95 gigs.....61,515 miles......Australia, Japan, Europe, UK, USA & Canada

1982 Duran Duran in Australia

Well, this turned into quite an interesting year. I was asked to go and meet the Berrow brothers, who managed Duran Duran. I met Paul Berrow and a couple of the band at Air London studios. They were putting the final touches to the Rio album. I sat down in the canteen with them and they asked me who I had been tour managing. I started to tell them a little about my touring to date and the band members were huge Cockney Rebel fans. Well they asked there and then if I would be their tour manager and that was that!!!!

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82 Aussie Itinerary

Aussie Press schedule

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A lovely lady enters my life in the form of Eleanor O'Rourke, better known as Dot or Dottie. She is to become my lodger and a best pal. You can see from my dateline that life is quiet at the beginning of this year. A lot of dining out and having friends around for dinner too. My friend the promoter, Michael Coppel from Melbourne was in town and came round along with Paul Roberts from Sniff 'n' the Tears for dinner chez moi..

I am still at this point trying to sort out the Rainbow tour of South America for Paul Loasby. He has been asked by the band to move the dates we have set by one month. So it is a slow process because it has to be done by telex to all the promoters one by one. In the end the band cancel the project, they are getting nervous about their US tour later this year and decide it's probably best to put this project on the back burner. It is to be the second large project that I have set up that does not go ahead. It would have been the very first continental tour of South America for any western band and having got the co-operation from so many promoters, it was a real shame it didn't happen. So I am free to look for something else...

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So having been hired by Duran Duran to set up their touring for 1982, they indicated that they would like me to bring in fresh people and I started to look around for suitable candidates. One of them was Keith Morris, who was working for ML executives, The Who's production Company, based at Shepperton Studios. Keith was in the sound department and to date had been a hired hand going out on different tours with bands hiring ML Executive sound systems. I introduced Keith to the band as their new monitor man. I also had the Berrow brothers interview Alan Goldberg, and Alan became the bands new lighting designer.

The video below is one I include as a pictorial history lesson in the new romantic movement. The Rum Runner in Birmingham was to be my base, and the owners Paul and Michael Berrow were who I were to work closely with for the next 3 years. I really only went up there for admin purposes, mostly to go over my touring accounts. In the beginning, I used to use my credit card and was reimbursed, business credit cards were rare then, and I actually set up and ran the whole of the Rio US tour on my Amex card!!!

At the end of January I went to see Sammy Hagar at the Hammersmith Odeon. He was being managed by Ed Lefler, the same manager as Steve Harley had moved to in 77/78

Another great place I was going to quite regularly was the Cricketers Arms in Kensington, right next to the Oval Cricket ground. Every Wednesday night there was a jam session with a lot of the studio musicians of London hanging out together. SFX, a band with Alan Murphy at the helm, played there quite a bit, Tony Beard and Stuart Elliott were there as was Felix Krish. I stumbled across this site with some great photos and, like me, memories too. https://www.andydrudy.com/Interviews/retroAlanMurphy.htm

personnel aussie 82

Some of the names on this Australian itinerary page, made by ACE our Melbourne based promoter, are etched into my brain. Of course I must point out the not so deliberate mistake of calling John Taylor, Nigel, which is pretty funny. Anyway some of the UK band crew can be seen on the following pages of this tour. I wanted to point out that not only is Michael Coppel, my dear friend by this point in my career, the main promoter but we are supported by an Australian act with several hits under their belts in Aussie, a band called The Numbers. Now The Numbers were a Dirty Pool managed act looked after by my best pal there in Sydney, the now ex-bass player of Icehouse, Keith Welsh. So it was really happy families for me from day one of this tour.

A couple of other mentions I feel necessary right now. One is for Michael Oberg, the production manager from Jands, who was so impressive from my point of view. Nothing too difficult, everything run very smoothly and a great guy to boot. I wonder if Michael can remember anything about this tour. Must have been one of the first international acts he would have worked with. Right now he's still at it with The Killers !!!

ACE tour pass

We flew into the country and had a great location in Sydney, in William Street at the Boulevard Hotel. It was a 5 minute walk to Kings Cross and the Manzil Room one way, and 10 minutes walk through the park to the centre of the city. What more could you ask for, when you were going to be in Sydney for quite a few days.

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Follow the guys as they move from city to city, spending more hours with the Australian press corp than they actually play on stage. It's quite a schedule, and I'll share it with you in the gallery at the top of the page. I guess the main mention on this subject was to always get Russell to set up with no really early morning interviews. This band went to bed quite late most nights, so it took Nick quite a while in the mornings to get his face on!!! He was always the last down, always...... but with that smile, what can I say!! xx

record co photo australia 82

Hey.... and Harry Parsons, on the sound system, looking after the monitors if I'm not wrong. Harry was always with Cold Chisel when I used to see them live in 1980/1 and Harry had a stare that frightened the life out of me. He was an ex-SAS Australian soldier and anywhwere we used to go after a show, if Harry was there, i felt as safe as houses, I wonder where he is now?

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Russell Thomas from EMI was on the road with us the whole way. Russell ran the Press and PR department at EMI in Sydney, and was absolutely brilliant at his job, the ultimate 'smooth operator'. Russell always to be found out about and last to bed, or was that Andy..... anyway he really gelled with the band and controlled the record company folks very well. I can't really think of anyone I've met that ever did it better. Good on yer mate, love him to death xxx

andy and russell thomas

Road Stories

95 gigs.....61,515 miles......Australia, Japan, Europe, UK, USA & Canada

1982 Duran Duran in Australia

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