John Taylor, In the Pleasure Groove
Featured Book
Short, melodic, to the point and just a little dark — just like a Duran Duran song.
For fans of the ’80s superpop group Duran Duran (and let’s be real: Who isn’t one?), John Taylor’s sweet autobiography is much like one of the band’s songs: short, melodic, to the point and just a little dark. The band’s cofounder and bassist whizzes through his life to date, paying homage to his hard-working, involved parents and moving on to the musical obsession that led him to form a band that experienced a dizzying rise to the top. Some of Taylor’s story feels a bit predictable – sex, drugs, booze, rehab, crazed fans – but Taylor (who narrates) comes off as so earnest, sincere and pleasant that the book is an enjoyable departure from celebrity memoirs where the author takes him or herself too seriously.
In the Pleasure Groove, with its lines of cocaine, appearances by Robert Palmer and the recording of Live Aid, is a look back at all that was bad, as well as all that was very, very good about the 1980s. The real meat of the book, though, is when Taylor talks about his parents, especially his World War II veteran father, whose wartime experience with lice led him to help his son cure himself of groupie-inflicted crabs. They always supported their eyelinered pop idol son; this book is in Taylor’s own way a love song to them.
