Star says Apollo was highlight
t h e y we r e preventing us leaving because there were a lot of young fans wanting to meet us. We just couldn’t get out the back of the venue, even with the help of the police. In Scotland, the noise would always be off the scale and it would be a great reception.” Andy, from Tynemouth, near
Newcastle, found fame when he joined the other Duran Duran members in Birmingham in 1980 – and it wasn’t long before the group hit the big time.
Their hits included Hungry Like The Wolf, Planet Earth, Rio, Save a Prayer and the 1985 Bond film theme A View To A Kill.
Andy said: “We’d gone with Grace Jones to the San Francisco premiere. I met Roger Moore at the premiere and had a martini with him. All I can remember was I spent a long time talking to one of the Grateful Dead.”
But his lifestyle from playing in Duran Duran and The Power Station soon began to catch up with him.
He realised the excesses were out of hand when they got a huge bill for a stay at New York’s Carlyle hotel. Andy said: “After about five years in the States, I can remember being in New
York in a carcarwithwith John Taylor. We’d just done a Power Station tour. It was after Live Aid and Bond and we were No1 and No2 in the charts.
“I was looking at the hotel bill. It was $ 500,000 and I was thinking, ‘Something’s going to have to give.’”
Six months later, Andy was criticised after he walked out on his Duran Duran bandmates – frontman Simon Le Bon, bassist John Taylor, keyboard player Nick Rhodes and drummer Roger Taylor.
Andy added: “At the end of that Power Station tour, I was thinking it was maybe over. Roger had walked out on us at Live Aid and he was the one who had his feet on the ground.
“He wasn’t well and that got to me. It really affected me, how bad he felt.”
He admits the stress of being in two of the most successful bands of the 80s took its toll on his mental health. He left Duran Duran again five years after they had reformed in 2001.
Andy, who has since recorded with Rod Stewart and rockers The Almighty, Thunder and duo The Ting Tings, blames depression brought on by the death of his dad from cancer.
He said: “Years ago, no one addressed mental health. And the pressure we were under compared to a boy band, especially with the lifestyle we’d had.
“When we got Duran Duran back together, within a few months my father was diagnosed with cancer. We were playing the Super Bowl and I got a call. He had prostate cancer and he hadn’t told me – it was late on.”
But Andy says he is now enjoying his music again. He added: “It’s not often you get the opportunity at 59 to be doing what I’m doing. People ask if I’m going to play Duran tunes – well, how do you run away from that?”