Simon Le Bon

Simon John Charles Le Bon (born 27 October 1958) is a British singer.

He is best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the new wave band Duran Duran and its offshoot Arcadia.

Le Bon has received three Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, including the award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.

Le Bon was born on 27 October 1958, on his father's birthday, in Bushey Maternity Hospital in Bushey, Hertfordshire, the first of three boys for John and Ann-Marie Le Bon, followed by his younger brothers, David and Jonathan.

His mother encouraged his artistic talent when he was six years old by entering him in a screen test for a Persil washing powder TV advertisement, which proved successful.

He was a member of the local church choir from a young age, and was trained as an actor.

Le Bon went to Pinner County Grammar School and Nower Hill High School.

In 1978, he completed an art foundation course at Harrow School of Art, before studying drama at the University of Birmingham.

For a time Le Bon worked as a theatre porter at Northwick Park Hospital Accident and Casualty, and also sang in a punk band called Dog Days at Harrow School of Art.

He appeared in a few television advertisements and also in several theatre productions including Tom Brown's School Days in the West End of London.

Le Bon worked on a kibbutz—an Israeli collective community—in the Negev desert in Israel in 1978, and then returned to England to study drama at the University of Birmingham before meeting the fledgling band Duran Duran in 1980.

Duran Duran was founded by childhood friends John Taylor and Nick Rhodes along with singer-songwriter Stephen Duffy in 1978, but Duffy left a year later, convinced that the band was not going to be successful.

The band went through a long succession of line-up changes after Duffy's departure, but finally settled on a guitarist and drummer.

The band had a powerful pop sound flavoured with disco, funk, and electronics, built on a solid rock rhythm section, and all they needed was a charismatic singer with a distinctive voice.

Le Bon's ex-girlfriend, Fiona Kemp (a bartender at the Rum Runner nightclub where Duran Duran were rehearsing), introduced him to the band in May 1980, recommending him as a potential lead vocalist.

As band legend has it, he turned up for the audition wearing pink leopard-print trousers, and carrying a notebook containing a large collection of poems he had written—several of which would later become tracks on the early Duran Duran studio albums.

After listening to the songs the band had already composed together, Le Bon spent some time fitting one of his poems ("Sound of Thunder") to one of the instrumentals, and found they had a good match.

Le Bon agreed to "try [Duran Duran] out for the summer"; within six weeks the band was playing steadily around Birmingham, London and Nottingham, and a national tour supporting Hazel O'Connor led to a recording contract with EMI Records in December that year.

The band's debut studio album, Duran Duran, was released in 1981, and they quickly became famous as part of the New Romantic movement.

Three more albums followed in quick succession: Rio (1982), Seven and the Ragged Tiger (1983) and the live album Arena (1984).

Each album release was accompanied by heavy media promotion and a lengthy concert tour.

By mid-1984, the band were ready for a break.

Duran Duran's only other work that year was an appearance on the Band Aid charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" which was recorded at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London on 25 November 1984.

Le Bon's vocal appears fourth on the song after Paul Young, Boy George and George Michael sing their lines.

The band had a UK/US top 10 hit with their first single "Election Day", and released one studio album, So Red the Rose in 1985.

While Le Bon has been in Duran Duran for the band's entire recording history, he has also dabbled in solo outings.

Following the departures of Roger and Andy Taylor, Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor continued on as Duran Duran, recording and releasing Notorious (1986) and Big Thing (1988).

Before Duran Duran reunited in 1986, Le Bon formed the band Arcadia with Rhodes.

The group added guitarist Warren Cuccurullo and drummer Sterling Campbell and recorded the studio album Liberty (1990), but the band's success had begun to wane in the late 1980s.

Duran Duran had a resurgence in popularity in 1993 with the Wedding Album, featuring the top-10 single "Ordinary World".

Several months into the extensive worldwide concert tour supporting this album, Le Bon suffered a torn vocal cord, and the tour was postponed for six weeks while he recovered.

That year Le Bon also performed Duran Duran's 1993 hit "Ordinary World" with opera tenor Luciano Pavarotti during a "Children of Bosnia" benefit concert for War Child.

Le Bon described the event to Jam!

Showbiz thusly: "If you're talking about name dropping, he's one of the biggest names you could drop, Pav-The-Man".

In 1995, Duran Duran released the covers album Thank You, and Le Bon had the chance to cover some of his favourite artists, (Jim Morrison, Lou Reed and Elvis Costello), but the album was severely panned by critics from all quarters.

When bassist John Taylor left the band in 1997, Le Bon and Rhodes remained as the only two members who had been with Duran Duran from the beginning of their recording career.

The successive two studio albums with Le Bon, Rhodes and Cuccurullo—Medazzaland (1997) and Pop Trash (2000)—were not commercial successes.

In 2001, Duran Duran's original five members reunited to record a new studio album, Astronaut, for Epic Records.

Astronaut was released worldwide on 11 October 2004.

The album was preceded by the single "(Reach Up for The) Sunrise", their first UK Top 10 single in a decade.