Alt-rock legends, The Dandy Warhols , have been delivering their unique brand of cool sound for 30 years...and their latest offering ROCKMAKER is nothing short of it. To make it all the more mind-blowing, they brought some famous friends along for the 10-track gritty, edgy, mind-blowing bender of a ride--Slash, Debbie Harry, and Pixies' Frank Black, to name a few. Frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor and drummer Brent 'Fathead' DeBoer stopped by the LifeMinute Studios last month for a few cocktails and a chat to tell us all about it. This is a LifeMinute with The Dandy Warhols.
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00:00 Hello, I'm fathead. I'm Courtney with the dandy warhols and you're watching life minute TV
00:07 All rock legends the dandy warhols have been delivering their unique brand of cool sound for 30 years
00:23 So
00:25 Their latest offering rock maker is nothing short of it to make it all the more mind-blowing
00:41 They brought some famous friends along for the 10 track gritty edgy
00:45 Mind-blowing bender of a ride slash Debbie Harry and pixies Frank black to name a few frontman Courtney Taylor Taylor and
00:53 drummer Brent fathead Deborah stopped by the life minute studios last month for a few cocktails and a chat to tell us all about
01:00 It this is a life minute with the dandy warhols
01:12 Kind of our best records have been or the most successful ones at least have been
01:16 based on a rule
01:19 We like to have a guideline if you go outside it
01:22 So this one was every song has to start with a metal riff a heavy guitar
01:40 And then they can wander off obviously if you've heard the record, you know, they go
01:44 everywhere from the Ramones to Nick Cave to
01:48 Sabbath to pixies
01:50 Yes, it sounds awesome, so how did you come up with that rule this time wanted to make a metal record?
02:03 Yeah, we tend to like to do
02:05 Yeah, we like to do
02:09 things that either aren't being done at all or just aren't being done in any kind of way that we are
02:15 satisfied with or we just
02:18 You know, we're the garbage men of rock
02:21 The song that ultimately had slash on it. I got far enough with that that Pete heard it and went. Oh
02:28 This is really cool
02:31 I'd like to help you with your problem
02:35 I think I know you too well
02:41 That was the first one of those great icons that we have on this record
02:47 Just the song that track itself help you with your problem. I just really wanted that
02:53 1970
02:55 Vietnam that
02:57 Acid rocket classic just LSD tripping in the foxholes
03:22 And how did the collab of slash come to be the discussion came up, you know
03:27 Who is the best because Brent I and Pete all are guitar players
03:32 and none of us have those kind of chops or
03:35 So who would we get oh, ho ho ho who would be the best guy to get and my friend John fell is a pretty awesome
03:45 guitar player
03:49 You know, he's the purest of that he's probably the last of that there is
03:55 There's no hipster in slash. He is just an absolute genius guitar player super melodic
04:02 Completely steeped in that thing, you know, he's just he's just the best
04:07 So we sent the rough mix of the song and he got back to us in like less than an hour
04:12 He really really dug it a lot. Yeah, he's a fan. I'm sure
04:16 Yeah, all those guys right remember bumping into Axl Rose here in New York at a party and I went up and said hey
04:24 Play drums in the Dandy Warhols and just instantaneously. He's going. Oh my god. We love your band
04:30 We I was a little bit surprised but then again, not really of course Debbie Harry as well
04:44 We hung out with Debbie and iced tea one night about 20 years ago
04:50 Well life-changing actually when I was a kid and Debbie Harry did Saturday Night Live, you know, I thought that was just
05:01 absolutely the most beautiful a human being could ever
05:06 Be or achieve and I remember walking down
05:11 court or
05:13 be
05:14 And a bunch of the popular jock kids, you know, eighth graders or something. We're at the end of the hall
05:21 Somehow I just knew they were gonna be talking about I guess because Monday
05:25 Was talking about was on Saturday Night Live
05:28 And they're like, oh geez. Oh
05:31 freak show and
05:34 I
05:36 Just slowed down and knew that from here on out. It was me against them
05:43 I
05:45 Frank black and the pixies he and I've been friends for
05:56 15 years so that was just
06:01 Incidentally being on the phone with him
06:04 We just want to get everyone still alive that we love and adore while we still can he was in Zurich
06:13 with
06:14 his four of his teenage sons
06:16 On pixies to her. He just gets a bus
06:20 Put his sons on but that's it quite a commitment
06:24 and he said
06:27 Courtney when you have four teenage boys
06:31 edification is everything I
06:34 Said well, are they Giger fans a friend of mine that with Chris Stein also happens to run the Giger estate
06:42 So I said, you know, he came back to all ask them
06:46 And he came back and said well that went over like gangbusters
06:51 What should I do as well and I'll email you with it right now
06:56 so they got you know tours of the state and the mansion and the
07:01 Museum and everything and he uttered those
07:04 Wonderful words to hear. Thank you so much Courtney
07:10 If there's ever anything I can do
07:12 So
07:16 Yeah, as you're hanging up you're like oh
07:19 Wait, I gotta call him back and he was cool. He was yeah, my 14 year old son is my recording engineer
07:27 We could probably bang this out next time. We're in a hotel
07:30 So that's how that happened and even better Peter in the band. Our guitar player is kind of the main engineer
07:39 recording engineer and
07:41 He sent the wrong song
07:43 we didn't know that until it came back and
07:45 That's what I said. I was like, oh my god
07:49 No, because dancing with myself that track started out as like a dancing for kind of vibe and
07:57 As it evolved it became more pixies
08:01 And so I really wanted to get Charles on that one and what Pete said was love thyself
08:06 [Music]
08:18 And
08:19 so that came back and he didn't really do any solo or lead or
08:24 Think so. It really wasn't feature
08:27 You know, it was just amazing textural cool
08:31 Stuff that of course again, we're dealing with great artists that none of us have those chops or would think like that or could do that
08:38 So I had to call up and go did he send you the other one? And so we have him
08:43 So thus he's on dancing with myself as a feature, but he's also on love thyself
08:50 There you go, you got two for one by accident
08:52 Unbelievable. Yeah, I would never ask so much particularly not of him. He's a very private
08:59 Person and you know, well, it's really telling that you got all these, you know hard to get people, you know
09:05 [Music]
09:13 Tell us about summer of hate if anybody thought
09:16 2020 was a summer of hate. Yeah, this summer is gonna be you know, I
09:21 Think that song is gonna have a comeback. It's gonna get gross. It's gonna get grosser. I should say
09:28 Or it might be lovely
09:30 I'd like to help you with your problems problem
09:35 It's a more cynical problem
09:38 It's far more cynical when it's just you want to help with just I'd like to help you with your problem
09:47 The main problem. Yeah
09:50 Or maybe not even the main one just the problem whatever the problem that is about a specific person
09:56 So I don't really want to I don't want them to know
09:59 Who it is. You have people in your life and you like them or you
10:03 You know, they're just part of your family. I've lived in the same town my entire life
10:10 Never moved anywhere else and I'm a really
10:13 You know, I dig in deep and I just there so I have a lot of the same
10:20 You know friends that I had when I was 10, but not the ones who didn't like Debbie Harry and Blondie
10:27 Those were no friends of mine. They would have wanted to punch Gordon
10:31 How did you guys get together
10:50 We're cousins
10:52 We're cousins
10:54 Peter and I
10:56 Started the band he moved back from New York after college
10:58 But we had been friends in high school. We met he was a sax player
11:05 Woodwinds played clarinet as well and I was a
11:09 percussionist in a symphonic camp for high school kids. We were new wavers
11:15 had high hair
11:18 Eyeliner
11:20 Did you guys always know you wanted to be?
11:24 Since I was
11:26 Cognizant I'd say so. Yeah
11:29 Yeah, I was probably four or five
11:33 well, I was kind of forced into drums because I would kept banging my head against the wall and
11:37 My my mom mentioned it to the doctor
11:40 Because I would I'd play the exact same song over and over give me the boys on my forehead
11:46 To the rhythm against the headboard. So go boy. We will we will we will we will
11:52 After hours and hours of this I've seen your four-year-old
11:56 Doing this, you know, I I have kids now, so I would definitely been standing there in the doorway going
12:01 There's this is this is something wrong here. You'd worry
12:05 So she mentions the doctor and he prescribed because I don't think they had all those kinds of pills that everybody has now
12:11 He prescribed drums
12:13 Yeah, he said he likes rhythm get him a drum set and then I just sat there
12:17 I
12:19 Was give me the beat boys to fill my soul
12:25 Why don't you listen and he was a huge Beach Boys fan as a little kid?
12:29 So he thought the guy was saying give me the Beach Boys to fill my soul somebody singing about my favorite band
12:35 My first my first moment was also at four and it was killer Queen and
12:47 I was you know little and I remember looking up at all the grown-ups and
12:52 They didn't notice that this was different
12:56 all points are equal on the continuum until you hear killer Queen and
13:00 Then all points are not equal on the continuum. This is
13:04 Something you mean what in the hell? I've never felt like this before and I
13:11 Subsequently tried to you know, I would stay up but pretend I'm going to sleep
13:15 Which my parents must have been over the moon about that and I'd know he must be already
13:20 Wow, he's tired
13:21 but I would get up and I just put my ear next to the radio and turn that dial and try to find out where that
13:26 Song is gonna come out of again, and then I heard radar love
13:30 So I clearly found the classic rock station
13:33 KGON Portland, Oregon
13:36 still station
13:41 So, yeah, and I think I have a I have an older brother and then we had of course big kids that would babysit us
13:49 So I heard though
13:49 I I think I somehow I must have put together that that was what it feels like the sound of that what I feel
13:55 That must be what it feels like to be cool
13:58 And that's sort of been
14:01 You worked that out early. That is what it sounds like
14:07 Yeah, yeah
14:09 Those songs are cool. They're really cool. They make you feel cool. Yeah
14:14 My dad his mom so early days those weddings and funerals that we'd see each other
14:23 Yeah, and Courtney always tripped me out. He'd show up with the wild amazing suits and his hairstyle and you know, he's like
14:32 Skinny with the makeup and his and he always had to hold his head to the side because his hair would like
14:38 Yeah, yeah, and I you know, I'm you know a few years younger than than Courtney
14:45 but just enough of a gap at that age for like an
14:48 11 year old to be tripped out by this 16 year old, you know, whatever. That's a real cool cousin
14:55 You know and also just very unusual guy as me
14:59 How did you know like how did you get together and know what you guys are both musically inclined?
15:03 Well at first his band opened for the Dandy's and then
15:10 the DJ craze hit and our drummer just up and quit and and I
15:17 Remember Kurt Loder we were watching
15:20 MTV when
15:22 The news came on and I said Dandy Warhol's drummer has quit to pursue it
15:29 career as DJ his his DJ is DJ name and
15:35 Loder goes
15:38 And he looks down at his paper and goes he will be replaced by
15:45 Front man Courtney Taylor Taylor's cousin Brent DeBoer
15:49 (music)
15:59 You guys have been around a long time
16:01 We have been around for a long time and you guys are touring right now
16:06 It's been going extremely well, I thought the shows have been fantastic
16:13 What do fans get when they see you play live?
16:17 Massive concussion of rock and roll and judging from this from the amount of smoke and what it exactly the
16:24 Aroma is I'd say they get pretty stoned
16:28 Yeah, we're a tripper stoner band that is the fact yeah, it's a psychedelic trip man
16:35 That's the whole idea make your crappy things that are dragging you down. They can go away for as long as you possibly can
16:41 you know music is
16:44 amazing like that it's a
16:46 transcendent experience or it should be you know, and whether it's whether you're I
16:50 Mean, it doesn't really matter what style, you know, people don't have to think that the music you like is cool or
16:57 beautiful or even
17:00 valid
17:01 You know music is this what an abstraction, you know, you can
17:06 Put those sounds together in the right order people just feel better
17:12 I start wigging out their bodies start convulsing and joy and happy bliss
17:18 But at this point, you know probably half of all music I listen to is the dandy Warhol's
17:24 it just goes straight to the root of whatever the problem is and
17:28 I either don't have to think about it or I think about it and realize that it's fine
17:33 When this music is on that's what we've done for 30 years is just
17:39 try to make a tool for
17:41 enlightenment or
17:44 Advancement or making yourself comfortable enough to face your own
17:48 lack of
17:51 Psycho-emotional growth or whatever your crap is. Everyone's got the same crap, you know, but that's yeah music is a
17:59 unbelievable
18:01 tool for for you know, the self-help
18:04 psychology oriented
18:08 people
18:09 Which are banned are definitely that that's what we're made of
18:13 What's the first album you guys ever bought I was seven six or seven maybe I had heard
18:22 Van Halen
18:24 1984 so how old was I guess I was more like eight or nine just heard a song on the radio and my
18:29 Dad took me to I said, you know
18:33 Do you have this record and he's like no
18:37 Jd. Jd. Did not have that record. He pulled over and got that and then at the same time
18:43 There was another song that he had heard and he's like, oh these guys are pretty good. So he got the minute work
18:49 The that land down under album. So those two came home on the same day
18:55 I played the hell out of them just loved them and my mom was really upset because there's a
19:00 Baby on the cover of the album smoking a cigarette
19:04 What was your first album
19:07 God I have no idea probably kiss alive
19:11 Why do they call you fathead I used to have a really fat hairstyle dude, it was like he used to
19:19 It was like that those early 2000s years
19:25 It was the biggest head. Where's your where's your drummer big hip fat head? Whatever his name is and we're like
19:32 That
19:34 Works
19:36 Like what do your family's think now were they supportive when you guys did absolutely
19:41 Yeah, my dad my both my parents they would go to every concert within an hour's drive
19:47 At least but I ever played in any band. They never missed a dandy's gig
19:52 They could not have been any more supportive. They never said. Oh, yeah. Well, that's good fun
19:57 You have to get a real job after that or whatever
19:59 I always just wanted to somehow make a living in music and then this became the ultimate
20:04 thing and and it's it was just a massive life-changing moment of little series of events to be able to
20:12 Join up with cousin Courtney and hit the road. We had a European tour coming up. Of course the stress is
20:19 Outrageous and we have a bona fide hit global hit at the time
20:24 I
20:26 You had to graduate from college early
20:35 And hit to hit the road. Yeah, that was cool
20:39 Yeah, we'd eight days to get it all done all the rehearsals everything had to be done and then just away we went
20:44 and then it was just
20:46 Cobblestone winding streets of Madrid and Paris and
20:54 Man, Vienna, it was rad. Those are really fun times
20:59 I mean, it's still fun life is, you know great to go to these places and have these friends there that we've known for
21:07 25 years that's super cool, too. Yeah, I
21:10 guess old friends are really
21:13 really important
21:15 To hear more of this interview visit our podcast life minute TV on iTunes and all streaming podcast platforms
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