I practiced writing "Mrs. Nick Rhodes" over and over

For the life of me, I cannot remember my very first Duran Duran experience before my fragile, hopeful, awkward, adolescent mind became infatuated and infested with worship for them. The Rio album came out when I was in eighth grade, and it was my very first cassette, included as a present with my very first Walkman.

The passion must have sneaked up on me. By the time I was a 14-year-old freshman in high school, I was an off-the-rails, obsessed Durannie. I never left the house with fewer than 30 Duran Duran buttons pinned to my outfit. I spent all my babysitting money on Tiger Beat magazine and all its clones, clipping the 8x10 photos and plastering them on my wall. Bought every Duran Duran poster Spencer Gifts had in stock; but my very most prized possession was a poster of just my beloved Nick Rhodes I'd ordered from England out of the back of Rolling Stone. He had red hair and was wearing a headband and a black and white striped shirt under a blue (or was it black?) blazer. His was the first face I saw in the morning and the last I saw before drifting off to sleep with the radio on.

Oh, how I dreamed of Nick Rhodes. I had never been kissed and knew -- was certain! -- that my first kiss would be with him just before he swept me away from Shallotte to England to marry me and live in a castle. I'd stare at his pictures and try to emulate his makeup. I'd practice my Brummie accent based on the clips of him speaking I'd tape-recorded off the television when I'd stay up all night long watching Friday Night Videos waiting for a glimpse of them (we didn't have the fledgling MTV on our cable network then). I bought their VHS collection of videos and begged my friend to let me watch them at her house, as her family had one of the few VCRs in the neighborhood back then.

It was in Mrs. Zelphia Grissett's Civics class in January of that year that Robert Bellamy told me Duran Duran was coming to North Carolina to play the Greensboro Coliseum. "Get off the floor," Mrs. Grissett told me, trying to regain control of her classroom after my shrieking outburst. "I have to go use the phone, Mrs. Grissett, it's an emergency!," I pleaded. "Sit down, Leigh Ann," she replied. I spent that class period furiously writing a note to my best friend, just like I did every class period then, but this note was really important!

During my lunch period, I called my daddy at work from the school's one pay phone (after waiting for the mean redneck girls to finish their conversations to their dropout, unemployed boyfriends) to tell him he HAD to take me to Greensboro to see Duran Duran. Otherwise, I'd just up and die. "Pleasedaddypleasedaddypleasedaddy!," I begged.

I have no idea how tickets were procured back in 1984, before Ticketmaster or the magic of the Interweb, but my darling Daddy acquired three for Duran Duran's Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour on March 30, at the whopping cost of $17.50 each. I was allowed to invite a friend, but as Greensboro was four hours away and the show was on a school night, none of my friends' parents would let them go. So my 11-year-old sister Jill was my date.

Those two months leading up to the show were by far the longest of my life. I could think of nothing other than how Nick Rhodes would spot me in the crowd and our destiny would be fulfilled.

"Nobody speak to me," I announced as Daddy, Jill and I set off on the drive to Greensboro after leaving school early that day. "I have to concentrate." I relinquished my God-given, birthright position in the front seat of the Pontiac 6000 and hunkered down in the back seat with my Walkman and my three Duran Duran tapes. Though we had an hour to kill when we got to Greensboro and Daddy and Jill were hungry, I was too wound up to eat and protested the stop at Burger King across from the coliseum and whined throughout their meal.

We got to the coliseum and I, being just a small town girl living in my lonely world with only Nick Rhodes to give me hope, was completely overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place and the crowd. We made a beeline to the first merch booth, where I dropped several months' worth of babysitting money on tee-shirts, posters and a tour brochure. Jill spent the money Daddy gave her (she was too young to earn her own money) on a Duran Duran headband.

Our seats were up in the highest tier. My daddy, my dear Southern, good ol' boy daddy, sat in his seat, arms laden with Duran Duran merchandise in the middle of our row as Jill looked around in awe of the place and I experienced my very first panic attack.

When the house lights went down, I'm not sure how we did it, but I remember grabbing Jill's hand and jumping over several rows of people in front of us with her trailing like a kite in the air behind me as we made our way down as far as we could go before settling at the railing. As they took the stage, I began crying my heart out. I kept my eyes trained on Nick Rhodes, my beloved, and though I was way up in the nosebleed section on the opposite side of him, he looked me directly in the eye and affirmed my love, promising me we'd be together forever...

I cried all the way home. I cried the entire next day at school, even though I was sporting my tour tee shirt and Jill's headband along with my usual 30 buttons. I really cried, though, the following summer when I heard on the radio that Nick Rhodes was getting married. So I ran away. I got on my bicycle and rode half a mile away to the grocery store and sat crying on a mechanical horse before my mother came to take me home.

My broken heart was mended by my next English pretend-boyfriend, a fellow named Robert Smith.

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On my first day at Elon College, in August 1987, I met a girl named Kathy. We went on to be roommates throughout school and friends for life. We were living together in a flat in London in the fall of 1988 and kept Radio One on at full blast at all times. Duran Duran were making one of their many comebacks at that time, and "All She Wants" came on at least once an hour. We were both former Durannies (Nick liked me more, Kathy!), and we'd make up our own lyrics, cracking ourselves up: "All she wants is (men!), all she wants is (beer!), all she wants is (cash!)."

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Flash forward to 1998. I made my friend David go with me when Duran Duran played at the 14,000-capacity amphitheater here in Raleigh. I say "Duran Duran," but only Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes were still in the band. "Oh my gah, David, I loved them when I was a kid. This will be a hoot!"

So we went. We were enjoying adult beverages outside the pavilion when some random girl started talking to me about having been the biggest Duran Duran fan ever, though she'd never seen them live. "Ha," I replied, "I saw them in '84," passively-agressively letting her know that she needed to step off, as I was obviously the bigger fan. Our conversation started to heat up and, though she was much bigger than me, I wasn't about to back down. David dragged me off to our seats.

"This will be really funny," I told David as we waited for the show to start. And when they came out, I squealed so hard my head almost fell off, even though Simon was looking pudgy and Nick was wearing an ill-advised tee shirt/shorts combo on his skinny, English frame.

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Another decade went by before I knew what had happened. Duran Duran reformed with all the original members and recorded an album, then Andy Taylor dropped out and they recorded "Red Carpet Massacre" and went out on the road.

"What the hell," I thought as I rounded up a group of friends to go see them at the little 4,000-capacity amphitheater in the suburbs. After we bought the tickets, I made a point to listen to the new album so I'd know the words at the show. My God. I couldn't get through it (sorry Anna). The beats are fabulous (with the aid of Timbaland), but the lyrics are just simply insipid, and that opinion is coming from someone who would have defended the integrity of "Shake up the picture, the lizard mixture with a dance on the even tide," to the death 24 years ago.

I called home three days before the show and my daddy picked up the phone. "Glad I caught you," I told him, "Duran Duran is Wednesday at 8 and we're planning to leave here at 7." "I'll try to be there around 6," he replied without missing a beat. "Awesome," I said, "I've been saving my babysitting money and need you to hold my stuff." I was relieved that he didn't bring up the fact that I'd stated, 24 years ago, that Duran Duran would be bigger than the Beatles.

Wednesday came and Robby, my standing show date, came to pick me up at the appointed time (Steve is not a fan, he's probably still hating on the fact that when we were 14, all the girls loved the poncy boys in pop bands). We drove out to the suburbs and looked for a place to park. Robby found a spot and rejoiced that it was in the shade. "Yes," I said, "that will be really helpful when we come out of here at 11. Bahahahahahaha." "You're going to blog that, aren't you?," he asked. Certainly not!

We met up with Kathy and her husband, Bob, and made our way to our expensive, pre-order seats. I went to find the smoking section as the kids soldiered through the opening band. During the break, as we were sitting in the outer part of the V shape of amphitheater seating, I looked out behind the stage and saw Nick Rhodes. Then I saw John Taylor.

Kathy and I ran around the barricade to the back entrance to the stage where the band were signing autographs and posing for pictures with people who'd won some radio contest. As we elbowed through the throngs, I couldn't help wondering who all these old people were. Kathy said of Nick Rhodes, our boyfriend, "He's so little!" "OMG, Kathy," I said, after seeing his outfit and haircut, "He looks like me!"

When they finally took the stage, it was still broad daylight, exposing the faces of the middle-aged women and gay men who were once Duran Duran's nubile fan base. They played three songs off the new album and I just rolled my eyes, feeling sorry for these once-kings of the industry. Then they busted out "Planet Earth" and I started feeling it. When I heard the first few notes of "Save a Prayer," I squealed so hard I peed a little.

During "All She Wants," Kathy and I reverted back to our college-aged selves, singing: "All she wants is (earplugs)!," "All she wants is (to sit!)," "All she wants is (bacon!)" But then they segued from "All She Wants" into a perfect cover of The Normal's cold, electronic "Warm Leatherette." And I was dumbstruck.

They closed, of course, with "Rio," and Robby and I made our way back to the once-shaded car. We talked about the fact that we'd relived both our first concert experiences from 1984 (his was Van Halen) in three weeks and we couldn't possibly top that next summer. "We'll have to do Broadway," he said. "Better yet, let's do Branson!" I suggested. So we'll see Yakov Smirnov and Paul Anka and buy tee shirts with our babysitting money.