the Stephen Duffy FAQ (4th edition)
a feature of The DEVILS Made Me Do It! site

I'm hoping that this FAQ will serve to introduce the music-loving masses to the musical works of Stephen Duffy, including his solo work since leaving the first lineup of Duran Duran (circa 1977-1979), his travails with the Lilac Time (all three lineups), and his solo work (from TinTin to Duffy).

Being that I was born the year (1979) he wrote his only top ten hit, "Kiss Me," in someone's basement in Moseley, Birmingham, England, there are bound to be inaccuracies and inconsistencies in this FAQ. This is not designed to be wholly comprehensive. Try Googling if you need more info. I imagine this site is pretty much redundant with the presence of Wikipedia.

**with thanks to Chris Squires, Matt Thurston, and others for pointing out some errors - nobody's perfect :)**

first posted 25.08.02
fourth edition posted 16.09.08

1. When and where was Stephen Duffy born?
He was born Stephen Anthony James Duffy on 30 May 1960 in Moseley, Birmingham, UK. That makes him a Gemini I, with mutable air qualities.

According to The Secret Language of Birthdays (Goldschneider and Elffers, 1994, Viking Penguin, New York), advice given to people born on this day is "keep your nose to the grindstone, and avoid distractions; operate deliberately and purposefully; beware of idle schemes and frivolity." The recommended meditation mantra is "when love, money, and excitement unexpectedly appear in our lives, our relationship with the Universe is nakedly revealed." This reminds me a lot of an interview of Stephen's I read in which he talked about "a honeymoon period" when signing to a new label, as inevitably an artist will realise after a while that maybe the label isn't putting his best interests first.

Other notables on this day include Peter the Great, bandleader Benny Goodman, the Russian jeweler Faberge, Mel Blanc (the voice of Bugs Bunny), and fashion designer Paola Fendi.

Interestingly, both Nick Rhodes (08 June 1962) and John Taylor (20 June 1960) are also Geminis.

2. How did Stephen get into music, and what has he done to date?
His brother Nick, 4 years older than him, taught him how to play guitar at an early age. (Incidentally, Nick later ended up as a member of the Lilac Time alongside his younger brother, and every Lilac Time album has at least one original instrumental penned by Nick Duffy.) After secondary school he did well enough on his college entrance exams to attend Birmingham Art College, where in his first year he met up with Nigel "John" Taylor. The two of them joined up with John's childhood friend Nick Rhodes (who bought and learned to play a Wasp synthesizer), with Taylor on guitar, Duffy on bass, and another friend, Simon Colley, on clarinet and/or oboe. This is a matter of confusion, as John Taylor claims Colley played oboe but I've read in numerous places that Colley played clarinet, not oboe. Stephen's days with Duran Duran were not without disaster - he has since revealed with great embarrassment that the first bass he bought was fretless because he didn't have a clue what bass guitars should look like! Wearing excessively tight leather pants that he bought after schlepping for 2 weeks at the local post office, Stephen became the band's reluctant lead singer.

I had never met people with such ambition before....they wanted to be famous...I was the lead singer, shrieking in a sort of effeminate manner..." - Stephen Duffy interviewed on VH1's "Behind the Music: Duran Duran"

When he first started as DD Mark I's lead singer, unsure of exactly what to sing about, he lifted passages from the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jack Kerouac, among others. The lyrics to the Devils' "Aztec Moon" are similar to those in Kerouac's Mexico City Blues, and Stephen names Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, and Tim Hardin as being major early influences.

Shortly after the start of DD, Duffy quit because he didn't want to continue on with the evolving sound of the band. He and Colley left to form the short-lived experimental outfit the Hawks, releasing the single "Words of Hope," backed by "Sense of Ending." I'd be interested to hear any demos from this era!

As previously mentioned, he wrote the song "Kiss Me" in a Birmingham basement sometime in 1979, and with production help from Bob Lamb was able to turn it into a surprise hit in 1983. The song was remixed in 1985 with a more techno/Eurobeat sound where it hit #3 in the UK. (I'd never heard the song until 2002 so I'll be the first to admit that I was a bit behind.) Unfortunately, the song is considered Stephen's calling card with the music business and most media are surprised to learn that Stephen has been making music ever since he appears on "Top of the Pops" in the early 1980s.

The strength of "Kiss Me" landed Stephen a 3-record deal with the new and fledgling Ten (Virgin) label in the early '80s. Though he received quite a bit of royalties for "Kiss Me," he admits he was a spendthrift buying too many clothes and too many drugs. The other records he put out on this label didn't do as well, and was dropped by Virgin following the release of the last album. The 3 Ten albums are now out of print but you can still obtain the Virgin compilation CD "Stephen Duffy: They Called Him TinTin" from European vendors and stores that carry British imports (such as Virgin Megastore).

Much to the distress of the folks at Ten (who dropped Stephen from the label when he presented a Lilac Time album for his third album), the remaining money from the earlier Tintin days was put to good use - for the recording and production of the Lilac Time's self-titled first album. The Lilac Time's eponymous album was released in 1987 (Swordfish), then on Fontana in 1988, the label that put out "Paradise Circus" (1989) and "& Love for All" (1990). The Lilac Time released several albums on the Fontana/Polygram label, but all of the earliest albums are also out of print. The Japanese "Astronauts+" (Legacy and Jazz Label, Sony Music Records) released in 1998, was re-engineered and re-released with 7 extra tracks picked by Stephen. A 45-track 2 CD set called "The Fontana Compendium" was released not too long ago and is available for those who can't get their hands on actual albums.

The last 10 years have been busy ones for Duffy. Around the time of the "Astronauts" (Creation) release in 1991, Nick Duffy (to be replaced by Sagat Guirey on guitar), Micky Harris, and Michael Giri left the band, despite the success of the electro-single for "Dreaming." 1993 saw his solo release of "Music in Colors" (Parlophone) featuring the violinist Nigel Kennedy and guitarist Guirey. He dropped the first name for 1995's "Duffy" (Indolent), and made time in 1996 to work with Alex James of Blur and Justin Welch of Elastica to form the short-lived MeMeMe, recording a CD-only single, "Hanging Around" (Indolent). Three years later the excellent "I Love My Friends" surfaced, under the auspices of the indie Cooking Vinyl label. "Looking for a Day in the Night" (1999) and "lilac6" (2001) were also Cooking Vinyl albums, featuring the return of Nick Duffy and Michael Giri to the fold, and a new backup singer, Claire Worrall.

The Devils project came about in 1999. He met up with Nick Rhodes (co-founding member of Duran Duran and currently still the group's keyboardist) at a Vivienne Westwood show in, and discussed the possibility of taking an old Duran Duran Mark I tape (which had been found in an old desk of Duffy's in storage alongside slides John Taylor had put together for one of their earliest gigs), reworking old tracks, and releasing them as a separate project to Duran Duran. The album was released only in the UK on 15 July 2002 (and later in Germany), on TapeModern/Universal, to very good press (some of the reviews can be accessed through here).

"Keep Going" was the 2003 release of Stephen Duffy and the Lilac Time (known as lilac7 to longtime fans).

3. What bands and/or artists has Stephen been associated with?
Here is a brief listing; please let me know if I have dates and/or associations incorrect.

Album discography (in approximate chronological order based on era):

4. Who or what does Stephen tend to sing or write about?
Please check out thelilactime.com which has a memoiresque rambling writing from Stephen chock full of amusing anecdotes and photographs. The stephenduffy.com site is now defunct. For a list of official sites related to Stephen Duffy, please refer to my Devils' main page.

Stephen must be rather fond of his hometown of Birmingham as it shows up in several songs. (London locations, such as North Kensington, are also named.) He wrote "Barbarellas" about the long-gone club of the same name in downtown Birmingham where Duran Duran used to hang out. For those of you out there not Duranies, the name of the band Duran Duran comes from the Jane Fonda '60s sci-fi flick "Barbarella," where Duran Duran was the name of the white-haired villain who tries to kill Barbarella with his "Orgasmatron." John Taylor and Nick Rhodes picked it among other possibilities because it wouldn't peg them down with a musical style and personality since in reality "Duran Duran" didn't mean anything.

According to Wikipedia, Stephen is now married to Claire Worrall (2008). It is my impression that he is a man who is in touch with his feelings and writes what he feels. I respect anyone who has the courage to be honest lyrically, rather than "hiding behind a a smokescreen of bourgeoisie cliches." It's pretty obvious that Stephen has had some meaningful encounters with more than a couple different women, but instead of eschewing from talking about them, he puts them out there on the forefront of his lyrics (a list of them available here). At least Stephen has written about love (in its unrequited, loss of, and melancholic types), for our benefit.

5. Where can I find the albums for Stephen Duffy, the Lilac Time, and the Devils?
This info is old and is likely to be incorrect. Google is your best bet.
Here's a quick rundown of places to get "Keep Going" (2003, Stephen Duffy and the Lilac Time) and "Dark Circles" (2002, TapeModern). Since many of the albums are out of print and hard to come by, searches in used shops and online auction sites may be fruitful.

6. Are there promotional videos available? What about live material?
There's nothing official available, as I have been told Stephen is averse to professional video recordings during gigs. There are some videotapes and miscellaneous stuff that that are available possibly on eBay. But, sadly, nothing official yet. I guess we can always hope. A DVD was purported to be released in early 2004. Stephen previously indicated that he has working out a deal to take all the Fontana-related audio and video releases and release them on Universal; however, nothing that I'm aware of has ever surfaced.

7. How often does Stephen perform in public and when will he stop in my town next?
In 2003, he promised to play more than 2 shows that year. He did a Devils' gig in Cologne Germany (February 2003), 2 in Camden (May and July 2003), and two Borders mini-gig appearances in Glasgow and London's Oxford Street (July 2003). Nic Blinston, the site's webmaster, pointed out that 3 is bigger than 2 (so I suppose he's doing better than we predicted). In 2007, he and the Lilac Time performed at the Green Man Festival, a folk festival taking place every August in Glanusk Park, Wales.

8. What fan clubs are out there for Stephen Duffy, the Lilac Time, and the Devils?

9. What's the deal with this FAQ and the Devils' site it's associated with?

This is strictly a not-for-profit site designed to be informative about the Devils, Stephen Duffy, the Lilac Time and, I suppose, occasionally Duran Duran in all its incarnations. I coded this site entirely by hand and made many of the graphics by myself. There are several other more comprehensive, graphics-laden sites out there on these subjects and I made (and make) no attempt to ape them; that wasn't the purpose of this site. It started out as a celebration of what the Devils were and accomplished, with slight branching off to what SD and TLT did/do -- and I've left it at that.

If you are interested in Duran Duran, I have a site called the Fields of Eden which I have put together of various essays, fanfic, club affliations, and more. Some sites out there are just disappointing since all you get are the same exact promo photos again and again and I've really tried to make something unique, and I hope you get a kick out of it.

-- Mary

...you got a funny way of saying hello...
The DEVILS Made Me Do It!
The Fields of Eden
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