Rocket Interview - July 9, 1997
The Rocket
My Dinner With The Dandy Warhols
By John Chandler

"You're paying for dinner, right?" The Dandy Warhols look up from the table at me expectantly.

Uh...

"If not, this is going to be a short interview."

Goddamn rock star twerps. That explosion you just heard was a torpedo slamming into my wallet. As a rock journalist I inhabit an economic strata normally reserved for boxcar hobos and circus pinheads. Head Dandy Courtney Taylor, sensing my financial distress, kindly asked for a pack of smokes and a friggin' hot fudge sundae to augment his already pricey chow order. Even as I was imagining a blind date between my steak knife and his jugular, giving the room a new, rosy look, my sense of professionalism took over, and gradually the steam coming out of my ears subsided to a barely noticeable whistle. Besides, I was outnumbered and I'd really have to go apeshit to take all four of them. "I really like your new album," I began lamely.

"I'd have thought you were an idiot if you didn't," Courtney countered, his gob full of foodstuffs.

Behold the Dandy Warhols in all their glory. Four smart-alecks whose only use for the interview process is to stock up on groceries.

"They can be a little, uh, high spirited," I was warned by one acquaintance. High-spirited, my ass. The bill comes to $88.

As a native Oregonian, I get used to looking at my feet when I walk, since there's hardly ever anything to look up at, like the sun or interesting cultural phenomena. The Dandy Warhols are like one of those pesky anomalies that the various Star Trek crews keep running into. Both in terms of their music and sense of public aesthetic, the Dandys are enough to make one not only look up, but rub the eyes in wonder and disbelief.

Every fiber of the Dandy Warhols screams out, "Look at me! Notice me! Look at the interesting things I'm doing!" This is quite a different story from the usual crop of Portland bands, past and present, who prefer blue collar anonymity and songs that reflect a bleak lifestyle that matches the gray surroundings. The Dandy Warhols will have none of it. They are a band born out of colorful rebellion.

"Of course we are. Didn't you read any of our early interviews?" Courtney asks me. "I went on and on about how Portland bands are full of skinny white boys trying to look tough and we wouldn't sleep with any of them!"

"We helped kill grunge," admits drummer Eric Hedford.

On the strength of their early riotous live shows (where nudity was, and still is, routinely encouraged) and Courtney's knack for sculpting dizzy, infectious pop songs - the "hey's" and "la's" of "Dandy Warhol's T.V. Theme Song" will be lodged in my cerebral cortex 'til the worms crawl through - the Dandy's were signed to Tim/Kerr records. Their sweet and crunchy debut, Dandys Rule, O.K. set the wheels in motion, as record label lackeys by the boatload set up camp at the Dandy's door. Let the wining and dining begin!

"It lasted between six and eight months," recalls Eric.

"Lot's of wining, lot's of dining," Courtney adds fondly.

"One guy, who shall remain nameless, took us out and said, 'I know you guys aren't really interested in signing with us. I just wanted to be there when you made it big!'" Eric continues.

"He wanted his boss to know that he'd tried to sign us," Courtney says. "So his boss came to see one of our shows, and we got cats from like King Black Acid and the Atoms onstage with sitars, bongos and all kinds of stuff. We just jammed out for like two hours. The guy goes 'I'm not sure what's going on here, but I feel a lot of charisma coming off that stage!'" All four Dandys get a chuckle over this one.

Eight months of being fawned over and told "I got the check," goes a long ways toward explaining the rather cavalier attitude with which the Dandys treat people who want some of their precious time. Even so, I for one can't stay upset at them any more than Donald Duck can stay mad at Huey, Dewey and Louie. They enjoy walking the fine line between narcissism and rock parody and part of their self-made myth is that they are born rock stars in a city where rock stars are creatures of momentary awe and continued contempt. Just ask Art Alexakis of Everclear.

"Everclear get way more shit than we do," guitarist Peter Holmstrom says confidently.

"That's because they try so hard not to get any," Courtney elaborates. "Do we get shit?"

"Oh yeah!" puts in effervescent keyboardist Zia McCabe. "Whenever we go to any kind of indie-rock show... people whisper,'What are they doing here?'"

After exhausting all the major label reps with their never-ending requests for more booty, the Dandys hooked up with Capitol Records (home of Everclear) in 1996, and set to work on their hotly-anticipated follow-up album. Unfortunately, Capitol was not enchanted with the results. One Portland music insider who heard the early tapes was floored. "It sounded like the Fall," he said. "I didn't know they were capable of being that weird."

"It was really heavy, really tough music," Courtney says of their aborted first try with Capitol. "Listening to it six months later, I was still surprised. There's some pretty cool shit on it. It's very dark. It's referred to as The Black Album. We'll pull it out one day.

"But we were so fucked up. We didn't know what was going on; we were sowhacked. We didn't spend as much on drugs as we did on studio time, but we sure tried."

"What famous album would you compare it to?" I ask.

"Meddle," Courtney answers, mopping his plate with the ten dollar bill I'd left as a tip. "Meddle by Pink Floyd. I wanted to record the album this way, because everyone was pressuring me to finish songs, and I finally went 'No, I'm not going to finish songs.' We're going to go into the studio and make music and fill up the CD, and whatever we come up with is going to be whatever goes. We did have some songs, but if I was going to put out the album, it would have maybe four or five songs, and the rest would be movements, washes and textures."

"We do what we want," Eric clarifies.

"I was sitting in an office with Gary Gersh (Capitol CEO) and Perry Watts-Russell (Vice-President of A&R)," Courtney remembers. "And Perry goes (cultured, English accent), 'There are no songs on this album.' And I'm like, 'What am I supposed to base this on? On all the hit songs you two have ever written? How many would that be? Like, none? I can sneeze and come up with five great pop songs!' And Perry says, 'Then I trust Capitol records can provide you with a tissue.'"

Fortunately, there have been no such high-powered confrontations with the finished product for the new Dandy Warhols album, Come Down, which by all indications should deliver the band some of that honest-to-goodness stardom that they crave. Even zestier and more pizzazz-laden than than their first record, Come Down plants a big wet tongue in the ear of the listener, jamming one wow-pop number after another into the auditory canal. "Boys Better" is probably thecatchiest thing Courtney's ever penned, and subsequent tunes like "Minnesoter" and "Every Day Should Be a Holiday" are close behind. Then of course, there's the first single, "Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth," which fires up the chorus, "I never thought you were a junkie/'cuz heroin is so passe."

"It should have been 'heroin addiction is so passe,' but it just didn't work right," explains Courtney. "Let's face it. When you see a special on MTV about heroin chic, you know it's all over. I like heroin."

Rather than pick up that football and run with it--like most things Courtney says, you can never tell if he's serious or just spouting shocking gibberish--we spend the rest of the interview discussing more serious topics.

"How come everyone wants to see the Dandys naked?" I ask the group. This came after the band nixed posing in the buff for the cover of The Rocket.

"We're beautiful," Zia says gleefully.

"Courtney's being profiled in some magazine as an up-and-coming rock hunk," Eric reveals.

"Who else do they consider a rock hunk?" I inquire.

"Beck!" Zia says.

"Beck is a dreamboat, not a hunk," Courtney corrects, as the waitress merrily cuts my credit card in half.