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Part 1
Part 2
BB: Which of your albums do
you feel the most connected to?
Courtney: Right now, the new one, and that's
generally the case, you know? It's called "Odditorium or Warlords of
Mars."
BB: Any others?
Courtney: Yeah. The great "Come Down," one of our first records.
"The Dandy Warhols Come Down," is a really special record that's pretty
phenomenal.
BB: What can you tell me about the DiG
documentary?
Courtney: Okay, yeah, DiG is, like, a fictional movie made from
real film. The timeline wasn’t accurate. It’s like seven years of us,
and eleven months of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. So, I mean, it’s
like, yeah they were jealous when we got signed, and acted like little
baby dickheads and whatever, but we’ve been friends for the 5, 6 years
since then, again, and the 3 years before that. Ondi Timoner needed to
make a film. She needs to make her career as a filmmaker. So, she did
what she needed to do. And I was disappointed that the film was not
about art or music – it was about crazy Anton hitting people, basically,
when it comes down to it. But you know, Ondi needed to do her thing. And
Anton and I didn’t go into the editing room and work with her on it, she
was left alone to do it. And so, he and I bitch a lot about how much we
feel like we got sold out by the thing, but, you know, what the fuck? We
didn’t make it, you know?
PLAYING OUT
BB: Do you prefer the studio or playing out?
Courtney: Well, you get to switch off. When I get tired of the
studio, it’s just incredible to go play a bunch of shows. And after the
first few, you don’t get nervous or anything beforehand. It’s all gone,
you’re just in this state of music where you’re on tour, you don’t
really care about anything else. You’ve got that hour-and-a-half, two
hours, nearly every night, and that is your life. I’ll spend the rest of
the day sleeping if I want to, I don’t really care, I’ve seen all these
towns. And if I’m not gonna be there for a week hanging out, then what’s
the use of anything, you know, I just sleep, hang out, read, get a
little exercise, stretch. And eat. And t hen,
okay, let’s do it again, you know? Let’s see what we got tonight – get
in there, get inside the music and just make this thing happen. So it’s…
when you do it, it’s just transcendent; it’s the best thing you can
imagine.
BB: What do you think makes a good show?
Courtney: The sound, the mix. Us having a mix that we can control
that we can really knuckle under. I mean, it’s like, you’re creating
your own wave to surf, you have to have a delicate balance, but you are
riding this giant tidal wave of sound that’s almost out of control, but
you can sort of control the way you sit on top of it. For me, it’s
singing. I think everybody should sing every day. Everybody should sing
a little bit every day. Everyone would be a lot happier, a lot.
BB: As you look back over the years of all the
shows you’ve done, what comes to mind as one of your best shows so far?
Courtney:
CBGB's. And Vancouver, B.C., in November.
And Amsterdam around the same time. We put on a Tsunami benefit show in
Portland earlier this year, and that was maybe the single greatest gig
of my entire life. And that was the mix, it’s really the sound, and
everything. That one I just, I could sing, I could really, it was
effortless. My voice wasn’t getting lost in the mix, and then it wasn’t
so loud that it made me uncomfortable to hear it back that loud in front
of the mix, it just sat in perfectly.
BB: Nice.
Courtney: It was effortless, and it gave so much, it gave far
more back than I had, was putting energy into it, the whole thing was
working. The whole was euphoric, and… and, so much greater than the sum
of its parts.
BB: Of all the people that you’ve opened for
and shared the stage with over the years, who was the coolest to meet?
Courtney: Well, Bowie.
BB: I would think.
Courtney: I’m the only person to ever walk on Bowie’s stage and
sing with him besides Lou Reed. That was a fucking amazing thing.
BB: What was that like?
Courtney: Pretty great, cause we had just played, so I was pretty
comfortable on the stage. We watched his gig, and then near the end, our
band came on and he and I sang White Light White Heat. And all of our,
both of our bands, are just piled in like a fucking zoo of musicians,
just banging on congas and jumping around, it was really fun. Super
intense rock too. Like, White Light White Heat. Bowie had sent me an
email saying, or actually we were at Tony Visconti’s studio, and Bowie
said, “Oh we should play a song together.” And so, then he emailed me
right before the gig, a week before or so, when I was still at home, and
he said, “What song should we do?” And I’d been giving it a lot of
thought, and I was at a friend’s restaurant and heard his old, old, old
cover of White Light White Heat. So, I’m going, what do we do, a Beatles
song? Do we do one of my songs, do we do one of his songs? You know,
like what the fuck? And then I heard it, and I was like, that’s it. So I
sent him an email back. Four words. White Light, White Heat.
BB: Nice.
Courtney: And it was like, perfect, done. And we rocked it. And
he doesn’t use actual monitors on stage, he has the in-ear monitors, you
know, the little… So he was going, “mumble mumble mumble mumble.” And
the whole crowd just went ape-shit! And he looks over at me and kind of
smiles, and I don’t know if he remembered that I didn’t have in-ear
monitors, I was just going raw, you know? So later he told me what he
said was, “only one other person has ever gotten on my stage with me
during my gig,” and it was in this same room, The Royal Festival Hall in
London, and it was thirty years ago almost to the day, ‘cause in the
70’s Lou Reed coming over to England. And it was like the same week, it
was almost the same day, 30 years almost to the same day. And I chose
the same song without even knowing that, that Bowie chose to sing with
Lou Reed.
BB: Seriously?
Courtney: Yeah. David Bowie’s only had two people sing, and they
both did the same song? You know, the whole thing was really strange.
BB: Wow.
Courtney: Fucking cool.
BB: That is a great story.
Courtney: Thanks, yeah, I love it.
IN CLOSING
BB: How would you compare Boston to some of
the other cities you’ve played in?
Courtney: Boston is one of these cities that is not like any
other city. It’s a weird city. What’s
 it
like? It’s like Wolver-Hampton or something, you know, it feels and
looks like an English working kind of town, like a northern town in
England, but then it’s giant and it’s American. It’s really unique, it’s
not like any other city at all. And the people, I can’t tell, we kind of
tend to attract the same type of people everywhere no matter what they
speak. Whether it’s in Greece, we kind of get the lovely, maybe kind of
feel-like-they’re-a-little-cleverer-than-other-people, but, we don’t get
the real stuck-up smarty-pants type, chip-on-their-shoulder, groovies.
We definitely don’t get that, I don’t think. Maybe a little. No we
don’t. I think we just get really lovely kind of outsider types.
BB: Yeah. What do you hope people will get out
of your music?
Courtney: Confidence. To sort of understand that how things they
feel, that maybe they think are weird, aren’t that weird, you know?
Other people feel them. I feel them, my band feels them. That’s why
these songs sound this way. Talked about these things. I mean,
particularly the small and awful, awful feelings, that’s basically the
way I write from, is just, the darkest shit in myself, and then I just
try to deal with it, and music is sort of the hopeful side of the
darkest part of myself.
BB: What advice would you have for other,
well, aspiring local musicians in Boston that might be reading this?
Courtney: Only make music for yourself, you’re not so weird that
no one else will like it. You’re Right. That’s what music is. Music is
you being Right. The minute you’re swayed by the opinions of others,
you’re wrong, and you should find another job.
BB: Thanks, Courtney. That was fantastic.
Courtney: Thanks, man. Later.
To learn more about The Dandy Warhols,
please visit their website at
http://www.dandywarhols.com
*Pictures courtesy of Ray
Gordon
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