A review by antiquitea
Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran by Andy Taylor
2.0
To be completely honest, I held no allusions that Andy would even begin to fully explain why he and Duran Duran parted ways on two occasions. Nor did I think for a moment that he would actually own up and take responsibility for some of the things that occurred - he seems to enjoy playing the blame game and taking things ridiculously out of context. For some reason, that didn't surprise me. Based on what I knew of the very public way that he and Simon Le Bon lashed out at each other in the press shortly after Andy's first departure from the band, I'd kind of already painted a picture of him, albeit an unfair one. That being said, when it comes to his family, Andy seems like a top notch guy, and that was very apparent in the book. If nothing else, that is the one great thing I will take away from having read this.
I think Andy is a phenomenal guitar player - heck, you've probably heard him on tracks for acts you didn't even know he was associated with - but he didn't do himself any favours by "writing" this book. It is so obviously ghost-written that it borders on painful. Most of the information contained within it were things I already knew, or could be found by typing Duran Duran into Google. Having finished Steven Tyler's autobiography before picking this one up, and groaning about the lack of consistency and competent co-writing, I thought that Andy's would be a breath of fresh air. Nope. Surely there must be a happy medium between the two? At least Steven's had heart - something that Andy's lacks entirely.
After having read the final sentence in his memoirs, I was struck more by his tellings of acting like a petulant child than I was of his detailed accounts of the song writing process and working with Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, and Roger Taylor (no relation). I don't hold the other four members of Duran Duran in a regard of God-like status, I'm certain that they're no saints either, but I don't think Andy comes across as how he wanted to. And maybe that was his intention. Maybe in rock and roll (and 80's synthpop), there is nobody who comes out smelling like roses, and he wanted to show us that. But I just can't help but think that this was a wasted opportunity to tell us so many things about the inner workings of the band - beyond his fights with Nick and cocaine binges with John.
I would recommend this book to any Duran Duran fan, but that's about it. I really wanted to enjoy this book, and in some aspects I did, but it ultimately fell flat and left me wanting.
I think Andy is a phenomenal guitar player - heck, you've probably heard him on tracks for acts you didn't even know he was associated with - but he didn't do himself any favours by "writing" this book. It is so obviously ghost-written that it borders on painful. Most of the information contained within it were things I already knew, or could be found by typing Duran Duran into Google. Having finished Steven Tyler's autobiography before picking this one up, and groaning about the lack of consistency and competent co-writing, I thought that Andy's would be a breath of fresh air. Nope. Surely there must be a happy medium between the two? At least Steven's had heart - something that Andy's lacks entirely.
After having read the final sentence in his memoirs, I was struck more by his tellings of acting like a petulant child than I was of his detailed accounts of the song writing process and working with Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, and Roger Taylor (no relation). I don't hold the other four members of Duran Duran in a regard of God-like status, I'm certain that they're no saints either, but I don't think Andy comes across as how he wanted to. And maybe that was his intention. Maybe in rock and roll (and 80's synthpop), there is nobody who comes out smelling like roses, and he wanted to show us that. But I just can't help but think that this was a wasted opportunity to tell us so many things about the inner workings of the band - beyond his fights with Nick and cocaine binges with John.
I would recommend this book to any Duran Duran fan, but that's about it. I really wanted to enjoy this book, and in some aspects I did, but it ultimately fell flat and left me wanting.