Duran Duran have played a headline performance slot at the spectacular opening ceremony in their home city of Birmingham for the 22nd Commonwealth Games, the biggest sporting event held in the UK since the London Olympics of 2012.
Staged at the rebuilt Alexander Stadium in Perry Barr in front of a 30,000-strong crowd and a worldwide television audience of more than one billion, the band played a four-song set on 28 July comprising Save A Prayer, Planet Earth, Tonight United and Ordinary World. The opening festivities to the Games also included guitarist Tony Iommi and acclaimed saxophonist Soweto Kinch. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony on 8 August featured a second performance by Iommi alongside a surprise appearance by Ozzy Osbourne as the pair reunited to play Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. Other artists on the bill included Dexys Midnight Runners, Apache Indian, Musical Youth, The Selecter, UB40 and Panjabi MC.
Duran Duran’s performance was a continuation of a hugely successful year for the band which also saw them play for 70,000 fans at Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Their most recent studio album, Future Past, peaked at No.3 in the UK, their highest chart placing since 2004’s Astronaut. On 5 November, the band will also be inducted into the coveted Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. It’s been reported that the fourpiece will reunite with former bandmates Andy Taylor and Warren Cuccurullo for the induction ceremony.
OBITUARY OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN
(1948-2022)
As Classic Pop went to press, news broke that much-loved Grease star Dame Olivia Newton-John had died at the age of 73. The singer’s husband, John Easterling, said she “passed away peacefully at her ranch in southern California this morning [8 August], surrounded by family and friends”.
Born in Cambridge in 1948, Newton-John moved with her family to Australia in 1954. Her Welsh father, Brinley Newton-John, had been a British spy during World War 2, while her mother, Irene Helene, was the daughter of the German Nobel laureate, Max Born.
Newton-John released her first album in 1971, If Not For You. Its title track, a cover of a Bob Dylan song, reached No.7 in the UK.
It was in 1978, at the age of 29, that she won the role of Sandy in Grease, the 50s-set musical in which she co-starred with John Travolta. The movie would become the biggest box-office hit of that year. “I was worried I was too old so I as
