I noticed on your website you have jailbabes.com (where hundreds of beautiful ladies sitting in prison are waiting for someone to love and care for them) on your links page. Are you in contact with a jail babe?
That’s interesting. How did that happen? No, I’m far too old for them. They wouldn’t be interested.

Did Iggy Pop realise he was doing his best work in years when he recorded ‘Aisha’ with you?
Well, that’s very nice of you to say so. I couldn’t possibly comment – how’s that for a get out clause. No, it was just great. We wrote him a letter because I’ve been a fan since I first heard ‘Lust for Life’ and ‘The Idiot’. And fan is the right word because we just sent a letter direct to him with a cassette with some music on it and he wrote back, being the perfect gentleman that he is, and said he liked our approach to making music rather than us getting our record company to contact his record company. It was a much more personal thing. I don’t think he would’ve done it otherwise. Well, he said he wouldn’t have done it otherwise.

Any plans of you working with him again?
Who knows? God, that’s a good idea. No. But you never know. I’ve met him on occasions since then so I suppose we’re on first name terms. Well, I still call him ‘Mr. Pop’.

You’ve teamed up with plenty of your idols and contemporaries – has anyone knocked back an invitation to sing ?
I can only think of one person and that was Jason from Spiritualized. But apart from that we’ve been remarkably lucky. I don’t think we’ve had anyone else.

What was Jason’s reason?
He said he was busy and then he said ‘oh, you don’t give up do you?’ (laughs) Whether he was too busy or didn’t like the song we never found out. But I’ve worked with him on Spiritualized stuff like ‘Pure Phase’ only as a lowly assistant engineer many years ago. He probably wouldn’t even remember.

What are some of the bands you’d like to work with?
Clinic being one. There’s a band called the Von Bondies, a band called Fuxa. I think they’re kind of European and American. I don’t know much about them but I’ve got a couple of their records.

How did the Rolling Stones feel about you appropriating ‘Aladdin’s Story’ off one of their 70s bootlegs?
I shouldn’t think they were that fussed actually. I think if they were we would’ve heard from their legal department by now. We actually in touch with their publishers and they said ‘we know it’s a song by the Stones but it’s never been declared as a song so we don’t own the publishing so you can do whatever you like’. So we did. The opening guitar riff sounds like it could be the opening to ‘Paint it, Black’ as well.

So that was the reason for the ‘unknown’ credit rather than Jagger/Richards?
Yes, that’s right. Even though we know (laughs).

Were you scared that using Liam Gallagher as a vocalist on a track inspired by Status Quo’s ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ would make you sound like Oasis?
What, we did end up sounding like Oasis? (laughs) I reckon it’s probably very difficult to write a song with guitar, bass and drums and have Liam on it and end up not sounding a bit like them. He just puts his stamp on everything and that’s why he’s so brilliant.

What inspired you to do the Gene Clark cover ‘So You Say You Lost Your Baby’?
That was Richard’s idea. We’d been at Abbey Road studio doing a live broadcast for the BBC and Paul Weller was there and he actually came up to us and said he really liked Contino Sessions and if we had anything in mind he’d love to work with us. About two weeks later Richard was dj-ing somewhere in Dublin with Mani from Primal Scream and they were playing records late at night in their hotel room and that was one of the records that they played. So Mani and Richard came up with the idea of doing the cover and getting Paul on the case.

Why did you go for such a straight up rock version when the original seems to be open for a more wiggy, psychedelic interpretation?
You’d have to ask Richard that one. I think we wanted to do a more punky version but I don’t really know if it’s turned out that way or not. For me that’s one of the few songs that didn’t really work…he said confessing. But I’ve got a version with Paul and acoustic guitar and it just sounds sublime. It far exceeds our version.

Do you worry that by using other vocalists that there’s not a discernable DiV style? Especially when you’re using such distinctive voices like Liam Gallagher and Mazzy Starr’s Hope Sandoval.
If we made any mistakes on this last album that was the mistake we made. I think it was to go too far down the celebrity vocalist line. But then the other way to look at it is you get your money’s worth with Death in Vegas. There aren’t many bands where you’d get Hope and Liam and Paul and Nicola from Adult. We know what we’re doing for the next album already and we’re certainly not going to go to India.

It’s interesting that you’re so honest in your appraisal of the Scorpio Rising record.
Well, you have to be don’t you really. I’m not saying I don’t like it, I’m not saying it’s not a good record. I’m very proud of it but I’m not going to say that everything we do is brilliant because no band can say that can they really?

Singles like ‘Aisha’ and ‘Hands Around My Throat’ are very dark especially for songs that have been chart hits in the UK. What draws you to writing those kinds of tracks?
Well, we didn’t write the lyrics. But certainly the music lends itself to writing dark lyrics. We try and write happy songs and fail miserably.

Why wasn’t ‘One More Time’ included on the Contino Sessions record? It’s a fantastic song that’s only come out on a vinyl EP and used as a b-side.
Well, we did it after we’d done the album. That was us in a little rehearsal room one afternoon and it kind of just happened. Bobby Gillespie was around and added vocals at the end. It was just one of those happy accidents. It’s a good song for skidding around a beer soaked dance floor. We’re quite into layering stuff in the same way that a lot of Kraut Rock bands did in the 70s. You get a hook and you sit on it and you change it slightly and morph it. I’m a big fan of the recording techniques used in those days where you jam for twenty minutes and make tape loops up.

What’s the next record going to be like?
It’s going to be a lot more electronic. In my head I’ve got a picture of what it’s going to sound like. More experimental is the best way to put it.

Have you given much thought about the irony of actually dying in Las Vegas?
Yes, I have. I’ve never been there because someone would probably shoot us.

¡Tarantula!
the Sand Pebbles' fanzine
'another ghost transmission...'
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©2003 Christopher Hollow