15 Dandy Minutes Of Fame
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The Oregonian
by Curt Schulz
July 18, 1997
Portland’s Dandy Warhols’ major-label debut has the music world rockin’ and talkin’
It’s make-or-break time for the Dandy Warhols.
Two years after signing with Capitol Records, the Portland pop act is about to release the album that decides whether the band’s members become truly big-league, world-traveling, hotel-room trashing rock stars or more also-rans with well-stamped passports, good guitar collections and a taste for expensive eye make-up. It’s their major-label debut – “The Dandy Warhols Come Down.”
The motor of the Capitol rock machine is firing with the muted roar of a Plymouth Fury on high-test octane. Tonight’s splash at La Luna is the first show on a national tour to support the album. Thousands of units are being shipped to music stores across the country, a video for the CD’s single “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth” is on MTV, and the band members are speaking in the bored tones of interview subjects on the tail end of a press juggernaut.
Having already been asked everything about he band and the album during the past month (frequently asked questions include “Why do you guys sound English?” “Are you drug fiends?” “Does Zia take her shirt off every time you play?” “What happened the first try at making the album?”), the only thing left is to cut to the chase and just ask: Is “Come Down” any good?
“I can’t tell,” Dandys frontman Courtney Taylor says on the phone from Los Angeles, where he’s been laying low in anticipation of the tour. “I’ve been so immersed in it that I don’t have any perspective. At this point I can’t tell why anyone likes any music at all. God knows I don’t, except that it’s fun to play. All I can say is that we made the record, and it’s there if people need it.”
Spoken humbly like the rock star Taylor has finally become.
On the surface, the Dandy Warhols’ approach is straightforward – massive washes of guitar, a solid backbeat, catchy tunes and a gamin waif of a keyboardist who would occasionally go topless onstage. But their willingness to be different on the Portland rock scene definitely got them noticed. When every band in town was impassioned, angry and playing like each note was a matter of life or death, the Dandys were cool, disaffected and played like they couldn’t care less what people thought. When it was hip to appear sincere, the Dandys were fabulously phony, slinging attitude around like Pollyanna spread sunshine.
Their first album, “Dandy’s Rule O.K.” (released on Portland’s Tim/Kerr Records in 1995), was a self-indulgent monster of applied pop theory that came over like the band had been feeding on nothing but takeout from the psychedelicatessen.
After the aggressive marketing campaign organized by Tim/Kerr head Thor Lindsay, characterized by the band flirting with any music industry executive willing to spring for drinks, dinner or plane tickets to New York or L.A., the Dandys settled on Capitol.
Then they imploded.
By all accounts the band’s first attempt to make the record – the Dandys call it “The Black Album” – wasn’t the chartbuster the Dandys hoped for.
“We decided to go into the studio, take a lot of drugs and experiment with sounds,” Taylor says.
Guitarist Peter Holmstrom recalls, “The songs weren’t finished, they were just ideas. We thought we could just see what developed as we went along, but we really weren’t at that point as a band.”
So, for the first Capitol record, it was Take 2. The band decided to write some songs before recording them and hired Portland record producer Tony Lash to guide them through making what became “The Dandy Warhols Come Down.”
While keeping a low profile around town, playing infrequent gigs and picking up part-time jobs – drummer Eric Hedford spins records in Portland clubs under the tab “DJ Aquaman,” and keyboardist Zia McCabe is a cigarette girl at La Luna – the band recorded and mixed the CD and made the video for the “Last Junkie On Earth” single.
With the CD and video done, the tour arranged and the interviews finished, all the crucial steps in the Dandy Warhols’ quest for world domination are in place. Now it just remains to be seen if the CD-buying public will take the band to Heart.
“It’s a home-run situation,” Hedford says. “Either we score or we strike out.”
A Few Words From Dandy Courtney Taylor
The Dandy Warhols’ Courtney Taylor has been called many things, but inhibited isn’t one of them. Mindful that being outrageous isn’t just his rock-star privilege, it’s his duty, here are a few glimpses into the mind of Portland’s king of pop music:
On Rock Fame:
“It ends up being a job, but it’s a good excuse to meet incredible people and have amazing experiences. It feels like the world is wide open for me, and I can say ‘I lived’ more than most people I’ve met.”
On Drugs:
“I’ve been more sane lately, but it’s like I’m a guinea pig. People can live vicariously through me and watch me look like I’m 40 by the time I reach 30.”
On The Money That Comes With Rock Fame:
‘I don’t know how to live rich, I only know how to live like a Bohemian scumbag. I might buy a big house, fill it with music and video gear and my beautiful friends and see what happens.”
On Satan:
“That guy? Wasn’t I supposed to sign some deal with that guy? I’d do it.”
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