High voltage: Electric Six’s Dick Valentine powers up for Greatest Hits tour

After hitting our shores to promote their new album Turquoise last year, disco-punk provocateurs Electric Six are back in Australia, bringing their Greatest Hits tour to stages across the country. Ahead of their two Perth shows at Rosemount Hotel on Saturday, August 31 and Freo.Social on Sunday, September 1, KAREN LOWE spoke to Dick Valentine about the tour and almost missing flights whilst at the gate.

You guys will be back in Australia touring your greatest hits soon. Are you looking forward to touring here again?

I don’t really feel like I’m leaving. It’s a long way to fly, but I don’t really feel like I’m leaving the United States. But there are slight differences that make it worthwhile. The shows are great. I love meeting the people before, during, and after, and you know it’s only a two-week tour, which for us is nothing. Our bass player’s never been there before. So, he’s just wet with salivation for this one.

And what are some of your favourite memories of Australia?

Oh, Lord. I mean, they all bleed into one.

I was thinking yesterday; I was recalling that we had a 4.00am lobby call to go from Adelaide to Perth last year. And I’m sitting there, and I fell asleep at the gate, at the gate of the air. Everyone got on without me in the entire plane, and the people at the gate would just let me sleep, and I woke up, and they were doing final call, and I was just thinking how fucked I would have been if I missed that flight when I was already there.

I was at the gate, and they were just letting me sleep! I would have ruined everything for the people in Perth. But God is on my side, so I woke up and got on the plane, but it was harrowing. I almost had a heart attack! That’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.

That would have to be my worst fear—missing a flight.

And at the gate! You would think that the Virgin Australian people would see me sitting there and maybe wake me up. Yeah. For me, that’s why I woke up. Maybe they did a wet willie, and I didn’t know it.

Speaking of greatest hits, what are your favourite songs to play and why?

Well, I love stuff off the new album, Turquoise, because it’s fresher. I do enjoy doing Gay Bar, but it’s also like singing karaoke.

At this point, when we do the stuff off the new album, you’re still kind of learning and feeling it out, so I really love doing Staten Island Ass Squad. I also love doing Five Clowns.

But, yeah, it’s a good album. I also like the covers that we’ve been doing a lot, too. So, it’s all I can do. I’ve got some ideas for Australian covers, and we’ll see if it happens.

Is there a song that you wish you played more live?

Sure. I mean, we have, what, 15 albums now. We’ve probably only played about a quarter of our material live, honestly. There’s tonnes of stuff off of all the records that we’ve never touched. And I would love to, but I can’t think of one in particular. I don’t know, there’s a song off How Dare You? called Dark Politics. I think it’s one of our best songs, and we’ve never, ever done it. So, let’s go with that.

And you can always bring it to Australia?

Possibly. None of us live in the same city, so rehearsing is kind of tough for us, so we kind of just rehearse on the road. In this case, the road is Australia, and we’re usually having too much fun to rehearse. So, you know, you might just get what you get. And you’re going to like it that way.

Electric Six has been around for almost 30 years. What are some of the biggest changes that you have seen in the industry from when you first started to now?

When we got signed, you actually had like A&R people who like signed you to a major label deal. I don’t know that it works that way anymore. It could. But obviously, with file sharing and Spotify and all that stuff, the way record labels did things back when we got signed, they have to do things differently too. So, I think we got in at just the right time—right before rock and roll started to die.

So once all the other rock and roll bands slowly started dying and going away, we were left holding the bag. It’s a wonderful bag because folks like yourselves want to stick your head in the bag. And we’re the only ones holding the bag. Well, us and a couple other bands. But, yeah, we fully intend to be the last band standing.

On that note, how have the audiences changed during that time? And how do you think you would go if you were just starting out now?

Yeah, I have no idea. You know, in the aughts, I would say around our second and third albums, we had a very, very male and juvenile audience. I think a lot of dumb fucking guys saw our Fire album and thought, “You know, these guys are like sex lords,” and people were always disappointed that I wouldn’t go out and fuck the entire town and have copious amounts of cocaine with them afterwards. They thought that what we were singing about in Fire was real.

So then, after a while, the veneer came off, and those guys started realising we’re not like them. And then we became a much more family-friendly audience. Now actual women come to our shows, and it’s extraordinary.

That must have been fascinating to look out over the audience over that time and just watch it change.

There were a lot of dumb fucking guys out there. It’s much better now. It’s people of all ages. We have rock and roll tenure. I think people look at us and we’re kind of like, you can’t touch us.

We’re mafia, mate. We’re a made band. Yeah, made.

Electric Six has put out a lot of records, including Turquoise, released last year. Do you find that the writing process changes with each album, or do you have a process that you have found works for you that you love to stick with?

I mean, the last, let’s say, 11 or 12 of our records, it’s all been done in-house by the band. We self-produce, and everyone in the band is capable of writing music. There’s a lot of co-writing, and there’s a lot of 50/50 where I write the lyrics and somebody writes the music. As you know, myself, John Nash and Chris Tate have been together now for 21 years.

We all know how to write songs through this band and how to go into making an album. The main thing is don’t overthink it. We have never tried to put together a concept album.

A couple of the albums, like Fresh Blood and Heartbeats, we knew were going to be synth-driven albums. Other than that, we don’t really sit down and try to write musicals or anything with a theme. We just write the songs that we have in our heads at the time, and those become a new Electric Six record.

You said that you’re all in different states as well?

Well, global, actually. Our bass player is Welsh, so he’s currently in Wales. It’s not like he’s coming to America to rehearse. His predecessor lived in Barcelona; our drummer’s in LA, and I’m in New York. I mean, the great thing about Electric Six is that what we’re doing is not so complicated. So we can just get together and have a rehearsal at the first sound check. The tours lately have been fantastic. We’ve been hitting on all cylinders. So, you have nothing to worry about… nothin’.

(Laughs) I was more wondering about the logistics of getting together to write a new album…

Well, a lot of the files are just shared online and emailed back and forth. I will go to Detroit to lay my vocals for real, and if you can get to Detroit, it helps but is not necessary. We have laid tracks remotely, and we don’t put any pressure on ourselves. Again, when you have been doing it as long as we have, we all know how to do it and how to do it within our band.

For such a long time, we did an album every year over 12 years, and we have had enough of that. The next album just comes when it comes.

When High Voltage was first released, the ‘rumour’ was that Jack White was the guest vocalist. Even though we know that to be true, you guys would claim it was a fan who won a competition for many years. Was that Jack’s request, or was it all in good fun?

(Laughs) I think it was a little of everything. I don’t recall exactly, but I think we just; I think both sides agreed to it. We didn’t want to look like we were milking him, and he didn’t want to look like he was being milked.

So, I think at the time, that’s what we said, but we’ve said a lot of things over the years. You know we have stupid stage names, and we put things out there and let the public decide.

What has been your favourite video that you have put out? And who comes up with the ideas for them?

We’ve had video ideas in-house, and the first videos—the big ones that everybody knows—Danger and Gay Bar were actually the concepts of the directors. I just showed up and was an actor, basically. But yeah, since then we haven’t had the kind of high budget that those videos required.

We’ve done a lot of lower-budget videos and had a good time doing it. My favourite is, I think, for the song Psychic Visions, which is off Heartbeats and Brainwaves. I went to Portland, Oregon, for that one. And I think it’s such a fun, unique video. And so, off the top of my head, that’s my favourite.

As a fan, it’s often quite hard to go up to your idols and say hello for fear of being turned away or fear of seizing up and sounding like an idiot. As a musician, how do you go at meeting your idols? Have you ever gone to speak to someone and just seized up?

Oh, Lord. I don’t know. I mean, it’s been so long since I’ve looked at another musician as an idol. I don’t remember how it was before I started touring. I honestly don’t because it was so long ago.

But there was a shift around 2003/2004. I met a lot of people who I had only seen on TV and magazines and started seeing them at festivals and got to know them. Then you do realise that they’re just idiots like you—they’re in a band.

I mean, I stammer just daily, you know, just trying to get through the day. Like going to buy gas or something, I seize up. That’s mean, that’s my M.O. I’ve always been a nervous wreck.