Interview With Zia - March 1, 2002

The Irish News
HAVE A GOOD TIME ALL THE TIME
By Tim Brannigan

Friday March 1, 2002

You can't fault US rock band the Dandy Warhols for honesty, but it may land them in trouble. When asked how the new songs for their next album were shaping up, keyboardist Zia McCabe said after some 20 seconds of broken sentences: "I'm sorry, I've just smoked a joint, I can't really tell you how the new songs sound."

After some consultation with another band member in the room, she came back with: "Oh yeah, that's it...They're like the Beach Boys if they were remixed by Dr Dre. Does that make any sense?" It probably does - if you're stoned.

The Portland-based band are expected to score (so to speak) with their biggest hit to date when Get Off is released on Monday. It is being re-released after another of their singles, Bohemian Like You, was used as the soundtrack to a Vodafone advert giving them massive exposure. The band, who described themselves on their website as being 'counterculture', reject charges of 'selling out' to corporations in this way. They sold 2,000 albums in Spain before the advert and 22,000 after it aired. "I mean look at us. We're here and we wouldn't be without the advert. Anyone who sold their song and then complained about it later is a big f***ing poser anyway...they're big fat liars," says Zia.

The Dandy Warhols are Zia McCabe, Courtney Taylor Taylor, Brent DeBoer and Peter Holmstrom. "The reason this band was put together," says Zia "was because there was no music being made that we wanted to listen to. I mean you had the Stone Roses in England but there was nothing in the States, just a post grunge depression. "So we were like, let's make some music that we like and we want to listen to and then hopefully some people will show up and then we'll make friends... and it worked."

To sum up the band's approach Zia explains that they've "always been about turning each other on". Like the song says, all they want to do is get off. "Have a good time all the time, that's our motto," says Zia as she smokes her way through the interview.

Such comments haunted the band in the early days and, to be honest, there is a bit of a contradiction. On the one hand the band got annoyed last year when they were described as sex and drugs libertarians and on the other they come out with headline making quotes such as: "You can never get too much sex." The problem started when they released the single, Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth. "It was really to do with our approach to interviews," explains Zia. "We were asked about our attitude to sex and drugs and we gave our honest answers and the British press, of course, narrowed the articles to focus on that, which was a shame. "Nothing else that we said got any attention and we had to become careful about what we said, which made us feel... (takes a pause and makes a deep sigh)... censored."

Despite her rock'n'roll lifestyle, Zia is clearly delighted at having been married recently. Twice. She was first married in October of last year, only to find out it was invalid, so she was remarried in Lisbon, Portugal, by fellow band member and lead singer Courtney Taylor Taylor who is now, technically, the Reverend Courtney Taylor Taylor.

She bought a house and cooks organic foods to keep herself 'grounded'. It's a picture of domestic bliss which is at variance with her public image. She often gets calls from fans to take her top off while playing shows. Sometimes she does. So, no bathfulls of Jack Daniels, then? "On my birthday maybe," she laughs.

Perhaps it was because she was under the influence, but Zia was incredibly talkative - if not always coherent. She was recovering from a night at the NME awards when we spoke to her and was a bit bemused that Ash won best single ahead of Gorrillaz, Kylie and the Strokes. "Ash won, isn't that weird? I don't even know anything about them, but the song didn't really do much for me."

"I'm 27 on June 2. I'm Gemini" she ventures. "And I'm Irish too, did you know that? I took the McCabe name because, well, it's cooler than Springer(her real name)."

She intends to come here to trace her roots, but admits she has no idea where her people are from: "If anyone can help, they can contact me by email on the website."

The band once claimed to see no point in playing Belfast because people kill each other here for no good reason. (And this from Americans remember). But Zia was a bit more relaxed: "We play festivals in the summer and I hope to get to Ireland then. Are there any good festivals in Ireland?"

"Sort of," I said.

Get Off is released on Monday on EMI records.