Background
To cap off the band's highly successful 1983/1984 "Sing Blue Silver" World Tour, EMI released a live album, which according to the sleeve was "Recorded Around The World 1984".
The album featured most of the band's big hits in a live environment, as well as some album tracks from Rio (1982) and Seven and the Ragged Tiger (1983), and a new studio track "The Wild Boys", which was produced by Nile Rodgers, who had previously remixed the single "The Reflex", and had been a member of the disco/funk group Chic.
"The Wild Boys" single was issued with six separate covers - one featuring each individual band member and one of the band collectively.
At the time of release, critics were suspicious that the mix was too polished for a live album, as most of the audience was muted. Other criticism arose from the omission of some of the band's biggest songs like "The Reflex", "Girls On Film" and "Rio". However, Arena still managed to peak at #6 in the UK (24 November) and #4 in the US (1 December).
The album was eventually re-issued 1 June 2004 and included two bonus tracks "Girls On Film" and "Rio". It had also been reissued in 1999 in the EU as a budget release by Dutch EMI affiliate Disky.
Arena would be the only full-length live Duran Duran release until the 2003 Encore Series of official bootleg recordings from shows in Japan and the West Coast of the USA.
Read more about this topic: Arena (Duran Duran album)
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