When Duran Duran were at the height of their fame, Rhodes gained a reputation as a dandy. “I started life as a window dresser and I never really changed, I guess.” “It tells you all you need to know, doesn’t it?” he says. Rhodes helped out at weekends – the most popular toys were the Six Million Dollar Man doll and “this ghastly thing called Stretch Armstrong” – and even won a national prize for window-dressing when he was 12. His father, Roger, was an engineer and his mother, Sylvia, ran a toy shop. “It seems so complicated having to have so many cups of tea and coffee every day,” he says. His mother once gave him a sip of tea as a baby and he spat it out with such vehemence that he has never drunk tea or coffee since. Growing up in Birmingham in the 1960s didn’t afford many opportunities for gastronomic adventure. I never made it before.’ It’s in the DNA.” I’ll say, ‘How do you know how to do that?’ And she shrugs and says: ‘I don’t know. “When you have a Sicilian girlfriend, there’s no point in pretending I can cook,” Rhodes concedes. His favourite dish is penne alla norma, made with tomatoes, fried aubergine, grated ricotta salata cheese and basil. Nefer does most of the cooking at the couple’s home in Chelsea. He has a Sicilian girlfriend, Nefer, which helps too: “It’s like someone stuck a pin in the map and said, ‘Let’s put all the greatest food in the world here. He enjoys food, especially Italian, and this is one of his favourite restaurants in London. “I’m going to the studio after this, I can’t!” he protests, as another glass of wine is poured. For his main course, he asks for a tasting selection of three pastas, even though he feels guilty about the carbs. You can see Rhodes making a mental effort to choose the most healthy thing on the menu, but then being overwhelmed by choice. We order our starters – both opting for the tuna and borlotti bean salad. “I’m sure other people would say, ‘Oh, you’re as shallow as a puddle.’” “Yes, doesn’t it? I always judge a bottle of wine by its label because it shows that it’s made by people who care about the tiniest details.” He pauses. Rhodes nods enthusiastically as if I’ve said something terribly profound. When the sommelier arrives with our wine to accompany a bowl of zucchine fritte, I mention it’s got a nice label. Pressure Off from Paper Gods, live in August 2015. He was so switched on and eternally curious.” He was so much smarter and hipper than anyone my age that I knew outside my band. On his first trip to New York with the band in 1981, he had lunch with Andy Warhol who became a friend and mentor until his death six years later. Rhodes has always had a keen eye for the aesthetic detail and enjoys a side career as a photographer. It would be hard to imagine him any other way than the foppish, cheek-boned, blond one sporting eyeliner and a pastel blue suit in the 1982 video for Rio, posing on board a speeding yacht as Simon Le Bon sings about cherry ice-cream and dancing on the sand. To be fair to Rhodes, the hair is an integral part of his identity. “It prompted me to get a haircut,” he replies. So what conclusion did he draw about his own barnet after reading the article? Throughout it all, Rhodes’s hair has stayed more or less the same: a beacon of follicular stability in an ever-changing world. Rhodes, the keyboardist for Duran Duran since the band’s formation in 1978, is now 53 and the group released their 14th album, Paper Gods, this month. I maintain a diplomatic silence, but I’m thinking: yes, Nick, yes it does. “I laughed and thought: ‘Christ! Does my hair still look like it did in 1980-whatever?”
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