140 - Blondie - Parallel Lines - Courtney Taylor-Taylor

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

The 500 with Josh Adam Meyers
Episode 140: Blondie – Parallel Lines, feat. Courtney Taylor-Taylor (The Dandy Warhols)
Release Date: October 1, 2025
Podcast Theme:
Josh Adam Meyers continues the countdown of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums, this time with musician Courtney Taylor-Taylor (Dandy Warhols) and writer/DJ Morty Coyle. Together, they break down Blondie’s epochal album, Parallel Lines, diving into the record’s history, sonic innovations, impact on pop culture, and how the legacy of Blondie shaped subsequent generations of music.

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on Blondie’s 1978 masterpiece Parallel Lines (ranked #140 on Rolling Stone’s list), with special guest Courtney Taylor-Taylor of The Dandy Warhols. While originally scheduled to feature Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, last-minute changes bring Taylor-Taylor in for a candid, impromptu, and deeply musical conversation. The discussion covers the album’s creation, Blondie’s genre-bending legacy, the power of “cool”, and how Parallel Lines became a lasting staple of rock—leaving a huge impact on artists like the Dandy Warhols and beyond.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene & Guest Introduction

(Timestamp: 02:10 – 07:15)

• Josh Adam Meyers introduces the episode, referencing the last-minute guest switch: “We had Debbie Harry and Chris lined up…they dropped out at the last second, but we got a pretty damn good guest. The one and only Courtney Taylor-Taylor from the Dandy Warhols.”
• Taylor-Taylor describes his current tour, the psych-rock/Shoegaze/Brit-pop festival circuit, and the return of '90s/00s alt-rock energy.

"There are a hundred-plus bands… all like a swirling drain, swirling around Levitation Festival…It does feel like the ’90s again, because they're wilder—crowd surfing, stage diving, the whole bit." – Courtney Taylor-Taylor (08:04)

2. Taylor-Taylor’s Musical Backstory & Influences

(Timestamp: 10:36 – 17:54)

• Taylor-Taylor recounts coming up in the Portland punk and alternative scene, his anglophile tendencies (The Who, Beatles), and growing up with Blondie.
• Discussion of the importance of grit and authenticity in his own music (“We always felt the need to leave grit in…” – 11:57).
• Reveals his origins as a drummer, his stint as a janitor in an ’80s Portland strip club (where he acquired his first guitar), and how accidental musicianship led to the Dandy Warhols’ unique sound.

“We just didn’t have the skills to imitate anyone accurately, so we kind of just fudged our way into making our own sound.” – Courtney Taylor-Taylor (21:11)

Memorable Moment:

Courtney’s “First Guitar” Story (18:40)
He tells how a guitar left behind at the club (after it was shut down for racketeering) became the instrument he used to write the first four Dandy Warhols albums.

3. Blondie’s Appeal & Early Impressions

(Timestamp: 15:26 – 18:15)

• Taylor-Taylor reminisces about discovering Blondie in the fifth grade via SNL, and the divisive reactions among classmates.

“That was the most intense sort of art-sexuality I'd ever seen… I knew then it was me against them. And that's sort of how it was for the rest of my young life.” – Courtney Taylor-Taylor (15:50)

4. Blondie’s Cool Factor, Genre-Blending, and Parallel Lines’ Breakthrough

(Timestamp: 23:49 – 33:43)

• Morty Coyle and Taylor-Taylor discuss Blondie’s crossover appeal—punk, new wave, disco, girl group sounds, and why Parallel Lines was a seminal breakthrough.
• Producer Mike Chapman’s huge role is highlighted—his history with glam, power-pop, and hits like “Ballroom Blitz,” “My Sharona,” and “Mickey.”

Notable Quote:

“She (Debbie Harry) didn’t sing like anybody else that I had ever heard.” – Courtney Taylor-Taylor (41:38)

5. Track-by-Track Highlights & Song Origins

(Timestamp: 33:43 – 44:52; 51:22 – 75:30)

“Hanging on the Telephone”

• Story behind this opener: a cover of The Nerves, discovered via Jeffrey Lee Pierce, choice justified by Jack Lee’s (Nerves) need for cash at the time Blondie called.

  “I remember the day vividly. It was a Friday. They were going to cut off our electric at 6 o’clock...that phone call went right at the exact moment.” – Josh Adam Meyers quoting Jack Lee (35:41)

“One Way or Another”

• Written about Harry’s real-life stalker ex, dark subject matter transformed into an energetic, playable anthem.

  “For 1978…it’s more art school…it was huge, groundbreaking.” – Courtney Taylor-Taylor (39:27)

On Covers & Influence

• Taylor-Taylor reflects on why big songwriting bands keep doing covers: "There is no great artist that…would say, I wrote all the songs I wanted to write. It’s just impossible." (37:12)
• Dandy Warhols sometimes encore with Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time” or Swoon 23’s “Pussycat Fingertips” (38:15).

6. Songwriting Darkness & Personal Stories

(Timestamp: 44:52 – 51:22)

• Taylor-Taylor discusses the origins of Dandy Warhols’ “Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth.” Explains the heroin epidemic in the PNW scene and the pushback against “heroin chic.”

  “Every year in my 20s, I lost one acquaintance or friend to heroin or suicide.” – Courtney Taylor-Taylor (48:13) “That was the attitude [in the song]; it was tough love, and it definitely worked to clear it out of the industry.” (49:29)

7. Iconic Imagery, Video Artistry, and DIY Philosophy

(Timestamp: 55:35 – 59:45)

• Discussion about imagery in album art—Blondie’s iconic cover, how image was managed, and parallels to the Dandy Warhols’ own art direction.

• Taylor-Taylor explains his hands-on approach to directing all his band’s videos (except the David LaChapelle one) and involvement in editing:

  “Whenever I have worked with other people, I still end up editing. It’s just something about the pacing…it could be my life as a drummer.” (57:38)

• On DIY in the music industry:

  “We do everything—you have to, whether we have a manager or not…from our insurance policies to you know, how much 80 hertz is in the kick drum.” – CTT (58:55)

8. “Dig!”, Band Rivalries, and Music Documentaries

(Timestamp: 61:04 – 70:33)

• Morty raises the topic of Dig! (2004), chronicling the Dandy Warhols vs. Brian Jonestown Massacre. Taylor-Taylor says Anton Newcombe (BJM) hijacked the focus, and the Dandys themselves made little money and were shocked by the edit:

  “Our lawyer told us, ‘Just sign it…no one ever sees these things.’ …We literally have never seen a penny for that movie.” (63:12) “The good part is…Jonestown Massacre had no hope of having a lifelong career until Anton took that movie over.” (63:55)

9. Parallel Lines—Detailed Track & Sound Analysis

(Timestamp: 73:25 – 96:41)

• Discussion about drummer Clem Burke as “the most versatile, powerful” element in Blondie; his recent passing is honored.
• The role of live band energy in tracks like “Heart of Glass” and the connection between live disco, krautrock, and new wave innovations.
• Morty and Courtney geek out about production: Mike Chapman’s pop genius, Jimmy Destri’s underrated synth work, the technological challenges behind “Heart of Glass.”

  “Destri was consistently cool, inventive and perfect sonically…His keyboards were always cooler than cool.” – CTT (83:17)

• Courtney discusses writing a movie about a fictional krautrock band and shares deep reverence for the experimental German scene.

10. On Working with Legends (Debbie, Bowie) & Lightning Round

(Timestamp: 86:37 – 100:30)

• Taylor-Taylor describes working with David Bowie and having Debbie Harry guest on Dandy Warhols music:

  “You just get a hold of their manager, send a song…Chris heard it, and said ‘Debbie, this is cool…’” (88:42)

• “Famousboy David was old…he seemed really old…So it wasn’t as intimidating as if to know Bowie at 28 years old.” (87:51)

Lightning Round Q&A

(Timestamp: 100:33 – 102:53)

• Favorite song on Parallel Lines?
  "One Way or Heart of Glass." – CTT (100:46)
• Any skips?
  None—it's a no-skip album. (102:09)
• Can you…to this record?
  “No, I can’t.” – CTT (102:17)
• How do you pitch it?
  “I’d just list the hits… Sunday Girl, Fade Away, Radiate, Heart of Glass, One Way or Another…” – CTT (102:29)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• The perfect summation of why Blondie matters:

  “It’s more art school…tougher, sounds like weirder people doing it. And it was huge, groundbreaking.” – Taylor-Taylor on “One Way or Another” (39:27)

• On musical covers:

  “There is no great artist that…would say, I wrote all the songs I wanted to write. It’s just impossible.” – Courtney Taylor-Taylor (37:12)

• On the impact of Dig!:

  “We literally have never seen a penny for that movie… Jonestown Massacre had no hope of having a lifelong career until Anton took that movie over and boss-manned it.” – CTT (63:12; 63:55)

• On live disco and Blondie’s uniqueness:

  “What people don’t understand is it’s the disco song, but it’s a live band… Clem never stops.” – Morty Coyle (92:56)

• On Parallel Lines’ influence:

  “One of the songs…blatantly sounds like it created The Strokes to me—there’s a lot of that on this record.” – CTT (100:53)

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Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Topic | Timestamp | |---------|-------|----------| | Guest intro, Blondie guest fallout | 02:10 – 07:15 | | Touring, 90s sound resurgence | 07:15 – 10:36 | | Taylor-Taylor’s musical upbringing | 10:36 – 17:54 | | First guitar story, strip club job | 18:15 – 23:37 | | Art school, DIY, Blondie “cool” | 23:49 – 41:06 | | Track-by-track: “Hanging on the Telephone” | 33:43 – 36:03 | | “One Way or Another” and its darkness | 38:50 – 44:52 | | Drug scene, “Last Junkie,” personal stories | 44:52 – 51:21 | | Album/Song imagery, art direction | 51:22 – 57:40 | | Dig!, DiY, and industry stories | 61:04 – 70:33 | | Album deep dive: production, krautrock, Heart of Glass | 73:25 – 96:41 | | Bowie, Debbie Harry stories | 86:37 – 90:53 | | Lightning round/favorite tracks | 100:33 – 102:53 |

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Final Takeaways

Blondie’s Parallel Lines—and Debbie Harry’s artistry—epitomize “cool” in music, blending punk, pop, disco, and art-school sensibilities.
The panel’s collective reverence for the album reflects its timelessness and ongoing influence on indie, garage, and alternative bands. The episode is a journey through musical evolution, DIY struggles, and the persistence of “weird bands” who define new rock generations.

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For tour dates, Dandy Warhols info, and more, visit: dandywarhols.com
Follow the podcast and host: @JoshAdamMeyers | @the500podcast

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Transcript

[Josh Adam Myers]

Next Chapter Podcasts.

[Morty Coyle]

When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Event invites and pin messages so no.

[Morty Coyle]

One forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Learn [e-mail] this podcast is supported by FX's English teacher. Last year's critically acclaimed series returns to follow Evan, Gwen and Markie as they vie for their students divided attention.

[Morty Coyle]

See why Cosmopolitan called its premiere season a masterclass of comedy while Glamor Raved is the year's funniest and most heartwarming new comedy series. FX's English Teacher. All new Thursdays on FX.

[Josh Adam Myers]

All episodes now streaming on Hulu. This show is brought to you by Distrokid. Bring your music to the masses. The 500 the 500 JM been walking us down through that 2012 edition so it ain't nothing too new. Hundreds more to go and in need of a friend the king of peace for angelo Talking the 500 until the end Talking the 500 until the end with my man JM on the 500 Talking the 500 until the end.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

One way or another I'm gonna find ya I'm gonna get you, get you, get you, get you One way or another I'm gonna win ya I'm gonna get you, get you, get you, get you.

[Josh Adam Myers]

One that is one way or another it's by blondie from the 1978 record Parallel Lines. It's number 140 out of 500 on the 500 with me, Josh Adam Myers. I am back in America and I am going through Rolling Stones list of the 500 Greatest Albums. Oh, we're chipping away. Yeah, I'm back. I want to thank Wolf Mother, Queens of the Stone Age and Jelly Roll and Bill Burr for taking me on the road. Let me hang and work and do all this cool stuff and now I am on the road doing my own thing. Uh, we're moving this weekend. We're moving Naples, Florida, because I'm just too exhausted to go down to Florida right now. But the 9th through the 11th, I will be in New Westminster, British Columbia. Then Santa Ana, Pueblo, New Mexico. The 17th and the 18th, Jansville, Wisconsin, Phoenix, Arizona. Why did that say? Oh, that's 11? Yeah. Then New Orleans, Baltimore, Maryland, Charlotte and Montville, Connecticut, all on my website. Josh Adam Myers.com the Big show, though, is going to be the show in Baltimore on the 22nd. So if you guys are available, I would love to see you guys come and pack that place out. Justin Schlegel from 98 Rock is going to be opening for me. It's gonna rule. Josh Adamize.com for tickets. All right, subscribe to the YouTube every Thursday. We drop the episodes there. Listen to it on all platforms, but just search the 500 podcast channel. And if you want to subscribe to the Patreon, you can help us. Patreon.com backslash the 500 podcast. $25 a month gets you so much. We love it. We love you. All right, let's get to this week's record. So I'm going to say it at the beginning. I got back from tour on Monday night and we had Debbie Harry and Chris lined up for this record and they dropped out at the last second and we were scrambling. And so I think we got a pretty damn good guest. The one and only Courtney Taylor. Taylor from the Dandy Warhols. I mean, great records like the dandy Warhol's come down 13 tales from the Urban Bohemia. Welcome to the Monkey House. And if you've seen the movie, dig, you might have seen the incredible. I don't want to call it a documentary because this shit was a movie. But them building their heat in the entertainment industry, versus, can we say versus? I don't even know it was versus. Just all I know is got Brian Jonestown Massacre as well. I don't mean to tie him to them, but that was where I really. I heard of them before that. But when I saw that, that was a cool thing about that, that movie is that it really made me fall in love with the Danny Warhol's music and the Brian Jonestown Massacre music too. And this is a really interesting conversation. I had DJ Morty Coyle help me out. He talked a lot. Morty knows a lot more about this record than I do, so I can't get mad about that. And him and Courtney really hit it off. And I think I said eight things. But you know what? I think it's a great episode. And I thank him for coming on and helping me because, you know, we had planned for. Well, we planned for Debbie Harry then we had planned this person that did drop out and that was set to go. And I was prepped for that, but then it came to this and I was like, dude, just come on. You know what I mean? All right, Ray, review. And most importantly, subscribe to the 500. Listen anywhere you get your pods. Follow me at Josh Adam Myers on all social media. Follow the podcast at the 500 podcast. Email the [e-mail] Follow the Facebook group run by Crazy Oven. And for all things 500, go to the website the500podcast.com. All right, y', all, not live to say, but here we go with 140 out of 500 blondies parallel lines. So I want to say thank you for coming on and, and not just for, for doing this, brother, but I'm a really big fan of the Dandies. I. I've been a fan since like the early 2000s, you know, got multiple of your records. I've met Zia before when she did a podcast here in New York City. And then that night I caught you guys at Webster Hall. This was, I think, 2024, an amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, amazing show, man. Amazing show. So it's a trip, dude, for you to be able to come on and do this, especially in the cut because, like, this was like. I mean, we probably reached out to you three hours ago maybe. So I appreciate you taking time out of the tours. Where are you right now? So you're in Tempe? Are you guys on the road? Like, what's going on?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, we started a week ago. This is exactly day eight, I think. What day is it? Tuesday. Yeah, we left. Yeah, we started in Salt Lake on Tuesday. You know, it's. It's a tour where there are a hundred plus bands that are all Cycroc, Shoegaze, Brit Pop, or, or adjacent. All like, like a, like a swirling drain. Swirling around Levitation Festival, which is, you know, probably the greatest psych rock festival in the world, but it brings all these bands that are really similar and have a similar audience into one region, which is the Southwest. So we're all playing Dallas, Houston, Santa Fe, Phoenix, whatever. And I can't, I'm surprised we're selling as many tickets as we are are. I think it's, it's in part due to having Kula Shaker on the bill with us because they, they're, they're also like class of 96, I think they started releasing, having hits in the, in the, in 96 that were also kind of psychedelic. And so it's, it's. It may perhaps it's not a generational thing actually, because we're getting, you know, the 90s are back, so.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Yeah, baby.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Teenagers. Hundreds by the hundreds. And they're cool. It's cool because it does feel like the 90s because they're wilder than, you know, middle aged fans. Sure. Bodies go up in the air, stage divers, the crowd surfing, you know, the whole bit. And it really started this year for us. We played the Balkans and. And we were pretty blown away at the just over the top energy of the new generation of fans.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Well, I think, I think music, like you said, is kind of in a circle. It's, you know, it's. It's always how it's been where it's like, you know, even just not bringing up just a band from the 90s, but like having to go and seen Oasis a few times while I was in London and, and if they just would have kept playing straight through, like, who knows if they'd be even remotely as popular as they are now. But there is something about that, like mid to late 90s rock, early 2000s, like everybody's starting to kind of have like this come up again with the younger generation like Dude, Like Corn and System of A Down, the metal bands, Limp Bizkits having Dude. Even Corey Feldman is making it work right now. Mean, I don't even know if we're going to see something as music because it's great, but it's just. Maybe it's just the show, but still it's like there's something about like, you know, the. Whether it's the clothes or the music, it definitely. It's the same thing with like, with you guys doing in a sense like, like almost like some of the psychedelic influence that you had like, you know, from the 60s and the 70s, like the Moby Grape or, or like who is it? Quicksilver Messenger Service. Like we did records and it's crazy being able to hear some of that music into some of the music, not just that you guys have made, but some of your contemporary. I mean, would you agree?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

I guess so. I don't. I don't know. I'd have to really think about that. I mean, not that I would know a Moby great song if it hit me in the head over Quicksilver for that matter either. You know, we, my friends and I, we kind of, you know, grew up with what everybody grew up, which, which would have been, you know, the doors, CCR.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Hendrix, Janis Joplin, you know, that was the 60s. But you know, I've always kind of been a Anglophile as far as the influences. So, you know, I have every WHO record I could get my hands on as a kid and you know, obviously sergeant Pepper and psychedelic Beatles stuff. Sure. And I was exactly the right age for mtv. I started playing downtown in the first real new wave looking and sounding band. And we were 15 and 16 years old playing at Satyricon, which years later when we were almost grown ups. Well, we were grown ups my age. Where the Kurd bed Courtney and that's where the Portland punk scene happened. You know, the Wipers and all that Napalm beach, those were the bands that were there. So that had a. Had an influence as well, just on the amount of grit that we always felt the need to leave into our records. We couldn't quite make it a record that was going to be slick enough to, you know, to really break through and have a lot of hits on it in America, the rest of the world. We had, I don't know, maybe 10, eight or 10 top 40 singles over a decade on Capitol Records. That was cool. And really only Monkey House was the. That was the slickest record we made, that one. Duran Duran, Nick Rhodes and Simon Dial Rogers is on it. But yeah, we've always been a, you know, we're a stoner LSD tripper 60s thing, but through the grunge and it and in the Angstroch era. So we have. In Portland, Pacific Northwest. So we have a, A pretty unique sound and always have, you know, we don't really have a lot of bands that sound like us.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Not if you're not at the time. Not at the time when like, especially like, you know, with the first three records. I mean, you got them 9597 in 2000. Like you said into welcome to the Monkey House in 2003. I mean it's, it's really just like you guys were. Were driving down your own lane and. And I found out you guys from thirteen Tales from Erman Bohemia, I mean it's, it's damn near a perfect record. No skips, you know, and so. Which is not surprising because I want to steer this real quick into, into Blondie. And, and when we reached out, they, you know, they said that you and your guitarist Peter, especially Peter is like a die hard Blondie fan. So like you were talking about growing up during the. Go ahead, bud.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

He's read the books, the biographies and the autobiographies. I have not. You know, I'm a. I don't really. My. I don't really read autobiographies or biographies of rockers. He. He does so. But I think he's probably a little too uptight about perfection and details to want to do this interview. I asked you to give me three days and I'll call I'll definitely do it. We had three hours.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Well, I'm not gonna lie to you. Can I be. Could I be. Can I be completely clear and then just be completely transparent? For, like, weeks we had Blondie, Debbie Harry booked to do it. And then my schedule got so shitty because I was on tour in Europe, and then I got back and immediately went to the middle EAS for shows. And so when they couldn't work with that, which was literally yesterday, we had found out, and so then we started throwing out the. The bat signal. So to be able to score you, Courtney, is. Is a gift. So thank you so much for coming on. And it doesn't make a difference, I mean, because you obviously. You're obviously a fan of Blondie, right? Like, when did your. When your love or. Or just whatever. When did that start?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

I grew up on Blondie, you know. Yeah. And because I was in our suburban school, you know, there were three of us, Harold Nelson and myself, and we were the wavos. We were the ones, you know, who listened to, bought the vinyl records of, you know, the B52s and, of course, the Blondie records. Blondie was, you know, like, parallel lines came out when I was maybe in the fifth grade. And I. I kind of knew then. I mean, when I saw Blondie on Saturday Night Live doing Heart of Glass, it. It definitely would affected me. That was. That was the most intense sort of art sexuality I'd ever seen. And getting to school on the following Monday, I heard some of the jocks and the popular kids talking about it night gleefully marched towards them in the empty. Otherwise empty corridor. And. And I then heard that they were horrified by this vampire woman with the fangs and the blacks in the back of her hair. And I knew then it was me against them. And that's sort of how it was for the rest of my young life until I moved out, moved downtown, and paid my way through college by being a janitor at a strip club. Club like that.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. We have the connection. I was not a. I was not a janitor. I was a strip club DJ for many years. Well, many six years in Los Angeles. And if I'm not mistaken, Portland has the most strip clubs per capita than any city in America. I know they're in the top three. I think, like, Tampa's up there historically.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Historically, in the best. More. But I'm sure 10 years ago it was. You couldn't throw a rock, you know, without.

[Josh Adam Myers]

What is that? What is that like being a janitor strip club? Because being the dj. Especially a DJ in like when I was doing it, which was like 2009 through 2015. I mean it was a totally different world. Like just like the music, like, like were you, was, were you in the heydays? Like the, the.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Oh, that.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Pour some sugar on me.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

That would have. Yeah, yeah, that would have been the, the 80s. Yeah, it would have been the, the late mid-80s. 87, 86. And well, you know, you just, you just let yourself in, takes about two hours. Minimum wage was about $3.50 an hour. Maybe then.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Maybe livable back then.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah. And I was getting 20 bucks an hour. No, I was getting 25 an hour. I'd get 50 bucks and, and just show up anytime between midnight, after midnight when they closed. It was a. There was no alcohol. It was an all ages or 18 and older Strip club. And. And you know, you just get out the shop vac and put on the. Snap the rubber gloves up to your elbows and just plug hold your nose and vacuum and mop and squeegee the organ prints off the mirrors and brasso the poles and that was kind of, that was kind of it. It took about, I don't know, hour and a half, two hours. I smoked a lot of weed. It was funny, my girlfriend at the end of that run, but it was great money. It was six nights a week, anytime before noon, finish before noon, start after midnight. And I got a call from my girlfriend Alex at the time and she said, are you going to work tonight? And I was like, God, why are you waking me up? What time is it? And she goes, what, you don't know? Turn on the tv. So I turn on the tv, turn on channel six or eight, whichever local one was, and there's the front of the club with the cops, the strippers, you know, zip tied hands with their faux fur coats and their high heels and yeah, it got busted for prostitution and racketeering. And that's where I got my first guitar. Somebody had left it there and so I stuck it in the janitor's closet, put a note on the DJ booth where the manager said if anyone comes in looking for this guitar, it's in my janitor. No one came. And then the place got busted, locked up. So I went down there and just grabbed that guitar. Probably some clothes, cleaning products, toilet paper, paper towels, you know. And yeah, it started then, you know, it started being on guitar because I was a drummer and a percussionist for my entire life. I was, you know, I went to music college and I had to write charts and Played marching band, high school and symphony in junior high. You know, I probably started learning to read music at 9 years old. So by the time I put the band together, I didn't want any real musicians in the band. I didn't want any bad habits. So I played guitar. I switched from drums to guitar. You know, my cousin is a far. He's an actual guitar player and an actual singer. Peter is an actual painter with a degree from nyu and it says so. And Zia worked at the coffee shop and was the coolest chick. And so we all learned how, which is probably why we don't sound like anyone else is. We just didn't have the skills to imitate anyone accurately. So we kind of just fudged our way into making being a composer who could write handwrite charts out for. I think my senior or my graduating project was like 10 instruments and it was a jazz college. So I knew that we could just get it on with three chords, two chords, one chord, four chords, whatever. And the point from being a drummer is just the groove, a perpetual groove. And that's what I wanted. With enough chord changes, vocal harmonies to have emotional content to keep the groove thrilling and incessant and, you know, psychically and sexually and emotionally, like a series of doors opening into progressively more and more wonderful rooms. And then five minutes, four minutes, whatever, it's sets you back down and, you know, next song, we do a lot of jamming live, you know.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Oh, yeah, I've seen it. I saw it at the Webster hall show, and it's great. We just want to introduce you to. We got our. One of my writers, my main writer, Morty Coyle is here.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Here.

[Josh Adam Myers]

He's going to be helping us out. He's a fan of. Of yours as well, and a huge fan of Blondie. So he'll be filling in the holes that I might miss. But before I get into the album, do you still have that guitar from the strip club? I gotta know.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, of course.

[Morty Coyle]

Of course.

[Josh Adam Myers]

I love that. I love that.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

It's amazing.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Wrote four albums with it.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, Yeah, I did. I slept.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Oh, I love that.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

So that I could wake up in the middle of the night and you know, it's coming to me subconscious. If the best is the better writer, the subconscious is the better artist.

[Morty Coyle]

When you were doing music in school, were you primarily working on percussion stuff or did they have you doing composing and orchestration? Across the board.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

There was a little bit of composing and orchestration. Mostly you learn things like sight singing and ear training. Being able to just look at a series of lines and dots on a page and sing it. Sing the melody, a word. And there's. I really got into. I had been. When I was about 14, they invented the four track cassette record quarters.

[Morty Coyle]

The Tascam or Fostex.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Figured out Fostex was the first one. Yeah, four, two, you know, left and right going one way on a tape and left and right going the other way on the other side of the cassette. You go four tracks in all, one direction. So you drums, bass, guitar, bounce those over to the other track to the fourth track that opens up three tracks. Now those two tracks, you can put another guitar and a keyboard with those on that track, you know. And so I learned how to. How to record. So once I got into music college, I really focused on the recording engineering process. Also. MIDI was new, sampling was new. So I got into the keyboard synthesis and all that studio integration and you know, I just learned how to. The important part is not being a great live band at that point. The important part was making this CD that could go out into the world without you having to be there, go out on the radio and whatever. Recording, since the invention of recording has been the more important part of the job. So I did a lot of that and that's what I remember. You know, it was an eternity ago. It was 40 years ago. So. Yeah, I can't remember what I did in my daily life there. Except for the recording part. Having Ensonic ESQ1 maybe the old.

[Morty Coyle]

With the old discs. Yeah, that's a keyboard. Keyboard that had you. You could essentially sort of make your own sounds and stuff. My cousin was just to get my quick bona fides. I've been in bands my whole life. We're about the same age, so we have a lot of. We probably have mutual friends and. And a lot of sort of. Even when I was doing the research for this, I was like, oh, I gotta bring up like this thing and that thing. So they'll, they'll. It'll probably come up organically. But I've been a singer in bands and everything my whole life. And we were signed around the same time you guys were to other labels too. So I've also seen your career and I knew, you know, the Brian Jonestown guys and stuff. So I also saw your career from a perspective of like a contemporary at the same time. And following, I DJ'd at a club called Bang, which was an 18 and over club in LA. And right about the time that bohemian sort of broke and it was around the same time like Brit pop was really happening, so. And I just saw Pulp the other night, and I was going to say there are a lot of similarities. I sort of saw between, at least in the ethos. So, yeah, I mean, so just. Just so, you know, when you. You know, when you refer to some of that stuff, you know, and I know Josh is a singer as well, you know, we. We kind of know, like, what you're talking about and appreciate that. I didn't realize how studied you were at the time because you gave off such this great feeling of this being a garage, almost like a garage rock project that, you know, the fact that you're.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, we were. You know, that's why we were all playing instruments that we're not schooled at. I literally was horrified by the, you know, bending a little guitar note, you know, like people that would do that, or bass players that had that skinny 90s sound that, you know, we. Yeah, we just kind of. Peter and I just sort of, you know, decided that we weren't going to get people that knew how to play their instruments. We got people that kind of grew up with instruments around them, but, you know, not, you know, Brent never played. Never played in bands or symphonies or marching band or anything as a drummer. He just played in garage bands. But mostly he just sat around with his friends learning Beatles songs and shit on guitar and singing, and he sang in choirs and all through, you know, schooling. So he is a great vocal arranger. He's fantastic. And he's a songbird, a perfect singer. And I am a not perfect singer.

[Morty Coyle]

I don't know. I. I mean, I definitely. I definitely have appreciated your contributions. Like, you were. There was another one of the bands, you guys, that was, like. There was an emulation of cool, you know, which I think with Blondie, there's such a big part of the Blondie thing where you're like, yeah, but they're cool, you know, and, like, I mean, if. Josh, if you want to just talk about the thing and get into the record, because there's some. This is the. This is.

[Josh Adam Myers]

This is the record. This is the undeniable breakthrough record. This is due in part to the band's willingness to span genres, unlike some of the band's contemporaries. While it definitely still has the punk and New wave qualities that got them noticed, they also crossed over into the mainstream with one of their most accessible songs that saw them flirting with the disco popularity of the time. Third record is what. What kind of is. This is the one that broke them. So there's two records before were There just no hits on that. Those first two records.

[Morty Coyle]

No, they had.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Had.

[Morty Coyle]

They had already like, sort of established them. Well, the first record is. Is sort of the. I think. I believe they worked with. What's it say? Is from Gor. The guy. The guy who worked with the. With the Goos on their first album. And part of the Strange Loves from the three guys that wrote We've Done this on the girl group episode where they. They were the guys that did I Want Candy. And he had a very. You know, I think people thought, oh, we have a chick in the band. It'll be like kind of a punky girl group type thing. And they were. Started growing by then. Mike Chapman did this record. So just.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

No, wait a second. You. You. You just named I Want candy. That's probably 80.

[Morty Coyle]

No, no, no. The Strange Loves version, the original.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Oh, okay. Oh, okay. What year was that?

[Morty Coyle]

65, I think. I think. Because the original.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, like Motown still going strong. The Beatles have put out Revolver and we're heading towards something.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, they were. They were Rubber Soul into Revolver. And the thing was, these guys, the three guys just blanked on their names. Richard. God, it was Goddard and whatever. They went on to do the Go Go's first album, One of the Cats. And they were part of, like, they were songwriters and producers and they would just come up with bands. So the Strange Loves, they pretended to be Australian surfer guys. Then they put together this band just so they could put out a single. And so they would do things like this. And then that was the first. The first Blondie album was produced by Richard. I think Richard Goderer is his name. I just blanked. But Mike Chapman did this record and Mike. We actually worked with him on the second record, so he used to tell us stories about. Well, I mean, with the Blondies and so Mike Chapman. So just to give you guys a heads up on who this guy is who produces this record.

[Josh Adam Myers]

He.

[Morty Coyle]

Produced the Suite. He wrote Ballroom Blitz. He was part of Chinny Chap, which was Nicky Chin and Mike Chapman together. They did Susie Quatro's stuff. Those songs, either written or produced in both did My Sharona for the Knack.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

That is a power stunner of a. Oh, yeah.

[Morty Coyle]

Oh, yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

That is just amazing. And that drummer became like the hottest session drummer in America after that single because that is. It's thundering. He is so sticky and tight. He's clearly a monster.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, that whole. That whole that, that. And he did Mickey for Tony Basil. He did. He did. What was the other one?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Oh, Mickey is a great track. I just got. I just went down that rabbit hole and checked out, you know, listen to Mickey for an afternoon 10 times.

[Morty Coyle]

And here's the great. Here's a great thing with that.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Our.

[Morty Coyle]

My old friend Rick Parnell was the drummer on that. Who by the way was all. He just passed away a couple years ago. But he was also the drummer in Spinal Tap at the time. He was the one.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Which one? Which one that died.

[Morty Coyle]

The last one who really died. And then he was also in my favorite drummer Tap with his brother back in the 60s. But yeah, Rick played on. On Mickey like one of those weird claim to fames of like, yeah, I'm in Spinal Tap, but I'm also the drummer on Mickey. And it was like, that's a real thing like that. I was like, wow. You know. But yeah, I was gonna say on Bohemian there's a. There's definitely a quality of that sort of, you know, that thumping glam rock sort of thing there that I thought was reminiscent.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Certainly. Yeah, certainly. Ballroom Blitz was a big deal to me as a kid. That was. That was one of my favorite songs for a good few years. But yeah, getting back to Parallel Lines, that's one of those. You know, almost half of those songs were radio are radio staples. You know, Sunday Girl to obviously One Way or Another and Heart of Glass were the. Those were the super powered. You know, they just attached themselves to radio and stayed there for the rest of eternity. And then, yeah, Sunday Girl is great. You know, I live in Portland, so our radio station still plays I Can't Remember what all Hanging on the Telephone. What else. Yeah, I remember that there are. There are five or six hits. Can you name.

[Morty Coyle]

This is the banger. We jump into the record and start going down this.

[Josh Adam Myers]

I mean it starts off. Yeah, it starts off with Hanging on the Telephone, which I didn't get into later with them. A lot of people don't realize that this second single was a cover of a song by the short lived west coast power pop the Nerves, which featured the songs writer, guitarist and vocalist Jack Lee, as well as drummer Phil Paul Collins, who would go on to lead American band the Beat, and bassist Peter Case, who would start the Plim Souls a million miles away from Valley Girl. Blondie discovered the song after musician Jeffrey Lee Pierce would later form the beloved cult band the Gun Club, sent them a cassette. Although the Nerves had already broken up, Blondie, covering both this and Will Anything happen on this record was a blessing. As Jack Lee recalled. He was really broke.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Bone is the nerve yeah, the Nerves.

[Morty Coyle]

It's their first song off their first ep.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Okay.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah. Which is just. Yeah.

[Josh Adam Myers]

And Jack Lee recalled he. He said he was really broke when Blondie called to ask permission to cover the songs. He said, I remember the day vividly. It was a Friday. They were going to cut off our electric at 6 o'.

[Morty Coyle]

Clock.

[Josh Adam Myers]

And the phone, too. So luckily that phone call went right at the exact moment. What a great way to open this record. I mean, it's.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

It goes from that into one way or another, right?

[Josh Adam Myers]

Oh, yeah, it does.

[Morty Coyle]

But also with that. With that thing at the front they were on the fence about, Mike Chapman was like, oh, I'll put like, a telephone sound effect at, like, the front of the thing. And they were kind of like, I don't know, like, is that a little, kind of, you know, cheesy?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

A little.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah. Like, it's, you know, it's a. It's sticky to use, especially because it's such a strong song. But the fact that this is the band that, had this not happen, like, who knows, maybe the Plim Souls, you know, wouldn't have happened. You know, where you get Peter Case and, you know, and his stuff. And even the Beat, which is the reason that the beat with uk, you know, the reason the English beat has to be called the English Beat is because of the American band called the Beat, you know, out here. So it's just really wild that these guys have two songs on an album by a band that, you know, could write their own material. You know, like, it's. It's kind of wild that a band would take.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

I mean, just think of that we're about to release. We're about to release our. I think we got our hands on every cover we've ever done.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Wow.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

So certainly a. A prolific songwriting band still loves other bands, other songs, you know, and there's, you know, you get asked a lot, what song do you wish you wrote? You know, and that's. There is no great artist that. That would say no great songwriter or terrible song. None. I wrote all the songs I wanted to write. It's just impossible. Yeah. So covers are an incredibly fun thing to do. You know, you feel really. You feel cooler than yourself, you know, because you don't know this other person and their trip. You just know their song. And it's something that made you probably feel real cool earlier in your life with you guys.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Are there any covers that. Hold on, is there any covers that you guys have in your set currently that you. That you always have in the rotation that you do in the. In the set list?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

No, interesting. We get. We get a swoon 23 song called pussycat Fingertips that we bang out. And if a crowd is really going mental when we walk off stage to say good night. And it's a very occasional. We make it. We play a long time. We make it pretty obvious that we're not coming back on. But if they do, we'll play the Last Time by the Rolling Stones.

[Morty Coyle]

There you go.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Interesting.

[Morty Coyle]

Which.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Interesting.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah.

[Josh Adam Myers]

All right. One way or another. You already mentioned it. I mean, this surf rock inspired track was written by bassist Nigel Harrison and Debbie, who based it on her former bandmate and ex boyfriend, who became so much of a stalker that she had to move out of her adoptive hometown of New Jersey. Although the song reversed the roles and added some playful menace and levity to the lyrics. It came from a pretty dark place, which is interesting because I never. I mean, I. You could kind of hear it. But it's such a fun song. It's such a rocker that you didn't even like. You almost forget that the lyrics even exist. Just. You just feel the energy and just. Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Thoughts on this Embodies New Wave. It is. Really feels like. And for 1978, you gotta understand that, you know, Pat Benatar and Foreigner were huge, you know, and that's just not. It's not anything like that. It's. It's. It's tougher. It's more art school. It sounds like weirder people doing it. And it was huge, groundbreaking. You know, I remember being on the playground at the end of the school day, you know, in fifth grade, and somebody's got a radio at that song. He's just screeching out of a little AM radio. And even that, you know, horrible for, you know, sonic version of it was just. What is that? What is that?

[Josh Adam Myers]

Yeah.

[Morty Coyle]

By the way, Mike Chapman also produced the Pat Benatar record, like right around that same time.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, that. That. That's interesting because Pat Benatar never really sounded like real rock to me.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, he. I mean, he did. Love As a Battlefield. Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah. That doesn't really sound like rock. It has guitar doing dangerous. It's got that kind of danger rock thing.

[Morty Coyle]

Oh, yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

The heat of the city streets and the heat. And. Yeah, even as a kid, it just kind of rang as like the older, like adult rock, you know, mom says it's okay rock. And it's not. It wasn't truly. It never sounded truly dirty. So it's interesting that it's not the producer it is actually the nature of the band, how they put their pieces together, what guitar tones they use, how the singer sings. You know, Blondie, Debbie didn't sing like anybody else that I had ever heard.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, she.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

That was something that was.

[Morty Coyle]

She definitely can go from the falsetto to the growl in like one song. I mean, really, she had. That's. That's a big thing about this too, is that when you listen to this record as a whole, because most people listen to greatest hits and a lot of the songs on here are on the greatest hits. But then you forget Rapture came out this many years later. And then, you know, Denise. Denise is like earlier. So it's hard to sort of think of like, you know, when you look at a retrospective of an artist, it just feels like the horizon is like this. Oh yeah. Everything they did was in like six months. But it's like when you see the, the. The growth of this band, I mean also of changing members and adding people. When you see the growth, growth of this band from being like, you know, a band that played CS in New York with other kind of punky bands and all this stuff, and then all of a sudden they break like big, you know, which we'll get to, you know, when the song comes up. But you know, that, that they evolved even as players, you know, from even just this new wave, whatever you would call new wave or punk, you know, they are absolutely contemporaries of the punk scene. I mean, they were together in 74, 75, you know, like when all of this was happening. So it's. They predate punk rock. They're in the, you know, in the New York Dolls sort of era of music, which.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Right. They're the same age as the Dolls.

[Morty Coyle]

It's wild, you know, and we're contemporaries.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Like legit was the art. Glam was the artsy form of rock right at that time. Glam and obviously, you know, glam was a very short lived thing because country and then disco came on in. In that order and just kind of wiped out, you know, rock until, until punk and new wave, you know.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah. By the way, happy Mark Boland's birthday to all glam rockers who celebrate. Yeah, you know, I talk about one of the, one of the gods of that. So. Yeah, you want to talk about with this one. With one way.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Picture this.

[Morty Coyle]

Well, with one way or the other. The only thing I was going to ask is you guys have, you know, just being on the outside and not knowing the whole story, stuff like the Last Junkie on Earth and things they they seem to come from a place of knowledge, or at least I mean, you call the Dandy Warhols. So there's already going to be the overview of there being sort of like a factory sort of artsy quality to what you guys are doing. And you have Dandy in your name. So, you know, I always assumed, even when I heard you, about you guys, before I actually heard the band, I was trying to put together what this band would be because it had like, you know, sort of the New York thing and then the Dandy thing, which is a glammy kind of quality, even if that wasn't the intention. But then when the last chunky on earth, I was like, these guys write like Morrissey titles. Like, great, like, intriguing. I want to listen to this song because I want to know what this is about. Did those. Was that darkness? Did it come from real life? Like experiences from the people you knew around you or the scene?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, I went on. We went on our first tour and I, you know, it's just eight days or seven days down the coast in a van. And back then the days just lasted forever. I mean, it was the longest days of my life. Everything was new and fresh, so exciting and great. I came back and my girlfriend of about three and a half years had shacked up with the singer of my first of my previous band, which is the last drumming I did in a band. And he kicked me out and stole it. Stole my previous girlfriend. And so now he's got my two. He's got these. My two fucking girlfriends and they're shooting smack. And the one that we were just kind of ending because of the tour and the band and everything. She shows up in my house like a drowned rat in the rain with a brown paper bag with a rig and a king size Snickers. And, you know, they get the dope and the plastic thing and it comes out of the dude's mouth under the bridge. And, you know, you put it in your lip in case you get busted, pulled over, you've got. You've got to sit in plastic, your little wad of dope. And it's. It was just like, oh, my God. And she just chewed me a new one for not caring about her enough and whatever. And now you're in this band and da da da, da da. And then she marched off to the bathroom to slam some smack and eat his giant Snickers. And when she came out, man, she was a terror. And the last thing she said as she slammed the door and left was and V neck Sweaters aren't even cool anymore.

[Morty Coyle]

That's a great line. Such a great line.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, I wearing this mod sweater, you know, the brown, big brown, you know, you know, trim on the V neck and heroin isn't even cool anymore. You know, it's like Vogue magazine probably that month that it put out a heroin chic, you know, photo fashion spread.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, I remember that.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

It looks so pretty. Oh my God, they're gorgeous. 14 year old girls with painted on veins and pink, you know, strung out look in the, in the woods with wedding dresses, like Victorian wedding gowns on. I was just like, oh, so yeah, that's where that came from. I wasn't about to give one inch of emotional sympathy to that.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, it was difficult. I had a junkie ex girlfriend who died around the time that. I mean, I don't, I don't mean to be. But I remember at that time too because it was a huge. In la, there was a huge heroin sort of epidemic. Portions of people that got into it all around the same time.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Oh, Seattle, Portland, the Pacific North. We didn't even have sun, we only had rainbow.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, it was, it was crazy.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Every I In my 20s, I lost one acquaintance or friend every year to heroin and sometimes suicide.

[Morty Coyle]

That's.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

I was horrible. And then I put that song out and, and that, that got globally big enough to where I the, the commercial industry of style and fashion sort of quit Once somebody poked their little turtle head up and said this is stupid. Not. This breaks my heart when you, when you stick that spike in your vein. You stick a spike in my heart. You know, they didn't approach it like that. It's just like, that's not even cool. That's stupid. You're pathetic. Get a life. You know, and to have that kind of attitude, it was tough love. Yeah, it was a great, it definitely worked. It worked to clear out, clear it out of the industry. I didn't have to, I didn't have to see it in magazines and fashion photo spreads anymore. You know, so that was, that's what.

[Morty Coyle]

I thought that was. What was. That was. That was a great part of that song. You know, it was also a fun song. But that was the thing I was like, man, what a sentiment. You know, it wasn't patronizing.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

I remember some other artists, you know, that were probably junkies in England on the, on, you know, talk shows and stuff, bad mouthing it is saying he doesn't understand the pain. You know, when you, when you're with, with people that have drug problems, you know, you have to be sympathetic. And it was. I was just like, you know, how about yourself with a sword? First of all, you don't know my life and you're not listening to the lyrics, idiots. So it was. It was rough because I had to be. I had to be snotty about it. I wasn't gonna be sympathetic or, you know, like this guy and my two ex girlfriends, you know, like, have a nice junky time. And they all ended up miserable in their lives and very regretful that. That they all kind of ganged up to try to, you know, hurt me emotionally and show me. And, you know, and yes, they did. It hurt it. All three of those fuckers broke my heart. And so, yeah, you know, I got to travel the world because of the pain they caused me. So, you know, I feel like I was gratified in the end. But then watching them deteriorate in their lives was not a joy whatsoever. That was when I really was really sad and tried to help out, which is a dead end street trying to help.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Kidding. Three junkies until they're.

[Morty Coyle]

Until they're ready to.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Anyway, sorry, I got them all.

[Josh Adam Myers]

No, no, no, no.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

I just wanted to know. Yeah, well, parallel lines.

[Morty Coyle]

Let's get.

[Josh Adam Myers]

All right, back to parallel lines. How we talk about Picture this, which is the debut single, is the first slice of girl group style pop heaven that will appear later on the record. Co written by Debbie, keyboardist Jimmy Destri and guitarist Chris Stein. This has Debbie cooling and growling with lyrics about her desire for a perfect life with simple pleasures, which include watching Stein, her partner at the time, showering. This was the first single. This is the one that they. They kicked this off with.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

This was a photograph. Yeah. God, so beautiful. What a cool.

[Morty Coyle]

And what's wild about this is because I was going to say the thing about the image, because, you know, the COVID of this album is iconic. I mean, even Blur did a piss take of it where you've got, you know, the guys in the band and their skinny ties looking like Reservoir Dogs against his peril. And then blonde and then Debbie in her white dress, just absolutely pulling focus. And you'd see it again and again in bands where it had this dynamic. But the guys were, you know, sort of almost like relegated. And I always wondered. And on the COVID of this actual single, she's like licking the vinyl and it's just her, you know, which makes it. It's almost like when Mark McGrath jokes about being called Sugar Ray, where everybody just called her Blondie because she's Blondie. Obviously, you know it's her, but the fact that it's a band and that, you know that. That everybody in the band contributed and really wanted to.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Hey everybody. So you guys have probably heard me talk about how I've been in bands my whole life. I love writing songs and performing in front of crowds. Just like with comedy. As a musician, it can be kind of hard to cut through the noise and really stand out as an artist. I feel like half the music projects I've been in have ended just because we couldn't figure out the answer to that eternal question of how do we get people to hear us? But then again, that was before there was Distrokid. Distrokid is a digital music distribution service that brings your sound to the masses. It's a one stop shop for getting your songs on itunes, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon, Deezer, Tidal, and many more. What's Deezer? I never even heard of Deezer. How many of them are there? I know all that. That's like the holy grail of streaming services though. And. And getting paid. They want to. We want to get you paid for your music. That's huge because a lot of bands go broke before they get big. But Distrokid collects earnings and payments and sends 100% of these earnings to artists minus banking fees and applicable taxes. And that's just one of the tons of benefits of using Distrokid. You can send big files to anyone with their Instant Share feature. You can use the Hyper Follow feature to promote your release and get pre saves on your song. You can even create personal landing pages for yourself, your band, your brand, and whatever you like. It has a free Spotify Canvas generator too to generate your own Spotify Canvas for your songs. And the Mixia feature instantly masters your tracks for higher quality audio. So if you're ready to bring your band to the next level, it's time to check out Distrokid. The Distrokid app is now available on iOS and Android. Go to the app or Play Store to download it. Listeners of this show can get 30% off their first first year by going to distrokid.com VIP the 500 that's distrokid.com VIP the500 for 30% off your first year. Dig it.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

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[Morty Coyle]

But when you guys, because you, you have. I don't mean to be fawning, but I mean, the banana on the COVID is, you know, homage to both, you know, almost like Apple records, but also like, you know, Velvet, you know, underground.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

And then, well, it's unzipping. It's not unpeeled, it's unzip. So it's the two rock record covers that Andy did.

[Morty Coyle]

Right. And it's like Sticky Fingers and that, you know, together. Yeah. And then you have, you know. But even the early stuff with the way the type, the typography across the, the page, the image. How important? Because you said you kind of came from a different ethos as far as what you were putting together. But I always felt that there was an artistic quality to the band from the beginning where, you know, the videos, all of it, you know what I mean?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, I directed all of them. I, I, I love film and I really got attached to the making of film through MTV. Watching the art of four minute film come, come to fruition during those early 80s years. And I really got into filmmaking. So I directed, I guess all of them except the David LaChapelle one and that one. You know, he was a still photographer who is and still is a mind blowing photographer way ahead of everyone else. Yeah, I checked in last year with, kind of checked out what his latest stuff he's been doing and it doesn't look like any. He's way ahead of everyone still. He's a fantastic artist, but, you know, he had never made a motion picture before. So Capital had to seize the footage and you know, we went in and edited it and that's, you know, that's like I'm the goalie at that point because whenever I have worked with other people, I still end up editing. It's just something about the pacing and it could be my life as a drummer.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

The simplest rhythm and short attention span. But not that short. Not like, not like if you watch the Ramones at the Roseland. Right. That's a bad edit. That is like I want to look at Dee Dee for three more seconds. I want to look at Joey for three more. You know, it's there. That was, that was a misinterpretation of the MTV era's editing.

[Morty Coyle]

Right. Cut too quickly. Right. Make it exciting.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

They Thought it was exciting. Yeah. And it was. And it actually turns out to be. It's boring.

[Morty Coyle]

But I love the fact that you're so invested in. Not that people aren't, but that you're so invested. I think we kind of come from an era where the diy, but also once we're given the opportunity, we're so invested in what we put out there. It's not just we throw it away to, like, oh, we'll just get the guy that does the thing that he does and that you're actually there and hands on, because, I mean, this really is your career. Our career. You know, when we talk about what we do, you know, we live or die by our artistic statement, you know, and so that's why I'm like, you know, you never want to feel like it was taken away from you. I'd rather die on the merits of what I do.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Oh, we're. God. Zia is in the front lounge of this tour bus right now, and she's been poring over numbers and, you know, pages and pages of watching the books. We do everything, you know, we have to, whether we have a manager or not, at whatever given time. We always manage ourselves. Sometimes we have a manager, and sometimes we don't have a manager, but we are always managing everything from our insurance policies to you know, our. How much, you know, 80 hertz is in the. Is in the kick drum. Everything, you know, you have to be diy. Yeah, I. I think you want to truly be able to sleep comfortably at night.

[Morty Coyle]

You know, I was going to say after watching and watching all the. Now that all the documentaries are out, Billy Joel, everyone's like, did you know he got screwed by his man? I'm like, yeah, everybody, like every, you know, everybody. Everybody does, dude. That's why they lived. You know, they. They dealt with Beatles, had a bad publishing contract so that you two would get all their publishing with Island. You know, like, they, you know, they walk so we could run. Speaking of picture this, I know Josh and I were just talking about. I don't know how you feel about this, but because it was such an impactful thing when Dig came out, speaking of pictures and of editing and videos, it. You know, we were just talking about that because it remains one of the best music documentaries. And you guys, even though I know you, you were along for the entire ride, you almost unwittingly become the sort of the ruler by which we're going to measure, sort of how Brian Jonestown Massacre is. Is applying their career, you know, and having Been in bands and seeing bands, like, coming up with, like, the Wallflowers and then seeing their career meteorically sort of rise, you know, in an exponential level while things were falling.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

They didn't come out of a scene. They came out of Bob Dylan's testicles.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Right.

[Morty Coyle]

Well, of course, but we were in it. We were in the Kibbutz Room and, like, we all played together and we, like Rami, when we started, like, they were still playing. You know, obviously at any given moment, a call could have gone out and said, I'd like to have a record deal, but they were still sort of slagging around. But you guys were legitimately. I remember at the time, Campfire Girls were out and they were like our contemporaries or like El Magnifico, like in la. I don't know. You guys, I think, were still up Pacific Northwest.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, that was the early Silver Lake scene.

[Morty Coyle]

And my cousin was in a band called Ludafisk. And there were. There were like a bunch of other.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Bands that were around rather unappetizing.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, but that was. That was the era, you know, of like, you know, that the great unwashed down here here of all of that. But when you guys started, when Dig Happened, how was it pitched to you as it was going to be about one of the bands or it was going to be following your career?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

It was following. It was following 12 or 13 bands. And Anton, in his classic Anton fashion, took it over and told in no uncertain terms the lady that was filming it that it was going to be about his band. And the Dandy Warhol said, that's it, or else we're going away. And we had. We had very little to do with that movie. And it's, you know, there's all sorts of, you know, it's about the Brian Jonestown Massacre because they're by far the more interesting Wild Up Ban. You know, we're just chopped in there. You know, I feel like it's a. Well, I was told by a filmmaker in Portland, because he saw it and I didn't. And he said, it's an assassination piece. You guys got fucked. And we never saw it. You know, our. Once again, a learning lesson in diy. Our lawyer told us, oh, just sign it. Sign the deal. No one ever sees these things.

[Morty Coyle]

Wow. I mean, I'm not gonna. I'm say you guys came out.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Well, we never. We literally have never seen a penny for that movie. We got really nobody to defend us, no one to protect us, you know, no one to go back in afterwards. And go, hey, they signed this, you know, when they were in. On tour in Poland or where, you know, wherever. And they were, you know, no one ever defends the bands. You have to do it yourself. Yeah, but, yeah, I saw it and I was horrified. You know, I was just only. You know. But the good. The good part is, is the Jonestown Massacre had no hope of having a lifelong career until Anton took that movie over and boss manned, you know, it around. And it. It got. It got how absolutely awesome their music was into the world forever. And that's really. I mean, we were doing very well. So that was really, you know, our concern mainly was like, yeah, we'll be in it. Because then, you know, this band will be seen by somebody. We had no idea how big it was be, but we figured someone would see it.

[Morty Coyle]

It's really the house band. I was in a band. We were the house band on Sunday nights at the Viper. So I didn't know what to expect. Everyone was telling me about the movie, and I'm watching it, and then they have their big epic, you know, Anton fighting thing on stage at the Viper Room. So it was so surreal to be like, oh, my God, that's like my home stage. Like, I knew these guys were around, but this is, like happening, like, in my neighborhood. You know what I mean?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

It's like toddlers. Like a bunch of toddlers fighting over.

[Morty Coyle]

It was embarrassing. It wasn't even like, you know, here's they're on stage and you hear about, like, how somebody threw a symbol. You know how, like, the. Who got in a fight. This was like one dude trying to kick another dude, like Joel falling over an amp. Like, it was just like a. Oh.

[Josh Adam Myers]

They'Re still doing that, too. They're still doing that. There was a. There was a. There was a fight recently, I think, that broke out. They were in the news. And. And I love that you said about really getting their music out, because it was. And, you know, it was good kind of in the sense to get both of you, because I think I know a lot of people. I remember walking in to one of my film classes, and the teacher one day was listening to the Danny Warhols, and then the next day was listening to Brian Jonestown. And it was so. It really did like, you know, and it made like, it puts you guys in a really good light and it puts your music out there. And then it was always funny hearing you talk about the Dave LaChapelle video, because in the. In the. The documentary or in the movie, it was you know, I could tell that you guys, you weren't happy or if I'm wrong, but it was like, because you didn't feel like if I lo. Was too bright.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

But.

[Josh Adam Myers]

But what it did show.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

We. We loved it. I was just pissed off that they. That his. His little makeup artists. See, makeup artists need to have little jobs to do, otherwise they don't have a job at all. And so Buddy, little buddy put some kind of everything proof, whatever you call it, mask. I don't know what it is, but what they call it exactly. Mascaras for your eyelashes. But he penciled my eyebrows into slugs or caterpillars or something. I have very. You know, I used to have quite fine eyebrows and. And was always glad to have some lovely young ladies tell me, oh, my God, look at your eyebrows. I wish I had those. I was always happy about that. So for our first big video on Capitol Records, I didn't have my eyebrows. I had somebody else's dumb, big, dumb eyebrows. And so that was basically it. Also, David trying to. Trying to get like some kind of expression out of me was. Was a. Not a. Not a very savvy directorial move because it's just. Just kind of ruined the. A bunch of junky, strung out vampires on stage with really pasty makeup on it. It's kind of, you know, it did. It wasn't a whole idea for, for our, for us. It didn't work out that way.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, sumptuous still.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

So, yeah, it was hard. We were, we were still learning. But David was great. I mean, La Chapelle was a bombshell, man. He was like, at one point, the. One of the camera moves was incorrect and one of his dancers got hurt and I, you know, the guy's like the, the cameraman or what? I don't know. Was it. Somebody was bitching about how this is like a, you know, how many hundreds of. Of thousands of dollars this camera is, and La Chapelle tore that sad little idiot a new one so hard in front of everyone. He was relentless and he's like, this is my dancer's life.

[Josh Adam Myers]

That's an entire life.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

What is the matter with you? And he was just. God, he was great. He was a powerhouse, man. I was so glad. I am so glad I worked with that guy. And I, I love that. Got him too. I literally tore off a sheet of paper at Capitol Records and said, david, I would love to work with you on anything at any point in my life. I really. This would mean a lot to me. I just put it on the fax Machine. And Perry wants Russell, our A R guy, sent it to La Chapelle's manager, their agent, or whatever they call it, photo industry. And you know, Perry. I remember Perry saying, I don't think this is how things are done, Courtney. And. But whatever, you know, you're a different thing. So. And it worked. You know, they got a weird message, an equally weird message back. David says he'll do it. That's it. That's all they've got. So I think that we were told that. I say, I think this actually means he's going to do it. But we. We don't know. We're going to try to track. Chase him down and see if we can, you know, get it locked in. And of course, it was fine.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Isn't one of the takeaways from Dig.

[Morty Coyle]

Though, that y' all had your shit together? Yeah.

[Josh Adam Myers]

In the Brian Jonestown Massacre.

[Morty Coyle]

Like, we're doomed to combust, basically.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

I mean, yes, we could. We could save. We could play shows, save money, rent a van, you know, play local shows, save money, rent a van enough to rent a van and go on tour down the coast and back. You know, we. We were. We weren't. We weren't in vans borrowed from friends that broke down and, you know, we weren't going to be. We weren't junkies.

[Morty Coyle]

Right. And in its own way, it really was sort of like a DIY on how not to as well as how to. You know, when you watch the movie, you're like, yeah, that's entertaining. But I don't want that. I want that. You know, I want to be able to go on the road and then come home and, you know, have some money for merch and, you know, having eaten on the road and not lose our record contract every time we stop.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Right. Yeah, we. I guess we've never really had to care about the money. So in our minds, it was the never, you know, we. We definitely spend our money on the road and still do, making sure that we. We can get enough sleep. We eat things we like. We have. We don't eat garbage. We get to, you know. And now. You know what really changed? Touring. I don't know if you guys were touring when this happened, but Whole Foods happen.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

And now you can get quinoa. Quinoa, tabouli salad anywhere in America.

[Morty Coyle]

I was going to ask you that because I've been vegan for, like, 35 years. And when you put the line in bohemian like you. I took such. The second. If you like them vegan food was like. Because People didn't really say it. It was just kind of like, what? You know, so there was like a subset. And I've been vegan for so long and everyone's like, hey, like. Because I toured through Cracker Barrel territory eating a baked potato, you know, everywhere we went and finding like every college town that had like any kind of natural food place so that I could not die on the road. So, yeah, but when you go, if you like vegan food, I was like, I can't believe somebody put that into a song.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Did he just say vegan food?

[Morty Coyle]

It was like perfect. Anyway, you want to get to fade away and radiate and then the big one, right?

[Josh Adam Myers]

Yeah. So we'll just mention this one. So we want to give Clem a shout out as really the closest thing to a ballad on here. This is a dreamy and poetic and almost gothic in its imagery and features. Additional ambient guitar by King Crimson's Robert Fripp. Yeah, not to bring the room down, but saying, staying with the gothic theme, we have to mention two rock heroes who we lost this year that are pertinent to this conversation. Clem Burke, Blondie's drummer and longest serving member besides Debbie and Chris, and the drummer for so many other projects, including some of the 500 artists. Bob Dylan, Ramones, Go Go's Iggy Pop, Pete Townsend and so many others. He passed away from cancer in April. His versatility on this record alone is unparalleled. He was still so vibrant and powerful up until the end. And of course, we recently lost Ozzy in July. So it's just, yeah, we gotta, you know, mention some of the greats. But yeah, having Clem, you know, he was so important to the group.

[Morty Coyle]

I didn't know if you got a chance, if you ever got. I got to play with him. He was as if you. I don't know if you've seen Blondie, but even recently when Josh was asking, should I go see Blondie at Pier? And I'm like, dude, go see them. If just for Clem, because he. I mean, when he died, it was so shocking. I didn't know he was sick, but it was so shocking because I had just seen him, you know, what I thought was relatively recently as absolutely as vibrant and as powerful and energetic. He never wavered. In fact, when the who lost that. Go on. Sorry.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, in the early 2000s, we had a bar called Slab Town and he hung out there a few times, but I was always on tour and so I. I never got to meet him. But he was, you Know, as a drummer growing up, he was such a big influence on me. And even. What song is it that you know, at the end. But it up. But it up.

[Morty Coyle]

Oh, yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

The silly little pill that might be on the end of Junkie. That Hedford just put that in as a little. To Clem Burke, I was gonna say.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, if you get a chance, if anybody gets a chance. There's a. There's a live version and then we can move right on to Heart of Glass. But there's a live.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

For years was my favorite Blondie. Oh yeah. During that kind of post end of high school college when I was, you know, listening to a lot of goth gothic music. Yeah, it's a Cocteau Twin Sisters of Mercy, Sisterhood, you know, Bow House and all that stuff. That was. That was. You know, the keyboard is. To my fans, like, this is the best Blondie song. And I listened to that and I was like, that was my favorite.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah. Once again. And not a. Like a total departure really from what people would think of if they thought of Blondie beyond Heart of Glass. Even if you just thought of like the new wave stuff, all of a sudden it's like, you know, like, here's this like gothy.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

So that's a. Clem Burke wrote that.

[Morty Coyle]

Wrote Fade Away, Fade Away and Radiate.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

That's what you said.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, no, no, no, he. No, I was saying that it's gothic. It's sort of gothic in its sort of spirit of what that is. And then that led to the gothic idea of, you know, of. Of the passing away of these great guys. We were looking for a segue because we really wanted to give homage to Clem because, I mean, besides Chris and Debbie, he's the longest. He was the longest serving member in that band, you know, through all of that. And just. And he would not stop playing. Like you turned around, he was like, oh, Gina. Shock was sick. He's in the Go Go's. Oh, somebody needs. He's in the Romantic. Like somebody needs like somebody to fill. That's why when Zack Starkey would left the who, I'm like, he missed his. Like, he would have been the greatest drummer in the who ever for that last tour.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Right.

[Morty Coyle]

He's such a Keith Moon acolyte. Like, he. He was just.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

That's funny that he was in the Romantics, because the Romantics, basically their entire stick was. Was clever.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

It was like the whole thing. And that drummer was. It really looked like he had based his whole life on Clem Burke and his Style. Yeah, look and everything. I mean, that was. Yeah, that was a cool band actually. The Romantics.

[Morty Coyle]

They are. And they had different singers on different songs too. Drummers saying what I like about you. So Wally's saying, talking in your sleep. You know, a lot of people don't know that Romantics were in that.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Great crowd.

[Morty Coyle]

They were in that era. 78, 79.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.

[Morty Coyle]

What I like about you came out in 79 because it really broke with MTV, but it had already been out, you know.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Okay. So that's what the MTV brought that.

[Morty Coyle]

They just grabbed anything they could. You know, they're like, who has a video? Rod Stewart. Rod Stewart's gonna be on MTV. 10 videos a day.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, hot legs. Rod Stewart, because he made 10 videos between 77 and 79.

[Morty Coyle]

He was a guy who was ahead of his time. It's like, okay, you know, and now I think, I mean, where there's great songs this record. But man, Josh, you want to bring up.

[Josh Adam Myers]

We got to go all the way just for time issues. Not to skip over everything, but Heart of Glass, originally written as one of Debbie and Chris's first songs in 74, 75 as slower but still funky song they called Once I Had A Love as well as the disco song. It went through many attempts and failures before becoming the classic Heart of Glass. They tried it as funky, a ballad, reggae, a pop, before flirting with disco. This exploration of the fragility and disillusionment of love wasn't their first brush with disco. They had already had a few songs in that vein in their live set, as well as covering Donna Summers 77 hit I Feel Love, which was co written and produced by Georgio Mordor.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

More. More. Yeah, Mor.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Who they admired and would later work with. Although Heart of Glass is now considered a classic disco song, the band was very influenced by craft work. Another kraut rock and electronic artist of the era. In fact, the original version on the record was soon replaced by the more obvious disco version. We are all used to for to now after producer Mike Chapman went back and modified it for greater dance floor and chart consumption.

[Morty Coyle]

And we have to ask. I mean, speaking of crowd rock, you seem to be pretty versed in that. Having done, you know, done the graphic. The graphic novel that. But also you putting out a record for essentially a band that doesn't exist.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, I. I love that. That whole era. And I'm actually working on the movie in AI right now. I've got the first scene done. We just started a couple weeks ago. Before I left on tour. And the first opening scene is done. It's 100 AI, which is very difficult. It really, really, really, really difficult to do. And I. I'm wondering how long it's going to take to do this. But they invent new tools for us basically monthly to solve some of these AI film problems. But yeah, I love that era. It was so. It was such. It just. In my mind, it feels like such an exciting time. It also was horrifying because that was like hipster terrorism, which we know a lot about in Portland and on a. On a much weirder, bigger international scale than really anybody had done thus far. I mean, it's. It's, you know, the Baader Meinhof gang was some serious Charlie Manson shit. And so that's my story. I invented a German art noise band that disappeared in 1978 and just put them in the end of the Vader Meinhof era. And yeah, it was cool making the record because really you can do whatever you want. That was. Can and Noy and all those guys. That was an incredibly freed up music scene. You know, they. They had nothing to go by. They were just limited to what they could get these synthesizers to do and they couldn't. Funny thing about I Feel Love, that's the first EDM hit.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

And it wasn't. The problem was they could get it to do that for a few seconds and then it would go heat up and slow down and drop in pitch. And it was a symphonic. A symphonic composer, conductor was screwing around with electronic music, electronic machinery making music in. To integrate, which I'll probably have to do for the score to my film. But he had a young assistant, Peter something, I believe, who worked it out. One night he figured it out how to. How to keep the machine from overheating and a sequencer from dipping in tempo and tone. So I have a scene in the film where my main character Sebastian receives a note from Georgia Rotor saying, you know, we're big fans of your work and I want you to hear something that we've done. I think we've broken some real ground and you might be interested in it. So, being a bicycle enthusiast, he rides from his Hometown of Mittenwald 100 miles or so to Munich to meet Giorgio Donna and. And then he hears the first successful completion of an EDM hit. And one of my favorite moments, it's like I'm getting kind of misty just thinking about it.

[Morty Coyle]

It's funny you mentioned that because on this song in particular, even though this sounds like an absolute sequenced Jojo Murder thing. The keyboards were done essentially by hand. All that Sequel, all that. He had. Jimmy Destry, like, had to ride the parts through because it was.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

He is the most underrated keyboardist in history. He was consistently cool, inventive and perfect. Sonically, his stuff is still so cool. And even their first records. I went back and listened to all those a year ago or two and. And there. His keywords were always cooler than cool. They're fantastic. He was. He was great. Is he still.

[Morty Coyle]

I forgot one of them passed away. There's a great. There was a great documentary. I have to look up Jimmy Destry. I thought Jimmy Destry was still alive or maybe I forgot which one passed away. Yeah, Jimmy. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was another.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, that's. What was he, 12 when he got.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, he was. I think he was a. He was like one of the younger guys in the band. He's born at 54. He's one of the younger guys in the band in the beginning. But. Yeah, I remember when. I remember when. Yeah, there's. There's a great. Is it. I forget if the documentaries on Jimmy or on the. On the other guitar player, because Nigel joined later, because then Nigel. Nigel wasn't there right from the beginning. He was. You know, there was. There was this New York sort of scene. You know, we've had Lenny Kay on before also from, you know, the front end of that with. With all of that. But back to the sequencing thing. And that's the part like the Kraut rock influence. For those of you that don't know in Germany. It was another reason that Bowie went to. To Berlin, was that he was sort of chasing this thing that was happening at the time. If you listen to Station To Station, which was actually recorded on Fairfax, right up the street at Cherokee in his LA Cocaine and Milk era. He does that.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Milk and cocaine.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah. And then he moves to Berlin to try to get clean. But Josh, when you were just there and you're like, what should I see out here? I was like, go to Connie Plank studio. Like, go. If you're out there, go see, like, where all of this stuff happened. You could literally look out the window and see where Heroes. Where he saw. You know.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

You'D have to know his room. You'd have to get his room. He had a piano in his room and he was trying to kick heroin. So he was up all night and then he saw. He would see a couple. One would show up first, one would show up, then the other one every single night. And so he Started riffing on Waiting for My man because he couldn't sleep because he's trying to kick dope and he's playing and he's just slowly waiting for my man. And then he'd look out the window, there they go. And he told me that he actually. And I love this. This is so Benny Hill. He actually snuck out to see who it was. He snuck up on him and he hid behind trees. Imagine David hiding behind a tree and then. And then running to another tree and waving. I mean, God, it's a. It's comedy cold. I can't believe nobody has made a little.

[Morty Coyle]

Well, we were told it was Tony Visconti and his side lady was what. Was what the. At least that's the folklore about that. And I was going to say because you work. You got to work with David, you know, it was.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

And. And May Pang was the. Was the lady.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, you. Well, they ended up. Yeah, they ended up together. Yeah, May and him ended up together. We did that benefit. Looking at the, the poster now.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Well, that would have been where. That's what. It would have been where it started then.

[Morty Coyle]

That's so wild. Yeah, I know it was a side thing that he had in Berlin because he had a wife somewhere or whatever. But you. I know Josh, we brought, you know, I know we don't have a lot of time, but you worked with Debbie on the last album. I mean, you did work with Bowie and I would love to hear everything. Or at least you know, you perform. He pan picked you to open for him, which I can't imagine the honor.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, we worked in his studio on Monkey House with Tony and David and then David came out to Portland and came to our studio and we fucked around in there a bunch and stuff. You know, he's just always been a guy that, you know, he just wants to find out what makes you think tick if he likes your music. You know, like what you were just saying about going to Berlin. You know, he just, he. This is new. I want to know why this. I love this. Why. You know, that was his. That was his thing.

[Morty Coyle]

Was it intimidating?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Famous boy. David was old, you know, he was. He seemed really old. He was like probably younger than I am now, but he seemed very old. And so it wasn't as intimidating as if to know Bowie at 28 years old, you know, you know, the intense that David was different than knowing a middle aged David. So it was. He was, he was very wise by that point. He wasn't. He wouldn't really get drunk with us and Stupid.

[Morty Coyle]

The elder statesman. Yeah. So what about Debbie? Like, how do you, how does that happen? How do you go, like, hey, do you want to say, you know, you.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Just get a hold of, you know, our manager gets hold of their manager and then, you know, sends them a song. Right. Chris heard the song, I guess, first and said, debbie, this is cool. This is really cool. You want to do this? And, but, you know, I, we didn't. You just. Everybody has a studio, right, Nowadays, so you just send them the stuff and they were. They record it. But I, I, I don't know if Debbie even remembers this, but she and I and my cousin, drummer and Ice T, hung out in New York City in the early 2000s. And I don't know if she'd even remember me, but, you know, I guess that's what kind of made it seem like it might be possible to get her to do it. But my manager just, you know, I had sang her part in a falsetto voice, and it was very coarse, and I wanted it, you know, to be a nice, more ethereal and truly, you know, angelic, kind of darkly angelic thing. And my manager said, well, if she had anyone, who would it be? I said, well, you know, of course, Debbie Harry. And he goes, he goes, okay, you know her. And I said, well. And I hung out with her once long ago. And he goes, well, whatever, I'll. Let me see what they say, you know, and, and yeah, apparently Chris heard it really was the, that was the clincher. And God, you know what the weirdest thing in New York, when we were there earlier this year, I was just walking down the street, and I look across the street and there's just the classic, you know, New York block. And I just took a picture of it and I said, I know this doesn't seem very exciting if you're not familiar with New York, but to be back here and just see a street that's so blatantly cliche New York. And our guy posted it, and within an hour, Chris Stein got back and said, that's the building we lived in. That's the one.

[Morty Coyle]

Wow.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Wow, that was weird.

[Morty Coyle]

Wow.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Oh, hey, I want to say something about Heart of Glass. Another thing is there are the electronics in that. Are those old? Like, home Wurlitzer?

[Morty Coyle]

Oh, I always thought that was a rhythm master. That's. Is that like an old organ, like the organ accompaniment?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

I don't know, but it's. If you listen to it, that's. Those kinds of sounds. And it's, you know, those are, those are drum Sounds from like the 1950s.

[Morty Coyle]

It was like for you to play along with. It's like a metronome.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yep. At home or in church.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah. You know, practice alone without a. Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Push a button and it's bossa nova.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah. Sly Stone made. Sly Stone made a huge. When he started working with that around riot. That was just Family Affair and all of that stuff that had that. That's why even to this day when I DJ that stuff, when you just hear it at the beginning of it, it's just that anticipation before the. Before it drops where it reminds me of like those moments of like even like a bohemian. Or on like, you know, Girls and Boys by Blur. When you just hear that, like you're like, here we go now. Now all they do is do drops and you know, repeats. But at the time it was just like.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, those soft, puffy sounds and really incredibly good grooves.

[Morty Coyle]

Oh my.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Yeah.

[Morty Coyle]

You get a chance. Watch. Especially as a drummer. But everybody, if you haven't seen it, there's a live version of Blondie at contemporary to when this would have been like what they were touring where they play like an 8 minute version of Heart of Glass live. They're on some show and Clem, who always looked like Keith Moon is wearing like the mod shirt with like a. You know, with like an raf or like an arrow or something.

[Josh Adam Myers]

He.

[Morty Coyle]

What people don't understand is it's the disco song, but it's a live band. This is so much closer to like what I mean, I hate to fall back on these Brit popper these bands. But when nowadays you would think of like a band as being like. If it's a synthesizer band, it's all sequenced, it's all recorded. It's all but Duran Duran and these other bands played live with some of these things. I know you work with Nick Rhodes, but you know, with guys that like added synth parts but they didn't give up on it being a rock band. And that's with Blondie. He never stops. What's the unsung hero of Heart of Glass is that he's doing those like at. In during the song. He's doing those fills in a. Essentially like what you would think of as a Kraut Rocky kind of discos even can. Those are live bands. You know, we've lost a lot of the new orders. A live band, you know, they had the same issue where they couldn't get the. They couldn't get the sequencing to work on Blue Monday.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Ken's drummer is. What a feel monster. I Mean, we. Our walk on music is. And he's got that shuffly whip, like, jazz thing. But it sounds super modern too now to my ear.

[Morty Coyle]

It's. Yeah, it's freaky. I still listen to that and go, how. What were they like? What were they like? Where were they here? Because it was still 71, 72, 73. You're like, what?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

What were they?

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, it wasn't Zeppelin. You know what I mean? Like, what were they like? Where did that come from? That they were like, well, we'll do minimalistic, but then we'll have this like one guy and then somebody will just be singing like. And I go, when you. And that's the thing about Heart of Glasses. We think of it as a disco song because that's all we knew. Not us, but, you know, all we knew at the time. It is so kraut rock when you approach it that way that you go, well, listen to, here's. Listen to like this can thing or noye or whatever. Now listen to Heart of Glass.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

The most. Yeah, yeah. The most disco element of it though, is actually the Nigel's baseline standard bass run. And other than that, you know, it doesn't strike me particularly, and it might be because of my age, I fall kind of too young to really lump it in with disco. And then by the time I became a savvy music listener, it was, you know, and a producer. It was 84 and I was in high school. And then I could really hear what it is and really be like, you know.

[Morty Coyle]

But yeah, I remember seeing them the Solid Gold and being like, you know, at the time when that was like a TV show, you know, in the 70s to 80s where it was like solid gold. Yeah. With the LeMay Gold and them doing the. The whole thing. And they would have like, Debbie Harry is on doing hard. And she was all coked up, but it was just her like with a soft focus, lip syncing. And I was like, what? And it was already a little later than the song had already been. It was almost like she just came back on and lip synced that. But I remember thinking like, oh, yeah, that's kind of like what this dance thing is that's going on right now. But like, I urge you guys now, you've heard Heart of Glass a million times. Listen to that. Listen to I Feel Love. And then listen to Heart of Glass and you'll be like, there's that Giorgio Moroda, like them imitating what they thought that sounded like, you know, that. That crowd rock thing with a real Drummer and a kind of synthesis. You know, it's like all that stuff. I mean, it's. It's just fantastic.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, I wonder. I often, you know, wonder or believe if the greatest pieces of music, or even art are failed attempts to imitate some lesser piece of music that they happen to love.

[Morty Coyle]

And I think that's, you know, listen, if you can do anything and get inspired, and then you come back to it and people are like, well, that started an entire industry. You know what I mean? Like, how did Revolver happen? You know what I mean? Like, Revolver just have. Here's Rubber Soul. They're playing acoustic guitar. Next thing you know, they're doing loops because Paul's listening to Stockhausen. And, you know, this guy's doing this. And now, hey, there's. These guys are using horns. It. We can do that too.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Saying is, yeah, I get the feeling with kraut rock, I get the feeling every. Almost everything was done because they could, you know, all that electronic was done because simply because they could. And maybe they couldn't do something else, you know, so they did this because they could. They could get the keyboard, the synthesizer to do this. And I talked when I. When I did my story, my graphic novel and the screenplay and all that stuff, you know, I got together with Carl Bartos and it was funny because I, you know, I was really excited about this era. And. And he said, no uncertain terms, told me that it was not exciting, it was not fun fun, it was boring. And you should probably make a movie about what you think it was like.

[Morty Coyle]

Wow. By the way, for those listening, he's a member of craft work just so that you guys.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, and I think. I believe he invented the trigger, the drum trigger pad. That was.

[Morty Coyle]

That was so they could have a real drummer play electronic sounds, you know, like, it's just so innovative for what. For what they are like. I'm telling you guys, go see. Especially after Clem Passing and Ozzy Passing, go see every one of these legacy artists. I say this every time Josh says this every time that these guys, every time they come to town. Paul McCartney's playing. If you can get there, go see Paul McCartney, because he's the only one that did it. He's. He's 83, played last night. I know people that went, we know it's Paul McCartney. And he sounds the way he sounds. But, dude, that's it. When he's gone.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, I just saw Willie Nelson. 93. I saw Willie Nelson.

[Morty Coyle]

That's it.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

And that is. That is one of the coolest it sounds like a hit. You know, he's got his. His son in there, who's a very spaghetti western guitar player. And there's not a lot of straight country in his set. It's very art school. I mean, it sounds like the hippest Glasgow arts art. Cool guy band trying to do the Texas sound of country or something. You know, it's very. It's way hipper. There's. He only played one song with a snare back. Everything had like, oh, wow, Mexico beats and cut. It was just so. I had no idea. It's so hip. And because his voice will give out, he has to do this half sing, half talk. So it gets this very New York, you know, Lou Reeve. It's so hip. Willie Nelson has never been as hip as he is at 93. I swear to God. It's so cool. It was amazing. And him with Bob Dylan and then Billy Strings going on first was. Was just a spectacular night. That was one of the greatest tours I've ever gone.

[Josh Adam Myers]

I love that.

[Morty Coyle]

Fantastic. So, Josh, you want to do Lightning round? Just. I don't. We don't want to take up.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Yeah, so we're good. So. So thank you so much for coming on, Courtney. We appreciate it. We ask everybody these questions. What's your favorite song on this record?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Well, One Way or Heart of Glass? All right.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Is there anything you skip over or is this a. No skip?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

You know, there's. I. I was one of the songs, and I can't remember which one it is. Blatantly sounds like it created the strokes to me. There's a lot of that on this record.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah, there's a lot of that on this record.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, they really. And I'm curious about the songwriting. I never really dug into it because some of, you know, some of them, they do all those 1950s chord changes and melodies, and then sometimes they don't.

[Morty Coyle]

They covered Buddy Holly on this record, and then they did two nerve songs.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah.

[Morty Coyle]

The I love you too, or whatever that one's called, is an old buddy. The gonna love you too, that has, like, the gang vocal thing. Yeah, dad, you know that's Buddy Holly.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

I remember that one.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Okay. But that's not the one. There's one that is just. To me that every time I hear.

[Morty Coyle]

It, I go, maybe just go away. The last song on the record might be. That might be one of them, because the other one sound like Sunday Girl. Sounds like a girl group sort of thing.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, that's a sweet 50s style love.

[Morty Coyle]

Gotta love all that stuff.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Wave.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Yeah. Is there anything on this album?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah. Anyway, continue. Next. Next question.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Is there anything on this record that you skip over or is it. Or is it like a no skip?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, I don't think there's anything I would skip over on it. Right on.

[Josh Adam Myers]

All right. Can you to this record?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

No, I can't.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Right on. And what would be your elevator pitch to get someone to listen to this record, bud?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Oh, I would just list the, the hits, you know, I'd go, come on, you know, Sunday girl, you know, fade away, radiate, you know, part of glass, you know, one way or another, you know, I mean, you know, that's, that's a kind of a no brainer. It's easy to just, you know, I probably have told people to listen to it by saying that.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Totally. All right, promote away, buddy. What do you got going on? Where can we find you? I know you guys are on tour right now, but please promote.

[Morty Coyle]

I saw that. Sorry, just wanted to. That's exciting.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, yeah, it's great. Yeah, it's sort of like. I feel like it's like Deep Purple and T. Rex on tour together in 73.

[Morty Coyle]

Rad.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

We've got so much vintage equipment and they're so proggy and, and that, that big Hammond B3 sound. And then we've got the breathy vocals and the slutty grooves that just, just go in the vocal harmony. Just go for a long time. It's, it's a cool tour. We're having a really good time. The guys are just so cool, you know. They've also been the same band.

[Morty Coyle]

Yeah.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

The entire time.

[Morty Coyle]

And they cover Deep Purple, Hush. They actually have a cover of that.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Right? That's right, they do. I keep forgetting that that's their second to last song every night. And yeah, they're a great band there also. I think we both had our first global hits in 90, 96 or 97 maybe. Yeah, junkie. So they were a year, a year ahead of us. So I guess they're the seniors and we're the juniors, but yeah, we're in, we're in. We're gonna hit the LA area in just a minute, like tomorrow. No.

[Morty Coyle]

You're kidding.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

We do Pioneer Town, we do la, we do Santa Ana and San Diego. And so that's where we're, you know, we'll probably just get a hotel in L. A, just shack up and just run around to the different areas and hit these other gigs.

[Morty Coyle]

Oh, far off. You guys are out. Go by Good Times, the Davey Wayne's DJ there. Stop by Good Times at Davey Wings 70s Bar. I play all 70s, like Beat Mitch and everything. But yeah, dude, if you guys are in town, I'll see if I can try to come check you guys out. That would. I mean, Good times at Davey Waynes on El Centro between Hollywood and Selma. It's an all-70s bar owned by the Houston brothers.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Okay. Davey.

[Morty Coyle]

Good times at Davey Waynes. And by the way, good times.

[Josh Adam Myers]

A great place.

[Morty Coyle]

Anytime you need a baby. I was also going to say just when you. If you want to plug, just put your. Your so where everybody can find you because we follow your Instagram.

[Josh Adam Myers]

We'll promote it.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

We'll.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Don't worry about it.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, we got.

[Josh Adam Myers]

We're going to promote it. The beginning in the end.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Also, I have never been on social media in my life.

[Josh Adam Myers]

You're not missing anything.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Lucky you and I. All right. Your people.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Right on.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

All right. Well, yeah, we're, you know, I'm sure it's all everywhere, you know, Facebook. Facebook.

[Morty Coyle]

That's the one that the kids made fun of us.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Yeah, it's the old one.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Tick tock. As the years. As the numbers reduce on the years, you go insta or tick tock.

[Morty Coyle]

All gonna be owned.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't get the Internet. I don't like it.

[Josh Adam Myers]

No, you're not missing anything.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Impresses me.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Yeah, it's terrible. Courtney, thank you so much for coming on, buddy. I can't thank you enough, dude. If you guys come to the area or if they're in your area, please go see the Dandy Warhols. The new record's great. Thank you, brother.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Yeah, thanks so much for, you know, picking me as, you know, the pinch hitter for Debbie.

[Josh Adam Myers]

For Debbie.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Flattering. Very flattering.

[Josh Adam Myers]

What did I tell you? What did I tell you? The one and only Courtney Taylor. Taylor. Follow him on Facebook. Backslash CourtneyTaylor2.official. Go to Dandy Warhols.com for everything at the Dandy Warhols. And the fall tour is going on right now, so go to their website for dates. Follow @DJ Morty Coil. JT. He's awesome. And now for new music pick. Since we just listened to Blondie for dishwasher intro, kid are proud sponsor. Why am I talking like this has brought us I will never stop loving you by the Danny Warhols. It's the song they did with Debbie Harry. It rules. Find links to the music on our website, the 500 podcast, and if you were in a band and were directly influenced by one of these albums or Arts. You want your music feature on the 500 website? Send your song to 500podcastgmail.com. Next week is the meters rejuvenation at 139 with rejuvenation from 1974. Do your homework more guys we were and I know what it means to.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Be you.

[Josh Adam Myers]

I will never stop loving you we know all about what we've been through and all the days I made you rue Know that I rue them too I'm sorry, but it's true.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

You.

[Josh Adam Myers]

I will never stop loving you But I will never stop loving you but for the pain that nothing stays.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

The same it's not true but it's so hard to.

[Josh Adam Myers]

I will never stop loving you and all things we misconstrue Some word lies but some word true despite our best intentions too and I will never stop loving you Sam.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

The.

[Josh Adam Myers]

500 keeping it fleecy for the fleece nation.

[Morty Coyle]

On the 500.

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

The 500.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Limu.

[Morty Coyle]

Emu and Doug Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?

[Courtney Taylor-Taylor]

Cut the camera.

[Josh Adam Myers]

They see us.

[Morty Coyle]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Fairy underwritten by.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. Affiliates excludes Massachusetts. For a limited time at McDonald's, get a Big Mac Extra Value meal for $8. That means two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun and medium fries. And a drink. We may need to change that jingle.

[Morty Coyle]

Prices and participation may vary.

[Josh Adam Myers]

Next chapter, Podcasts.