Rolling stone's "Last Junkie" video article

Rolling Stone Magazine
by Jill Hamilton
September 4, 1997

Rising right and early at 1 p.m., Courtney Taylor, singer and guitarist for the Dandy Warhols, is almost ready to talk about the new video for “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth.”
“I just woke up, and I’m stoned, and my vocabulary is not even… handy right now,” he says.
The clip in question is what you might expect from a decadent outfit like the Warhols. “It was a big, tacky, pink, funsy, everybody-behaving-like-big-sillies party,” says Taylor. To go with the catchy refrain of “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passé,” the video is set up like a demented game show, complete with a frenetic host and a Vanna White type who displays the prizes of heroin life: a crashed car, a hearse and a pair of tombstones. There’s also a mime who spends the video retching into a water-spouting toilet.
Then there’s the troupe dressed in 1908s finery doing extra-crazed versions of ‘80s dance moves, “from when videos were new and breaking all kinds of ground,’ explains Taylor. “Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller,’ Pat benatar’s ‘Love Is A Battlefield.’ Very, very hot.”
But in art there must be pain. In a scene that was cut, an enthusiastic dancer did a backflip, catching a shin in the camera. After being bandaged, he made it back for the final scenes. Then there was that mime. “you know, he gave it his all,” says Taylor. “He retched so hard and so long that he totally threw up.”