For Simons 50th birthday, the other band members John, Nick and Roger gave him an unusual present. Inside the giant silver DJ box were 50 albums, one released in each of the years since Simons birth. The three of them argued long and hard about which choice was appropriate for each year, and of course, many years had several great albums known to be favorites of Simons, which made the task even harder. Over a period of several months they gathered the collection from far and wide, and although most were found in the US and the UK, the Cocteau Twins Blue Bell Knoll and Kraftwerks Man Machine were found by Nick and John on a shopping spree in Rimini, Italy!
When the gift was finally presented to Simon, he was actually visibly taken aback. The choices ranged from Elvis to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, from David Bowie to Dr. Dre , but admittedly there is one Duran Duran album - they included Rio for the year 1982.