Andy Wickett: the Duran Duran star who never was
May 25 2009 by Lorne Jackson, Birmingham Post
He’s written top ten hits but fame and fortune escaped him. Lorne Jackson meets Andy Wickett, who left Duran Duran just before they hit the big time.
As Andy Wickett thoughtfully strums his acoustic guitar, there’s a hissing noise, then wispy traces of a gaseous substance snake through the air.
In an alternative universe, the wispy traces would be dry ice, added to Andy’s stage performance by a special effects guru, in order to wrap the singer in mystery and allure.
But this is no alternative universe, and the gaseous substance isn’t dry ice. It’s fly spray.
Squirted by a barman in the small pub where Andy’s rehearsing. And it isn’t adding mystery or allure. Quite the opposite, in fact. The singer politely asks the barman to stop, just for a couple of minutes, so he can get through the rest of his plaintive lyrics.
Everything could have been so different, and probably is, in an alternative universe. In an alternative universe, Andy wouldn’t have left Duran Duran, which he did in the early days, before fame and fortune. In an alternative universe, Andy wouldn’t have cheaply sold the songs he wrote to his former band mates. Songs that became huge hits and pop classics.
But this is no alternative universe. It’s Nicole’s, a tiny pub in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, where Andy regularly performs. In this universe of drudge and disappointment, flash bulbs, fame and filthy lucre don’t exist. Not for Andy.
There’s just the acoustic guitar, the plaintive lyrics, and the fly spray.
Yet miraculously, Andy doesn’t come across as a bitter man. With a certain fondness he recalls the late 70s, when he was a tyro songwriter and performer, waiting for his big break.
“I remember when I came up with Girls On Film,” he tells me. “I was working the night-shift at Cadbury’s factory. I used to write songs when I was on the conveyor belt, watching chocolates go by.
“That’s when I came up with all my ditties and tunes. Then I would go back to the guys, and say, ‘I’ve got this thing we can try.’”
At the time Andy was dipping his nose in his extensive personal library of books, which is where the inspiration for the songs came from.
“I was reading all sorts of stuff,” he says. “One of the books on my list was Sunset Boulevard, which was about the dark side behind the glitz and glamour. That was all in my version of Girls On Film. But in Duran Duran’s version, they changed the words, so that it’s all glitz and glamour.”
Before joining the group, Andy was already a central figure in Birmingham’s vibrant music scene. In fact, original Duran members, John Taylor and Nick Rhodes, met Andy because they adored TV Eye, a previous band he fronted.
