Druid's Dream Is So Passe

Melody Maker
by Mark Roland
June 27, 1998

It seemed simple: offer The Dandy Warhols some legal highs and get their verdicts. En route we discover the best ways to harass dealers...

PSSST! Wanna buy some Extra Strength Super Skunk? A bag of Wizard Blend weed? How about a vial of Love Druid's Dream? If you're going to any festivals this summer, chances are you'll be bumping into these products at any number of hippy stalls. They're legal highs, but are they any good? In this crazy old world we call rock'n'roll, there's one band who might have an opinion about them, the famously boxed-off Dandy Warhols.
Dandy Warhol guitarist Pete Holmstrom is largely unimpressed by the collection of evil hallucinogens we produce.
"If you're going do drugs out of sparkly test tubes," he says, eyeing the sparkly test tubes full of Love Doves and Submarines we're offering him, "you'd better do, like, four test tubes. Everybody knows, if you're going to get drugs, you have to go to see some sleazy guy in the ghetto."
Which sounds dodgy enough, but buying them at festivals can be just as risky, not least because they're as likely to be paracetamol as the real deal. Hey kids, just say no!
"If you're ripped off at a festival, you can do something about it," says singer Courtney Taylor. Um, like what? "Like you can run around and find those guys and threaten their lives and beat the money back out of them! They usually go: 'OK,'" he says, feigning the nervous voice of the scamster drug deal. "'Let me just go find my friend.' And you say, 'Sure, but we're coming with you!' So you and all your friends start dragging some punk-ass Ecstacy dealer around by the scruff of his neck looking for his 'friend', and there's eight pissed-off white kids standing around this guy going: 'You ripped us off for 60 bucks, man,' poking him in the chest. So he says: 'Oh, oh, oh, I'm tripping my balls off right now! Here, I'll give you some more for half price!' And you go: 'No! You give us them for free!'"

It's a vivid picture painted by a man who's obviously been involved in this very scenario. It's an easy object lesson, Courtney.
"Yep, get pissed off and get all your friends to go and kick some ass. Raise some hell, totally. Big festivals are dangerous, kids."
Pete: "Bring your baseball bats and your big boots."
"Don't go to festivals unarmed, kids!" recommends Courtney (yeah, and when you get strip-searched by security, just tell 'em that The Dandy Warhols sent you - Ed).
Are festivals better with drugs, or worse?
"Depends on how good the drugs are," says Courtney.
If they're good?
"Then everything's better. Festivals are just... terrible. I went to that Tibetan festival last year. I stayed in the backstage area and smoked pot all day - I got so sunburned. That was the best festival I ever went to. I would get up and go for a walk sometimes, and I would get about 20 feet outside the little cordoned-off area and hear this huge noise, and the crowd was getting more dense, and people were walking around me and I'm like: 'I just don't have the energy for this nightmare! Hot, dusty, dirty, f***ing smelly people everywhere grabbing you, then you twist your ankle in the ruts in the road... F*** that! I'm going to go back and lay in the grass!'"
That was your best festival experience?
"Yeah! That was a really good one."
And the worst?
"Lollapalooza. We were smoking hash and opium, it was raining and muddy - just a godawful nightmare. I was really feeling like I was going to lose it and I kept sinking into the mud. We finally got into this tent it I was all gooed out, and my friend Billy said: 'What would aliens think I they came down and this was the first place they landed?' And I was like: 'Of course they'd understand - communication is contingent upon proximity. If you could communicate equally well over any distance, you'd go crazy with all the input. But, if they build the ship to get here, they'd have to communicate and collaborate to create that ship...'"
Like I said: just say no, kids.
Since the band are about to record a session for MTV, they admirably resist our legal temptations, but decide it'd be a lot more fun if their new press officer gets to play guinea-pig for the day. Courtney sets about piling the capsules down his throat with the efficiency of a scientist testing nail-varnish on a bunny's eyes. It's very, very cruel.
"We need white coats!" enthuses Peter.
"What do we do now? Sit and wait for an hour?" asks Courtney, seconds before being whisked away to play for the cameras. It looks like the jury's out on this one, but let's just say The Dandy Warhols seem to disapprove of the whole festival/drug interface.
Especially if it's legal.