As I shake hands with the slightly demure - although constantly smiling - man in the woolly hat and coat, it's hard to believe that this is the same guy who dressed up as a half naked Abraham Lincoln for the infamous "Gay Bar" video, or who used to rip off his shirt onstage to reveal a t-shirt bearing the legend "SEXY & RICH". But, as Dick Valentine is keen to explain, there's a lot more to him, and to Electric Six, than "disco sleazemongering". I caught up with him just prior to the band's near-sellout gig at the Carling Academy, where despite his reserved dress sense, his penchant for playful banter was still in evidence... So, first of all, how's the tour been going? Well, it's been a real smorgasbord of activity for us... I've had the stomach flu, I got that in Wolverhampton, and dealt with that; we've had people being invited to be DJs at clubs, and that's gone very well; the shows themselves have been either sold out or close to sold out - when we're not selling out it's by, like, fifteen tickets or twenty tickets or something. So that's frustrating - you deal with that, you wonder, "My God, if only we'd got to those fifteen or twenty people, who knows what could have happened in terms of our long-term career?" But, you know, I'm in therapy and I'm learning to deal with it. You seem to have shown up in the UK quite a lot over the past couple of years. Do you like it here? Oh yeah, well, we just gig wherever we can, and for the past couple of years this has really been our bread and butter. We're working on exploring some other territories now, including our home country of the US, but this is where we get the most radio and video play, so it follows suit. How do you like it here in Liverpool? You're from Detroit, which of course has a great rock and roll heritage - how do you think the music heritage here compares? Yeah, it's funny, actually, all these places in the UK like Manchester or Liverpool claiming to be the next Detroit... I guess both cities have their arguments. What I like here is the radio tower, that reminds me of Seattle a lot, so that's great. Tell me about the new album, Senor Smoke. Are you happy with the way it's come out? Oh yeah, we love the record. We think we've got, for the most part, what we wanted to accomplish with our second record. I think the sound is better than that of "Fire", I like the way the production's come off. I think we're happy as well because on our first record we got pigeonholed as kind of disco sleazemongers, just because we made one video, so I think this record just shows more what we're capable of. Another term that gets - perhaps unfairly - thrown around by the music press with regard to you is "novelty" band. Do you think with the reception this album's been getting, you'll have been able to shake that off? Yes and no, I mean, I'm real proud of our videos, I like the fact we don't do performance videos, but at the same time that's why we get the novelty perception - people don't even know we're a real band, they think we're just a hologram, or something. You know, we did a gig in London, three or four months ago, for some industry people, and they were like, "Wow, I didn't even know it was a real band! I thought it was just one guy and a drum machine!" To some degree it's unfair, but, you know, I can understand why it happens. All you can really do is keep gigging, and the irony is that we probably gig more than most bands out there - we do six shows a week, and we've been on the road for so long... but it is what it is, and you can't escape the power of the media! Speaking of videos, I presume you've seen the Bush and Blair "Gay Bar" parody video... what did you think of it? Yeah, in fact, that was actually in the running to be the official video, and we wanted it to be, but I guess there were some clearance problems or something, so we ended up making a video filled with Abe Lincolns... but, you know, anyone who wants to get involved and help with stuff like that, we've never thwarted that, and it's always worked out well for us. There always seems to be a lot of energy and power in your live shows. Where does that come from? Oh, you know, nerves, anxiety... some of us are in debt, some of us have bad relationships - that all just comes out onstage, really. You're quite a chatty frontman onstage - do you thrive on audience interaction? Well, I learned to do that because, as you know, we've lost some members in this band, and back in the old days there would be, like, two to three minute gaps between songs while they looked for cigarettes, or tuned their guitar for the umpteenth time, or while the drummer's drumset fell apart. So I just had to learn over the years how to do something to fill those gaps, and it's just become second nature. But now we're in a band where we could just go song to song to song if we wanted, so maybe I should be doing that! I've heard that you're not particularly keen on the name your band got stuck with, after having to change it from The Wildbunch. Given the personnel changes that you've had, have you never thought about changing the name as well? Not really, no, I mean, I think the time will come when I do something different than this band, or where Tait [Nucleus, keyboard player] does something different, and Nash [Johnny Na$hinall, guitarist] does, and so forth. But I just think, as long as we're in a position to continue touring, and playing shows, and we're not sick of that, then we'll just ride the Electric Six moniker, because at the end of the day it's a business, and you can't just change your name to "The ****faces" or whatever and expect to sell as many tickets. We're pragmatists! So what's next for you, when you're done touring this album? Where do you see Electric Six going from here? We just kind of reassess at the end of every year, so that's the plan. The record just came out in February, so that should keep us busy until the end of the year, and then if we want to do a third album, we will - I mean, we almost didn't do the second record, we're definitely glad we did, but... who knows. So, you just kind of reassess at the end of every year - every tax year. I mean, let's say I made money into 2006 with this band, up through January, and then called it a day - that would screw up my taxes! So, you want to keep it all nice and simple on the tax front... |
