Watch Duran Duran Play ‘Save a Prayer’ on ‘Austin City Limits’
Duran Duran turned “Save a Prayer” into an atmospheric synth-pop sing-along for their episode of Austin City Limits. The performance, available to view below in an exclusive video, highlights the band’s hour-long appearance on Season 47.
Faithful to the version on their 1982 blockbuster LP, Rio, the track sparkles with Nick Rhodes’ synthesizers and Simon Le Bon’s smooth croon, building to a squealing guitar solo in the back half. On the choruses, Le Bon defers to the audience, their faces illuminated by cell-phone flashlights.
The episode premieres on Jan. 22 at 9PM ET on PBS, with online streaming starting the next day at 10AM ET. Each episode of Season 47 will be filmed in front of limited live audiences at ACL’s home studio in Austin.
“Save a Prayer" closes the 10-track set, which blends classic cuts (“Girls on Film,” “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Ordinary World”) with tracks from their latest LP, 2021’s Future Past (“Anniversary,” “Invisible,” “Tonight United”). The season kicked off Jan. 15 with St. Vincent and Joy Oladokun, and the final installment arrives Feb. 12 with the Best of Nanci Griffith.
Duran Duran returned to full-length live gigs on September 2021, playing their first since fall 2019 in their hometown of Birmingham, England. "I didn't realize how much I missed playing these songs until it gets to playing them with a great crowd like you guys," Le Bon said during the show. "Let's celebrate!”
The following month, drummer Roger Taylor revealed that the band was in the early stages of working on a biopic. “It’s something that is under discussion,” he told the Sun. “It’s being discussed and we’ve had different scripts and ideas put forward. We haven’t quite decided on the right one yet. But there are things in development so we will see where they go. We would love to do something like that and I think something will happen in the next few years.”