Duran Duran wasn’t just a product of the New Romantic trend – they were a full-blown cultural takeover of the earl 80’s sound. Their mix of disco grooves, punk energy, and cutting-edge synth-pop shattered expectations and rewrote the rules of pop music. Driving the pulse of their sound was bassist John Taylor, whose groovy grooves became the backbone of many of the band’s greatest hits. In a new podcast with Dingwall Guitars, John shares the story of his signature bass and the legendary track that started it all: Rio.
A Bassline as Iconic as the Song
The funky staccato bassline in Rio is iconic, and Taylor’s intricate fingerstyle grooves are the heartbeat of the song. From the opening measures, where the bass dances under Nick’s synths and Andy’s guitar stabs, to the chromatic runs that dominate the bridge, Rio is a bass masterclass. It made everyone want to pick up a bass and lay down a groove.
“We were five kids trying to make an impression on the world, and it shows in every note,” John told Adam “Nolly” Getgood in their conversation for the podcast. “[Rio] has been such a signature for me. The idea of celebrating it with a signature bass seemed like a fun idea.”
Taylor’s new premium Rio Dream Bass bass, designed in collaboration with Dingwall Guitars, features an onboard preamp developed with Rupert Neve Designs.
Rio Still Rules
John credits Rio’s enduring appeal to a perfect storm of talent and creative swagger. “There’s not a bad note on Rio,” he muses. “Everything clicked—not just for us, but for everyone involved, from the producer to the graphic designer. That album was iconic from the jump.”
It was for us too, John.
Comfortably Strung, The Dingwall Guitars Podcast, Episode 2, John Taylor Transcript
Welcome back to another episode of the Comfortably Strung Podcast powered by Dingwall Guitars. I’m your host, Mark Michele, and today we feature a special conversation between founder Sheldon Dingwall and John Taylor of Duran Duran. Slippery, 16th-y, and beyond catchy, Taylor’s bass playing demands both low-end weight and crispy mids, a requirement he fulfilled using a custom Dingwall bass on the band’s recent tours.
Modeled after the Dingwall NG3 that he used on Duran Duran’s 2021 release Future Past, he began closely working with Dingwall to develop a limited edition signature model, the Rio Dream Bass, which launched in 2023. Aesthetics aside, specs on the bass included an onboard preamp, designed and configured in collaboration with Rupert Neve Designs, whose studio consoles have long represented the pinnacle of high-end audio engineering. Following this limited edition bass, Dingwall has since launched a production model with some design modifications to really hone in on John’s tone.
Sheldon and John also discussed all the ins and outs of this collaboration, how the anniversary of the iconic Rio album inspired John’s signature model, why he’s always steered clear of vintage basses, his tenured history working with Neve, and much more.
Here’s the interview.
Sheldon: John, you told this story before, but it’s kind of interesting. How did you first, how did we pop on to your radar?
John: I was in Toronto and I was having dinner with Bernie, my tech and another friend of ours who’s in the bass manufacturing community, who I’d known for a while and I was using some of his instruments. I don’t know what came up, but I said something to him, well, could you do something like this? He said, you should look at Dingwall.
I remember being in this restaurant and opening up my phone and looking at your website and just seeing the basses and thinking, holy smoke, that’s the instrument I want right now. I said to Bernie, when we got out, we’ve got to check those guys down. We’ve got to get one of those basses.
In the 80s, I came out with Aria, and Aria was very definitely associated with me for a long time, and they were an exciting company in the early 80s. It really felt they felt cutting edge, and I loved the instruments that I played with them. And then I was like, I suppose the” “, it was a little bit like I was in the…
Well, the 90s was like a kind of, I don’t even remember the 90s, but I was looking for a style. And I always say with Duran Duran, the sound of the bass, it needs to be very tight, it needs to be very powerful, but it needs to be, it just needs, it’s got to fit in amongst a lot of other sound. And so really, it’s never been an option for me to go down the vintage route.
I’ve never felt that that kind of a sound, you know, the P bass through the, you know, through the valves. It’s just, I just don’t have the room in the Duran sound. I just found like with your basses, it was just like the power, but the concentration of power was exactly what I was looking for.
And it’s been, you know, it was love at first sight, wasn’t it, Sheldon?
Sheldon: You know, it’s funny because I think your tone, imprinted on me. And so every time I would listen to one of our basses, I would be trying to achieve the perfect tone, whether we were tweaking the woods or tweaking the pickups or preamps. And so I think all along you’ve been influencing the development of our basses.
John: Well, you know, I think all bass players today, we’re all, you know, we’re all in competition with electronics today. And, and it’s a very, again, you know, synthesized basses are highly concentrated, highly compressed, you know, it’s a very, very tight sound. And to some extent, you know, the modern listener, you know, is attuned to that kind of sound now.
So, you know, when we bring in an analog bass, you know, you know, an electric instrument that’s played by the fingers, we’ve got to bring as much of that consistency, I think, to the sound as possible.
Sheldon: You know, I’ve heard Nolly say the same thing. And it always surprises me, I mean, I grew up as a musician, but it always surprises me when I talk to musicians at your level, just how refined and your technique is. And it has to be, because your voice is the tips of your fingers.
You have to communicate all the musical ideas and emotions that you are trying to communicate just with the tips of your fingers. And to me, that’s just magic.
John: Yeah, it’s a lot. I mean, for all musicians, it’s a lot. It’s a lot for your fingers.
It’s a lot of responsibility. You think forearms and your elbow and your shoulder, and you’re right. And we have to express it all in four strings and single notes.
And if you’re a bass player like me, you know, when we write songs together, you know, I want the bass to be a really important part of the song. You know, I’ve always, you know, I’ve always felt like that. I mean, Duran Duran, we’re all like that.
All of the band members, you know, think it’s all about them, you know. And when we write a song, you know, Nick’s thinking how impressive he wants the keyboards to sound. And, you know, and I’m thinking about the bass and Roger’s thinking about the drums.
And Simon, of course, he knows it’s all about him. But, you know, that’s what I feel like that’s what makes that’s what makes bands interesting. You know, you know, having said that, at least I, you know, I’m lucky in that I get to I get to invent what I play.”
You know, I’m not having to show up to a to a studio session and and be prepared to do all sorts of different things. You know, that’s a different, that’s a different kind of bassist, different kind of musician. And I, you know, have a huge respect for for men and women that can do that.
You know, there’s a certain degree of versatility within the sound of Duran Duran, but it’s not like showing up to a session, you know, wondering whether it’s going to be jazz oriented or folk oriented or rock oriented, you know. But I do think that, you know, if you’re if you’re in that line of work, you know, these instruments are perfect for you.
Sheldon: Yeah, I had always thought it’d be really cool to work with you on a signature model, but I never brought it up to you. It was you that came up with the idea to to collaborate. And so how did that happen?
John: We were coming to the it was an it was the anniversary last year of the Rio album. I think it was, gosh, 40 years, maybe. Yeah, from 82.
And, you know, I mean, that song, that bass line, it’s just been such a signature for me for so long that the idea of sort of celebrating that anniversary with a signature bass seemed like a fun idea. I didn’t know whether you were going to be up for it, quite honestly. You know, I had done a signature bass about 15, 16 years ago, but I knew this was going to be a different deal because that was very much a, that was a very sort of all-purpose kind of, how can I say?
I don’t want to say inexpensive, but relatively it was an entry-level instrument, you know, and I knew that this was going to be different, that this was going to be a premium piece of kit. What I didn’t know was how, to the degree to which you were going to embrace the idea and really take it and run with it. And, you know, I think you know me well enough by now that, you know, I’m not Mr. Technical, you know.
You know, you really had to introduce me to certain aspects of the production of the thing, you know, and we got into talking about the woods. And tell us about the materials and then the electronics, which are really radical.
Sheldon: Well, it was kind of like a perfect storm of on the electronics of, I’d always wanted to work with Neve. And unbeknownst to me, Rio was recorded on a Neve console. And so you already have a long history with Neve.
And this was the opportunity to approach them and say, listen, we’ve got this really cool project. I know you’re going to love it. Would you be interested in working with us?
And they were incredible to work with. And everybody on the engineering team were bass players. And so this was almost, I got the impression it was almost like they would have done it for free in their spare time because it was just so much fun.
And they nerded out more than I’ve ever heard of anybody nerding out on a preamp on all the little components. And they killed it. They just absolutely nailed the tone, the battery life, the noise floor.
Everything was just unbelievable. And I hope you agree.
John: It must have been so much fun for you nerding out with those guys on that level. Because it’s a rarefied atmosphere, isn’t it? Living in that atmosphere of electronics.
Noise floor. I’d never heard that before. I love whatever that means. I like that phrase.
Sheldon: Be a good name for a band.
John: We’re all kind of the same, I think, in that we’re doing what we love. And in that respect, we’re kind of like kids. We get to play with stuff and create new things.
And so that’s definitely the feel I got from the engineering team at Neve. It’s just that they love what they do. They’re passionate about it.
And they’re incredibly good at it.
I mean, that’s really been the secret source, hasn’t it, with this project? Because I really got into the aesthetic. And we’ll talk a little bit about that, about what the bass looks like and the design and the colors.
But really, knowing that the engine was going to honor this particular moment in time. I mean, you talked about it being a tool. You know, all instruments are tools.
I meet so many people of all ages that want to play bass. You know, it’s not, you know, sometimes, sometimes I think it’s, you know, we are, you know, we’re an endangered species. You know, I always say, we’re going the way of the cellist.
But, you know, but actually, you know, the cello is alive and well. You’ve just got to look hot. You’ve just got to look for it, you know, and, you know, and in the, you know, and we’re drowning in a sea of samples and electronics right now, you know, and that kind of, the kind of emotion and sort of muscular pushback that you bring to music when you’re a musician.
For me, it’s so crucial. It’s so important to keeping music vibrant and alive, whether we’re talking about rock music or R&B, any kind of contemporary music, really. And whenever I hear a new song, like I was listening to Miley Cyrus’ song about, I can hear my wife singing it all the time, you know, I can send myself flowers, you know, and I listen to it and I hear this bass line, I hear this octave bass line, and I’m always so happy when I hear that, you know, knowing that the producer made a choice, probably to use a sample that sounded really close to her, but it sounds to me like somebody’s “actually played the damn thing, you know, and that that’s a choice, that that was important to the producer.
And so, you know, I think that, you know, giving, putting something out there like this, like this tool that you’ve built for me, and, you know, I’m hoping for lots of other people, it’s really going to be something that you can run with. I mean, this guitar is going to last you, it’s going to take you into the next decade, at least, I can tell you that. Even though it’s got this retro consideration, I don’t know, I think that we’ve come to appreciate the classic, you know, I mean, when I started off, nobody wanted to play Gibson, nobody wanted to play Fender, it was all about the new instruments that were coming out of Japan, Ibanez, Tama Drums, you know, and Roland.
Nobody wanted to get, you know, we wanted to define ourselves by this new style, but like, wow, you know, how that has changed now, you know, and everybody wants everything. And so I think that we’ve done something kind of clever, you’ve done something kind of clever, which is a super modern instrument that sort of speaks of, you know, a moment, sonic moment, which was the, you know, the start of the eighties, but sort of pushes it into today. I think it’s great.
Sheldon: Oh, man, I love that. And I’ve always wanted to ask you, one of the things that we hear a lot from people who play our basses live is how it changes, how the rest of the band can hear them. Have you experienced that?
Have you heard from the other members of the band that, you know, I’m able to hear you better, I can lock in with you better?”
John: Definitely, definitely. I think in part, it’s been so much fun to really get into the basses that I’ve just, I’ve been playing more than I have been in years. And so I’m bringing a new level of myself to the stage today, because I’ve just been really turned on by the instruments, you know, and I don’t know, I found like, it’s just been like having, it’s just been like riding the fastest horse.
And like I say, there’s a lot of sound on our stage, you know, and you’ve got to find this, you’ve got to find this place. And to, you know, and if we’re going to walk off stage and some, but any other band member is going to say, wow, the bass was really, that was smoking tonight, you know, then I know I’ve got to play really hard and hot, but at the same time, you know, but without drowning anybody else out. And that’s been happening.”
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, to some degree, the template for the Duran Duran sound was set on that first album songs like Girls on Film, Planet Earth, then into the second album, Rio. Since then, we’ve done all sorts of different things, but then we come back around Future Pass, this most recent album, which was the first recording that I did with Dingwall basses. I mean, that was a big thing, man.
I mean, it’s weird. I think guitar players, this is my experience, guitar players usually have a battery of instruments that they take with them everywhere. And whether they’re in the studio or on stage, for a particular song, they’ll reach for a particular instrument.
And they love that. They love expressing themselves through different instruments. For me, the bass experience is completely the opposite.
It’s like I don’t ever want to change my bass in a show. I want to walk out on the stage and I want to walk off stage holding the same instrument. So I’ve got to have quite a degree of versatility in that one instrument.
So I’m getting that here. I’m getting a lot of heat, but I can also pull it back. There’s a lot of softness, hardness.
There’s a lot of things that I can do with the tone.
Sheldon: How do you find it in terms of expression? You mentioned that you can get a lot of different tones. How expressive have you found it either through dynamics or through just moving your hands around?
John: Yeah. Honestly, it’s way ahead of me.
I mean, I’m only beginning to appreciate the possibilities that the instruments have. I’m sure there are players out there that work a lot harder on their playing than I do. They’re probably appreciating the versatility of your guitars more than me.
I feel like it takes me wherever I want to go. It’s like driving a Ferrari in a 60-mile-an-hour limit. It’s like, I know it can take me further.
That’s just down to me. I’m not limited by the bass at all. I’m only limited by my own chops or by how much practicing I’ve been doing.
That’s up to me. The basses have got as much as any human is going to want, I think.
Sheldon: Oh, man. That’s great. We touched on a little bit about nerding out with the electronics, but we also nerded out with the woods a little bit.”
And man, I’m really happy with the combinations we came up with. And one of them is the ebony fingerboard, the casserole ebony. And then the other is the body wood, which we eventually chose gnatto, which is similar to mahogany, but lighter in weight.
John: And I think lightweight in a bass is never a bad thing. Yeah.
I mean, I asked for that, didn’t I? Because I, you know, I just, you know, I came off a run last September, I think it was. And I just, you know, I mean, I’m 62 and I’m basically doing what I was doing when I was in my 20s, you know, and I’m throwing this thing around, you know, and I came off the end of the tour and I’m like, damn, this thing’s heavy.
So, you know, I came back to you and said, is there any way we can take anything out of the way? I’d never ever thought of that before. It never been a consideration, but I thought, well, hey, if we’re doing this, is that even a possibility?
And Bernie, my tech, I said, well, you know, you’re going to lose, you know, you’re going to, you could be sacrificing something in tone, but, you know, you found a solution.
Yeah, there’s always a trade-off, but in this case, it seemed to add, you know, we took away weight, but we added tone and punch. So I’m really happy with the way it turned out.
Sheldon: Yeah. What about that? Talk about the fingerboard.
John: So the fingerboard is Macassar Ebony, and this has been one of my favorite woods my entire career. We don’t use it as often on bases, us personally, but on yours, it just, it was the right wood, it gives the right top end, and it works with the mahogany in a really just synchronous way. So plus it’s beautiful.
Sheldon: It’s just got that nice dark chocolate, milk chocolate look to it.
John: Yeah, yeah, one can almost, well, the chocolate analogy, you can almost melt into it a little bit. I think that that’s one of the things we want to be able to feel. You want to feel as unified as you can with the instrument.
You want to feel that there’s give and take, that there’s ebb and flow with the materials. I think that’s really important. And of course, the design of the thing.
I mean, we’ve kind of had fun with that, haven’t we? And I’ve got to give a shout out to Patti Palazzo because she’s my design guru. She’s worked on so many Duran Duran projects over the years.
And the first thing we decided to do was take the colors of the Rio album project that had been… I mean, it was quite a… Nick calls the Rio album cover the Mona Lisa of the 80s.
And who am I to mock it? But it has a very distinct color palette, thanks to the design work of Malcolm Garrett and the painter Patrick Nagel. So, you know, it was…
I mean, Duran Duran, we’re one of those bands, it’s like we’re always moving forward, we’re always moving forward. Everything’s got to be new now. But sometimes it’s fun to just dip back into the heritage, you know.
I really enjoyed having… I felt like, you know, I had permission to just be unapologetically celebratory with this. We decided to call it the Rio Dream Bass, and we decided that it would have this look that was just…
It was just pure celebration of the album from which it takes its name. And, you know, we ended up doing four variations on the theme, right? Which I’m so excited.
I mean, I’ve been playing beta versions of what I call the 82, which is the limited edition version of this bass, of which there are 82 models. So don’t wait around. Run, don’t walk if you want one of those.
But there’s 82 of those, and that is strictly to the color palette of the album cover itself. And then we decided that we were just going to then, you know, take why would we do something? So much work has been put into this thing.
Why would we only do it 82 times? So, we’re going to be releasing an unlimited version of this base in three different color ways, right, Sheldon?
Sheldon: 100%.
And, you know, hopefully more colors to come. And at the risk of interrupting, I don’t want to lose this thought. Two things.
I remember, like it was yesterday, when you and Patty showed me Patty’s concept. And, you know, guitar design and graphics, they’re two different worlds. And it can be very hard to, for a guitar designer, to create something successful in the graphics world and vice versa.
But Patty seems to have a gift for, that translates to guitar design. So she did an amazing job. I remember seeing it for the first time and going, and getting this feeling right here, just going, wow, this is amazing.
It created an excitement inside of me and that I wasn’t expecting actually.
John: Well, it was a dream project for her. I know she was super excited to do it. But yes, it’s doing something, having a signature model with a particular look.
But that isn’t, I mean, I don’t want to tread on every player’s vibe. Every bassist out there has their own vibe. I don’t want to be too John Taylor on any of them.
So we’ve tried to come up with something. I think it’s got more like, it’s like a classic corvette or something. You know, it’s like it’s just, you know, if you get, if you understand, if you know the Rio album cover, then you’re going to get it.
But if you don’t, you’re still going to get it. It has a particular look to it. It just looks like it looks super slick and chic and cool.”
And I think actually that the different colorways, I mean, I’m really excited. We’ve got a, we’ve got a black, we’ve got a cream and we’ve got a, we’ve got a foam, seafoam green, which is sick. And they are all like, they just take it to the next, they take it to the next level.
You know, they are like, oh, they kind of look back at Rio, but it’s like, they’re very much to me, to my eyes, it’s a very modern, very modern look, doesn’t look retro one bit. But I mean, you’re, I mean, I mean, you’re aesthetic as a company. I mean, you’re, I mean, I love your color palettes, you know, there’s some, I’ve got some beautiful instruments of yours.
I mean, you know, I’ve got a deep pink, I’ve got a very, there’s a very dark green. I mean, you always seem to like, every time I get a new bass from you, I’m like, oh, I want a car in that color, you know. I mean, you know, what goes into your, you know, when you’re thinking about, you know, when you’re just coming to the end of a, you know, when “you’re refining a new model and you’re thinking about the color ways and, you know, how it’s going to look.
How much, you know, what is that process for you typically?
Sheldon: You know, it’s almost 100% intuitive. I’ve just always liked colors. I’ve always paid attention to colors.
And because of that, I think that gives anybody, it gives them sort of an instinct as to what the next, where colors are going. If you’re paying attention to them constantly, then you kind of see the arc of which colors are becoming out of fashion and which colors are becoming more exciting. And so sometimes it’ll be the middle of the night, I’ll wake up, or sometimes I’ll see something and I’ll go, that would make a great color and I’ll take a picture of it and save it for later.
And I think a lot of that stemmed back to my to my older sister Karen, who used to come back from concerts. And either I just picked up on what she was saying and ignored the rest, or else this is what she came back and told her little brother, Sheldon, was you “should have seen the guitars at the concert. There was this yellow one or there’s sunburst.
And, you know, so to me, it was like, oh, guitars have to look exciting. And it means something to people. Because how many people in the audience are going to really be able to understand tone, but they’ll be able to understand what they see.
And they’ll like what they see or they won’t like what they see, but they’ll go home and they’ll describe it and that will stick with them. So tone is important, but so are visuals.
John: 100%. I love that you said that. I mean, I love fashion and I love cars.
And those are two areas where color is so important. And you can see, you know, I remember, you know, Porsche recently, they dropped this, well, a few years ago, they dropped this gray, this flat gray color onto the market. And now, like everybody’s, you know, every car is coming in that gray.
And it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because it’s a way of reinventing, you know, to some extent. But it’s also allowing each generation, you know, and what’s a “generation in music, you know, like three years or five years.
But it’s allowing each generation an opportunity to own its own thing, the way that I did when I was 20. And I got into these, you know, these wood, you know, these wood bases, you know, with… So, yeah, I love that.
Sheldon: I have one real quick question for you. You got talking about the Rio cover and just how significant was. Do you recall seeing it for the first time, you know, way back in the day when it was presented to you?
Like, what was that like?
John: Oh, yeah. I mean, I didn’t… I mean, the first time I saw it, it had been…
It was in its complete state. And, you know, the painting that had been commissioned by the band had been taken by the graphic designer and sort of put into a frame.
And, you know, there’s… I’ve come to believe that there are times in your… You know, if you’re creative, you know, there are times in your life where you’re just going to be so focused that everyone around you is going to be focused, too.
And I have to say, at that moment in our lives, in that summer of 1982, when we were just wrapping up this album, and I’m not one to blow this group’s trumpet, you know, but there’s not a bad note on that album. You know, it’s just everything came together for Duran Duran and for the five musicians in Duran Duran for that album. But it also, I could say the same for every engineer, the producer, the artist, the graphic designer, everything around that project was absolutely as good as you could have wanted it to be.
So it always felt, it just felt super iconic, you know. And I actually, looking back, if anything, I was probably, oh, it’s not a picture of us on the cover. We’re not doing that.
But, you know, I’ve got to credit our manager. You know, he had the vision to commission the painting and, you know, and our record label had introduced us to this fantastic graphic designer who’d been working with us from the beginning. So, you know, we had a great team around us.
Sheldon: You know, I can’t think of another album cover from that era that pops into my mind, but that one, you know, you say Rio, and it’s there, it’s there. It’s earned its place in my permanent memory banks.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s a good one. I’m proud of it.
Hence, the Rio Dream Bass.
Sheldon: 100 percent.
From Comfortably Strung | The Dingwall Guitars Podcast: Episode Two | John Taylor, Oct 31, 2024
About the Comfortably Strung Podcast
Comfortably Strung is a podcast where bass players share the stories behind some of the greatest bass tones ever committed to record. Each episode is driven by conversation ranging from the guest’s origins (along with a few never-before-revealed secrets to their success) to their life passions and current projects. From the dexterous bass fills of L.A. session legend Lee Sklar to the phenomenally fast-fingers of metaller Adam ‘Nolly’ Getgood, this podcast is about showcasing the bass guitar legends (and legends in the making) who are currently employing Dingwall guitars for recording and live work.