Simon Le Bon was feeling a bit lost.
It seems that there had been several revisions made to the setlist earlier in the day and the Duran Duran vocalist didn’t get the finalized document.
“We got to version No. 7 or 8,” he remarked to the crowd. “And I got version No. 6.
“Now, I really don’t know what song we are doing next.”
That turned out to be the only hiccup in what was an otherwise pretty much flawless opening night of Duran Duran’s 2023 North American tour on Saturday (May 27) at BottleRock Napa Valley.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame group — which also was scheduled to perform on Sunday at the SAP Center in San Jose — delivered a thrilling 100-minute set that nicely balanced the big hits with deep cuts and new songs.
Duran Duran certainly wasn’t holding anything back at the start of the show, opening this headlining set on the festival’s big Verizon Stage with two of the new wave band’s most beloved songs — “The Wild Boys” and “Hungry Like the Wolf.”
From there, Le Bon and his longtime bandmates — keyboardist Nick Rhodes, bassist John Taylor and drummer Roger Taylor — amped things up even higher as they launched into a stellar version of the No. 1 hit “A View to a Kill” (from the James Bond film of the same name from 1985). The title track to the band’s fourth studio album, 1986’s “Notorious,” quickly followed, sending the crowd even deeper into ’80s nostalgia overdrive.
Le Bon sounded strong on all four of these up-tempo hits, nicely replicating what you hear on the original recordings that were made, in some cases, more than 40 years earlier. He also did a fine job on the slower material, such as when he brought backing vocalist Anna Ross out front to duet with him on a lovely rendition of the 1993 hit “Come Undone.”
The crowd got a bit of a breather when Duran Duran played a new song — “Anniversary” from 2021’s “Future Past” — which sounded quite good, but obviously wasn’t greeted with the same type of fan enthusiasm shown to the likes of “The Reflex” and “Planet Earth” later in the show.
The group played two cover songs, both of which really connected with the crowd. The first was a version of “Super Freak” that was funky enough to please a Rick James fan. The second came later in the evening as the band rocked through its popular version of “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It),” the Melle Mel old-school hip-hop classic that Duran Duran featured on the 1995 covers album “Thank You.”
“Ordinary World” — a dependable highlight at just about any Duran Duran show — was even better than usual this time around and might just have been the song of the night.
“It’s a song about trying to find some peace when everything around you is crazy,” said Le Bon, dedicating the song to the people of the Ukraine.
“Ordinary World” was achingly intense and emotional, in sharp contrast to pretty much everything else played on the night, soaring high on Le Bon’s poignant vocals and the gorgeous guitar work of touring bandmate Dominic Brown.
Duran Duran played one more song off its most recent album, which resulted in the pairing that some fans had been hoping for.
“We are about to have a very special guest join us,” Le Bon said.
He’d then bring out Tove Lo — who had just performed her own set on the Verizon Stage prior to Duran Duran — and they’d nicely reprise their duet on “Give It All Up.”
The group closed the 16-song main set with “Girls on Film,” which left the thousands of passionate fans clamoring for more.
“There isn’t any alcohol involved in this, is there?” Le Bon remarked of the crowd’s enthusiasm as the band returned to play even more music
Duran Duran used basically every second it could to show the fans a good time during the two-song encore, opening with a lovely version of “Save a Prayer” and then racing “Rio” right up to within a minute of the festival’s hard 10 p.m. curfew.
In addition to the BottleRock and SAP Center gigs, Duran Duran will return to Northern California later this year to perform at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento on Aug. 24. See duranduran.com for more information.com.
Prior to performing their set at BottleRock, the band’s John Taylor and Roger Taylor appeared at the festival’s Williams Sonoma Culinary Stage, cooking up big fun (as well as some food) with celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern and host Liam Mayclem.
Setlist:
1, “The Wild Boys”
2, “Hungry Like the Wolf”
3, “A View to a Kill”
4, “Notorious”
5, “Come Undone”
6, “Anniversary”
7, “Lonely in Your Nightmare”
8, “Super Freak”
9, “Friends of Mine”
10, “Careless Memories”
11, “Ordinary World”
12, “Give It All Up”
13, “Planet Earth”
14, “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)”
15, “The Reflex
16, “Girls on Film”
Encore:
17, “Save a Prayer”
18, “Rio”
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