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Duran Duran's "Girls On Film"
By Chris Jisi | January 2005
John Taylor At His Funky Finest
Mention '80s British pop to us bassists and we’re bound to conjure up Sting’s deep, compositional Police lines, Pino Palladino’s ultra-melodic fretless sub-hooks with Go West and Paul Young, and Mark King’s iron-clad thumb work with Level 42. But there’s another interesting voice of the era whose contributions loom larger in retrospect: John Taylor of Duran Duran. A guitarist who switched to bass, Taylor brought to the band equal parts punk rock (à la New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders’ slurring, swagger-filled approach) and R&B bass—specifically the ghost-note throb of Chi'’s Bernard Edwards, who would later produce Taylor’s second gold-selling band, Power Station. The result is Taylor's edgy-but-anchored, syncopated style, which turned countless young rock-minded bassists onto the joys of locking with the drums and bringing the funk.
Taylor’s best known bass work is probably Duran’s "Rio" [from Rio, EMI/Capitol] and Power Station's "Some Like it Hot" [from Power Station, EMI/Capitol], but his seminal, style-defining track is undoubtedly "Girls on Film," from the band’s self-titled 1981 debut on EMI/Capitol. John recalls, smiling, “I still love it—it’s one of our best tunes and one of my best bass tracks. Since this was our first album, we had been playing the songs for quite a while. We really had them together.” He continues, "'Girls on Film' actually went through several revisions; the first demo we made was very straight, with four-on-the-floor drums and a stiff octave-bass part. But as time went on, both Roger [Taylor, drummer] and I opened things up and tried different approaches. At that point we were both very influenced by the work of [bassist] George Murray and Stevie Wonder drummer Dennis Davis on David Bowie’s albums Station to Station, Stage, and especially Low. Eventually, I stumbled upon my syncopated line.”
In the studio that day, Taylor used two fingers to pluck his single-pickup Aria SB 700 bass, which was strung with Rotosounds and recorded both direct and through a miked amp. The bass is so well recorded you can hear virtually every ghost-note. "That’s a credit to the brilliance of producer/engineer Colin Thurston," notes John. "You can hear all of us clearly, but never at the expense of each other or the overall mix." Taylor remembers doing only a few takes, recording with Roger Taylor (no relation), while guitarist Andy Taylor (no relation) and singer Simon LeBon provided scratch tracks. John says he may have done a bass punch or two. To help keep a steady tempo, the band played along with a Kay Memory Rhythm drum machine.
The track opens with the sound of cameras clicking and Roger Taylor's four-bar drum setup. John enters at bar 5 with a two-bar intro phrase that will become the foundation of the verses. Note the syncopated ghost-notes within beats one and two, which he gets via left-hand damping of the open A string. While he might have normally fretted those A’s on the E string (and the D’s in bar 2 on the A string), the use of open strings helped him facilitate the rhythmic figure. Also note the octaves on beats three and four, a holdover from the original demo’s disco-flavored bass line. At the end of bar 2, John “pops” the notes with his index finger, a stylistic nod to slapping, which was just becoming all the rage at the time. Most important, the intro’s four bars (bars 5–8) set up an interesting template in which John continually varies his part via the built-in fill space on the last two beats of every other bar (the ones with the D7 chord)—a benefit of having played the song long enough to build up a vocabulary of fill ideas.
At A, the first verse, Taylor continues this format with, among others, a popped fill in bar 10, an ear-catching 5ths fill in bar 18, and a cool chromatic climb from the low F in bar 24. 2I was just focusing on keeping the groove going while trying to make the part sound interesting and exciting, and make it "move around the vocal. Remember, we were a band of 19- and 20-year-olds, and everybody wanted to be heard and be a star. I was playing to the very peak of my abilities at the time, pulling out every trick I knew." A 6/4 breakdown (bar 25) leads to the first chorus, at B. In this section, the Am7/D7 progression reverses and goes twice as long (two bars of each chord). Here, John takes on the additional role of echoing the vocal melody with the four eighth-notes at the ends of bars 25, 27, 29, and 31. Bars 34–37 are a groove transition to the second verse at C. In this section, as well as in the second chorus at D, Taylor continues with similar propulsive syncopation.
For the bridge, at E, the Taylor-made rhythm section breaks it down, and John goes to quarter-notes with syncopation on the backhand side of the two-bar phrases. Building momentum at bar 70, he adds more of his signature syncopation and a 3rd in the bass every other bar. F, verse three, mines previous terrain, but at G, the out chorus, John reigns his line in subtly. "I've always felt that as you get toward the fade of a track, the ad-libbing becomes more the role of the singer and lead instruments, so it behooves the rhythm section to calm down a bit and really lock in the support for them." Currently, in concert with Duran Duran, the reverse is true. Taylor laughs, "We’ve been doing 'Girls' and 'Rio' as our encore numbers, so while everyone in the band is wiped out by the end of the show, I'’m thinking, Damn—I've just got to get going now."
Duran Duran's "Girls On Film"
By Chris Jisi | January 2005
John Taylor At His Funky Finest
Mention '80s British pop to us bassists and we’re bound to conjure up Sting’s deep, compositional Police lines, Pino Palladino’s ultra-melodic fretless sub-hooks with Go West and Paul Young, and Mark King’s iron-clad thumb work with Level 42. But there’s another interesting voice of the era whose contributions loom larger in retrospect: John Taylor of Duran Duran. A guitarist who switched to bass, Taylor brought to the band equal parts punk rock (à la New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders’ slurring, swagger-filled approach) and R&B bass—specifically the ghost-note throb of Chi'’s Bernard Edwards, who would later produce Taylor’s second gold-selling band, Power Station. The result is Taylor's edgy-but-anchored, syncopated style, which turned countless young rock-minded bassists onto the joys of locking with the drums and bringing the funk.
Taylor’s best known bass work is probably Duran’s "Rio" [from Rio, EMI/Capitol] and Power Station's "Some Like it Hot" [from Power Station, EMI/Capitol], but his seminal, style-defining track is undoubtedly "Girls on Film," from the band’s self-titled 1981 debut on EMI/Capitol. John recalls, smiling, “I still love it—it’s one of our best tunes and one of my best bass tracks. Since this was our first album, we had been playing the songs for quite a while. We really had them together.” He continues, "'Girls on Film' actually went through several revisions; the first demo we made was very straight, with four-on-the-floor drums and a stiff octave-bass part. But as time went on, both Roger [Taylor, drummer] and I opened things up and tried different approaches. At that point we were both very influenced by the work of [bassist] George Murray and Stevie Wonder drummer Dennis Davis on David Bowie’s albums Station to Station, Stage, and especially Low. Eventually, I stumbled upon my syncopated line.”
In the studio that day, Taylor used two fingers to pluck his single-pickup Aria SB 700 bass, which was strung with Rotosounds and recorded both direct and through a miked amp. The bass is so well recorded you can hear virtually every ghost-note. "That’s a credit to the brilliance of producer/engineer Colin Thurston," notes John. "You can hear all of us clearly, but never at the expense of each other or the overall mix." Taylor remembers doing only a few takes, recording with Roger Taylor (no relation), while guitarist Andy Taylor (no relation) and singer Simon LeBon provided scratch tracks. John says he may have done a bass punch or two. To help keep a steady tempo, the band played along with a Kay Memory Rhythm drum machine.
The track opens with the sound of cameras clicking and Roger Taylor's four-bar drum setup. John enters at bar 5 with a two-bar intro phrase that will become the foundation of the verses. Note the syncopated ghost-notes within beats one and two, which he gets via left-hand damping of the open A string. While he might have normally fretted those A’s on the E string (and the D’s in bar 2 on the A string), the use of open strings helped him facilitate the rhythmic figure. Also note the octaves on beats three and four, a holdover from the original demo’s disco-flavored bass line. At the end of bar 2, John “pops” the notes with his index finger, a stylistic nod to slapping, which was just becoming all the rage at the time. Most important, the intro’s four bars (bars 5–8) set up an interesting template in which John continually varies his part via the built-in fill space on the last two beats of every other bar (the ones with the D7 chord)—a benefit of having played the song long enough to build up a vocabulary of fill ideas.
At A, the first verse, Taylor continues this format with, among others, a popped fill in bar 10, an ear-catching 5ths fill in bar 18, and a cool chromatic climb from the low F in bar 24. 2I was just focusing on keeping the groove going while trying to make the part sound interesting and exciting, and make it "move around the vocal. Remember, we were a band of 19- and 20-year-olds, and everybody wanted to be heard and be a star. I was playing to the very peak of my abilities at the time, pulling out every trick I knew." A 6/4 breakdown (bar 25) leads to the first chorus, at B. In this section, the Am7/D7 progression reverses and goes twice as long (two bars of each chord). Here, John takes on the additional role of echoing the vocal melody with the four eighth-notes at the ends of bars 25, 27, 29, and 31. Bars 34–37 are a groove transition to the second verse at C. In this section, as well as in the second chorus at D, Taylor continues with similar propulsive syncopation.
For the bridge, at E, the Taylor-made rhythm section breaks it down, and John goes to quarter-notes with syncopation on the backhand side of the two-bar phrases. Building momentum at bar 70, he adds more of his signature syncopation and a 3rd in the bass every other bar. F, verse three, mines previous terrain, but at G, the out chorus, John reigns his line in subtly. "I've always felt that as you get toward the fade of a track, the ad-libbing becomes more the role of the singer and lead instruments, so it behooves the rhythm section to calm down a bit and really lock in the support for them." Currently, in concert with Duran Duran, the reverse is true. Taylor laughs, "We’ve been doing 'Girls' and 'Rio' as our encore numbers, so while everyone in the band is wiped out by the end of the show, I'’m thinking, Damn—I've just got to get going now."
