Roger Taylor Walks Away From Duran Duran — and From Drums for Good

The announcement landed Thursday with no press conference and no farewell tour attached. Duran Duran posted a statement, and Roger Taylor posted his own underneath it: the drummer who joined the band in 1979 is stepping down, and he is not just leaving the group. He is retiring from playing drums altogether.

Taylor is 66. His tinnitus, diagnosed recently, has been getting worse, and the decision came after careful consideration and medical advice, with his hearing and his long-term health put first. "This is one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make," he wrote. "Playing drums in this band has been the joy of my life, and I'll never be able to properly thank the fans for the love they've shown us over the years. But the truth is that my tinnitus has been getting steadily worse, and I've reached the point where I must now listen to my body and my doctors."

The sound that would not stop

Tinnitus is a ringing, buzzing or clicking in the ears with no outside source behind it. It can follow hearing loss, a head or neck injury, or years of noise exposure — and a drummer's working life is noise exposure, scheduled nightly, from about four feet behind the loudest object on the stage. The American Academy of Otolaryngology reports that more than 40 percent of musicians experience it. Most play through it. Taylor's statement is what it looks like when playing through it stops being an option: the instrument did not just give him a career, it kept the receipt, and the bill arrived at 66.

There is no comeback language anywhere in either statement. This is not a touring break or a reduced schedule. USA Today reported the plainest version of it — he will step down from the band and retire from music altogether.

Two runs, one band

Taylor's career with Duran Duran comes in two long chapters. He joined in 1979, part of the classic lineup, and played on the band's first three studio albums — Duran Duran, Rio and Seven and the Ragged Tiger — plus the live album Arena. Those records carried the drums that a generation learned this band by: tight, dance-floor drums under songs built for radio and clubs at the same time. Then fame did to him what it did to a lot of people standing next to it in 1985. He left in 1986, burned out on the rigors of it.

He came back in pieces — a studio return for the band's 1995 covers album Thank You — and then, in 2001, he came back for real, rejoining full-time and staying for six more studio albums, through 2023's Danse Macabre. The second run lasted a quarter of a century — more than three times as long as the first one. Whatever Duran Duran became in this century, his drumming is under most of it.

Going out on a high

Taylor chose his ending carefully, and he said so. "Figuring out the timing of all of this has not been easy, but I'm going out on a real high," he wrote. "We've just returned from a hugely successful UK and European tour, which followed our second headline show at BST Hyde Park, our induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and a return to the studio with Nile Rodgers. I couldn't have asked for a better final chapter, with so many special moments that I'll treasure forever. I move on with enormous pride, and with nothing but love for Simon, Nick and John."

The bandmates he named answered in the same post. "Roger is our brother," Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and John Taylor wrote. "His drumming helped define the sound of Duran Duran from the very beginning and having him back with us since 2001 has been incredibly important to us all. We completely support his decision and wish him health and happiness. He will always be part of this family, while we continue exploring new and exciting projects with the band."

A trio, for now

So Duran Duran goes on as three — Le Bon, Rhodes and John Taylor — with new projects promised and studio work with Nile Rodgers already part of the recent past. No replacement drummer had been named when the announcement landed, and the band has been here before, in a harder key: guitarist Andy Taylor, another member of the classic lineup, has been living with stage four prostate cancer, a diagnosis the band announced from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame stage in 2022. The classic five is now, on paper, three.

Somebody will eventually sit down behind that kit and count in Rio. Whoever it is will be playing parts Roger Taylor first played as a teenager in Birmingham, in a band he left once and came back to because the first goodbye turned out to be the wrong one. This goodbye is different, and he knows it. The drums were the joy of his life. The ringing is what is left of them, and he has decided to keep what hearing he still has instead.