INTERVIEWING THE DWARVES (By Ben Shafran)

Interviewing the Dwarves seemed like a daunting prospect. I expected to find myself in a dressing room above tonight’s London Water Rats venue with the band members snorting all sorts of illicit substances off the body of a naked Suicide Girl who was lying in the middle of the room. I couldn’t be more wrong! I meet lead singer Blag Dahlia outside the venue and head to a nearby pub. He orders tea since his voice is gone and the barmaid looks incredulous.

Blag, how is the tour going so far?

It’s going well. We just got back from Sweden, and you know what the women there are like… it was brilliant. They are genetically superior.

Is there a difference between how you are received in Europe and in the US?

Yeah, people in Europe have a sense of humour.

Do you find that there’s a difference with what the band can get away with in Europe compared to the US?

Well, we don’t have to get away with as much as we used to because people know what to expect. They know there’s going to be mayhem, they know there’s going to be madness. I love coming to Europe, people just make me laugh – and I mean that in a good way.

Does it annoy you that your are still best known for an album (Blood, Guts & Pussy) that came out 17 years ago?

It does. Only because no-one bought that album when it came, and 5 years later when I put out another great record everybody told me how great Blood, Guts & Pussy was. And 5 years after The Dwarves Are Young & Good Looking, when I put out another record, everyone told me how great …Young & Good Looking was. So I think the lesson we can draw from this is that everybody figures out what’s up with the Dwarves about 5-10 years after we do it. Centuries hence it will all make sense… that’s the idea.

I stand by Blood, Guts & Pussy - I think it’s a classic. It’s just a great punk rock record. Most punk bands don’t evolve. They make one good record at the beginning, like Blood, Guts & Pussy if they are lucky, and then they just get worse and worse and fatter and fatter and lamer and lamer. We see that at these festivals all the time. But with the Dwarves it’s like… the last album we made had every genre of music – even hip-hop, turntable shit, garage shit… so we just keep evolving, that’s our thing. We don’t really care if people “get it”.

So you would rather be influential than big in the commercial sense...

Yes, absolutely. There’s a lot of bands like that, everybody from The Ramones, The Cramps… a lot of bands that it took them a while to connect with an audience but other bands said “I wish we could let go that much and be this thing”. But the industry likes to hype things that appear to them to be safe, that don’t appear like they’re going to cause them problems or stretch people out of their genre boxes. So they promote whatever is the most middle-of-the-road.

But every once in a while I will like something that everybody else likes and then I’m so happy, I’m like “Wow, I’m not crazy”. You know? Like, everybody likes the Lily Allen album and I like it too. But when it comes to punk bands, it seems the most popular ones are generally the most boring ones.

I’ve heard people say that if it wasn’t for all the sex, nudity and violence in your records and on the sleeves you would have been a huge band…

And I would have to agree with that.

Yes. Well, like you said, at the mainstream the industry seems to churn out bands who have their 15 minutes and then they disappear. Do you think that by actively pushing away from the mainstream in the way that the Dwarves have, you have actually helped your longevity?

That’s a good question. I never felt that we were actively pushing away from the mainstream, I just felt we were making art, and that it’s good, powerful art. The imagery of the naked women is artistic. It looks good and it stands up over time. Thematically it works and it’s strong, so that should be a good commercial, mainstream thing. But people are scared of it. Talking about sex, violence, drugs… these are the things that people are actually interested in, so you’d think they’ll be very commercial. Also, again, if there’s enough marketing money behind you then they push the things that are supposed to be “the bad things”, like Marilyn Manson. So you actually can succeed in the mainstream pushing a non-mainstream agenda if the marketing push is behind you. The Dwarves… were always at the wrong place at the right time [laughs].

But as far as the reason people say what you’ve said, and I’ve heard it a lot, is because the songs stand up so well. And now, what’s happening because of internet radio is that you hear Dwarves music more than ever before because it’s not about type playlists, it’s about people playing what actually sounds good. The Dwarves , especially over the last 10 years, have really been the best produced punk band there is. We’ve had Eric Valentine, he’s a mainstream guy, does huge acts. So our records have sounded louder and better and tighter and more pop than most other people’s records.

Speaking of Eric Valentine, his CV includes the sort of acts that seem to epitomise everything that the Dwarves stand against…

[Laughs] Well, you know… I met Eric in 1995. I recognised him almost immediately as a musical genius and a production genius. I’ve always appreciated him and worked with him, so when the industry embraced him because he made a hit record for Smash Mouth he just continued on his path, which is making big hit records for whoever he was interested in making hit records for…

He approaches things differently from most people. He doesn’t sit around like a rock fan thinking about what’s “cool”, he thinks about how to take the project that’s in front of him and make it as good as he can. Unfortunately he’s worked with some wack fucking people. I think they’re wack and I’ve told him that, but me and Eric are very different people and I’m just lucky that he took me in and allowed me use of his genius.

You started off in the Eighties as a 60s style garage rock band, then you evolved into the sort of punk/hardcore band of the Nineties that you’re best known for, and more recently you’ve started to incorporate loads of elements of other genres into your music. How has the nature of the band changed over this time?

You’ve hit the nail on the head and I thank you for that. I love rock & roll music… I came up during hardcore and I liked the energy of hardcore, I thought it was cool. But I thought that musically it was missing something. I was more interested in the 60s punk bands, rockabilly and stuff, but we couldn’t do anything in that scene because they were stuck in old, traditional ways of working… and the liberation of punk rock was too strong. I think things like Blood, Guts & Pussy are really 60s garage records sped up… that’s what they sound like to me.

I was always interested in music and pop elements, but the reality of the situation was that we were getting in fights and arguments and issues… or get thrown out or get dropped [from our record labels] or whatever. It created this strange thing… it’s hard to describe… but I think in a way it is the reason we’re still around, because we had to develop a way of working outside of the mainstream. We just couldn’t get any acceptance in there.

Now that the music industry is crumbling on itself and doing worse and worse every year, the Dwarves get better and better and make more and more money and sell more and more units. Why? Because we are really good! We’ve always been really good. I’m not bragging, it’s understood.

Did you find it funny when bands like The Strokes emerged and got very popular doing a similar thing to what you were doing 15 years earlier?

Well, I was glad to see that genre finally getting some credibility. I think that any band that writes a good song and plays a decent thing is good. I’ve heard some good songs from The Strokes and Jet and similar bands… The White Stripes… I like some of what they are doing. But again, I just find it limiting. I don’t think any of them are really pushing the boundaries. I think The Hives managed to push the boundaries of the garage genre and do something different with it, but most of the garage bands were conservative. So what’s happened is the same thing that happened when the punk bands became big in the Nineties or when the mid-tempo rock bands became big in the grunge era – they just did one thing, and it works if all the stars are aligned and they have good people behind them and they make it work commercially. But as far as doing something interesting musically… bands like the Dwarves… I’d put us up with bands like the Beastie Boys and Butthole Surfers that expand genres and change things.

So I don’t think it’s really a question of whether I like a song by The Strokes… there’s more than that. You know, the gold standard is The Beatles. Every six months they came out with a new genre and a new batch of great songs, and they played them well. If you can do that… you’re really doing something important. I wouldn’t put myself up there with them, but I would say we’re a lot more important than the numbers would dictate.

It’s easy to write off anybody who’s been around for a long time and say “Who gives a fuck about these guys?”. But I challenge anyone to go see us live… I keep waiting for young bands to blow us off the stage but it just never happens. Tonight my voice is fried, I sound like shit, I’m still going to be the best thing out there. This is how we roll.

Has the internet been beneficial for the Dwarves in terms of narrowing the gap between the band and the audience, and also by making record labels less important to the process of getting your music heard?

Absolutely. Not only because it made hype and bullshit less important, but also because the music’s so much more accessible, it’s allowed to speak for itself. Now you can hear it before you but it, so downloading works in favour of good bands and works against people that suck.

So you’re happy for people to go out and download Dwarves songs?

Sure. I have no problem with downloading; I think it’s a good thing. The music industry was never able to a. figure out how to exploit it, and more importantly, b. the music industry doesn’t pay artists fairly, so nobody feels like they’re ripping off artists when they’re downloading, they know they’re ripping off record companies, and nobody feels sorry for the guys in Metallica and R.E.M. either.

It comes down to – if downloading is what it takes to bring down the bullshit house of cards of the music industry then fair enough, bring it down!

My thoughts exactly.

Great minds think alike.

Speaking of the music industry… you’ve worked with three seminal record labels – SubPop, Epitaph and Sympathy For The Record Industry. How do they compare?

That’s very true. Epitaph is extremely well run grassroots, smart on the retail level of things… it really saw a niche in the market and exploited it very well. They didn’t do much for us, but I think as a label they do a lot of pretty interesting things.

SubPop is really a much different animal. They were one of those labels where they caught a particular wave in time and were just never able to do anything else that was even semi-interesting since. And they were ridiculously unethical business-wise. Every label stinks because the industry is so weighted against artists, but Epitaph really treated people much more fairly I think. SubPop was more like on the order of “We’ll get you a Cadillac” 1950s bullshit.

Sympathy… is head and shoulders above everybody. Long Gone John [owner/founder] is the coolest guy that ever put out records. He’s the only one who didn’t insist people sign deals… he is the only guy who understood that owning people’s master tapes is not ethical. Basically Sympathy is the gold standard of cool record labels. He’s the coolest guy ever… he doesn’t even have a secretary… he doesn’t even have an answering machine… he just puts out records and doesn’t tell you you’re getting anything you’re not getting. If every label was run like Sympathy then the record industry would not have the problems it does.

Do you think it’s possible to run a big label like Sympathy?

I do. But I don’t think anyone will. I absolutely think that a smart major label can come along and work along the lines of Sympathy – not owning people’s master tapes, make fair licensing deals with every group, make fair downloading agreements – and do great and beat all the other labels and get all the new young bands and own the planet. But they won’t do that because of their extreme greed. So what they’re doing is they’re going in the opposite direction… trying to sue people for downloading, and they’re trying to get bands to sign away their logos, their merchandise… their lives… recording money… And they’ll get away with it! because musicians are like sheep. They’re afraid, they don’t think well… they’re afraid of business, they’re afraid of independent thought, and all they want to do is be patted on the head by somebody in an office and told they’re a nice boy. So it’s a sad state of affairs.

You can make a huge label and run it just like Sympathy – although you’d probably have to get an answering machine. But if you run it ethically along those lines I think it would be a great thing. It will never happen, but there you go…

Is there a place for politics in your music or is it all about doing your own thing regardless of who’s in power?

I think about politics a lot and have very definite opinions, but I doesn’t really fit in with the Dwarves. I don’t think me aligning with a political position would make it more popular… it will probably make it less popular and less serious. Personally I lean towards the progressive… [gets distracted by a girl who walks into the pub]. I’m sorry, we were talking about politics? That definitely wasn’t Margaret Thatcher that just walked in, let’s put it that way!

Moving swiftly on… are there any current bands you rate highly?

A couple of years ago I heard a great band from Sweden called Quit Your Day Job. I thought they were brilliant. I’m not sure they’re around any more. I think The Hives are still good. I heard they made a record with Pharrell, which I think is a great idea. I love the Lily Allen record and the Amy Winehouse record, I think they’re both brilliant. Great lyrics, very well performed. I hear stuff I like, but I don’t keep up with music much… I prefer to read.

What about anything on the punk/hardcore scene?

I hear stuff that I like, and see stuff… but nothing’s really killed me. I have so many friends that do it, I’d love to hype all their shit. But you know, punk rock for me is like science class. I went to my first punk show in 1980… I’ve seen The Misfits, Black Flag, Minor Threat, The Replacements… it makes you jaded. It’s hard for me to hear a punk band and say “Oh, this is amazing!”.

Do you think the scene has lost something compared to what it was that it had in the UK in the late Seventies and in the US in the early Eighties?

Well yeah, because now it’s a genre; back then it was a way of doing things. Genres are different… a genre you can master and get paid to master. A way of doing things is a different idea, it’ll never be that again. The closest thing to punk rock [since] was like hip-hop guys selling tapes out of the back of their cars, recording a record in their living room…

I think the lo-fi rock bands had a vision. Most of them didn’t follow through on it, but I think bands like Guided By Voices, who did home recordings, had a vision similar to punk rock.

I read on your bio that one of the band members appeared on TV with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard…

L. Ron Hubbard? Haha, I don’t remember that part…

Oh right, I was going to ask for your opinion on Scientology…

I’m not a fan of Scientology. But… whatever works, right?

Would you say that’s your general attitude towards religion – “whatever works”?

You know, I was raised a Catholic… I think religion has its place, it can work for people. But I’m the Antichrist, so…

If you could kill off a musician to ensure a legendary status a la Hendrix, Cobain, Morrison etc., who would you kill?

That’s interesting… who would I kill? I’d have to say myself… I want to die.

I had a feeling you might say that… how would you want to die?

I think jumping out of a window would be the best way to go… defenestration… you’d have that moment of like hurtling towards the grounds… then “Splat!”.

You played Reading in 2005. How was it?

I had a great time. I happen to have friends in some of the bands that were also playing. You know, you’re playing and the Foo Fighters are watching you, and Bad Religion are watching you… it’s hard not to feel like “Wow! This is the Big Time”. I am just as susceptible to that as anybody… Plus, you know… I got loaded and got my dick sucked, so I just couldn’t complain. I’m a big fan of Reading.

How do European festivals compare to the American ones?

In America things are really top-down. You can’t really get on there, they make you pay to do it. I find European festivals to be really fun. I’m not really big on daytime rock, I don’t really get that, but I enjoy it. There are little things about the European way of doing it that appeal to me more than the American way.

What can we expect from your show at Reading this year?

We haven’t had a record in a couple of years. Some people are saying “Ah man, what are you doing here?” so we’re just gonna prove that we’re here to fucking destroy. I spent the last couple of years working on my book ‘Nina’, I didn’t dedicate as much time to rock as I might have. People say “Where have you been?”, so we gotta come in and prove it. That’s what we’re gonna do. It’s gonna be chaos… mayhem…

Are you working on a new record though?

I am. I don’t really know if it’s a Dwarves record... I’ve been working with this Russian singer… it’s like Sonny & Cher meet Boris & Natasha…

And just like that he’s gone. “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”.

Thanks to Blag for taking the time to be interviewed.

All pictures are taken from the Dwarves' official site.