Interview
by Whitney Weiss


Yeah. Okay, so first of all I have to say the new record is really, really great.
Thank you.

So very nice job on that.
Thank you.

And I think you have Nick Rhodes and Simon LeBon on it?
Yes, Simon came across the hall. We were recording with Nick, we had the record pretty much done, we went to London to kind of finish it with Nick. And, uh, yeah he was recording the new Duran Duran record across the hall so all of those guys were over there.

Oh wow.
And so, you know, Simon, we were thinking that Simon should sing at the end of "Plan A."

Right.
And so we showed him the part and he sang it and it was cool.

That is cool. Is anyone in the band a Duran Duran fan?
Yeah, Pete's probably the biggest fan. I'm not a huge fan but I like that first record a lot. I was like, I dunno how old, seven or eight or six maybe when "Hungry Like the Wolf," the first single came out. And it was right when my parents first got MTV and so I remember the "Hungry Like the Wolf" video just scaring me.

(laughs)

Quite a bit.

Wow. (pause) That's funny.
(laugh)

Was it the girl?
It was the girl.

Oh yeah the girl is kind of freaky, actually.
Yeah my eyes hadn't quite seen anything like that yet. I didn't know what it all meant!

Aw, you were a poor little first grader.
I know .

This crazy girl with face paint attacking the lead singer of the band.
I know and crawling around in the woods and all that stuff. It was like 'I don't understand!'

(laughs) Okay so you're just doing well for yourself. You've got Duran Duran on this album and you're about to go on tour with Bowie in Europe. You're opening for him?
Yeah, we've got a couple months with Bowie.

And he was checking out the Dandy Warhols when you played festivals, was he not?
Yeah, yeah we were playing Glastonbury, and nobody told us but he was standing there watching us from the side of the stage and I had kind of noticed, I looked over and saw some smartly-dressed kind of sophisticated looking adult-like people standing on the side of the stage and thought 'Huh, that's weird' and didn't think much of it but then afterwards our tour manager said 'Hey David Bowie came and watched you play' and we're like 'Oh cool' and, uh, he said we can come watch him play later.

Wow.
And we got to go stand on the stage and watch his gig later on which was really great because there were like half a million people swinging flags and going crazy and he played kind of the greatest hits set, which was fun. Headlining Glastonbury, that's a gig.

That is quite cool.
Yeah.

Now is there any truth, I heard you were doing a Velvet Underground cover with him?
Well we did it once, we opened up for him on the last night of the Meltdown Festival, which we curated, and yeah he invited onstage to play "White Light, White Heat" with him, which was really fun.

Wow, that's quite cool. Now I've heard a version of "I Am a Rock" you guys did, and you did a Janis Joplin song once. What kind of covers do you guys play, or do you not really play covers that regularly anymore?
We do play covers. We play "The Last Time," the Rolling Stones song. And AC/DC's "Hells Bells" which is cool because it's like, slowed down just barely. It's basically the same tempo but Courtney sings it a little bit lower. And that riff he begins singing the riff 'De ne ne, ne ne newr" You know that riff?

Yeah, yeah.
(Finishes singing riff) 'Ne NEWR newr.' We do that with the trumpet.

Oh cool.
Yeah, so it's like repeats riff but mimicking a trumpet instead of electric guitar . It's really epic and tidal wave-esque. And what's another one we do? We did a Swoon 23 song for awhile, "Pussycat Fingertips," but I can't remember the last time we did that. Um, I know I'm forgetting a couple.

But Courtney and I have a little side project that we do called The Slimmer Twins.

Okay.
Where we just do all 60s covers.

Oh, very cool.
Well I guess not all 60s covers, coz we blended Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire" with Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."

Oh that's fantastic.
Yeah we just slow it way down, and we have two guitars and just the two of us sing. We do kind of like Simon and Garfunkel type harmonies all the way through them and trip them out a little bit, it's really fun. We made a record and it'll probably come out at some point. Yeah, so that's, I know there's some other Dandy Warhols, some other covers we do. I dunno, maybe I'll think of one later.

Alright. What's your favorite cover to play with your side project?
With the side project? Um, probably "All My Loving" by the Beatles.

Oh very nice. So you mentioned you've got the covers band with a lot of 60s music. Do you listen to mostly old music or are there newer bands that you're really into as well?
I really like the Shins. I love that record. And the Brian Jonestown Massacre. And, um, I like,let's see. I mean, yeah all the obvious, T-Rex and Stones and Beatles and everything of course.

Right, right.
Yeah, other than that, oh god. Modern bands. I just listen to Outkast and Dr. Dre and Eminem and stuff as far as modern music goes. It's the most interesting to me and kind of pushes the boundaries of what you can get away with sonically.

Right.
I really like that. There's not really much guitar, I mean like the obvious ones, like Black Rebel Motercycle Club and the White Stripes and the Strokes and whatnot, but I don't listen to a whole lot of new guitar rock at home. I listen to a lot of old country and western music at home.

Old like Johnny Cash or old like before that?
Hold on I've got to shut this window. Okay.

Old like old Johnny Cash and Sun Records stuff, or before that?
Well I have this satellite dish that has all of these music channels and one of them is called "classic country" and I put that on. And I have a curtain over my TV so that people don't just stare. Because it tells you what artist is playing on the screen, and everyone will just sit and stare at it. Because it's the TV. So you're just naturally inclined to stare at the TV. So I have a curtain that covers that up. So half the time I have no idea who it is singing to me, but I just love old country music.

Well that's a really good way to make people not stare at your TV. We have the music channel here, too, but they do that Windows screensaver thing while they play the songs.
Oh, oh like the trippy psychedelic stuff?

Exactly.
That's a good deal.

Except we only had salsa, punk, and classic rock.
That's the three options?

Yeah it's like you get the really nice psychadelic images to listen to Latin music.
Unreal.

It's quite an experience, yeah. So speaking of trippy, the British press mostly, not the American press so much, has kind of made the Dandy Warhols out to be a drug band. Are you finding as you make more albums that drugs are more or less important in your writing process?
Oh, I don't (sighs) I don't know. The British press, they're in that tabloid mentality of just moving units. Whatever the flashiest headline is, with maybe some sort of a ridiculous pun or something, you know, whatever's gonna sell papers. If you talk to somebody in the British press for an entire hour and some point you say 'Oh, excuse me a moment, I'm gonna light a joint' or whatever, the headline will be 'I need a joint!' or something. You know?

And the whole article will be you doing drugs.
Yeah and the subheadline will be 'Woo Woo, Randy Dandys! Those Raaandy Dandys!

(much laughter)

At it again!' You know.

Are you serious?
Yeah, you talk for an hour about all sorts of things and then,

That's a shame.
That's the way it used to be. Now after putting out a few records, they've toned it down and they talk to us about music.

That's good.
Maybe the name of the band seemed a bit jovial or ironic to them, and they took us lightly and let's just goof off and talk about our hairstyles and stuff. But I find that they're treating us with a lot more respect now, which is good.

Right.
But as far as sitting down and talking to them, that's exactly the same still. It's the same conversation. It's just that they write a little differently now.

Well that's good that they're writing differently, since they're music publications and all.
Yeah.

And I have to ask, there's a lot of electronics on this record. I'm not hearing as much live drums so what exactly...
There's not as much live drums?

I'm not hearing as much live drums on this record as I did.
Oh, yeah there's only a few songs with loops and whatnot. Yeah I went back with Nick and played all the drum parts over again, just like one take from start to finish so I could open up the hi-hats and do everything in time with Courtney's voice and whatnot. Coz at that point in the record, I had recorded my drums so long ago that they sounded, to me, like I was playing to a different song, coz lyrics had changed, where Courtney sang different words had been moved around. I needed to re-do it, and I just did it from top to bottom. Just one take. Yeah, there's only a few...you know like "Insincere" and "Over It."

Yeah.
Um, one of the ones that sounds the most loopy to me, like 'Wonderful You' was just one take. It was done in New York.

Oh wow.
Yeah, they're blatent drums, they're just so huge! Nick Rhodes gets great drum sounds, you can hear the whole inside of the bass drum.

That might be it then.
Oh it's really fun. Yeah, there's, yeah let me look at this here. Let's see. Yeah like "Plan A," that's the best I've ever played the drums. That was a perfect take. Let's see (runs through names of songs) so like, 'Insincere,' 'I Am a Scientist,' and 'I Am Over It' are the only three. Oh, and of course 'You Come in Burned.' Yeah four of them. The rest of them are just straight-up Ringo.

They all sound really, really good.
Yeah I love the drums on this record. Oh and the electronics, we have about the same amount of keyboards, the keyboard situation is the same, it's just stripping all the guitars out. If you strip all the guitars out of the record ...Come Down you would end up with about the same amount of keyboards. And swooshy swooshy sounds like you have on this record. It just sounds a lot more keyboard-y because the guitars aren't washing over the keyboards.

Right.
And, you know, I think that's just the main thing. We wanted to incorporate a lot more space as a challenge, see if we could do it.

Well I think you succeeded admirably. It's a really, really good record.
Nice, thank you.

I have to listen to a lot of music and sometimes bands I think will be really good turn out to not just sound so great. This was something we were excited in the office to get.
Mmm, nice, I'm glad.

Yeah I'm glad, it's awesome. From 13 Tales to this record, what exactly do you think the biggest change has been in the band and songwriting besides the working with space?
From 13 Tales til now?

Yes.
Uh, I think, as far as songwriting goes, they're the same kind of songs. They're that Courtney style of lyrics and chords and whatnot. Zia was experimenting with basslines, we were all experimenting with leaving space. And part of that was Zia trying out different approaches to the bass. And uh, it all came down to, I think the biggest difference was in the mixing process. And also just the fact that since 13 Tales to now, we've spent a lot of time travelling the whole globe and meeting a lot of people in a lot of different places and learning a lot from them and hearing a lot of different kinds of music. And getting into hip hop and Dr. Dre, too.

At one point this record was just straight-up dub.

Are you serious? Wow.
It was a blatent dub record. It was just bass and drums and Courtney's voice and little sci-fi sci-fi noise 'Bee-ow' sounds. That was it. And slowly but surely we started bringing the guitars back up and texturizing the bass and drums just for the hell of it.

Did the dub version ever get around or did you keep that to yourselves?
Uh, there are different versions of all these songs floating around. When I say that, I mean in my apartment and Courtney's apartment and stuff. There is a whole other version of this record that Russell Alvado (sp) mixed. I don't know if you're familar with him, he did that D'Angelo record that he won a Grammy for.

Oh, yes.
Which is one of the coolest sounding records ever. Hearing that record was one of the things that just completely messed me up. And I know it messed Courtney up, too. We heard that and we were just upset. It sounded so good and it was really inspiring. And then we thought, 'Could we get this guy to mix our record? Could we get a blatent R&B winning producer to mix this? Is this possible?' We got a lot of heming and hawing (sp) from the label. 'Hmm I don't know, well we'll try to get ahold of him. Are you sure that's the guy for you? Well, we'll see.' And it finally took Courtney getting a cab down to Electric Lady. I think that's what he did. He went down there and just buzzed himself in and talked to him. And he's like, 'Yeah I'd love to work with you.' Actually, it was just that easy.

Right.
And we got him and he is the most amazing ears in the world. He's just a dream. And his version of our record is probably my favorite record I've ever heard. He's, he's...yeah you'll hear that at some point coz we'll release that version of it.

Okay.
It's called Sound, that version of it. The Dandy Warhols are Sound.

What made you decide to go with the version that you did release first?
Well, it was like, we had an opportunity to have some of these songs remixed and blah blah blah and Courtney got back from LA with some other mixes of 'Scientist' and I think the other one was 'Used to Be Friends.' And they were really neat and Capitol said 'Yeah well he's willing to do a few more.' 'Well yeah let's here 'em.' It's like Christmas when you hear remixes of your band.

And then a couple more songs turned into a few more and a few more and a few more and all of them. And once that's done you kind of get jerked around as far as which version of this and that. And we realized, 'Okay we're not going to have half Russell's, we're not going to mix this up because they're too different We've got to do one or the other.' And they're both really good. And so we thought, 'Perfect, we'll release both of them.'

Do you have a favorite song off of this record?
Probably, it kind of changes day to day. I think 'Burned' and 'The Last High.' And 'Wonderful You.' 'Wonderful You,' 'Burned,' and 'The Last High.'

'Wonderful You' is an amazing song.
It might be called 'The Dope' on your version of it.

Ah, I have a promo copy and just listen to it in the car constantly.
Yeah, that's the one that starts off with like the AC/DC sounding like breathing noise

And then the drum and the...
Domb, duh-domb domb.

Do, do, do-do-do do
Ooo wee-ooh-WEE-ooo.

I really like the backing vocals on that, actually, who is that?
What's that?

In the background, on the 'De nu, nu nu'
De uh, ooh-ooh. That part?

Yeah.
Yeah, I sang that.

Very nice.
(laughs)

Excellent.
(laughs more) Yeah, I love that song. That one and 'Burned' are the survivors from the dub, from when we really stripped it all down to just like, an Outkast record.

Right. Now what do you think of N.E.R.D. or the Neptunes, their production and...
Great, I love all that trippy, lovely, stoney hip-hop production that's out there. I don't know what it is. It turns me on.

What got you into that? What was the first record you heard of that genre that you thought was amazing?
First record of what?

Of that genre.
Uh, that genre...as far as hip-hop goes?

More specifically, new production hip-hop.
Right, I'd say (pause) well Dre 2001 really got me thinking. I really couldn't believe that. I got the instrumental version of that too, I don't know if you've ever heard that, but it's remarkable. It sounds like a French band or something. It sounds like an aggressive version of Air or something, with all of the horns going sings horns from Dre 2001. You know, like really, really nice, beautiful room on all those horns. Goregous little sparkley sounds waaay inside the mix and there's so much room for all those little sounds. Yeah, yeah I think that was the one.

I really like the influence that music has had on your record.
Oh thanks. Yeah it's pretty obvious in there, I think. You can really hear it on our new record. We're kind of obsessed with it.

I like how you put your own spin on it because it's really distinct.
Yeah, yeah that was the trick.

In your press info you have this information on the Oddotorium.
Yeah the Oddotorium. That's a nice spot, that's our new recording studio/photo studio/editing room/hangout area, library, movie theatre, uh, um, rehearsal space.

Now when did construction start on it and what made you want to put it together in the first place?
Well, you know, when you start a band you always dream of having your spot, you know, your headquarters. That's just been years in the process coming up with, I think mainly, the funding to make it happen and whatnot. That came about extremely quickly because we needed to shoot the 'We Used to Be Friends' video in it as soon as we moved in. So those three rooms that you see the big, uh, the big rock room, the grey and red chill room, and the kitchen were done within months. It was just like an ant farm in there, of people working. That was quite miraculous, actually, how quickly that happened. And the rest of it will just be an ongoing project, just constantly painting and decorating. That will probably go on for years. But that's a nice place. We're definitely enjoying it.

And is that just the Dandy Warhols' space or are there other local Portland bands involved with that?
Well, it's definitely the Dandy Warhols' space but we'd like to help other band with whatever they need. It'd be nice if we could get our friends' bands in there to work and whatnot. We've already had photographer friends in there working and anytime you can hire your friends it's a good thing.

Absolutely. My last question before you have to go is are there any bands that are unknown right now that you think deserve recognition?
Yes. The best live band maybe I've ever seen in my life, they just changed their name, they were called Garman Bizia (spellchekk this). Um, and what they changed it to, they changed it to something trapper or trapper something. But yeah, Garman Bizia, whatever, god I think trapper something. They shouldn't have changed their name I don't think because Garman Bizia was just fine. But wow, they are so good. And also, uh, I heard Rick Bane's making another record. I loved that one, no one knows about the Rick Bane and the Genius Position album called Crooked Autumn Sun. But, uh sorry someone's beeping me or something. But that's just a beautiful, lovely, perfect record. Almost perfect, it's just beautiful. I love that record.

Alright, well thank you so much for your time.

 

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