ROBERT PALMER : Music & Style

Recording The Power Station album took about only six months (“Nobody expected it. Nobody anticipated it, least of all us,” Taylor now says); the record was a combination of rip-roaring rock (Murderess, Communication, Get It On, and a cover of the Isley Brothers' Harvest For The World) and sleek seductive funk (Lonely Tonight, Go To Zero and Still In Your Heart). Its biggest hit was Some Like It Hot, a track that the Taylors first worked on in Paris during the early stages of the project.

“I’ve got a demo of it, and it actually reminds me of the Clash almost,” Taylor says. “It’s a song that I’m very proud of. I mean, the work that the baritone saxes do, and the horns — it’s such a funky, funky record. I listen to it, and I go, 'That’s me. I'm in there.’ The production is just incredible. I mean, every aspect of it, going back to Jason Corsaro and the sound on everything, and probably one of the most indulgent in the history of recorded music. Roger Taylor flew to New York to contribute timbales to the song. I mean, how indulgent can we get? In that particular instance, it was worth it. I don't get tired of that song. I'm very proud of it.”

In February, 1985 the group made their appearance on Saturday Night Live; a month later, The Power Station album was released and eventually reached number 6 on the Billboard chart. But as the Power Station were about to launch their tour later that year, Palmer surprisingly pulled out and was replaced by actor-singer Michel Des Barres, formerly of the band Detective.

“There was no way we were going to stop now,” Taylor remembers of Palmer’s exit. “It was our agent, Wayne Forte, who knew of Michael. I mean, Michael had an incredible reputation. There were a lot of people who believed in him from an early age. And God bless him. He was available and wasn't intimidated at all by the gig. He was able to step into it. He had a hit single that summer with Obsession, which he'd written with Holly Knight for Animotion. So it wasn't like digging somebody out of the ground and having them come on stage with us. He was hot to trot. And if you close your eyes, there really hadn't been much change in the sound.”

The Power Station with Des Barres performed on July 13, 1985, at Live Aid in Philadelphia (those performances appear on the new Deluxe set). Coincidentally, John and Andy Taylor were also pulling double duty with Duran Duran, who performed on that same Live Aid stage that day.

“We were out of control,” Taylor says. “There’s a time when you can almost be too famous. And the opportunities that you get, you just can’t turn them down. When we were in rehearsal for the tour, and Live Aid had just been announced, Robert Plant called me and said, 'So Jimmy (Page) and I are getting Led Zeppelin back together. We’ve already asked Tony. Would you be interested in joining us on stage?’ And I said, ‘Oh, man. Thank you, but I'm doing it already with two bands. There's just no way.’ I'm so glad I did because John Paul Jones actually did Live Aid with Robert and Jimmy. I saw that from the side of the stage, and I remember going, ‘Wow, so this is Led Zeppelin.’ And that was without (John) Bonham. That was a hell of a summer.”

The Power Station line-up toured that year, and the new Deluxe edition of the album contains a never-before-released live show from Philadelphia’s Spectrum on Aug. 21, 1985. “It’s the only tour that we (myself, Andy, Tony and Michael) did," Taylor says. "It’s such an odd collection of songs because there are eight songs on the album. One of them is a cover. So there are seven original songs, and we’ve got to fill out a two-hour set. We were going to do Some Guys Have All The Luck with Robert. ‘Well, let’s do it with Michael. And let's do Obsession and Dancing In The Streets.” Oh, my God. It's such a mess. But it's unique."

With Des Barres, the Power Station later recorded the track, Somewhere Somehow Someone (We Fight For Love) for the soundtrack of Commando starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I wasn’t in the best of shape by the time I got to the end of the tour,” Taylor says, “and I thought, ‘I’m not sure that I need to carry on with this.’ I didn’t really foresee going back into the studio again. But we’ve got this opportunity to do this song for this specific project. And we went in. I remember walking away from it thinking, ‘I’m good to move on.’ But listening to it and remastering it for this album, I thought, ‘This is pretty great.’ Again, I'm glad that that's part of the project, too. It gives you a sense of where we might have gone, I suppose.”

Around the same time that John Taylor and Andy Taylor were touring with the Power Station, the other Duran Duran members — Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor — formed their own side project, Arcadia, which released their only album, So Red The Rose, in late 1985. Like the Power Station with Some Like It Hot, Arcadia scored their own Top 10 hit in the form of Election Day.

“There was definitely a sense of competition," Taylor says of Arcadia. “I loved Election Day. That’s one of my favorite songs in our catalog. There was competition for sure. They (Arcadia) were continuing with the Duran vibe. Whereas Andy and I were like Thelma and Louise. We just headed for the hills with our six-guns. But now, I think they're a really fascinating pair of albums for fans, actually. In the context of Duran's legacy, you get to this junction in the road where there's not a Duran album, but there are these two albums that you have to kind of negotiate and consider in order to get to Notorious. It was dangerous."

In 1986, Duran Duran regrouped, amid the departures of Roger Taylor and Andy Taylor, for the aforementioned Nile Rodgers-produced Notorious album. About 10 years later, the original Power Station line-up - John Taylor, Andy Taylor, Thompson and Palmer - reunited. But as the Power Station were recording the Living In Fear album, John Taylor departed and Bernard Edwards filled in on bass. Sadly, the key figures involved in making the 1985 Power Station debut record —Palmer, Thompson, Edwards and Corsaro — have since passed.

“We were definitely playing with fire,” Taylor says about his time with the Power Station. “I don’t think I really appreciated what we had achieved with Duran and how extraordinary that was. But when you’re under pressure, you do all sorts of crazy things. We had the two singles, (Duran’s) The Wild Boys and A View To A Kill, which were both extraordinary three-minute miracles but enormously hard work. Sometimes it's like that. Sometimes you've really got to dig in. And sometimes you just get lucky. That’s what the Power Station was. It was like a hall pass. But it was a very intense project. And they were all very intense individuals. Man, I'm so glad I got to work with them.”

David Chiu (Forbes - Jan. 2026)

Voir aussi :

• Firing Up The Power Station (Variety - 2026)
• The Power Station's Cocaine-Fueled Chaos Left An '80s Masterpiece  (Spin - 2026)