Rare is it when a band a dozen albums into a career is still making viable and compelling music, without interest in rewriting the same thing over and over, phoning it in, or placating a fanbase. But The Dandy Warhols have never been ones to fall in step, so it’s little surprise that their new LP Rockmaker (out March 15) doesn’t necessarily meet or exceed expectations as much as set its own bar.
This time around, they decided to lean into the hard rock, turn the guitars up, and inject some psychedelic, gritty, Portland, Oregon branded alternative along the way. We already proclaimed recent single “Danzig with Myself” as the Song Title of The Year, with the Dandys hitting up Frank Black for some of that “Monkey Gone to Heaven” Pixies fairy dust by playing guitar on the thumping track.
Not that the band have been shy about hitting up special guests before, but heavyweights like Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash and Blondie’s Debbie Harry, in addition to Black, makes it clear The Dandy Warhols had a particular musical agenda for Rockmaker. It’s also apparent the big names aren’t just for the sake of boosting the album’s status, they serve the song, and it was the music that needed their input – without compromise.
“Once a song starts to become a thing stylistically, as far as the production, we’ve been doing this for so long, we really want to just take ’em real far into whatever their trip is,” frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor tells Vanyaland. “And there’s nothing stopping us at this point.”
Ahead of Tuesday night’s (March 5) show at Royale, where they’ll be playing cuts off the upcoming Rockmaker as well as familiar favorites like “We Used to Be Friends” – aka the Veronica Mars theme song – and “Bohemian Like You,” Taylor-Taylor checked in for a Vanyaland 617 Q&A (Six Questions; One Recommendation; Seven Somethings). He talked about his feelings for the infamous music documentary Dig! on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, advice he received from David Bowie, and why The Empire Strikes Back never should have left the ice planet Hoth.
:: SIX QUESTIONS
Michael Christopher: Rockmaker has a distinctly, well, “rock” sound, compared to much of The Dandy Warhol’s catalog. Why did you decide now was the right time for the band to break out the heavy guitars?
Courtney Taylor-Taylor: That decision was made before Covid, so probably four and some odd years ago. It’s our nature to kinda get tired of everything, I guess. We generally do a song, a track, on each record that’s pretty heavy, like “Wasp it the Lotus” or “Nietzsche” back to “Ride” on our first record. I mean, we are metal kids and we’re from the grunge era, but we were anti to the grunge radio-pop, radio grunge and rap-rock and all that stuff. So that’s what we came out of; “We’re not doing that, we’re going to do this.” And also, just what we wish somebody would do, and I always wished somebody would make a really heavy, heavy metal record with real cool singers. So, we just obviously decided to do that.
There was one rule and that was every song has to start with a metal riff – and that’s it. And it can go anywhere. Obviously [on Rockmaker closer] “I Will Never Stop Loving You,” that track went, if Nick Cave did a James Bond theme. It went way off the metal. But obviously “I’d Like To Help You With Your Problem” with Slash, that’s just straight up. I wanted that thing to just be this sort of Vietnam vet rock, which is… I have to say this 10 times a day, “How’d you get Slash?” Dah-dah-dah. That was the point. He was the best. So start there and then if he didn’t want to do it, we would see who else kind of did that kind of thing. But he did, so that was great, and he was exceptional at it.
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Tell me a little bit about “Danzig with Myself.” I mean, the title alone is amazing, but then having Black Francis on it as well.
Well, that one started as… I don’t know, it just struck me as very Danzig 4, and when he started to really experiment in the industrial kind of thing. It’s got a real sludgy, late ‘80s thing to it and it kind of just started to go more Pixies. “Danzig with Myself” is of course just a working title. That was [guitarist] Pete Holmström called it that. But then as it went more Pixies and we got Black Francis on there and everything, we just couldn’t come up with a better title than that. It’s stuck and that sometimes happens.
Not many people reference Danzig 4, which I think is a criminally underrated record. Are you a fan of Danzig in general?
I’m a fan of Glenn. He is such a unique and an amazing icon – he’s great. He seems to have a good sense of humor about the thing, but he gets off on what he does. He’s great.
The album’s got some major guests on it. What do you do with “Danzig with Myself” live for the Frank Black part or the songs with Slash and Debbie Harry parts?
Oh, [for Frank Black] Pete covers his guitar, like his surf guitar thing. Zia [McCabe, keyboard, bass] and Fathead [drummer Brent DeBoer] will probably sing the Debbie Harry parts on “Never Stop.” What else do we do? I’m singing it in falsetto, but Zia really wants to – I think she’s crazy though, because people are going to go, “It doesn’t sound like Debbie Harry,” but I don’t want to do it either, so. [laughs] Who else did we have? Oh, well, God – Slash. Yeah, that Slash is a difficult one. Pete has just decided to go full Middle Eastern. I mean, the reason you get Slash is because none of us have the skills to do that kind of thing.
Thematically, “Alcohol and Cocainemarijuananicotine” feels like a sequel to Queens of the Stone Age’s “Feel Good Hit of the Summer.”
David Bowie, when we went out to my tour bus before one of our shows with him, we both had new records about to come out. So, we went out to my bus – my janky bus – we didn’t go out to his fabu bus [laughs] for some reason, probably because he wanted to have a cigarette and have no one see him, but I don’t know, and listened to our record. He listened to Monkey House about one minute and went, “Courtney, why do you have to be the first to do everything? It’s so much more profitable to be the second.”
But fortunately, we had never heard that song [“Feel Good Hit of the Summer”]. Neither Pete nor I, which is interesting. And Peter told me once we both found out like, “Oh my God, there’s this song that…” Well, I think quite a lot of singers in bands that do drugs and party want to list all the drugs they love in a song. Probably country artists used to do that. Still, the point being that I am very glad [we never heard it], because we would never have done that. I wouldn’t have written that song. I would’ve gone, “Oh, it’s already been done.” I would be embarrassed. So I was quite embarrassed to find out.
And it’s a big song. It was actually on the radio in England – we were told. Like, when we were in England a lot. So how we avoided hearing that is bizarre. Maybe it was only on Kerrang! Radio or something and became a big hit there. But yeah, when I heard [the Queens’ song] , I was like, “Oh fuck, it’s amazing. That’s a hell of a huge production.” Fortunately, we were done and Pete goes, “Ours, it’s not anything like that. And ours is fucking great.” If Pete says that, because he’s the biggest skeptic of mix and purity and power, he’s the biggest skeptic. I kinda relax about it. Now, I just go, “Fuck, this is an awesome track.”
I’ve really loved your one sentence movie reviews. Some of them were so spot on. I was literally chuckling out loud when you talked about Empire Strikes Back, you wish they hadn’t left Hoth. Which I’m thinking to myself, that would’ve been the greatest movie…
Dude, come on. It was amaaazing. They didn’t even start to tap into that. It was great. Why did you leave Hoth dude? Swamp? Boooo. Ok Indiana Jones.
You said of The Dirt, and I got to look at the quote, “I’m totally being serious one of the best movies I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Yes. My gang watching that, we just were expecting, I don’t know, camp or something real stupid and it is so self-aware and so incredibly funny and moving. It’s really perfectly shot. The color correction on the film just takes you there. Yeah, I can’t believe it. I think it’s really just so good. And that was Machine Gun Kelly playing Tommy? I didn’t even know that the whole time. And yeah, I was just sitting there blown away because I’m pretty good friends with Tommy Lee and [Kelly] just nailed it. He just is him. The whole time I was just seeing, “Wow, that’s what Tommy Lee was like when he was 16.” It was great. Everything about it was just so cool and it just really sent me, and I’m pretty hard on movies. They got to be pretty tidy. That one was.
Speaking of movies, the 20th anniversary of Dig!, Dig! XX, came out this year. Have you seen it yet?
I don’t involve myself. I was so disappointed and saddened. That was just such a bitter and fake thing… we let this wom- this person [director Ondi Timoner] film us thinking that she was going to catch what our lives were and we’d be able to watch it forever. And really, she was not interested in that. She just wanted to get anger and bitterness and that’s what people are suckers for, obviously. You can tell what politics are now and everything. So yeah, I have no interest at all, and it just makes me more sad and feel stupid. [laughs]
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:: ONE RECOMMENDATION
Courtney Taylor-Taylor: A single piece of music. It’s a French piece. It’s the coolest piece of music in the world right now.
Okay. So it’s a band called Scuffles, a duo. “Sol Détrempé.” It’s amazing on so many levels that it tweaks my brain and just has that basic psychological, physical impact that it’s just cool. Just everything about it is so cool and they’re inventive and creative enough to keep it changing slightly and here and there, things come in. It never jars you. It’s very strong and cool.
Yeah, it’s just awesome.
:: SEVEN OF SOMETHING
Rockmaker is the title of the upcoming Dandy Warhols record. Give me seven of your favorite rock records. Doesn’t have to be in any particular order. Just seven of your favorite rock records of all time.
Kiss – Destroyer
Kiss – Dressed to Kill
Iron Maiden – The Number of the Beast
Aerosmith – Rocks
Aerosmith – Toys in the Attic
The Sisters of Mercy – Floodland
Love and Rockets – Express
THE DANDY WARHOLS + SISTERS OF YOUR SUNSHINE VAPOR :: Tuesday, March 5 at Royale, 279 Tremont St. in Boston, MA :: 7:30 p.m., all ages, $25 :: Event info :: Advance tickets
