Save a Prayer is the sixth single by the English new wave band Duran Duran, released on August 9, 1982. The song was the third single taken from their second album Rio (1982). It became Duran Duran‘s biggest hit (at the time) on the UK Singles Chart, reaching number two. As of October 2021 Save a Prayer is the sixth most streamed Duran Duran song in the UK.
Save a Prayer was not originally issued as a single in the United States, although the music video was very popular on MTV. An edited concert single version from “Arena” was finally released in the U.S. in January 1985 and reached number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The song began with Andy Taylor and Nick Rhodes picking out chords together, and was then built around the sequencer track. Simon Le Bon wrote the lyrics to the song while the band was on tour. The lyrics are about a chance meeting between two people that turns into a one-night stand. Le Bon has described the lyrics as “realistic, and not romantic”. According to Le Bon, the chorus of the song was based on Gordon Lightfoot‘s folk song If You Could Read My Mind.
The verses of the song are in D minor, while the chorus is in B minor. It opens with an arpeggiated delay-treated synthesizer riff (created on a Roland SH-2), which plays in the background throughout the song.
Tracklist:
A Side
- Save a Prayer
B Side
- Hold Back the Rain (Remix)
The video was filmed by director Russell Mulcahy among the jungles, beaches, and temples of Sri Lanka in April 1982. Scenes were filmed atop the ancient rock fortress of Sigiriya, among the ruins of a Buddhist temple at Polonnaruwa and the island’s southern coastline, with Simon Le Bon appearing in Speedos.
The shoot was a difficult but memorable experience for the band. Simon Le Bon and Roger and John Taylor went ahead to the location while Andy Taylor and Nick Rhodes were in London finishing mixes for the Rio album and B-sides. They had almost no time after that was done to change clothes before catching their flight, and Rhodes wore the same leather jacket and trousers he had been wearing against the London chill.
When they arrived in Colombo, it was very warm, and Rhodes was uncomfortable in his clothing. Taylor reassured him they would be in their hotel soon and could relax. The driver who met them in a flatbed lorry informed them it would be several hours’ driving time to Kandy in the centre of the country, where the band were lodged. Along the way they were struck by the poverty they witnessed.
During the filming of the scene where the band members were riding elephants, a female elephant made a strange sound. One of the crew had recorded it, and found it funny enough to play back. It turned out to be the elephant’s mating call, which led the elephant carrying Roger Taylor to charge downhill and attempt to mount the female. “It was funny as hell, but quite hairy for a moment,” says Rhodes.
While perched on a branch over a lagoon and miming playing his guitar, an intoxicated Andy Taylor fell into the water. He accidentally swallowed some, and had to be hospitalised during the band’s subsequent Australian tour due to a tropical virus he contracted at that time. The band members all initially refused to do the scene where an elephant sprays water from its trunk onto one of them due to its homoerotic overtones; they finally settled on John Taylor since he was the band’s pin-up boy. He would be teased about it for years afterwards. “I didn’t care,” he wrote in 2012. “I loved it. It is one of my most treasured memories.”
Andy Taylor recalls in his memoirs that the shooting at the temple was very tense, since the country was on the verge of civil war and the temple’s monks were impatiently waiting for their leader to arrive and address a large political gathering. The band members wore bare feet in deference to the temple’s religious importance, frequently scorching themselves on the bare rock they were standing on. During some takes, the band members yelled “Fuck you, Russell!” instead of mouthing the lyrics. For one scene, Le Bon and Rhodes were dropped off from a helicopter that could not itself land on the monument.
A live version of the song was released in 1985. On the live version Simon Le Bon dedicates the song to Marvin Gaye, who had been fatally shot the day before the concert was recorded in April 1984. The video was taken from Duran Duran’s Oakland, California concerts that were filmed for the Arena (An Absurd Notion) video.
Duran Duran
Simon Le Bon: lead vocals, acoustic guitar (live)
Nick Rhodes: keyboards, synthesizers
John Taylor: bass guitar, backing vocals
Roger Taylor: drums
Andy Taylor: guitar, backing vocals
Also credited
Colin Thurston: producer and engineer
