When their self-titled debut album arrived back in 1981, Duran Duran delivered a dazzling pop-rock confection combining rock guitars, synth-pop and disco sounds, and a touch of punk. They fashioned a look and vibe that would strongly inform the New Romantic and New Wave bands of the time. The soon-to-be-called Fab Five were different than the dark, brooding metal bands that had come out of Birmingham, England. While the album generally had an upbeat tone with songs like “Girls on Film” and “Planet Earth,” other songs like “To the Shore” and the instrumental “Tel Aviv,” with its orchestrated synth strings, gave off more atmospheric vibes.
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Impressionistic Inspiration
One track took a darker twist. Opening with eerie ambient synths, “Night Boat” felt more like the soundtrack for a spooky movie. It took over two minutes into its five and a half minute running time for frontman Simon Le Bon to begin singing, with the band members gradually overlaying their parts—snaking bass, gently thumping tom work, supernatural keyboards, and dramatically ringing guitar chords.
Standing on the edge of the quay
No light flashes on the water for me
Fog in my mind darkens in my eyes
Silently streaming for a distant sound
Ripple river yellows
Rising for a breath of breeding and drowns
Stillness overcomes me in the night
Listen to the rising water moan
I’m waiting
Waiting for the night boat
According to lore, “Night Boat” was inspired by Le Bon waiting for a bus late at night following band practice. That sounds like the perfect setting for a fear flick. When one is alone in an isolated environment after the sun sets, all sorts of unsettling thoughts can creep into their head. The lyrics for this particular song had reportedly been in Le Bon’s lyric journal for a few years by the time the band recorded it. “Night Boat” also became the first of many Duran Duran tracks to possess spooky overtones.
“We were definitely still rehearsing at the Rum Runner [Club] when we came up with that song,” drummer Roger Taylor told me during a Grammy interview last year. “And I gotta say, it’s a pretty deep and epic piece of music, isn’t it, for a bunch of 20-year olds. I was very impressed when we started to play it again because the arrangement is pretty out there. It’s not your normal three or four minute pop song arrangement. It’s a very unusual piece of music. Where did that come from? I have no idea.”
When asked to pick his 10 favorite Duran Duran tracks by Stereogum in 2015, keyboardist Nick Rhodes included “Night Boat.”
“[It] is quite a strange piece of music,” Rhodes acknowledged. “I don’t know what we were smoking at the time. Again, a very unusual arrangement. We used to open our set with that in 1980, before the album came out. We’d come onstage to all these scanners moving over the audience. Actually, it was quite effective. We had no budget, so we went down to our local hardware store and bought six of these things. I think it’s held up.”
Creeptastic Video
Russell Mulcahy directed the video for “Night Boat,” which was shot on the island of Antigua. Mulcahy shot many of Duran Duran’s early, iconic videos and would go on to direct the fantasy cult classic film Highlander with Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery.
The “Night Boat” clip opens with the band members standing on a dock in late afternoon awaiting the arrival of, from one overhead verbal exchange, a mysterious woman. Le Bon seems to go into a trance, reciting Shakespeare as his bandmates become increasingly nervous about someone or something coming. In silhouette at dusk, one of them screams before running into the blackness. After that, pale-skinned zombies, many of them women, emerge to torment them during the nighttime. The vibe of the video and look of the ghoulish extras recalled Lucio Fulci’s infamous Zombie film, known also as Zombi 2, a sort of unofficial sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, which had been recut and released in Italy as Zombi.
There are other great aspects to the video beyond its horror film approach. “Night Boat” was not an official single, but the band chose to make this unusual clip anyway. The addition of a monologue and dialogue was also different for the music-video medium. The group were already ahead of the curve musically, and the video arrived sometime in early 1982, months before Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” and Greg Kihn’s “Jeopardy” videos, which also had horror themes, and at least a year and a half before Michael Jackson unleashed “Thriller” on the world. That hugely successful clip inspired more videos to use dialogue and horror elements. But Duran Duran had done it earlier.
Bringing “Night Boat” Back from the Dead
Although none of the singles charted here, Duran Duran’s eponymous debut album went to No. 3 in the UK and eventually hit No. 10 on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart. It would not hit Gold status until mid-1983 after their sophomore release Rio became a hit in America. It would achieve Platinum sales by January 1985.
Duran Duran played the song live earlier in their career, and the quintet decided to resurrect the track for their reunion tour in 2004. It lay dormant until Halloween 2022 when the band dressed up for a spooktastic Vegas show. Then their Halloween-themed album Danse Macabre arrived last October. The group reinvented the track in a more ethereal, creepy fashion on the album, breathing sinister new life into it, and this fresh version became the dramatic opening number for their sets. Interestingly enough, “Friends of Mine” from their debut album was performed live in 2022 and 2023 before a video montage of vintage horror movie clips.
While not as widely known to mainstream music listeners back in the day, “Night Boat” has garnered renewed interest in the YouTube era. It’s nice to see the band bring it out for their recent tour and give it more love. It’s about time.
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Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for iHeartMedia
