Pop Smart: Inside The Dandy Warhols' Factory

Spin Magazine
by - Suzan Colon
October 1997

Band: The Dandy warhols

Personnel: Courtney Taylor (guitar), Peter Holmstrom (guitar), Zia McCabe (keyboards/bass), and Eric Hedford (drums).

From: Portland, Oregon

Why we care: Their new album, ...The Dandy Warhols Come Down, is a joyously rocking update of the '70s British bell-bottom sound. Think T. Rex 2000.

Origins: "We sat in the laundry room of my building and learned how to play together," says Taylor, the hunky singer guy. "I'd never played guitar standing up before. It's hard."

Visuals: "Our video for 'Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth'? Oy, I thought we should have been further in the background, like part of the scenery. People who only see our video will get the wrong idea about us."

The right idea, in eight to ten words: "Okay: My eternal obsessive struggle with my own depression."

Availability: "I'm always looking for love. What I get is four or five... friends who are sexy enough to fool around with, but it's not like the lock-and-load. That's great when you find it, but that's usually when I get insecure and fuck it up."

Great expectations: "Touring, deciding on videos and all that shit...God, it's grueling, and it's so different than what we thought growing up. Look at all those pictures of Kiss and Aerosmith. What ever happened to 'We're an American band, we're coming to your town, we'll help you party it down'?"

Obligatory Nietzsche reference: "Nietzsche said that happiness is when your control over your reality is waxing, and depression is when you feel that it's waning. That's why people in unhealthy relationships yell at each other - it's a quick fix for happiness, like a sugar rush. It's like a dysfunctional doughnut. I can't eat doughnuts and all that shit, though."

On becoming the next Evan Dando: "Even Dando?!? Why would anyone ask me if I was the next fucking Evan Dando? I want to be the next what's-his-name fromxxn of Ulysses! He was a Sassy boy a few years back, and he's cool. I want to be the next him."