Duran Duran's Drummer Quits: Too Much 'Rio', Not Enough 'Rest'

Duran Duran’s drummer Roger Taylor has left the band because of tinnitus, a ringing in the ears that he says has been getting steadily worse. He must now “listen to my body and my doctors.” It is the most rock and roll sentence ever uttered by a man who spent four decades hitting things very loudly.

The catalogue is still doing fine. Somewhere right now, a 24-year-old is singing “Hungry Like the Wolf” in a supermarket car park, and a wedding DJ is ruining a perfectly good reception with “Girls on Film.” The songs are thriving. The man who played on them is not.

Is the music to blame? Obviously the music is to blame. Those synths and stadium-sized snare hits were engineered to rattle teeth in arenas, and nobody thought to print a warning label on the back of “Rio.”

The band has not named a replacement. Its ticketing team, one assumes, has the rest of the year booked and the earplugs already on sale in the merch tent.