Duran Duran opened its latest world tour at Auckland’s Vector Arena last night, and according to reports, things didn’t go all that well. Not only did Simon LeBon forget the words to “Hungry Like The Wolf,” the mid-show “electro set” where the band reportedly wore matching jumpsuits, Kraftwerk-style, was so plagued with technical difficulties that at one point the band was “standing in front of their synthesizers like confused cashiers in a supermarket,” according to Stuff; photos of the band’s outfits haven’t cropped up anywhere online, although John Taylor looks a bit Edward Scissorhandsy here. Taylor also reportedly walked offstage as a protest against the set, saying, “I could not dance to that. These people came here to dance.” A theory that would be borne out by the way the audience–which every writeup noted was mostly made up of 30something women, all of whom had probably referred to themselves as “Durannies” at one point in their life–forgot the words to one of the band’s biggest MTV-era hits en masse!

Apparently the crowd forgot the words to “Save a Prayer,” which Simon LeBon and the boys decided to present as a singalong opportunity to the crowd. How it managed to forget the relatively straightforward lyrics to that big ballad I’ll never know, but hey, at least Duran Duran didn’t try to get its fans to babble along about Renoirs and TV sets during a big old singalong of “The Reflex.”

Gig review: Duran Duran in Auckland
Duran Duran at Vector Arena [New Zealand Herald via Reuters]
[Photo: Getty]