INTERVIEW: Dandy Warhols still have more tales to tell from ‘Urban Bohemia’
Photo: The Dandy Warhols will soon celebrate the 20th anniversary of Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia. Photo courtesy of the band / Provided by Reybee Inc. with permission.
The Dandy Warhols, the beloved alternative rock band, are celebrating a special anniversary during these historic COVID-19 times. Even though they are physically unable to get out on the road and be with their fans in person, the band has decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their influential album Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, featuring such hit songs as “Godless,” “Get Off” and “Bohemian Like You.”
Courtney Taylor-Taylor, lead vocalist for the band and songwriter of the tunes on Thirteen Tales, recently told Hollywood Soapbox that the band members, including Peter Holmström, Zia McCabe and Brent DeBoer, will mark the occasion with a special “global streaming event” on Wednesday, Dec. 30 at 3 p.m. EST. The virtual event will feature a concert of the entire album plus the band answering fan questions.
“We’ll do a bunch of questions and stuff before,” Taylor-Taylor said in a recent interview. “Talk a little about the olden days, and then we dug up little short bits of film that people filmed of us back then while we were on the wild ride of this record, which ended up gold and platinum around the world. It’s a walk down memory lane.”
The singer has loved each and every album that the Dandy Warhols has put out since their debut in 1995 with Dandys Rule OK. Whether it’s Welcome to the Monkey House or Odditorium or Warlords of Mars or Thirteen Tales, Taylor-Taylor sees the effort and love in each recording.
“We thought all of them were going to change the world and be one of the most beloved records in history,” he said. “We feel very strongly just because we’re really expressing as much of ourselves as we possibly have the skills to express, and so therefore we find our own music pretty psychologically and emotionally satisfying. And we can’t imagine anyone else wouldn’t. Then you put your records out, and you face the real world. … When we released this record [Thirteen Tales], it did not shoot to the moon. … It was looked at as a fringe record that was pretty advanced and pretty cool and very psychedelic, but it took a year and a half to really go.”
Taylor-Taylor counts the success of this 20-year-old record as one of the two defining moments in his musical career. He called these pivotal datum points the times when God came down and told him, “Courtney, I am sorry that I’ve been so busy, and I forgot to tell you. But you were right the whole time.” The other moment was his long-lasting relationship with another highly influential rock musician.
“The other was David Bowie deciding we were the coolest band in the world and just wanting to come and hang out and go to our gigs and have us play with him and work in the studio together, hang out in New York,” Taylor-Taylor said. “Bowie just falling in love with the Dandys was the other most completely gratifying thing that’s happened in my life.”
Of the songs on Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, no song has had more lasting impact than “Bohemian Like You,” which still pops up in many cultural references and still receives radio play.
“There’s no flab,” the singer said of the song. “There’s no confusion in the song. It’s a very succinct and focused piece of music. Sonically, lyrically — it’s just great. It really is one of our greatest compositions and studio achievements. … ‘Bohemian Like You’ always feels the same. It works really well. It gets up, and it gets running. It’s self-evident truth in every listening situation around planet earth for 20 years I’ve ever heard it in. It does the same thing. It does that trip, and it does it every time. I think that’s a huge amount of why.”
Taylor-Taylor recognizes that there are many sides to his songwriting that are different in 2020 and many sides that are similar to those days in the late 1990s when they recorded the album for its milennium debut.
“The growth rate of myself as an artist cannot even be charted,” he said. “It is pathetic how I can see in my own work how I just shift from side to side and don’t actually progress. I can see that could be argued. That could be utterly completely argued. I’ve just been drowning in the same emotional and psychological loops I’ve always had, so fortunately change is the only constant. So I think quite a lot of people either don’t feel the same way, or that’s one thing they like about us. We keep putting out new material, but it comes from the same place.”
One of the Dandy Warhols’ more recent recording efforts is 2019’s Why You So Crazy, which Taylor-Taylor said is the band’s crowning achievement. He loves the record, and who knows, maybe in 20 years there will be a virtual event celebrating its impact.
“I haven’t listened to it in a couple of months, but I spent a year of my life utterly convinced that we had just done the greatest work that we might ever be able to do,” Taylor-Taylor said. “I think it’s just f***ing amazing. It’s a record that does not sound the same on every stereo, but I love it. I’m shocked by how fresh it is and cool and sexual and intellectual and physical. God, I can’t even believe. I love that record. That’s my favorite of our records.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Dandy Warhols will present 13 x 20: A 20th Anniversary Celebration Showcasing Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia Wednesday, Dec. 30 at 3 p.m. EST. Click here for more information.
