Seven and the Ragged Tiger by Duran Duran

Seven and the Ragged Tiger is the third studio album by English pop rock band Duran Duran, released globally in November 1983. It would prove to be the last studio album for the band's original lineup until 2004's Astronaut. Simon Le Bon said the album "is an adventure story about a little commando team. 'The Seven' is for us — the five band members and the two managers — and 'the Ragged Tiger' is success. Seven people running after success. It's ambition. That's what it's about." EMI re-released the album in 2010 in two configurations - two disc digipak and three disc (two CD, one DVD) boxset. The three disc boxset includes on the DVD the first official release of the "As The Lights Go Down" video. Duran Duran intended to spend a year away from the United Kingdom as tax exiles, as their income had increased dramatically after the fantastic success of Rio and the reissue of their 1981 debut album Duran Duran the previous year. Thus during May 1983 the band began writing and making demo recordings at a châlet near Cannes on the Côte d'Azur in the south of France with producer Ian Little. The band was having some trouble writing material there but still came up with ideas for most of the songs that appeared on the album. Several were completed, including a track called "Seven and the Ragged Tiger", for which the album was named. This song was never officially released, but parts of it would eventually evolve into the album track "The Seventh Stranger". A demo version of the original track leaked onto the internet, albeit in very rough, warped shape. No quality recording of the song is said to exist. With the songs written during their South of France adventures, the band started recording at George Martin's Air Studios on the Caribbean island of Montserrat in May. The sessions, which saw producer Ian Little joined by the vastly more experienced Alex Sadkin, would keep Duran Duran in Montserrat for five weeks. During one of these sessions, keyboardist Nick Rhodes collapsed and had to be airlifted to a hospital; newspapers later reported it was due to an episode of paroxysmal tachycardia (abnormally fast heartbeat). Prior commitments brought the band back to the UK in the summer of 1983, including a July charity gig playing in front of Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales at the Aston Villa ground at Villa Park. It was later revealed that the Irish Republican Army had plotted to plant a bomb at the concert in order to injure Charles and Diana, but the IRA member sent to carry out the plot, Sean O'Callaghan, was in fact an informer working for the Irish Government and successfully helped to pull the plug on the operation. It was around this time that the Princess of Wales publicly named Duran Duran as her favourite band. During their time in the UK, the band worked on a few more songs in a studio in London, before returning to Montserrat for one final late summer session. After the island's isolation, the band moved the operation to downtown Sydney, Australia at the end of August. Producers Ian Little and Alex Sadkin continued working with the band on the album, now titled Seven and the Ragged Tiger, at 301 Studios. An argument during this period between John Taylor and Alex Sadkin over the prolonged mixing is said to have been the germination of the Power Station side project that happened in 1985, as Taylor contemplated leaving Duran Duran for the first time. The album's cover photo was shot on the steps of the State Library of New South Wales. With their Sing Blue Silver world concert tour to commence in November at the National Indoor Sports Centre in Canberra, Australia, the band departed for the sands outside Sydney to film the video for lead off single "Union of the Snake" with director Simon Milne. Twenty-four hours before the band were due to deliver the single for "Union" to EMI, Nick Rhodes and Simon Le Bon did an all-night session to complete the writing, recording and mixing the B-side "Secret Oktober". At the end of October, Duran Duran raised a few eyebrows by deciding to release the "Union of the Snake" video to MTV a full week before the single was released to radio, at a time when the industry feared video really might kill the radio star. The simultaneous worldwide release of the album followed a few weeks later on 21 November. The album swiftly went to number one in the UK and achieved platinum status there only a week after its release. It also reached #8 in the US and was certified platinum by January 1984, and eventually double platinum. The tour for the album, which played large indoor arenas and continued through the first four months of 1984, was recorded in the Russell Mulcahy-directed documentary Sing Blue Silver, the music video for "The Reflex", and the concert videos Arena (An Absurd Notion) and As The Lights Go Down. The live album Arena was also recorded during this tour. The next single "New Moon on Monday" was released in January, accompanied by another ambitious video. In February, they appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, and won two Grammy awards in the brand-new Long Form and Short Form music video categories. A Nile Rodgers remix of "The Reflex", released in March, became the band's second number one single in the UK (four weeks at number one) and first number one in the US (two weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100). The live concert video was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Best Stage Performance (but lost to Van Halen's "Jump"). While the albums Duran Duran and Rio were seen by many as masterpieces from start to finish, the sheen was starting to wear thin on Seven and the Ragged Tiger. In the documentary film Extraordinary World, filmed a decade later, Rhodes described the sound as "barely controlled hysteria, scratching beneath the surface". "Restores danger and menace to a band that was veering dangerously close to the insipid." (Melody Maker) "Pathetic, useless, no good. It's pretentious, pompous and possibly the first chapter in their decline." (Record Mirror) "It's apparent that Seven and the Ragged Tiger's content has the band moving ever so slightly into a dance club arena, with the songs leaning more toward their ability to produce a sexier sound through electronics and instrumentation than through a firm lyrical and musical partnership. Even the unreleased tracks trade Duran Duran's handsome edginess for a shinier sound, heard mainly on "I Take the Dice" and "Cracks in the Pavement." It's here that Le Bon and Taylor's personalities begins to get overshadowed by the demand to produce a more synth-snazzy and fashionable style of music." (Mike DeGagne, Allmusic Review: Seven and the Ragged Tiger) The variety in musical style was expanded upon in the members' side projects during the band's ensuing hiatus. Le Bon and Rhodes focused on the atmospheric, layered sound found in "Tiger Tiger" in their project, Arcadia, while John and Andy Taylor joined with Robert Palmer and members of Chic to create Power Station, built around the rock sound seen developing in "Of Crime and Passion ℗ 1983 Parlophone Records Ltd, a Warner Music Group Company