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"The Wild Boys" is the twelfth single by Duran Duran, released in October 1984.
The song was the only studio track on the live album Arena, and was produced by Nile Rodgers, who had previously remixed the single "The Reflex". It was recorded at the end of July 1984 at Maison Rouge studios in London.
"The Wild Boys" became one of the band's biggest hits, reaching #2 on the American Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart, and hitting #1 on the German charts and the Canadian CHUM Chart. It became the band's biggest charting single in Australia, reaching #3.
The idea for the song came from longtime Duran Duran video director Russell Mulcahy, who wanted to make a full-length feature film based on the surreal and sexual 1971 novel The Wild Boys: A Book Of The Dead by William S. Burroughs. He suggested that the band might create a modern soundtrack for the film in the same way that Queen would later provide a rock soundtrack for Mulcahy's 1986 movie Highlander. Singer Simon Le Bon began writing some lyrics based on Mulcahy's quick synopsis of the book, and the band created a harsh-sounding instrumental backdrop for them.
The single was issued with six separate collectible covers - one featuring each individual band member and one of the band collectively.
The video for "The Wild Boys" was directed by Russell Mulcahy. The cost totalled over one million dollars, a staggering sum for music videos at the time, as his design filled one entire end of the "007 Stage" at Pinewood Studios with a metal pyramid and a windmill over a deep enclosed pool, and called for a lifelike robotic face, dozens of elaborate costumes, prosthetics, and makeup effects, and then-cutting-edge computer graphics. The choreography of dance routines was undertaken by Arlene Phillips, including intricate stunts and fire effects added to the cost. Mulcahy meant the video to be a teaser for his full-length Burroughs film, demonstrating his vision to the movie studios he was wooing, but that project was never made.
The video featured all of the band members imprisoned and in peril, wearing uncharacteristically rough and ragged outfits similar to the pieced-together clothing of the film Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. John Taylor was strapped to the roof of a Mercedes-Benz car suffering a psycho-torture with pics of his childhood and early past, Nick Rhodes was caged with a pile of computer equipment, Roger Taylor was put in a hot-air balloon that was dangling from the ceiling, leaving him high off the ground, and Andy Taylor was bound (guitar and all) to a ship's figurehead. Singer Simon Le Bon, strapped to the spinning windmill which dunked his head beneath the water with each revolution, supposedly found himself in real difficulty when the windmill stopped with his head underwater. He was given a tube to breathe through and the issue was promptly fixed, but the British tabloids had a field day exaggerating Le Bon's "near death experience". Le Bon himself has dismissed this story in more than one interview as an "urban myth", claiming nothing of the sort happened.
"The Wild Boys" was named Best British Video at the 1985 BRIT Awards.
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