Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut

By Rob Sheffield

From the bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape and Turn Around Bright Eyes, "a funny, insightful look at the sublime torture of adolescence".—Entertainment Weekly

The 1980s meant MTV and John Hughes movies, big dreams and bigger shoulder pads, and millions of teen girls who nursed crushes on the members of Duran Duran. As a solitary teenager stranded in the suburbs, Rob Sheffield had a lot to learn about women, love, music, and himself. And he was sure his radio had all the answers.

As evidenced by the bestselling sales of Sheffield's first book, Love Is a Mix Tape, the connection between music and memory strikes a chord with readers. Talking to Girls About Duran Duran strikes that chord all over again, and is a pitch-perfect trip through '80s music-from Bowie to Bobby Brown, from hair metal to hip-hop. But this book is not just about music. It's about growing up and how every song is a snapshot of a moment that you'll remember the rest of your life.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9781101437209

Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield is a columnist for Rolling Stone, where he has been writing about music, TV, and pop culture since 1997. He is the author of the national bestsellers Love Is a Mix Tape: Love and Loss, One Song at a Time; Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut; Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love & Karaoke: On Bowie; and Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Book preview

001

ALSO BY ROB SHEFFIELD:

LOVE IS A MIX TAPE: LIFE AND LOSS, ONE SONG AT A TIME

001

DUTTON

Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First printing, July 2010

Copyright © 2010 by Rob Sheffield

All rights reserved

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Introduction

THE GO-GO’S - Our Lips Are Sealed

DAVID BOWIE - Ashes to Ashes

RAY PARKER JR. - A Woman Needs Love

THE ROLLING STONES - She’s So Cold

THE HUMAN LEAGUE - Love Action

ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK - Enola Gay

CULTURE CLUB - Ill Tumble 4 Ya"

HALL & OATES - Maneater

ROXY MUSIC - More Than This

BONNIE TYLER - Total Eclipse of the Heart

HAYSI FANTAYZEE - Shiny Shiny

A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS - Space Age Love Song

CHAKA KHAN - I Feel for You

PRINCE - Purple Rain

PAUL MCCARTNEY - No More Lonely Nights

MADONNA - Crazy for You

THE REPLACEMENTS - Left of the Dial

THE SMITHS - Ask

THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS - Pretty in Pink

LITA FORD - Kiss Me Deadly

TONE LOC - Funky Cold Medina

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK - Hangin’ Tough

BIG DADDY KANE - Ain’t No Half Steppin’

L’TRIMM - Cars with the Boom

DURAN DURAN - All She Wants Is

Acknowledgements

LOOK AT THE TWO PEOPLE DANCING ON EITHER SIDE OF YOU. IF YOU DON’T SEE A GIRL, YOU ARE DANCING INCORRECTLY.

—THE KEYBOARDIST FOR LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

Introduction

If you ever step into the Wayback Machine and zip to the 1980s, you will have some interesting conversations, even though nobody will believe a word you say. You can tell people the twentieth century will end without a nuclear war. The Soviet Union will dissolve, the Berlin Wall will come down, and people will start using these things called ringtones that make their pants randomly sing Eye of the Tiger. America will elect a black president who spent his college days listening to the B-52s.

But there’s one claim nobody will believe: Duran Duran are still famous.

I can’t believe it myself. I’ve always been a Duran Duran fan. I was an ’80s kid, so I grew up on them. I watched Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes give Save a Prayer its world premiere live on MTV. I listened hard to the lyrics of Is There Something I Should Know? and pondered its existential vision of romantic love. I have studied their fashion, learned their wives’ names, bought their solo albums. I’ve always been obsessed with Duran Duran. But even more so, I’ve been obsessed with how girls talk about them. I’m pretty sure Duran Duran would cease to exist if girls ever stopped talking about them. Except they never do.

Talking to girls about Duran Duran? It’s how I’ve spent my life. I count on the Fab Five to help me understand all the females in my life—all the crushes and true loves, the sisters and housemates, the friends and confidantes and allies and heroes. Girls like to talk, and if you are a boy and you want to learn how to listen to girl talk, start a conversation and keep it going, that means you have to deal with Duran Duran. You learn to talk about what the girls want to talk about. And it is a truth universally acknowledged that the girls want to talk about Duran Duran.

My little sister Caroline understands. It’s like talking to boys about wrestling, she says. You can’t just name check, oh, Hulk Hogan or Roddy Piper, because all that means is you used to watch WWF with your brother. So you have to act casual and mention Billy Jack Haynes or Hercules Hernandez. Then the boys are putty in your hands.

I’ve never heard of these wrestlers, though I assume my sister knows what she’s talking about. But I guess Duran Duran are an obsession for me because they were the girls’ band that I loved and because I loved them at a time when I was figuring out what it meant to be a guy. So trying to figure them out is how I keep figuring myself out.

There’s a character in a Kingsley Amis novel who asks, "Why did I like women’s breasts so much? I was clear on why I liked them, thanks, but why did I like them so much?" I wonder the same thing about Duran Duran. I get why women love them, but why do women love them so much? I feel like if I could solve that riddle, I could solve a lot of others.

003

The Durannies liked girls. Like Bowie or the Beatles, they liked girls enough to want to look like girls. The admiration was mutual, and at this point they have been famous and beloved for thirty years. It’s fair to say that at the time, we all thought this band would be forgotten by now, yet everyone in the Western world can still sing Hungry Like the Wolf. Simon, Nick, John, Andy and Roger remain icons of adolescent female desire. Even the tenderoni who weren’t even born in the ’80s know what Girls on Film is about and nurture that special relationship all ladies seem to share with John. (Sometimes also Roger. Frequently Simon. Not Andy.) How did this happen?

The ’80s, obviously. I was thirteen when the ’80s began and twenty-three when they ended, so this was the era of my adolescence, and I never figured anybody would remember the ’80s fondly after they were over. But like everything else that happened in the ’80s, Duran Duran symbolize teenage yearnings. Girls still grow up memorizing Pretty in Pink and Dirty Dancing during those constant weekend TV marathons. Any time Sixteen Candles comes on, my sisters can recite every scene word for word. (If I’m lucky, I get in a few Jake lines.) When Michael Jackson, John Hughes and Patrick Swayze died, these were national days of mourning. Every night in your town, you can find a bar somewhere hosting an Awesome ’80s Prom Night, where you can count on a steady loop of Tainted Love and Billie Jean and Just Like Heaven. Any wedding I attend degenerates into a room full of Tommys and Ginas screaming Livin’ on a Prayer. If that doesn’t happen, the couple could probably get an annulment.

If you were famous in the ’80s, you will never be not famous. (In theoretical physics, this principle is formally known as the Justine Bateman Constant.) Any group that was popular in the ’80s can still pack a room. When ’80s darlings Depeche Mode come to town, my wife, Ally, begins picking out her dress weeks before the show, even though I already know it’s going to be the short black one. And I know I’m her date for the show, and I know she will look deep into my eyes when Dave Gahan sings A Question of Lust. We played Kajagoogoo’s Too Shy at our wedding and nobody even walked out.

I’ve built my whole life around loving music. I’m a writer for Rolling Stone, so I am constantly searching for new bands and soaking up new sounds. When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst. All sorts of futuristic electronic music machines offered obnoxious noises for the plundering. All kinds of bold feminist ideas were inspiring pop stars to play around with gender roles and sexual politics, on a level that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier. The radio could be your jam, whether you were a new-wave kid, a punk rocker, a disco fan, a hip-hop head, a Morrissey acolyte or a card-carrying member of the Cinderella Fan Club. I was every one of these at some time or another—I loved it all.

But even I didn’t think there was so much going on in the ’80s that people would still be trying to figure out all these years later. I didn’t expect I’d still be trying to figure it out either. A few years ago, I went to the Rocklahoma festival, devoted to the ’80s hair-metal bands. I stood in a field, surrounded for the first and last time by thirty thousand of my fellow Quiet Riot fans, listening to the band play Metal Health (Bang Your Head). Was it strange? Very. Did it rock? Brutally.

It’s always weird to see how the Hair Decade lives on, even for people barely old enough to remember it. Every week, in my neighborhood of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, I go and see young bands getting brand-new kicks out of ’80s beats. At the time, we all figured we were stuck in an Epoch of Bogus. The country was in horrific shape, with Reagan and his cronies running amok. It was customary to blame music for the poisonous state of the nation. Nobody would have suspected that anyone would ever go to the movies to relive 1985 (The Wedding Singer), 1987 (Adventureland ) or, Jesus, 1986 (Hot Tub Time Machine). I mean, the biggest movie of 1985 was the one where Michael J. Fox used a time machine to get the hell out of 1985. We were young, bored and dumb, so we couldn’t wait for it all to end. But something has kept this all alive. And in retrospect, the Epoch of Bogus evolved into the Apex of Awesome. Who made this decision?

Girls, obviously. As Tone Loc said, This is the Eighties and I’m down with the ladies. The ladies were not necessarily down with Tone Loc—but they’re down with the ’80s, and it’s feminine passion that sustains the whole mythology of ’80s teen dreams. And of all the absurd and perverted artifacts from that time, nothing keeps them feeling fascination like Duran Duran. Which is why I’ve always been fascinated too. How the hell did men and women communicate before they had this band to discuss? Fortunately, I’ll never have to know.

The first girls I shared them with were my high school pals Heather and Lisa, girlie girls who liked to talk about Duran Duran because they liked to say the name, which they pronounced, Jran Jran. Heather and Lisa taught me about sushi, high heels, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, the value of earrings shaped like pieces of sushi, and the importance of never letting Lisa drive your car—but the most crucial lesson was Duran Duran. We would go out for ice cream and they would sing along with the radio, using spoons for mikes, and we would wait until the next time Union of the Snake or Hungry Like the Wolf came on WHTT, which was never a long wait.

Lisa’s cousin was a model who was married to the keyboardist in this band, and she went to their wedding. We grilled her for the details—apparently her uncle gave a moving toast, which was drowned out by the ecstatic squeals of Roger Taylor’s date in the backless dress as he licked her entire spine, vertebra by vertebra. Lisa also had sordid backstage gossip of drugs and sex. But what really mattered to me? The way Lisa said their name: Jran Jran. I tried to say it that way too.

Heather and Lisa had disposable boyfriends who suffered at their hands and made me secretly feel grateful to be above such things. I was better at being a girlfriend than a boyfriend anyway. I wasn’t really living the Duran Duran lifestyle, which seemed to involve dedicating your life to traveling to distant locales where you would flip over tables and pour champagne for pouty vixens who would help you apply your mascara. I might have been a shy, bookish geek, but I was totally hung up on this pop group who were devoted to sex and glamour and danger. I loved how fiercely girls loved DD , and how fearless DD were in the face of so much girl worship. I was pretty sure I had a lot to learn from these guys.

I envied the religious intensity of their fandom. One day, you’re a perfectly ordinary suburban princess, content with Journey and Styx, and then you hear something new and all of a sudden you’re one of those girls. It’s funny because a female audience is often a fickle audience, and yet it goes both ways. A girls’ artist, whether it’s Depeche Mode or Neil Diamond or Duran Duran or Jeff Buckley or Luther Vandross or R.E.M. or the New Kids, commands a certain loyalty that never really goes away. An adult woman might have a slightly mocking, slightly ironic relationship to her teenage Duran-loving self, and yet she can still feel that love in a non-ironic way. And when adult women talk about them, they turn into those girls again.

That’s why Duran Duran always keep coming up in conversation, no matter where I am or who I’m talking to. A few weeks ago, I went to see a band called the Cribs at the Bowery Ballroom in New York and wound up at the bar talking to a music-industry lawyer who represents the biggest names in hip-hop. Within five minutes, she was raving about John Taylor. She’d just been in the Bahamas, staying at a posh resort where (by coincidence) Duran Duran were staying, in rehearsals for their upcoming reunion tour. She was in the pool with John Taylor, swimming past him in her bikini, trying to turn his head, telling herself, I am swimming in John Taylor’s water. The chlorine touching his body is touching mine.

This woman obviously loves them in a way that’s very different from how I love them, yet in some ways not so different, and I guess those differences intrigue me. Even if I didn’t share those dreams of splashing in John Taylor’s backwash, I definitely associated the music with sexual yearning, and I loved how girls would get a certain glow in the throes of pop passion. My feelings for these girls could get all mixed up in identification with the band—maybe girls would scream for me the way they screamed for DD if only I modeled my life on Simon Le Bon, and borrowed his lipliner, and spiced my conversation with lines like My mouth is alive with juices like wine. It might take years of monastic devotion. I might have to go to exotic locales and have sex with actual wolves.

When I had my first actual girlfriend, she tried putting makeup on me; I begged her to give me the Nick Rhodes, although I was secretly hoping she would accidentally give me the John Taylor. As a die-hard punk rock chick, she hated Duran Duran, but she liked the idea of a boyfriend who looked a little bit more like John Taylor. Unfortunately, I ended up looking kind of like Andy Taylor’s bag-lady auntie. I had to face the facts. Being Duran Duran was never going to be an option. I would have to settle for being a fan.

When you’re a boy, you sometimes begrudge the rock stars who are bogarting your share of feminine attention. When I met Peter Buck of R.E.M., he mentioned something I’d written about resenting how much girls loved his band. I was mortified, but he just smiled and said, In my day, it was David Bowie. I was mad at him because my girlfriends liked him better than me.

Duran Duran rank high on this chart. Boys always hated them, and there’s no way the band didn’t know it. They simply didn’t care.

The way girls raved about DD was so different from the way we boys talked about the bands we liked. I remember hours of debate in the high school lunchroom about the Clash: which was better, London Calling or Sandinista!? Is Lover’s Rock really about oral sex? Which member of the band truly understood the geopolitical context of Nicaraguan history? Who had a cooler name, Joe Strummer or Tory Crimes? My female rocker friends call this boy list language, and they won’t tolerate it. When I talk about Duran Duran with other guys, which admittedly doesn’t happen all that often, we end up debating whether the Power Station was a better side project than Arcadia. No Duran Duran chick, not even the hard-core obsessives, would sit through a conversation like that.

I will always love the Clash, because I loved them so much when I was fourteen, and I love how you can start a conversation with almost literally any dude about the Clash. For instance, if you are a dude, you are still stuck halfway through the last paragraph, spluttering, "London Calling is much better than Sandinista! This is just the way we dissect the things we love. But it’s tougher to talk to women about the Clash. (They love Stand by Me but they don’t care that it’s really called Train in Vain instead of Stand by Me.") So Duran Duran are a much bigger part of my day-to-day life.

I still feel like I have a lot to learn from Duran Duran. They’re Zen masters on the path of infinite sluttiness, shower-nozzle heroes devoted to inspiring female fantasies. One of the things I admire about them is how they sincerely do not give a shit whether boys like them. They surrender gracefully to the female gaze. They still wear the makeup, they still dress like tarts, and every time they do a reunion tour, they play the hits they know will make the Durannies scream. They have never sold out their girls, and there’s nothing about them that would evoke the dreaded words guilty pleasure. As Oscar Wilde said, no civilized man ever regrets a pleasure, and no uncivilized man knows what a pleasure is.

The songs in this book are some of my favorite ’80s relics, the songs that warped my brain with dubious ideas, boneheaded goals, laughable hopes and timeless mysteries. They might not necessarily

Reviews for Talking to Girls About Duran Duran

[jonez-6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

2.75

When I was in Junior High and High School my dream was to write for Rolling Stone magazine. Reading this was a nostalgia trip that made me recall my youth, and where those dreams were born. I enjoyed the trip down 80's lane that Sheffield provided, but I wish he would have driven us a bit farther. The book only scratches the surface of a memoir and is often disjointed on delivery. Its, at times, more of a photo blurb than a full article. Still, it was enjoyable enough to almost garner a full 3 stars.

[rdra1962 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A music writer ties snippets of his life to popular 80's music while trying to explain how each music style reflected the times. A cute premise that grew very tiresome very quickly!

[lakobow · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Unfortunately I must be too young to enjoy this book. Though I was born in 1982, I did not get many of the 80's references, so I felt I could not fully relate to Rob's experiences and just found most of the references distracting. This is no criticism of his writing--I just could not enjoy this as much as I thought I would.

[bookwormteri · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A love letter to 80's music. Beautifully written and so entertaining. Rob Sheffield, a writer for Rolling Stone, recounts the his favorite (or most memorable) 80's songs and what they remind him of. Little snippets of song and life. This book is rad!

[bongo_x_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I’m more than halfway through but I don’t think I’m going to finish this one. It isn’t awful, I don’t hate it, it’s just really…nothing.

This is what you read if Chuck Klosterman is too deep or difficult for you. I can enjoy Klosterman in small doses. This is Chuck with less to say, and not as funny. He can put a sentence together and is not a bad writer in that way, it was only after reading a couple chapters that I thought "what the hell is this guy going on about?"

Imagine you’re having a conversation;

"Remember that 80’s song ___?"
He sings a couple lines
"I love 80’s music! When that song came out I worked at ___"
He then spends half an hour telling you about his job when he was a teenager, or the arguments he had with his sister, or his car or something.

If you were at a party you’d probably try to get away from this guy after a few minutes. That’s this whole book in a nutshell. The problem is the stories just aren’t very interesting. It’s not like he had any story worthy experiences, or like some authors, can pull some insight out of common, mundane experiences. These are not even really essays into what the music means, or growing in America in the 80’s, or anything else that I can get out of it. It’s just some guy rambling about his teenage years and a lot of not terribly exciting music.

The other problem is the one lots of others have pointed out. He makes a lot of sweeping statements; girls like this, boys like that, everyone in ’84 was listening to ___, all teenage boys are like ___, etc. We’re close to the same age, yet I found I disagreed with almost everything he said, like we grew up on different planets. It was very distracting since he does this a lot.

I didn’t like this or Nick Hornby’s similar book. I’ve probably had all the Klosterman I need. I guess I need to quit reading these things. Why is it that so many music obsessed writers seem to have such dull musical taste? Maybe I’ve just gotten lucky that way.

[satyridae · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I liked several of the essays very much. Most of them were just okay, though, and I think the book went on too long. I loved reading about Sheffield's totally awesome sisters. I think he should write a straight memoir about growing up with them shepherding him through life, it would be such fun. I remembered nearly all the songs, but with considerably less fondness than the author did, so that perhaps contributed to my overall sense of malaise regarding the majority of this book. Sheffield also assigns way too many gender stereotypes to suit me.

But if you grew up in the 80s, it's certainly worth leafing through. The intro is hilarious, though ridden with the aforementioned sterotyping.

[othemts · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sheffield, a music critic for Rolling Stone, writes an amusing and touching depiction of his life growing up in the 1980s with each chapter built around a song from that misunderstood decade. Sheffield stands out from the stereotypical music critic as he declares a true love for a lot of this music, even the songs and bands he knows aren’t very good. The book resonates with me because so much of his life story is similar to my own. We both grew up in the 80s fascinated with the music and culture of the decade, we lived in New England suburbs, we had Irish-American families, we were unusually active in the Catholic church at a young age, we had sisters who influenced us greatly (he has three younger sisters, I have one older sister) and we went to college in Virginia (I went to William & Mary for undergrad, while Sheffield went to University of Virginia for graduate studies). Perhaps the most eerie similarities are when he (like I) works at a Harvard University library and he shares a house with his grandfather in the same neighborhood, and possibly even the same street, where I now live. So, if I never write my own biography, this book will give you the gist. Even if you have nothing in common with Sheffield I recommend this book for Sheffield’s humor, cheerful optimism, and deep love for the 1980s.

[kristi17_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A hilarious read! Anyone who was a child of the '80s like me will appreciate it very much, even if for some reason you don't agree that Duran Duran was the best band EVER. Highly recommended!

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was born in 1984. So for me, the ‘80s mainly consisted of a lot of My Little Pony, diapers and learning how to write my own name, but not a lot of concert going and head banging. I grew up on a steady diet of ‘90s, but was only in kindergarten when the infamous “hair” decade came to a close.

This does not mean I can’t appreciate some good ‘80s references though, I was a huge fan of the original I Love the ‘80s show on VH1. I just didn’t experience the decade in the same way as others who were teens during that era.

In Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Sheffield explores his own experiences growing up with a bunch of sisters in the 1980s. As a writer for Rolling Stone, his love of music has only grown over the years, but it was just in its infancy when he was introduced to the music of Madonna and Prince.

Sheffield’s candor throughout the book makes it feel like you’re chatting with a friend and reminiscing about your years spent discovering who you are. The chapters, each titled with a hit song, tell disconnected stories from his life. Some are sweet, others funny; there’s a great bit about his love of karaoke, another about the horrible things we do for the people we love (when he’s living with his grandpa).

My favorite chapter was “Enola Gay” which covers Sheffield’s time in Spain. I couldn’t stop laughing at a section where he describes seeing the movie Airplane! with friends who had never seen it. A lot of the humor is lost in translation and he finds himself howling at the jokes he knows so well, while the other wonder why characters keep saying, “Me llamo es no Shirley!”

The book’s main strength was also its main weakness. The stories are disconnected, which makes it easy to pick up and put down, but also makes it feel a bit too episodic. It veers from funny to sad, so the book doesn’t have a consistent mood. It feels like a collection of short stories or memories that have been strung together under the pretense of “’80s music.” It’s a fun summer read, but I liked it, I didn’t love it and wouldn’t re-read it.  

[indygo88 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I will probably forever remember this memoir, not because it was so terribly memorable, but because it was the first book I read on my e-reader, which was kind of exciting for me. Other than that, I was kind of disappointed. It wasn't bad; it was just okay. I was a teen of the 80's, so I thought I would really relate to this well. I did relate somewhat, but maybe it was a little too new-wave for me. I thought the title was misleading -- not a whole lot about Duran Duran in there, sort of touch & go with the quest for true love, and I don't really remember reading anything about a cooler haircut. It was fun taking a trip down memory lane -- some things were spot-on, but other things I read & just kind of thought, "What is he talking about?!"

[heatherlove_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this because I liked the title, it made me chuckle (and think of 7th and 8th grade.) I can't say enough good things about this book. I felt like one of my friends was talking to me, because many of us couch our lives in terms of what music we were listening to or what movies we had recently seen when talking about a specific time in our lives.

A lot of people my age? We make sense of how we grew up to a soundtrack that except for some obsessive thing he has with a one-hit-wonder band I've never heard of, track moments of my life with the songs he lists for his. We all identify with the awkwardness of talking to someone of the opposite sex, but can be unified in music--whether it is or isn't Duran Duran per se.

I think, no, I know that I have a crush on Rob Sheffield even though I've never seen him before. He's a couple years older than me. I spent a year in Italy, he spend time in Spain. We were in Charlottesville around the same time from what I can tell from his stories-he meeting his wife, me a naive undergrad student.

I saw Duran Duran a few years ago at the House of Blues in Chicago, I definitely would have talked to Rob Sheffield or his contemporaries after the glow of that show.

[knitwit2_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a refreshing book. It was so nice to read a book about music and a crazy time (80's) without having to read about drugs and sexual conquests. It was fun reliving the 80's through this book that reminded me of Bananarama and other bands that I'd forgotten. The author was light and funny talking about his youth.

[kristenn_43 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I own Sheffield's earlier memoir but haven't quite gotten around to reading it. This one, however, I went through pretty much as soon as I brought it home. I figured it would be much more upbeat and certainly relateable. Context/confession: I was a hardcore Durannie back in the day. I also later listened to a lot of the same new wave etc music that Sheffield did.

Sheffield is five years older than I am, which is close enough. I'm not sure, however, how well this would resonate with a reader from a completely different generation. Being an 80s teen is enough; he does cover a range of genres, including hair metal and early rap. (Duran Duran actually only appear in the first and last chapters.) There is also a lot more to it than music. All the confused coming-of-age basics.

The cheesy lyric-based humor can wear thin, but quite a lot of the writing is genuinely funny. He manages to be self-deprecating without wallowing in self-mockery, which not every light memoirist manages to carry off.

I had particular thrills of recognition (if also some embarrassment) at mentions of The Wraith and a whole chapter on cassingles, crucially including Bust a Move. There is also an extended discussions of John Hughes films (of course) and why the movie Airplane didn't translate worth a darn into Spanish.

I did have some quibbles with Sheffield's denial that I ever existed -- a fan whose favorite Duran Duran member was Andy and whose favorite track was Save a Prayer. Must have been an east coast thing. And thank goodness that he clarified in the acknowledgements that he got the clap-clap thing wrong. That was bugging me.

[voracious_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Rob Sheffield's new book reveals new insights into knowledge all men must learn about the elusive truths about women. As the youngest brother in a house full of opinionated Irish sisters, Rob was the recipient of many early lessons about social graces and communicating with girls. Like his first book, "Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss One Song at a Time", Rob searches for insights in the world of music. Rob's use of language and musical references make this book as funny as the first, though this novel lacks the emotional depth of his first book. Nonetheless, I would highly recommend both books to anyone who enjoyed rock music in the 80's and is still seeking insight into why, to this day, girls still love to talk about Duran Duran.

[2percentmilk · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

After reading Rob Sheffield's first book, Love is a Mix Tape, I was eager to read his new book, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran. This was my first choice for my vacation reads, and I ended up finishing it in a day!
I found Talking to Girls About Duran Duran extremely funny and had great music suggestions!
I would definitely recommend this book if you are looking for something light and funny!


And I can't clap to Hall and Oates' "Private Eyes" either.

[helpfulsnowman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut by Rob Sheffield

Okay, before we get too far into this, everyone should know that this book doesn't come out for a whole week.
This is very exciting for me.
Not only did I hold the book in my hands before the unwashed, unshaven, apparently wholly uneducated about hygiene masses, but the version I held was special. And not just because it was an uncorrected proof. Not just because Steve Perry was named Steve Terry at one point, something that confused the shit out of me for a second. This is all very new to me, so instead of thinking right away that there was a one-letter typo, my world started swirling with the possibilities of an entirely new band led by Steve Terry, a man who sounded by all description like Steve Perry, patron saint of sincerity in the face of ridiculousness, but was in fact an entirely different man.
Let's leave it there because the details of how long this was in my brain and how badly I wanted it to be true are goddamn embarrassing.
No, this was not just special because of the ghost of Steve Terry. It was special because this is the official launching of my career as a book critic.
Here is my basic career outline:
1. Get books before they come out.
2. Review them. Post on helpfulsnowman.com.
3. This is wildly popular somehow.
4. Actually get paid to review books.
5. Start career as sincere, earnest critic with insightful things to say.
6. Almost immediately slide into the world of writing cover quotes that are about half a sentence. "The writer has defied science and written a book as electrifying as it is grounding." "More mesmerizing than a swinging pocket watch right in front of my goddamn face that time I was in Vegas and somehow ended up at a magic show." "Not since I got a lighter with a woman on it where you rub her bikini and it disappears have I been this invested in the resolution of a mystery."
7. Get job at the New York Something.
8. Attempt to discourage young, Bambi-eyed kid reviewer from getting in over his head, actually reading all these books he reviews.
9. Bury corpse of Bambi-eyed kid reviewer somewhere near the waterfront.

So without further ado, let's get this career a-launching!

Most of you probably know Rob Sheffield as a contributing editor to Rolling Stone. Or you might have seen him on one of those shows where people ranging from cultural critics (such as Sheffield) to Vern Troyer (alcoholic Golem on a mobility scooter) talk about things of great consequence, such as whether Michael Jackson could actually destroy a car with all his might.
Those of you who are very lucky might have read his previous book, Love is a Mix Tape. If you haven't, get off your ass.
The important thing to know is that the guy does an awful lot of writing, so it's not a brand new game for him. This isn't some silly biography that starts off with the thrilling tale of who his great-grandfather is and why we should give a good goddamn. This is a silly biography that takes us through the songs that define the 1980's for Rob, which turns out to be a good storytelling tool. Everyone has a couple songs that don't really mean what they're supposed to mean. Maybe Ben Folds had a hell of a lot going through his brain, but "Rockin' the Suburbs" might as well be called "Summer, 1999" as far as I'm concerned.
Sheffield takes you through his songs, his times, and the music is the driving force some of the time and takes the passenger seat at others.
A great way to see if you'll like this book is to read the section named for Prince's "Purple Rain." It chronicles Rob's summer as the ice cream man, a summer filled with teenage freedom and forever solidifies the impossibility of selling Bomb Pops. This is one of the strongest sections. Good, clear writing, humor, and just enough relatibility to keep things fun.
Something that makes Sheffield's writing about music really work is that he's not trying to convince you to like or dislike anything. This isn't like talking to your buddy who will spend an hour trying to convince you that Ride the Lightning is the best Metallica album when it creeps up to maybe fifth on your list. This isn't like talking to some goofball who tries to convince you that Beyonce is important somehow. This is a guy who likes what he likes, makes no apologies for it, and tells you what he likes about it. Much like the claim he makes about Duran Duran having mostly female fans and not really giving a damn, Sheffield will have people who disagree with him, but he'll go right along doing his thing.
The weaker points come in when reading about songs you've never really hear of or don't give two shits about. As the wave of 80's nostalgia passes over us, you probably wouldn't be surprised to read a little something about Flock of Seagulls, David Bowie, and Hall & Oates. But Paul McCartney, L'Trimm, and the group Haysie Fantayzee (which I'm not entirely convinced wasn't a joke because the story was so perfectly 80's pop) round out a number of groups. It's really a nostalgic trip through the 80's, but moreso if you actually lived through them. Not a lot of time is spent catching you up, and folks born after 1985 will be left behind children.
To be honest, it was a little bit like a driving through a foreign country. It went fast, I enjoyed it, but at times I was so busy trying to figure out where I was that I didn't really get to enjoy the sights. To help you out I've included a track list of the main songs mentioned in the book, so if you want to spend a couple bucks or know someone with a decent library of80's music you can really get a leg up on this one.
Talking to Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield. Check it out July 15th. Or, you know, after that.

The Go-Go's, "Our Lips Are Sealed"
David Bowie, "Ashes to Ashes"
Ray Parker Jr., "A Woman Needs Love"
The Rolling Stones, "She's So Cold"
The Human League, "Love Action"
O.M.D., "Enola Gay"
Culture Club, "I'll Tumble 4 Ya"
Hall & Oates, "Maneater"
Roxy Music, "More Than This"
Bonnie Taylor, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"
Haysi Fantayzee, "Shiny Shiny"
A Flock of Seagulls, "Space Age Love Song"
Chaka Khan, "I Feel For You"
Prince, "Purple Rain"
Paul McCartney, "No More Lonely Nights"
Madonna, "Crazy For You"
The Replacements, "Left Of The Dial"
The Smiths, "Ask"
The Psychedelic Furs, "Pretty In Pink"
Lita Ford, "Kiss Me Deadly"
Tone Loc, "Funky Cold Medina"
New Kids On The Block, "Hangin' Tough"
Big Daddy Kane, "Ain't No Half Steppin'"
L'Trimm, "Cars With Boom"
Duran Duran, "All She Wants Is"