Power Station: It's Not Punk Or Funk
When John Taylor of Duran Duran decided to start an "extra-curricular" band more than three years ago, he and fellow D-2 member Andy Taylor envisioned a sound somewhere between Sex Pistols punk and Chic funk. But that's "not quite" how it came out, according to Power Station drummer Tony Thompson.
And Thompson should know - he served as the drummer for Chic, the 1970's premier disco-funk band, until that group fell apart. "I do feel it's similar with the Chic sound, because of course I'm playing drums," Thompson said. "It has a rock 'n' roll top to it, because of (the Taylor's) background. But I think Sex Pistols is a bit extreme."
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Thompson was pulled into the project after meeting John Taylor, Duran Duran's bass player, while he was playing drums for David Bowie's Serious Moonlight tour. "John, the whole band, came to the show. And I had met them previously. They were opening for Blondie, I think, at the Meadowland (in New Jersey)," he said. "John took me out to a disco that evening and I think he drove his Rabbit from London all the way to the south of France. We got into the car and he had nothing but Chic cassettes," Thompson laughed, "probably the last thing I wanted to hear at that time."
Taylor told Thompson the same thing the veteran drummer had read in Duran Duran interviews - that the band enjoyed Chic's music and that Taylor's favorite bass player was Chic's Bernard Edwards. "So he said, 'Why don't we get together and do just one tune,' which was a remake of the T-Rex tune, Bang A Gong," Thompson said. "That was originally the only idea, to do just one song."
But enthusiasm caught up with Taylor and Thompson and their plans became more elaborate. The two met again in Australia as Thompson was finishing up the Bowie tour, with Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor now slated as a part of the project. "But at the time, we didn't have any idea about a singer or anything, or a producer," Thomspon said. "So I just got Bernard Edwards involved (as producer). "And then I mentioned something about a singer to John and he said, "Well, I've been talking to Robert Palmer."
The original idea called for the group to do songs with a variety of singers fronting the Taylor, Taylor and Thompson group, and this turn of events was less than exciting to Thompson at first, he confessed. "The idea didn't knock me over, using Robert at all," Thompson said. "I mean, I was familiar with his stuff, but I didn't feel like he'd fit in."
But John Taylor persisted, and the trio cut basic tracks of a few songs and sent a tape of them to Palmer's home in the Bahamas. At the same time, Taylor was trying to win Thompson over to Palmer's involvement, he had to woo Palmer away from the tropics, the drummer said. "It's really hard to get Robert out of Nassau, sitting in the sun," Thompson said. But the singer "fell in love" with the music, flew directly to New York and met the group at the city's Power Station studio - hence the band's name. "And he didn't even take off his coat, came right in, sang his tail off and blew everybody away," Thompson included. "He was perfect for it."
The drummer was equally impressed with the Duran Duran duo and credits them with more musicianship than their usual 12-to-14-year-old fans notice. "They're excellent, they're really fine. I mean, I wouldn't play with anybody who couldn't play, that's the bottom line," Thompson said. "And they can play, or I wouldn't have done this album or it wouldn't have sounded like that. It's a good album because there's good musicians on it."
Thompson concedes the adoration Power Station gets from its teeny bopper fans "kinda nice." The attention is also "kinda nice" for substitute lead singer Michael Des Barres, who filled in when Palmer dropped out to finish his own album. "He's taken over," Thompson said of Des Barres, whose most recent claim to fame is authorship of the recent Animotion hit Obsession.
But the change doesn't bother Thompson. "He's got a lot more energy than Robert would have had," Thompson said. "Because Robert, he has his own style. And the thing he moves most is his shoulders and that's about it, while Michael is doing cartwheels."
While the Taylors and Des Barres deal with entertaining the hordes of frantic girls, Thompson is tucked away behind an impressive Yamaha drumkit. But the lack of pre-teen attention doesn't disturb him. "I'm not into screaming girls, believe me," he said. "They may not know my face, they may not know my name, but they know my playing. That's more important than my face. It's what I'm doing."
UPI (Mohave Daily Miner - Aug. 1985)