have seven injections. It’s like your body leaves you and you have to keep breathing deeply to stay okay. I felt as if my soul was pinned to the ceiling. It’s the worst I’ve ever been. You’ve never seen me like that. Anyway, after the Toronto show, I was incredibly tired. Usually I just want to party and however tired I am on stage, nine times out of ten I come off saying, ‘Right! Where’s it happening?’ But that night I went straight to bed. Not much happens in Toronto on Monday nights anyway. So it was back to the hotel, a cup of hot chocolate, a big pizza and turn on MTV." |
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