Talking to Girls about Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut »

ROB SHEFFIELD is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. He has been a rock critic and pop culture journalist for fifteen years, and has appeared on various MTV and VH1 shows. He lives in Brooklyn.


From the Hardcover edition.

Growing up in the eighties, you were surrounded by mysteries. These were the years of MTV and John Hughes movies, the era of big dreams and bigger shoulder pads. Like any teenage geek, Rob Sheffield spent the decade searching for true love and maybe a cooler haircut. Talking to Girls About Duran Duran is his tale of stumbling into adulthood with a killer soundtrack. Inept flirtations. Dumb crushes. Deplorable fashion choices. Girls, every last one of whom was madly in love with the bassist of Duran Duran.

In his first book, the national bestseller Love Is a Mix Tape, Sheffield shared a heartbreaking true story of love and grief. With Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, he returns with a smart, funny, and emotionally pitch-perfect trip through the music and memories of the eighties. As a confused teenager stranded in the suburbs, mowing lawns, and playing video games, Rob had a lot to learn about women, love, music, and himself. But he was sure his radio had all the answers, whether he was driving an ice cream truck through Boston to "Purple Rain," slam dancing to The Replacements, or pondering the implications of Madonna lyrics.

From Bowie to Bobby Brown, from hair metal to hip-hop, he loved them all. Talking to Girls About Duran Duran is a journey through pop culture of an American adolescence that will remind you of your first crush, first car, and first kiss. But it's not just a book about music. This is a book about moments in time, and the way we obsess over them through the years. Every song is a snapshot of a moment that helps form the rest of your life. Whenever you grew up, and whatever your teenage obsessions, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran brings those moments to life.

The Barnes & Noble Review

In Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, Prince's "Purple Rain" gets no more ink than Haysi Fantayzee's "Shiny Shiny," and that is part of the book's charm. Rob Sheffield's coming-of-age memoir, his follow-up to Love Is a Mix Tape, ponders the good, the bad, and the ugly of '80s music, as experienced by one sheltered altar boy in the Boston suburbs who used pop culture to figure out his way in the world. Sheffield is full of fond nostalgia for the geek he was, admitting that even at 16, he was shocked to read an interview with Hall and Oates, at the peak of their "Maneater" fame, implying that the singers were not virgins.

While he writes tenderly about family and friends, particularly his three sisters, the musicians he's never met are credited with as prominent a role in raising him. He is indebted to A Flock of Seagulls, at his first rock concert, for giving him "the sensation of dissolving into a crowd" and blames the Smiths' Morrissey for providing him "with excellent reasons to keep hiding in my room where I belonged." But, as the title suggests, Duran Duran were Sheffield's spiritual guides throughout the decade, mostly because females adored them. "I loved how fiercely girls loved DD, and how fearless DD were in the face of so much girl worship," he muses. "I was pretty sure I had a lot to learn from these guys." As the '80s came to a close, the Fab Five were teasing Sheffield with "All She Wants Is," a song that, sadly, didn't reveal the secrets promised in its title.

--Barbara Spindel