Huge Drugs And Huger Sex

Select magazine
by Eddy Lawrence
June 1998

Damon Albarn, a Loaded cover model, some lesbian prostitutes, speed, valium, transsexual encounters and some more speed – who cares if The Dandy Warhols are any good or not?

Name: Brett Debore
What He Does: Drums. Probably drugs.
Behavioural Characteristics: Goggle-eyed, shocked, speechless. Gets well into ‘70s dino rock-dancing, singing, air-drumming and shit. A bit like a young Luke Skywalker.
Sleazy Fact: Would ‘do’ Justine Frischmann.

Name: Peter Holmstrom
What He Does: Bass. Drugs
Behavioural Charac teristics: Quietly spoken, not as forward as Zia or Courtney, but equally opinionated. Could be intellectual.
Sleazy Fact: Used to take “fistfuls” of drugs. “Whatever anyone put in front of me at any time.”

Name: Courtney Taylor
What He Does: Singer/Guitarist. Drugs.
Behavioural Characteristics: Louche, confident, witty, has a reputation for rubbing people (especially other bands) up the wrong way.
Sleazy Fact: Made out with a guy, according to Zia, “while getting his pole smoked”.

Name: Zia McCabe
What She Does: keyboards. Cocaine (mostly).
Behavioural Characteristics: Friendly, talkative and open. Enjoys blatant nudity and public urination.
Sleazy Fact: Has a digital picture of the singer from Spacehog’s penis, which she describes as “the biggest dick in the US”.

Some bands have a couple of halves of shandy and are in bed by midnight. Others stay on the shandies till four in the morning. And then there are those who utilize a mysterious source of energy to keep going right through till the following lunchtime.
Then again, there are those whoa re said to have attempted ordering drugs and prostitutes on record company expenses. Who, it’s rumoured, indulge in sex and rugs to such an extent it makes Hammer Of he Gods seem like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Whose members are apparently going out with Damon Albarn and cigar-chomping Loaded cover model Michelle Norkett. Who dismiss heroin as “passé” and are more likely to espouse the merits of crystal meth. Who we’d all, basically, like to be Bez for.
The Dandy Warhols are that band. They have never touched wood in their lives. Even breakfast in their native Portland, Oregon is fraught with possibility. Taking their first meal of the day at a typically slack 1pm, the band are entertained by both a subdued country hoe-down duo in one corner of the café, and a frankly befuddled singing hippy lady popping in and out of the toilet door by their table.
As Janis Joplin makes yet another foray into the restrooms, drummer Brett Debore silently rises and locks her in from the outside. Frontman Courtney Taylor chuckles with mild amusement.
When confronted by the litany of dark rumours that surrounds the band, Zia McCabe, their diminutive keyboard player, sends back a cool, even glance. “Those aren’t rumors,” she says.

The Dandy Warhols are a band whose reputation goes before them. Their first gig in London saw Zia perform the encore topless (she maintins this is the only gig she has not played completely starkers). They tried their best to lead Blur astray whilst supporting them in the States and Canada (the source of the Zia and Damon stories). Their UK record company talks about them in hushed, fearful tones – obviously more comfortable when the band are safely installed on the other side of the Atlantic.
They look exactly like the sort of friends your parents discouraged you from having. Not that there’s anything particularly outré about the feather cuts, black sweaters, leather pants or even guitarist Pete Holmstrom’s impenetrable eyeliner. It’s more their bearing – the unmistakable swagger of a group who’ve learnt everything bad that Sonic Youth, Pink Floyd, Spiritualized, The Stone Roses, Velvet underground and the whole of the ‘70s had to teach.
These influences also inform their post-psychedelic, heavily Britophile narco-rock. Their new LP, ‘The Dandy Warhols Come Down’ has so far spawned two memorably title singles, ‘Every Day Should Be A Holiday’ and ‘Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth’. They may not sound like Black Sabbath, but it’s clear that this lot have sold their all to the dark forces of rock’n’roll.
Only drummer Brett stands out as unsullied, having only been in the band a couple of weeks, replacing Eric Hedford who departed either because he “grew up” (Courtney) or “spontaneously combused” (Pete/Spinal Tap). Even though he’s Courtney’s cousin, Brett seems genuinely shocked as he listens to the rest of the band’s increasingly outrageous proclamations.
And, indeed, their conversation knows no taboos. “There have been some huge drugs and some huger sex,” Courtney confides within hearing of everyone in the diner. “And thank God! If you had to go to your grave without having experienced that kind of thing, you’d kick yourself.”
The band make no secret of their proclivities on their records either. Their first LP, ‘…Rule OK’, featured a nude picture of Zia on the insert. The new one boasts an equally candid snap of the keyboardess taking a leak. The chorus of single ‘Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth’ has a line that goes “Heroin is so passé”, and its accompanying video, directed by top-price US lensman David LaChapell, stars a troupe of dancing syringes.
The so-last-season nature of skag doesn’t prevent Courtney from liking it “as much as the next guy”, along with a diet of coke, pot, E, crystal meth and, basically, whatever else you’ve got. According to Pete, previous drummer Eric used to steal canine-strength valium from his dog.
“Our first trip to San Francisco,” Zia recalls, “we were like, ‘Boy, we gotta do some speed!’ I just could not come back off that stuff. Later on – liquid codeine, dog valium, some nighttime Benedril – and we still didn’t sleep. We just lay there like, ‘Wow! This sucks!’ Courtney didn’t leave his couch for two weeks.”
Courtney shudders, “I definitely had a couple of days afterwoods of… weeping uncontrollably.”
“That’s why sometimes I’m just so glad that TV exists,” continues Zia. “It mindlessly takes up the time. And Valium. Valium and TV! Imagine being sober and trying to come down off speed. Trying to go to sleep. Mission impossible.”
“Yeah,” Courtney says, “Charlie’s Angels saved my life.”

The Dandy Warhols attitude to sex is predictably as out-there promiscuous as their take on drugs. They’ll wax lyrical about the relative pleasures of drug orgies and sex orgies and, inevitably, the latter wins hands down. Courtney thinks prostitution is “a beautiful thing”. Zia, on the other hand, thinks it’s an organizational fiasco.
“When I was in London, I tried to hire this hot dude,” she sighs. “I mean it was a chick, but the legs above the knees weren’t touching – the total dude sex change. The legs are still used to having the stuff in between. That was a guy. Anyway, we saw this skanky ho’ but she was too expensive so I didn’t get her.
“Next thing, we were in Amsterdam and I really wanted to find a chick to eat my pussy, ‘cause I felt that I couldn’t get any diseases from that. But, like, I got my period the day before we got there. I couldn’t do that to any woman for any price. I was a complete mess. So I guess I’m a loser. I tried to hire a prostitute but I had to sleep by myself both times.”
Courtney had similarly had fortune in Holland, when he was tempted by “this total textbook Swede. Straight blonde hair, really thin, high cheekbones, full lips, perfect broad shoulders, perfect pale skin, fair – she was amazing. Scared me. Like ‘Ch… g…’”
“Why didn’t you, Courtney?” asks Pete.
“Michelle [Norkett, Courtney’s aforementioned model girlfriend] was back at the hotel. Ha ha ha! Y’know, ‘I’m gonna get a couple of falafels, I’ll be right back honey…’”
“You should have run and got her!”
“Hmm, I’m sure Michelle would’ve understood. ‘Honey, there’s a woman down there that really wants to eat your pussy. And needs to me jack off on her tits. No, she needs to - she told me. She’s hot for it.’ Ha ha!”
Yes, despite the triumphant impropriety The Dandy Warhols revel in, they are all firmly attached. Which sadly scortches the Zia/Damon Albarn rumours that have chased the band since their Canadian blur support slots.
“I’ve talked to him twice,” says Zia, before sardonically teasing, “it was obviously one of those love at firght sight things. Now me and Justine gotta hook up to complete the circle. And me and Steve Malkmus.”
“Justine’s hot,” pipes up Brett, snapping out of his interview-long shock to join in for the first time. “I’ll do her.”
“You can stay out of this,” Zia snaps. “This is my love triangle!” Despite the misfirings of the rumour mill, Bur didn’t entirely avoid the Warhols’ corrupting influence. Courtney slips into breathless reverie as he describes his attempts to get Graham laid in Montreal.
“I had these two girls – they got their hands up my shirt, like, ‘Ooh la la!’ like, ‘Uh… mmm’, but they’re not working each other at all so it’s like, ‘OK, this is too much work for me… Graham, come on! Look at these beautiful women, they’re so beautiful! They’re so yielding and lovely and soft and smooth and sexual!’ and he just says, ‘DON’T FUCKING DO THIS TO ME, MAN!’ And the drummer’s standing there and I’m like [sotto voce] ‘Which one?’ and he’s like ‘The youngest’.”
“Oh no.”
Courtney cracks a thumbs-up and a sly, evil almost-laugh. “Oh yeah!”

Home to such bohemian institutions as the radical feminist Evergreen university, Oregon has a young and active population, but Portland itself doesn’t have enough of a hometown scene to regulate social conduct. Pavement and Sleater-Kinney are both from Portland, however, and you’d be hard pressed to spot them drinking coffee after eight at night.
More than their hometown, the Dandys owe much to their forebears, both musical and familial. If it came to a court case, their defence would be, “Well, Iggy Pop did it.” Zia’s mother apparently takes “more drugs than the rest of us put together”, and has a boyfriend a year younger than Zia’s. They have little faith in the “puritanical, repressed” American society they operate in. But they’ll also tell you they love it: fast food, Charlie’s Angels re-runs, the whole works…
“Portland’s not a big town. It’s not a chic place,” says Courtney. “So you have to make your own fun – shaving each other’s pubes, running laughing and naked through supermarkets. ‘We’re out of cigarettes!’ So we’ll just run into a store and steal wine and cigarettes and whatever – stupid shit. That freedom means that we can have a great time in… Tulsa… anywhere.”
“We’re not particular about company,” continues Zia. “As long as they’re honest and get off on simple pleasures.”
Although tourmates such as oasis, Radiohead and Spiritualized may be conspicuously absent from the Warhols’ social calendar, they do count Debbie Echobelly among their friends.
“When we were over, she took me to this really weird dance club,” explains Zia. “I did some bad British coke, and my lips were stuck to my teeth. I was so high and so stressed because I was so thirsty and there were too many people at the bar to get a drink.” Luckily, the star-studded night was saved by the timely intervention of the guitarist from Daisy Chainsaw with a glass of water.
Indeed, the band’s sojourn in Europe was an eventful time. Zia fulfilled her ambition of going topless on a European beach. In Brighton. In February. “I was really excited,” she gushes. “I had my can of Hooch, ripped off my dress and went down to the beach. Over here, I would have been arrested.”
Courtney reckons this is nothing compared to the Supergrass party they attended after supporting the band in Hollywood.
“All the label heads are there, there are big deals going on, very hoity-toity power hitters… and Zia just walks in completely fucking naked with a martini and starts acting all socialite. Pretending like she’s ‘Oh hi! Oh my gosh! Mwah mwah!’ She just sashays through and… mingles. Completely.”
“That was the same night I had the live, internet buttfuck conversation,” recalls Zia. “My whole view on buttfucking was all over the internet.”

Although the Dandys obviously hold a special place in their hearts for the well-worn mantra of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll which has served their heroes so well, from Iggy and Lou Reed onwards, the most essential aspect of their fun is simple: someone else has to be paying. Other than Brett, none of the band has ever held down a job.
“At the end of the day,” reflects Courtney, “we all just wanna have a good time. And somebody else is financing us to just have a great fuckin’ time all the time. If that means getting up in the morning and cooking all day and going bowling, that’s a great day. Or, getting whacked out of your brain on three different kinds of drugs and going home with a pack of dykes who end up liking dick as much as the next guy…”
“The next guy?” laughs Zia, as Courtney gives up the thread for lost. It has, by now, been a long day and the band have to prepare to “entertain” a group of models who are driving down from Seattle to appear in the next video (for free). Surprisingly, the last, stunned, word goes to Brett: “Are you really gonna print all of that?”