In the often dark world of rock, the Dandy Warhols represented a beautiful glimpse of sunshine at the end of the 20th century, thanks to two luminous albums, Come down (1997) and Thirteen tales from urban bohemia (2000). Their name, chosen in reference to the pop art star Andy Warhol, was as amusing as their light and radiant music, made of rain of guitars and synthetic pads.
Born during the “summer of love”, in 1967, the founder of the group, the guitarist and singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor, dreamed of living in a romantic, extravagant world, one of these three mythical eras, the London of the swingin' sixties, the allegorical San Francisco of Haight-Ashbury or the bubbling New York of Warhol. His young age of course didn't allow it, and in any case, he hadn't landed in the right place. His world was the rain that fell continuously, the sticky, flooding rain of Portland, Oregon, where he grew up gazing at the huge tankers from the dock.
The smell of the last opium dens still wafted through the streets of the great industrious city. Courtney Taylor-Taylor seemed to have no choice but to work in the shipyards like her grandfather. But one passion could take him away from this clear-cut future: he wrote songs on the way to school. “You're more likely to find fame in New York, and also depression. No one in Portland expects to be famous, but here there's more joy.”he would confide to Figaro in 2000.
War machine
This inconsistent and playful state of mind supports the groups that inhabit the city, Gossip, The Decemberists, Elliott Smith and Pink Martini. He also hosts The Dandy Warhols, which debuted in 1990 at the “Satyricon”, a venue in the old town. Courtney brings together a happy group, her drummer cousin Brent DeBoer, her friend Peter Holmström and the pretty keyboardist Zia McCabe, lovers of wine and champagne. They obtained authorization from the rights holders of the painter, who had died a few years earlier, to play with his name.
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They could never have imagined that a major label, Capitol, would welcome a “electropsychedelic group with guitars that make you want to fuck and play naked keyboards”, as they defined themselves, nor that the public would appreciate them. Their music borrowed from the Rolling Stones and David Bowie, went from joyful folk to enlightened gothic, mixing jaw harp and brass, the exact opposite of another illustrious formation of the time from Massachusetts, the funereal Morphine. The Dandy Warhols produced music more exciting than that of their famous English rivals Oasis. David Bowie even invited them to tour with him.
But their dazzling odyssey would gradually lose its luster. Courtney managed to bring to fruition the epic and splendid Odditorium or warlords of Mars (2005) against the advice of Capitol who found his pieces too sinuous. The following discs, This Machine (2012) or Distortland (2016), published on an independent label, disappointed. The Dandy Warhols hung up their fur coats and no longer tasted Château Margaux. If the stable formation (this is rare enough to be underlined) escaped the ego quarrels which threaten rock, it took the full brunt of the crises.
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Courtney Taylor-Taylor had a bad summer in 2020. He saw the fires ravage the beautiful forests of Oregon where he loved to walk when he was young (40,000 people evacuated and a poisonous cloud over Portland), then the riots shook his city afterwards. the election of Donald Trump and the assassination of George Floyd.
Heavy and burning
“It was dark and oppressive”, he said while he was developing his twelfth album and invited – a sign that the aura of the group remains high despite everything – illustrious signatures, Slash, the guitarist of Guns N'Roses, Frank Black of the Pixies and Debbie Harry from Blondie. The result, Rockmaker (rock maker), with the cynical title, was released this spring. The Bohemian storytellers laid down the flowers. They bomb, spit a metallic factory sound, a heavy and sweaty beat, raw post-punk songs. The heavy and burning Danzig with myselftortured by Frank Black's riffs, deals with the Apocalypse and liars.
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The hiss of a menacing reactor bursts into Teutonic wineAnd The summer of hatewith its intense mechanical impulse, buries the utopias of the 1960s. “I was born in the summer of love and I lived in the summer of hate”reminds us of Courtney at the head of his noisy and dark war machine. “I don’t know where the artificial ends and the real begins”, said Andy Warhol. Reality will have ended up violently colliding with the romantic bohemianism of the Dandy Warhols, even if the final and splendid piece, I will never stop loving yousung with the iconic Blondie, leaves a note of hope.
The Dandy Warhols, RockmakerBeat the World.
