In the whole scope of 1980s music, Duran Duran was never supposed to be a big thing in the United States.
In 1982, the band from Birmingham, England released its second album, "Rio," but getting an audience in the United States was rather difficult. There were no bites. But as 1982 turned into 1983, Duran Duran was starting to get a ground swell of support from a place that would define their careers.
Music Television, aka MTV, not only brought the band to cable television with their music videos, but also helped to sell the band's persona as well. And the fans came out in droves, which propelled Duran Duran's first single to big-time status.
"Hungry Like The Wolf "was written on a spring Saturday morning in 1982. Keyboardist Nick Rhodes got the ball rolling by working with his sequencer in the basement of EMI's recording studios in London. All through the day as the various members arrived for working on the "Rio" album, each member put their piece of the puzzle into the composition.
The sound they were working with came from some of the new technology that was out there then. In the case of "Hungry Like The Wolf," the band combined the sounds from the Roland TR-808 drum machine with the Roland Jupiter-8 sequencer Rhodes was working with at the time. While Rhodes was fiddling with the sequencer, lead singer Simon Le Bon was coming up with the lyrics to the song. On guitar, Andy Taylor was putting together the guitar lick that hearkened back to the days of the late Marc Bolen and T. Rex and would give the song its distinct sound. And drummer Roger Taylor and bass guitarist John Taylor (no relation among the Taylors) completed the work.
The band went into the studio that night to put together the song they pieced one part at a time during the day and laid the track down, complete with the "doo-doo-doos" at the end of each verse line that Le Bon said was inspired, of all things, by the musical instruments' melody played on Gordon Lightfoot's 1971 breakthrough hit, "If You Could Read My Mind." And the flirtatious laugh at the start of the song and the moans at the end? Those were provided by Rhodes' then-girlfriend.
Colin Thurston, the band's producer for the "Rio" album, had the daunting task to edit and put parts together. He cut down on a lot of the excessive work and mixed everything into a simplistic final edit.
Soon as the final edit was done, the band jumped out onto a tour, but EMI had other plans. They sent the band to the country of Sri Lanka and spent $200,000 to make a music video for "Hungry Like The Wolf." Using the beauty of the country in the backdrop, they made the video into a mini-movie like that of the 1981 film Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark, starring Le Bon in the starring role and featuring the band in other "key" roles, while all of this was directed by Russell Mulcahy. While they were there, they also made a video for another song on the album, "Save A Prayer."
The song got released in the spring of '82 in England and climbed to No. 5. Soon after, Thurston asked the guys to return to London's AIR Studio to re-record "Hungry Like The Wolf," this version to be put onto the "Rio" album in America. If you ever listen to the two versions of the song, there's not much difference other than Rhodes' girlfriend sounds faint on the moans of the original.
Duran Duran had been hitting the British charts since early 1981 with songs like "Planet Earth" and "Girls On Film" and their videos were rather appealing, especially to the growing group of female fans.
Enter MTV. Started in August 1981, the network had played music videos by such "established" artists like Rod Stewart, The Who and Elvis Costello just to name a few acts, but really hadn't come across someone who could appeal to a "younger" crowd. Enter Duran Duran, the band who named itself after a character in the 1968 Jane Fonda movie Barbarella. Not only were their videos titillating to anyone who laid eyes on them, but could help bring a new wave of music fans into the 1980s. So MTV played all the videos the band had out at the time, another one of those videos being the title track to the album, "Rio," set in Brazil off the Atlantic Ocean.
The buzz was rather large and in November 1982, Capitol Records, which owned Duran Duran's rights in the United States, gave the go-ahead to release the band's big 1982 UK hit to the U.S. public, "Hungry Like The Wolf."
"Hungry Like The Wolf" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 77 on the week of Christmas. From there, it stormed up the charts quickly, moving to No. 65 after the holiday break. It climbed another 12 notches to No. 53 for the week of January 15, 1983. Then the next week, radio airplay, record sales and MTV's saturation of the band all over the network's landscape pushed "Hungry Like The Wolf" into the Top 40 from No. 53 to No. 34.
And it went on -- it moved up from No. 34 to No. 27, then to No. 22 and No. 19. And for the week of February 19, 1983, "Hungry Like The Wolf" bolted up 10 places to go to No. 9. Two weeks later, it had matched its peak position in the U.K. by getting to No. 5. Still, it didn't stop. After two weeks at No. 5, it moved up to No. 4, then to No. 3 the week of March 26, 1983. It would end up holding at that position for three straight weeks before falling back to No. 6 the week of April 16, 1983.
The ball was rolling. MTV's non-stop airplay and radio's requesters had made Duran Duran a name in this country. And 1983 was a huge year for Duran Duran -- they would hit the No. 14 with "Rio," get to No. 4 with "Is There Something I Should Know?" their first No. 1 hit in their native country, and by the end of 1983, they'd have one last big hit with "Union Of The Snake," the first single release from the band's next album, "Seven And The Ragged Tiger," which would peak at No. 3.
In the 1980s, Duran Duran would score 13 Top 40 hits, eight of which would land in the Top 10 and two of those songs -- "The Reflex" in 1984 and "A View To A Kill" in 1985 -- would go to No. 1. For a while, the band broke up to do two separate offspring projects as Andy and John Taylor would form Power Station with Robert Palmer and drummer Tony Thompson of Chic fame and Le Bon, Rhodes and Roger Taylor would be the trio known as Arcadia. Though the band has splintered and reformed, then splintered with Andy Taylor leaving for good in 2003, it keeps going on. They released the CD/album "Paper Gods" in September 2015.
As for the video that put them on the map forever, Duran Duran made history at the Grammy Awards in 1984 when that music video won the first-ever honor for Best Short-Form Music Video.
Fledgling MTV had a lot to do with the success of Duran Duran in 1982-83 and over the years. The band could never be more appreciative for that success. And the band doesn't mind if you identify them with "Hungry Like The Wolf" at all.
After all, it made them mega-superstars.
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