Liberty

	Liberty
album by Duran Duran
Released	20 August 1990
Recorded	1989—1990
Studio	Olympic Studios, London, UK
Genre	New wave, Pop rock
Length	50:26 minutes
Label	Capitol, EMI
Writer(s)	Duran Duran
Producer(s)	Duran Duran; Chris Kimsey
Duran Duran

Liberty is the sixth studio album by Duran Duran, released by Capitol-EMI on 20 August 1990.

About the album[]

Although the album garnered a surprise #6 hit for the single "Serious" in Japan, the album was not very successful, and was the first album for which Duran Duran did not perform a supporting concert tour.

Liberty is the first Duran Duran album to feature songwriting credits outside the original five band members. Guitarist Warren Cuccurullo and drummer Sterling Campbell were made permanent band members and given songwriting credits, although Campbell would leave in early 1991, before the band began work on their subsequent hit The Wedding Album.

Writing and rehearsing for the album took place intermittently between May and July 1989; demo sessions took place in August and September, and final recording began on 9 October at Olympic Studios, with producer Chris Kimsey and engineer Chris Potter. Recording, production and overdubbing of the many keyboard and vocal layers dragged on until March 1990, and the result was an album that many fans and critics considered bland and overproduced.

Album Development[]

In a 1998 interview with Goldmine magazine, bassist John Taylor admitted that he was struggling with his drug addictions during recording of the album. He said, "When we were in rehearsal, it seemed like we had a great album, but we weren't able to parlay it into a great album in the studio, whatever. I can just remember smoking hash oil, that's all I can really remember about making that album." ^[1]

Vocalist Simon Le Bon commented "We went into a barn in Sussex and started jamming away, and before we got finished, it was like, 'Right we've got the album, let's go and record it now.' And I don't think we got it right; I don't think we were paying enough attention. We were quite self-conscious at the time as well, the way things had been going, and it kind of made us stand outside of ourselves to do the album.

Chris Kimsey said "The sessions were really very interesting – there was a tension because the band members weren’t used to playing together. They’d been on the road playing old songs, but there weren’t playing new songs. And it was very tense, like ‘oh, we’re in a recording studio’, which I hate. I don’t like that atmosphere at all. There’s a funny story which started with Warren who was, very muscular, very fit, and he had his top off, right? So, I said, come on guys, get your tops off. So, they all took their tops off. Next thing, Warren’s Butt Naked in the studio. That broke the ice very well. But that was good, because all of a sudden it was like, hey, we’re just here making music. So that really helped the group." ^[2]

Kimsey thought the songs needed a bit more work. "I did. Definitely with the lyrics, in a constructive way. I like to record everything live, pull everyone together, and then we replace whatever we need to replace afterwards. But I also like to record the vocalist, so the band are playing to the singer. That was a bit difficult because some of the lyrics and other things weren’t quite finished. And these songs hadn’t really been rehearsed enough or played enough for Nick to have his sound for each song. It got to the point where we were spending a week, two weeks, finding that sound and I was going, ‘this is costing a fortune and I’m getting bored’. I told him, that my friend Blue Weaver had a studio in Chiswick – keyboards everywhere – and I suggested he go over there, and do all his keyboards there, and then come back. And that’s what happened. Nick’s a creator. He’s a painter of sounds. But really, a lot of that should have been done before we started the album, so he had a list of the sounds he wanted to use. But he ended up doing that in the studio."

Simon said: "But out of that came two of the best songs Duran's ever come up with, "Serious" and "My Antarctica", they're really, really beautiful songs. I don't think it's a bad album, but there's definitely weak spots on it, definitely. I mean, something like "Violence of Summer (Love's Taking Over)", it just didn't have a proper chorus, great verse though. Just not paying enough attention, we just lost our concentration."^[1]

Bootlegs[]

A bootleg recording of the demo sessions for the album, titled Didn't Anybody Tell You? surfaced in 1999. It contained many unreleased songs, including "Bottleneck", "In Between Woman", "My Family" (played live 1989 at the Skanderbourg Festival), "Money On Your Side", "Worth Waiting For" and "Dream Nation".

When asked about the bootleg, John Taylor said, "I like coming across things that I've forgotten about. That I've forgotten that we recorded. That's what's really exciting about the Didn't Anybody Tell You? bootleg, because there's so many songs on there that never got finished. They just take me back to that moment. Actually, what I like about that album is that the Liberty album - when we were rehearsing it, when we were writing it was gonna be a great album. I really felt it was gonna be a great album. When we got in the studio I fell apart and the production just wasn't right. It turned out to be a very mediocre album, but at the demo stage, which is what that (bootleg) album is all about, I think there's a great album in there. Could have been great songs."^[3]