How Mick Jagger Kept Duran Duran From Breaking Up

Mick Jagger and Duran Duran might seem like an unlikely combination.

But the Rolling Stones legend helped keep the new wave pioneers from breaking up, as the band's Nick Rhodes revealed in an interview. "We were just sort of split in half in 1985 [working separately on] Arcadia and [the] Power Station," the keyboardist told The Independent. "We'd done these two separate projects, and he looked at me and he said, 'You know, you really do need to stick together. That is your future.'"

"I guess he was really right because it could have all fallen apart at that time," he continued. "It was easy for him to see because they'd already [gone] way past that part of their career, and they're still around now."

He says that he and the legendary frontman had a good bond. "Everybody who knows Mick, knows that he's got a big personality," Rhodes said. "We laughed a lot together."

Duran Duran Found Their Own Mick Jagger

Raised on icons like Jagger, it would take some time for Duran Duran to land the right frontman for their own band. But when the moment happened and they met Simon Le Bon, it was immediately apparent. "I think to be a lead vocalist, you need to have something really special. That's how we knew with Simon," he explained.

"We'd been through several vocalists, some of whom were pretty decent," Rhodes shared. "But when he walked in and he just sung a note, I thought, 'That's it, he's the one.' Because he was so distinctive. If you look at the male rock voices, the ones that have really stayed with us -- David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Freddie Mercury, they're all so unique and distinctive -- and Simon had that."

Duran Duran at 50

As the band approaches their 50th anniversary (they first formed an early incarnation in 1978), Rhodes can still see striking similarities to how they first began as young musicians in Birmingham, England. "Surprisingly, I think the DNA that we had right at the beginning is still intact and remains pretty unchanged," he said. "Of course, our lives changed a lot. People have. We have a lot more kids around us now and some grandkids."

"You look for different things in life, but our focus has always been the band when we're together," he detailed. "So whenever we're in the studio and we all plug in, something magical happens. Not always immediately, but after a while, something happens. The chemistry works and when we play live shows, that's where everybody's very comfortable on stage and so that really hasn't changed much at all."

What's Duran Duran Doing in 2026?

They continue to release new music. The Halloween-themed Danse Macabre album arrived in October 2023. More recently, they put out "Free to Love," their newest collaboration with longtime associate and friend Nile Rodgers. The single has been accompanied by a number of additional remixes of the track featuring Trixie Mattel, Horse Meat Disco, Harrison and others.

The band be back on the road for their latest leg of concerts beginning in Oct. 2 in Norway and they're presently set to wrap this year's road work a month later on Nov. 3 in Portugal.