The Dandy Warhols are a band that need no introduction with great hits like Bohemian Like You, We Used To Be Friends and their new album Distortland (out now).
We spoke to Courtney Taylor-Taylor about talent shows, the next Nirvana and parties at The Odditorium before their tour, this October.
You guys have been around for a long time now – do you all still get along well?
Yeah, well enough, you know how to get along, how to enjoy each others company. We learnt a long time ago that you don’t have a choice regardless if you are in a band. You are more or less forever in each others lives – we’re not going away. We are just a team. You know how to deal with each other, you know how to have fun together.
The key to getting along is knowing to sweep everything under the carpet. You just sweep it under the carpet and it goes away – done. You don’t have to discuss everything, draw it out, it’s bull shit. You just have good times and it’s kind of what we do and it’s fun. We have good times.
Your drummer is now living in Melbourne. How does that work with touring, writing new material and practising?
Well, you know, he’s here probably a couple of months a year and when he’s here for 5 days or 14 days or whatever we just make sure we get a shit ton of stuff down, recorded. We don’t get to practice much you know, only a few days before tour and all that. But you know, we are not 22 year olds living in an apartment building any more so it’s just life. It’s just a part of our lives now. It’s not the whole part … not the whole life any more.
You would have seen a lot of changes in the music industry – how do you think the band would go if you were just starting up now?
I think we would obviously be a lot more electronic. I think you’ve got to, at this point, plan on it being a hobby unless you are going to make electronic pop for 9 year old girls. Then you would probably get rich doing it but if you are going to make some cool, art rock I wouldn’t count on doing it for a living.
You are not going to get rich ever. I just don’t think that it’s, kind of possible but, it may be in a few years once there is more corporate control of the internet. If the corporations manage to get the big players, if they end up getting more control like they used to, then that opens the possibility for, you know, a rock band; an antique styled guitar band could sell a lot of material.
Right now, the internet is the Wild West still, that music is free – you don’t really have to pay for it or you can pay 10 bucks a month and you have all of it so now it is valueless. Music is valueless as a commodity now unless it’s very geared towards children.
Do you feel that the influx of talent shows for musicians has had a negative impact on the industry?
Yeah, that’s what I am talking about; that music for kids – music for kids or simpletons. That’s the biggest market in the world. And that’s not rock or pop. I mean, that’s not art, that’s commercial entertainment.
I mean pop music theoretically can be Nirvana or The Cure or The Clash but more often than not, it’s Katy Perry, Britney Spears and everything now. It’s entertainment. Not art.
A giant amount of music being entertainment in the world is corporations and they are able to wring money out of people for their music. Good for them. I wish they would do that with really cool bands you know?
And maybe, one day there will be a backlash against it you know? Like there was in the late 80s when it had gotten way too slick and grunge just had to happen. It was destined and needed to happen.
I am waiting for the next band to be Nirvana.
Well, the last Nirvana was The Strokes and The White Stripes because boy bands/girl bands were being called real bands. They were called great bands by commercial magazines like Rolling Stone or whatever on that level referring to bands that really weren’t bands as a great band. There had to be a backlash against that.
And it seems like it will happen again or maybe the omnipresent interwebs so you can always watch some Growlers videos if you want. Maybe there will never be a backlash commercially against that coz effectively you can do it simultaneously.
The Growlers will always get 436 thousand views and Justin Bieber will always get 436 million views. Maybe this is just how it’s going to be forever.
What impact, if any, do you feel that international success had on your subsequent creative process?
It doesn’t really have any effect on the creative process. Definitely on the technical end, it has given us more control over finishings of records and owning the equipment to do that. The creative part, nothing ever affects it. It’s emotionally driven and looking to blow your own mind. You are still doing the same things for yourself.
You have just recorded a new album. How did the recording process go?
We never stop recording. This is just taking a slice of our last two and a half/three years and just one slice that represents what we have been doing for the last three years and all the stuff we’ve done and lived through and gone through. The joy and tears of The Dandy Warhols for three and a half years.
So that is our slice of life and that’s kind of what it seems like it will be from now on. Unless something makes our studio go away. If we can’t own our own studio then I’m not really sure how we will do this. It will change again. The process will change again.
Do you have any stories that you can share with us about parties etc that happened at the Odditorium?
The first party we had at the Odditorium was pretty amazing. It was Jet, The Vines, The Strokes and us all having dinner together, big dinner then The Raveonettes came over, showed up at the end of it and we just had an all-night rager with a bunch of friends, local, you know, rockers, and that was pretty amazing.
We just had great parties, great fun. Anyone in town, they wanna come by, that’s great! Let’s get a chef in, make dinner, do some recording and jamming, you know. We had Duran Duran, Bowie…we had Bowie in there hanging out playing pool and we had dinner with his whole band and I collect wine so I love showing off the wine.
It’s always been a good time and that’s what it’s been. We’ve got a lot of work done there and we managed to really get the party on and not have it get in the way of the work, have it in hand and bring more life to it and more, more fucken awesomeness.
How are repairs coming along?
So the repairs are done, it’s gorgeous. All that stuff’s done from the big roof collapse flood but now they are building a condo around me so I have to deal with that and is that going to destroy part of my building?
It’s all a bunch of real grown up shit to deal with now and no higher power to appeal to just let Daddy do it. I wish I had a dad who could just fucking…you know but I have to do it. I have to big boy it up and you know just get down the brass tacks.
I also want to put in a little wine shop and tastings and might have something open to the public so I have a little clubhouse you know and open that into the whole Odditorium so I can have a place that closes at 7.30 at night.
If you could pick any other career other than music, what would you choose or have you always known what you wanted?
This is the only thing I was going to do for sure. I would love to be an English Teacher, I’ve probably talked about since I was a little kid and you know, literature since I was a kid. I always thought that was a noble and fun dreamy aspiration but you know this is it. This is it, this was what I’m gonna do. It’s my earliest memory.
KAREN LOWE
Originally published by AMNplify.com.au.
