Hungry Like The Wolf A View To A Kill Duran Duran

Hungry like the Wolf Album: Rio (1982)
A View to a Kill Album: A View To A Kill Soundtrack (1985)
by Duran Duran

Hungry like the Wolf was the band's breakthrough hit in the US. It's success originated from MTV, which had only just come on air, showing their video of the band in the Sri Lanka jungle (they also shot the clips for "Lonely in Your Nightmare" and "Save a Prayer" on this trip). It was an early sensation particularly in the Deep South where the channel was being trialed. In a pre-MTV world where Duran Duran could be heard but not seen, it is unlikely that they would have broken through in America.

Duran Duran were asked in an interview with Q magazine (February 2008) for their memories of the video. Drummer Roger Taylor recalled: "We'd go to Alabama or Texas and the girls would be screaming and the guys in cowboy hats would be looking at us with clenched fists. I don't suppose they'd seen so many guys in make-up pouting before." Singer Simon Le Bon added: "It worked for us though. Video made it possible to create a cult of personality across the globe. You arrive on a tour bus and they'd already seen us on a yacht in a video."

In 1982, new synthesizers and sequencers were coming on the market that changed the landscape of Pop music, as groups like The Eurythmics and The Human League coaxed new sounds out of them. Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor was able to take advantage of the technology on Hungry like the Wolf, creating the distinctive track by linking a Roland 808 drum machine with a sequencer and a Roland Jupiter 8 keyboard. In an interview with Blender magazine, guitarist Taylor explained that the track "came from fiddling with the new technology that was starting to come in."

According to the band's Blender interview, lead singer Simon Le Bon's lyrics were inspired by the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, which features the Big Bad Wolf.

The first Grammy Award for Best Short Form Video was given at the 1984 ceremony, and it was given to Duran Duran as a joint award for "Hungry Like The Wolf" together with "Girls On Film."

The video was loosely based on the movie Apocalypse Now, with the rest of the band searching for Simon Le Bon in an exotic locale. It was shot in the Sri Lanka city of Galle, with scenes of Simon running through a market. The night before the shoot, Le Bon went to a stylist to get blond highlights in his hair, but she botched the job and his hair turned orange. That's why he's wearing a hat in the video.

Russell Mulcahy, who was Duran Duran's go-to director, did the video. If you were watching MTV in the early '80s, there's a good chance you would see his work - he even did the very first video the network aired: "Video Killed The Radio Star" by The Buggles.

The lyric started with the title, which Simon Le Bon had written down in his notebook, inspired by Jim Morrison's "Lizard King" persona.
The band's girlfriends contributed makeup that helped shape their look, and keyboard player Nick Rhodes' girlfriend Cheryl appeared on this song, providing the laugh at the beginning and the moaning at the end, possibly the sounds of the wolf sating his hunger. Cheryl also did the laughing you hear on "Rio."

Speaking with the A.V.Club in a 2012 interview, John Taylor said the song was "written very quickly." He recalled: "It was a Saturday afternoon, we were in EMI's demo studio, a studio they had up in Manchester Square HQ, and I think Nick [Rhodes] and Andy [Taylor] were kind of messing around. Andy had the riff, Nick developed this sequence, Simon had a thing, Roger [Taylor] came in and played 'cause he'd just bought some Simmons drums, so that was where he got those big fills from. I came in, and they'd been working for maybe two hours, and I just knew exactly what to play. The song was probably written by cocktail hour. [Laughs.]"

The outfit bassist John Taylor wore in the video was used as the basis for styling the character Sonny Crockett, played by Don Johnson on 1980s TV show Miami Vice.

Also in 1982, the punk band X released a song called "The Hungry Wolf." That one was produced by Ray Manzarek of The Doors, who also directed a video for the song.

"A View to a Kill" is the theme song to the 1985 James Bond movie of the same name starring Roger Moore and Grace Jones. It is the only theme from a Bond movie to hit #1 in America.

The story behind A View to a Kill, according to the bassist John Taylor, was that he approached the longtime Bond producer, Albert R. 'Cubby' Broccoli, while extremely intoxicated when they were both at a party. He stated that he was a long time fan (Major Bond geek would be more accurate. An Aston Martin was said to be one of his first "rock star" purchases, and he frequently mentioned his Bond video collection in interviews) of the series, but the music for the last few movies had been mediocre. He then offered to have his band fix the problem and Broccoli took the idea under advisement.

If you are a complete Duran Duran nut, you will notice during the video that there seems to be communication between three band members (Le Bon, Rhodes, and Roger Taylor), while the other two members (John and Andy Taylor) are doing things like shooting the deployed cameras and setting Rhodes's ear mike to explode. John and Andy were the members who left for Power Station. The other three made up the band Arcadia.

A View to a Kill was the last single Duran Duran released before they took time off to pursue side projects. John and Andy Taylor joined Robert Palmer to form The Power Station, while Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, and Roger Taylor formed Arcadia. A year later Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor continued recording as Duran Duran.

Duran Duran performed A View to a Kill from the Philadelphia stage at Live Aid in 1985. At the time, it was the #1 song in the US, and their performance was the first song broadcast by ABC as part of their coverage of the event. MTV broadcast most of the show in the US, while the BBC aired it in England.

Looking back at this song during a 2012 interview with the A.V.Club, John Taylor commented: "Bond songs have to be big songs, don't they? They have to have the grandiosity. It's like designing a Rolls-Royce. You want it to be completely state of the art, but it's always going to have the honking great radiator grill on the front. There's certain criteria that have to be fulfilled. But I think we nailed it with that song. We really did nail it."

Being asked to perform the theme song for a James Bond movie is a great honor, but the requirement to include its title in the lyrics can be challenging. Just ask John Taylor. "To this day we are forever grateful that we didn't get Quantum Of Solace," he said.