On Terrible '90s Music, The Various Varieties Of Hangovers And Low IQs

The Dandy Warhols are survivors. Despite a well-earned reputation for being bon vivants, the Portland rockers have yet to crash and burn. Now 22 years and - after the release of 2016's Distortland - ten albums in, the band show no signs of slowing down. Which is surprising to everyone save frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor. "We felt that from the start this is it, this is the band'," says Taylor-Taylor, 49. "This is the band to end all bands. We just felt like, somebody has gotta do this. There weren't that many good bands back then. Music was terrible in the '90s. Rap-rock. Dramatic metal. Teen pop. Pop punk. It was a really awful, awful time. That was pop music back then: these million sellers that were all just fucking terrible. Not even cool at all. Nothing smart or interesting or advanced or clever. It was bizarre.

"Music was terrible in the '90s. Rap-rock. Dramatic metal. Teen pop. Pop punk. It was a really awful, awful time."

"So, I figured that if I made a really beautiful band - got together to make some art - that there would be people out there who'd care. We were just ourselves. We weren't trying to be these tough guys, with tattoos up their legs and giant black shorts. Tough guys don't learn to play guitar! Tough guys don't write songs! God, that was just so fucking stupid. These metal guys who took this rap influence, but basically just took the misogyny. Aside from the Beastie Boys, every single rap-rock group from the '90s was just idiotic. So, in the face of that, it was really easy for us to take that leap of faith. We knew we'd be able to collect anyone with any fucking taste, with half a modicum of a clue. Anyone with a three-digit IQ would be so fucking glad this band exists."

The Dandy Warhols first Australian tour came in 1998, behind their breakout second LP, 1997's ... The Dandy Warhols Come Down. Their first local show was - if Taylor-Taylor's admittedly vague memory is correct - at Livid Festival in 1998. "We went on and played Rave Up, which is like this 15-minute two-chord jam from our first record, and the whole tent went fucking bananas. It was just this wild mosh pit, stage diving, pogoing. We thought no one was gonna care; we were halfway across the world from home, no one knew who the fuck we were. And then it was just fucking bonkers."

While he was excited about the Dandys' reception, the headliners were less so. "Pulp played on the main stage. It seemed like it was mostly pre-recorded, like digital backing tracks. It was very weird." Two years later, The Dandy Warhols returned to Australia, again played Livid, and again had a disappointing experience watching rock royalty. "Lou Reed played after us. He wasn't what we were hoping for, at all. He was very professional, very slick. He was trying to get things really tight with his band. It was all '1, 2, 3, 4', with the big shimmer at the end, and he was pumping his fist. It was all very bizarre."

Taylor-Taylor is gasbagging in his Portland studio, where he's installing a wine bar, though it's yet to reach the liquor-licensing stage. "Really, I've gotta be a grown-up about this? That's gonna suuuuck," he says. He's been collecting wine for ten years, after someone gave him a ten-year-old bottle of Bordeaux. "I had an absolute epiphany, almost a religious experience. I stopped drinking beer and hard liquor, which is a great thing. The cost/benefit analysis is highly in favour of fine red wine. The high is incredible, and then the hangover is merely clement." Taylor-Taylor then details the various varieties of hangover, clearly an expert on the subject. "Can you imagine how much I know about hangovers? It's absolutely sad. I'm amazed I accomplished anything, really. I drank so fucking much! We partied so much. It was crazy."

The band's wild salad days are enshrined, for eternity, in Ondi Timoner's 2004 documentary Dig!, which follows the Dandy Warhols and their fucked up friends, The Brian Jonestown Massacre. "I don't know if you can quite call it a documentary," Taylor-Taylor says. "It was totally made up. All the times [Timoner] was asking us to do this, or say this, none of that's in the movie. Her voice is never in the movie, but it's all told in her voice. She put us in it to make it a movie, basically, to generate this story. We're part of the machine that Anton [Newcombe of the BJM] can rage against. Anton is spectacular in it. He's just out-of-control, drinking two-fifths of vodka a day, showing off for the camera, making it happen. He was totally committed to making this some legendary, out-of-control rock'n'roll movie. And, it lives on. But it's got very little to do with us, either who we were back then or who we are now."