Billboard article

Billboard Magazine
by Bradley Bambarger
August 23, 1997

A big believer in altered perception, Dandy Warhols front man Courtney Taylor is no tee-totaler. But he picks his poison and has his limits. “Heroin is a pain reliever, not a mind expander,” he avers, referencing the topic of his band’s single, “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth.”
The tune’s tale stems from Taylor’s experience with an ex-girlfriend who started using. “We’d dated for years, and it wigged me out seeing her like that,” he explains. “Then she started shooting speed, which really eats your brain. It was so devastating – this perfectly wonderful woman was just gone.
That doesn’t sound like the stuff of a trippy pop confection with the hook like ‘Heroin is so passé,” and Taylor agrees. “Often, I try to deal with my problems by writing songs about them, but this one I didn’t deal with at all. So, the song isn’t personal or deep in any way. In fact, it’s pretty immature. But, really, even writing the most deeply personal, poignant song about something isn’t the same as dealing with it, is it?”
No. 37 on Modern Rock Tracks, “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth” is from “The Dandy Warhols Come Down,” the band’s Capitol debut. The Dandy Warhols – Taylor on vocals and guitar with guitarist Peter Holmstrom, drummer Eric Hedford, and keyboardist Zia McCabe – hail from Portland, Ore., and put out a couple of disks on local indie Tim/Kerr Records before signing with Capitol (and having their own chemically induced meltdown, which contributed to an aborted attempt at the first album).
“Not If You Were The Last junkie On Earth” has a loopy Syd Barrett-via-the-Cars sort of appeal, but it’s use as the first single “had us biting our nails about being pegged as a novelty,” Taylor says. “There are 15 songs on the album: Three of them are cute little pop songs, and 12 aren’t.” The sexy Jesus & Mary Chain vibe of “Boys Better” and “Good Morning” is “more of what the band is about and what I feel like 9 days out of 10. The single is snotty and clever and fun, but it’s not entirely truth in advertising.”