The Very Dandy Warhols

Venice Magazine
by Stephanie Counts
September 1997


Capitol Records… the scene… only the coolest of the cool allowed in. Three trendy guys in late night rocker attire step out of the elevator followed by a girl on roller-skates. They are the Dandy Warhols – Courtney Taylor (vocals, guitar), Peter Holmstrom (guitar), Zia McCabe (bass, keyboards), and Eric Hedford (drums). Ushered by their publicist into a conference room – replete with an assortment of sandwiches – it’s the big time for the Dandy Warhols.
After their slam dunk debut CD, Dandy’s Rule OK (Tim/Kerr, 1995), the Warhols have returned to stick it with their second album, appropriately titled The Dandy Warhols Come Down. Their catchy retro hit, “Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth,” has placed the Warhols in the hot seat. The video for “Last Junkie” pokes fun at the ‘80s appetite for excess. In it the band plays amidst a puking clown, dancing heroin needles, and a crazy Donnie and Marie kaleidoscope-styled choreography with nurses and rolling beds.
“Last Junkie’s” poppy beats covered with drooling vocals might even fool listeners into thinking these guys are from England. Actually, they’re form Portland. “We all came from no band,” Taylor reveals. “Eric was DJ-ing, Zia came from a coffee shop, I came from being a bouncer, and Peter was trying to be a painter.”
Hard work paid off for the Dandy Warhols even in the beginning. Side-stepping the Portland norm, they created their own distinctly soothing direct sound. “There are two scenes in Portland,” Taylor declares, “tweaked-out galaxy space rockers and Fugazi/Nirvana lovin’, acid dropping grungers.” Not fitting into either of these categories has been The Dandy Warhols’ blessing.
Accepted to North By Northwest (the industry’s big scout for new bands), the band managed to get signed six months before the showcase. “We had to decide between some really great labels…uh, um,” Taylor says sarcastically, “but hey, they were still paying for our food, our flights, movies, and shit like that. So we couldn’t stop.”
“Actually when we first started, we had nothing,” admits Hedford. “We didn’t know where we’d be staying. We’d be like, ‘Hey, man I know you like Courtney here, but if one of you has a floor we can crash on, that’d be great’ We spent the whole tour like that.”
The floor days are long gone but the band will still be out on tour for the next couple months. At the end of this tour, there is a big consideration at hand. “My biggest concert now is how the fuck are we going to shoot a video ‘cause we’re on tour for two and a half months,” Taylor confesses. “We have to have a video single ready to go by the end of our tour.”
What’s the next song up to bat? “It’ll probably be ‘Boys,’” Taylor suggests and the band agrees. “We’ll probably be in New York because that will give us enough time to get it set up, to find the sound stage or club that will let us shoot it, maybe even get a little pyrotechnics going.”
From a basement band, to talking about using pyrotechnics, the Dandy Warhols have only one thing to say to those who feel they’ve sold out to a big label. In the words of McCabe, “Yea. We don’t have to wash dishes.”