The star-studded side project. A strategy that is almost guaranteed to satiate the creative aspirations of restless rock stars.
A chance to flex creative muscles, move beyond the stylistic parameters of your genre and hopefully create something innovative and inspiring in the process.
The ’80s were riddled with them, projects such as Electronic, the Italo house-inspired supergroup formed in 1988 by Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr; The Creatures, the percussion-focused side project formed in 1981 by Siouxsie Sioux and drummer Budgie; the Tom Tom Club, a dance club-inspired splinter project formed in 1981 by Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, the husband-and-wife rhythm section of Talking Heads.
Then there was The Power Station, one of two side projects to emerge from the ranks of Duran Duran, after bassist John Taylor and guitarist Andy Taylor hooked up with besuited ex-Vinegar Joe vocalist Robert Palmer and former Chic drummer Tony Thompson.
To bolster their ranks, they drafted in Chic bassist Bernard Edwards as producer and manager.
The Power Station released three singles but it was the first, the thumping funk-rock track Some Like It Hot, that was by far the most successful.
It is a song borne out of one of the more interesting collaborations of the lavish, excess-fuelled ’80s.
In mid-1984, following a global tour, the five members Duran Duran took a lengthy hiatus.
Frontman Simon Le Bon, keyboardist Nick Rhodes and drummer Roger Taylor formed the side project Arcadia. At the same time, John and Andy Taylor formed the band that became The Power Station.
Their aim was to break out of the synth-heavy pop of Duran Duran and pursue more aggressive and rhythmic music, rooted in funk and the swaggering heavy rock of Led Zeppelin.
The project was sparked when the American model and would-be singer Bebe Buell decided to record a cover of the 1971 song Get It On by T.Rex and needed a band. This one-off project seemed like a good jumping-off point.
The Taylors asked Tony Thompson to join after meeting him when he was touring as David Bowie’s drummer on the Serious Moonlight tour in 1983.
“We were at a David Bowie concert at the Sydney Cricket Ground,” Andy Taylor told Jerry Ewing of Classic Rock in 2024. “I knew quite a few of the band, and I ended up at the afterparty in some hotel suite.
“I went into the loo and I bumped into Tony and we just started talking – not doing anything naughty, although I was a bit drunk. ‘I fucking love your playing,’ all that. And at some point John got involved in the conversation. I got up the next morning and I’m like: ‘Did we really form a band?’”
The idea was to create a revolving supergroup, with each track featuring a different singer. Numerous big names were considered, including Mick Jagger, Billy Idol and Richard Butler from the Psychedelic Furs.
Then, in autumn 1984, John Taylor found himself on the same flight as Robert Palmer, and mentioned the idea. Palmer was intrigued and was later invited to contribute vocals to a new song called Communication.
The Taylors and Thompson were impressed by Palmer’s soulful and precise R&B-style vocals. Palmer was aware they had recorded demos for Get It On and asked if he could try singing on that track as well. Before long, they invited Palmer to become the vocalist on the whole album.
The new band was signed to Capitol Records and embarked on sessions to record an album at the Power Station Studios in New York City, adopting the studio’s name for their new venture. The album would feature eight songs and Some Like It Hot was the opening track.
The sound that John and Andy Taylor envisaged involved placing Tony Thompson’s drums right upfront in the mix.
“What we really wanted to do was put this drummer out there in a way that we felt he deserved,” John Taylor told the AV Club in July 2012, “so that song [Some Like It Hot] was sort of designed to really showcase Tony.”
The Taylors were not the only ones influenced by Led Zeppelin.
“We grew up with Zeppelin,” Bernard Edwards told Jerry Ewing of Classic Rock magazine. “In fact, Chic, or what became Chic, started out playing Zeppelin covers. But in the early ’70s, no one was interested in a bunch of black dudes playing hard rock.”
Tony Thompson had been equally smitten by Zep.
“I knew that about Tony,” recalled Andy Taylor. “He grew up playing along to Zeppelin records on cardboard boxes in the projects. How great is that?”
For Thompson, a dream would come true in 1985 at Live Aid, when after performing with the Power Station, he played with Led Zeppelin as one of two drummers – the other, of course, being Phil Collins.
John and Andy Taylor wrote the basis of Some Like It Hot. The title was taken from Neil Simon’s 1959 classic comedy film, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. But this detail didn’t seem to concern the fledgling supergroup.
Armed with a demo of the song, John Taylor decided to pay Robert Palmer a visit.
“I flew to Nassau in the Bahamas,” he told the AV Club in 2012, “which was where Robert Palmer lived at the time, and played him the demo that Andy and I had written and said, ‘We’ve got this idea that we’re calling Some Like It Hot.’ And he just looked at me and said, 'And some sweat when the heat is on.’ I was, like, ‘Yes! That’ll do!’”
In late 1984, sessions began in earnest at the Power Station although the reportedly lavish, drug-fuelled lifestyle during the recording sometimes made focusing difficult.
“I had to be, like, strapped to the desk if I was gonna get a bass line finished, because I was just all over the place,” recalled John Taylor on the official Duran Duran site.
Producer Bernard Edwards brought some discipline and focus to the sessions while his Chic partner Nile Rodgers contributed informally across the album.
“It was just such a mad, crazy time,” John Taylor said. “But, yes, he [Bernard] was very inspirational.
“It was extraordinary getting to work with Bernard and Nile independently of each other. I cannot imagine what it must have been like working with the two of them together. They must’ve really been an amazing team. Still, I feel we really got the best from them both.”
In an interview with Jerry Ewing of Classic Rock in 2024, Andy Taylor recalled the social whirl of the sessions at the Power Station, which was located on West 53rd Street in Midtown Manhattan.
“We only spent twenty-seven days total working on [the album],” said Andy Taylor said. “We were working nights… and the Power Station became a bit of a club.
“The other thing was, all the session guys then… they worked on pagers. You’d page them and ask them to come do a session, and they’d turn up in an hour. Late at night. They were always ready.”
Listening back to Some Like It Hot, 40 years after its creation, the song is a high point of the album, although the digital ’80s sounds and effects, such as the gated reverb on the kit, do anchor it in time.
That said, it’s a fearsome groove from Tony Thompson and a massive thumping high-in-the-mix presence, nicely offset by John Taylor’s punchy, overdriven bass.
“I think that bass part is one of the best things I did,” Taylor told Marco Passarelli of Bass Player magazine in 2007.
One minute in and the track segues into its big melodic hook. Palmer’s voice brings real power and intent. “Feel the heat, pushing you to decide,” he sings. “Feel the heat burning you up, ready or not.”
Of all the members of Duran Duran, Andy Taylor was always the one more interested in rock music, which was at odds with the band’s pop image. On Some Like It Hot, he gets to inject some serious rock swagger, reeling off a driving riff and then a seriously twisted, searing solo at 3:20.
The whole track is lean, tight and punchy, but it’s the flawless percussive stabs from the brass section – Lenny Pickett, Mark Pender, Mars Williams, Paul Litteral, and Stan Harrison – that really make this track fly.
Fittingly for the ’80s, there was a spirit of largesse on the sessions, a fact highlighted by the decision to bring Duran Duran drummer, Roger Taylor in for a guest spot. The demands on his time were minimal, as reported in the February 2008 issue of Q magazine.
“John [Taylor] felt sorry for me,” recalled Roger. “He said, ‘Of course we've got work for you.’ He flew me and my drum tech to New York on Concorde and put us up in a 5-star hotel. After 14 days, I finally went to the studio and I played these drums – called Octobans – on Some Like It Hot.
“I hit the drum maybe five times. That was it. Concorde flights for two, 14 days in a 5-star hotel... The most expensive bit of drumming in history.”
Some Like It Hot was released on 25 February 1985 and became The Power Station’s biggest hit, with their eponymous one-off album landing exactly one month later. The song reached No.6 in the US, No.14 in the UK and rose to No.4 in Australia.
On 16 February 1985, the band performed Some Like It Hot and their cover of Get It On on NBC’s live, late-night TV comedy sketch show, Saturday Night Live. It would be Robert Palmer’s only live performance with the original band.
The Power Station’s unexpected success led to a planned US tour, but Palmer quit before the tour to record a solo album and capitalise on his new high profile. He would go on to achieve massive solo success.
Palmer was reportedly criticised for joining the band only for the money. He was quick to respond. “Firstly, I didn’t need the money and, secondly, the cash was a long time coming,” Palmer told Number One magazine. “It wasn’t exactly an experience that set me up for retirement.”
Following Palmer's exit, The Power Station enlisted as his replacement Michael Des Barres, a singer and actor who had previously fronted the bands Silverhead and Detective – the latter signed to Led Zeppelin's vanity label Swan Song.
It was with Des Barres that The Power Station performed at Live Aid, shortly before disbanding.
40 years on, Duran Duran’s two high profile side projects are not always remembered fondly.
“Arcadia and The Power Station", wrote Bob Stanley of St Etienne in his 2013 book Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story Of Pop, “were possibly the two worst bands of the decade. So much huff and puff.”
In a piece in The Quietus, published in March 2015, writer Simon Price noted: “Some Like It Hot is an ugly brute of a thing.” But he went on to acknowledge: “It’s a fascinating artefact”.
“The bottom end cooked up by John Taylor and Bernard Edwards is so overdriven it threatens to buckaroo the needle out of the groove,” continued Price. “And on top of it all, Robert Palmer’s uptight, knotted-tie delivery, sounding like he’s on the brink of phoning the paramedics.
“It’s a record that brooks no dissent. Sometimes you just need to put it on at full volume and marvel, submit to its strutting rock-funk grandeur.”
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