Rock Sound Interview
Rock Sound
Courtney Taylor of The Dandy Warhols
By Darren Taylor
May 2001

With a new single due soon and an album in June, who beter to ‘Get Off’ The Record with than Courtney Taylor, from Portland’s very own Dandy Warhols.

What was the last thing you bought at a drugstore and how did you use it?
Oh, I’ve just been on anti-biotics so I bought some Sefalexon and a Cadbury’s Cream Egg. I use the Sefalexon three times a day, if I remember, to try and kill this ear infection and I ate the egg before I could even pay for it and the woman got mad. There’s no one else in the store so she got pissed at me ‘cos she had to go all the way to aisle 1 to get another one.

What makes you cry?
Loss coupled with regret. I’m very familiar with it. I write a lot of songs from that headspace. What I actually prefer is loss and regret coupled with an intellectual Zen understanding that that’s just what life is and it’s OK. Life is something to be lived everyday.

Who would be your ideal dinner guest?
Probably whatever girl I’m really, really into at the time. If you’re having dinner then you might as well have a candidate for best friend/sex on top of it. I understand the nature of your question and it’s more like John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, and lots of people I love.

What would you cook for them?
I found the best thing. Salmon on a bed of broccoli and then just covered in apple, cranberries, cinnamon, nutmeg, orange peel chutney. That goes in the oven in a deep dish with a glass top and at the same time you put in butternut squash filled with a little sausage in the middle, raisins, brown sugar and butter. It’s the best thing I’ve ever made and it was like holy shit!!

Do you own slippers and a dressing gown?
No, I have silk pyjama’s which I wore aa reading, foolishly. We woke up at three in the afternoon and we were like ‘Hey let’s wear our pyjama’s onstage.”

How many times a day do you look in the mirror?
Jesus Christ! The best days are the ones where you get up and do your thing and just before you leave you get your look together in the mirror.

Who would you make a saint?
Jerry Garcia! I don’t even have to, a lot of people already did. The kid in the Woodstock movie I saw the other day. I would make everybody in the band a saint. There’s a lot of people who were beautiful. Kurt Cobain was beautiful, George Harrison should be sainted.

Do you believe in God?
You mean the Christian God or the Buddhist God or the Greek Gods? No I guess not, I don’t believe it looks like a man with a beard or anything. I don’t believe in a higher consciousness that is very human like. It may or may not exist but we’re too dumb to know so therefore why think about it and certainly why kill each other over it.

What’s the most unusual place you’ve had sex?
I don’t really have sex in unusual places ‘cos I kinda just love sex and the whole bonding thing so much that I like it to take a long time and I don’t have fear of interruption. If I had to name a place it would probably be in a darkroom when I was at college.

What was the last lie you told?
I’m pretty much shameless and OK with everything I do but I did tell the guy in Video at our label to lie to whoever, the head of A&R, the president, the GM, to get this thing going. I don’t really set myself up for reasons in my life to lie. I try to keep all my business and emotional affairs the same way.

What was your biggest fashion disaster?
Wearing pyjamas at Reading. I just rolled out of bed, I didn’t realize I was going to look fuckin’ like MC hammer.

What was the last record you bought?
The Brian Jonestown Massacre’s ‘Strung Out In Heaven’. It’s very intimidating to me, Anton, he and I have been such close friends for so very, very long. That record is so deep and beautiful.

Who would you like to play you in a film of your life?
There was this model from Portland who’s really successful, he was in a band here, his name’s Shine Adams. He’s so brilliant and heavy, he’s a little obsessed on the heavy, I don’t know if he could laugh as readily as I like to laugh. He gotta a lotta shit for being a Courtney clone.

What’s your most unpleasant habit?
Doing all the fucking talking! Making realisations about life when I’m talking to somebody and then making more and more so that I can’t shut up. I’ve become obsessed with it. (20 minutes later…)

What was the worst job you had before you were famous?
I was a mechanic for a shop that pretty much specialized in antique German cars. Mercedes, BMW’s and Volkswagens cos there’s a lot of hippies in Portland and Oregon. I’ve never owned any car that wasn’t a Volkswagen van. I also worked at the door of a club that was kinda an old man, pot bellied guys, blues club. I didn’t want to work the door of a club where people I knew would see me.

What was the last thing you looked at on the internet?
I looked up the website of a long lost sweetheart. It didn’t end well, she doesn’t call me back and she doesn’t know how much I think about her. I found it and it was not impressive.

Would you quit the band if you won the lottery?
Are you kidding? I’d fucking’ even bank roll the band more then I already do. I did win the lottery, what are you talking about. I get to tour Europe with my 12 best friends in a tour bus, Jesus Christ, people pay for booze, hotels and lunch. I did win the fucking lottery!