Gay Bar 2: Have Electric Six been at the Sherry?

It’s been a turbulent two years for Dick Valentine and his motley crew of ragamuffins; you change your name from The Wildbunch to Electric Six, get in the top 5 of the charts with two undeniably catchy hits, reshape your whole band line-up and then get dropped from your record label…So explain Dick, explain! Explain Mr. Valentine did when Gigwise caught up with him at a warm up show for the festies at Liverpool Academy.

Gigwise: Electric Six have become so famous now that your ‘hits’ have spiralled out of control and now appear on late night Hollyoaks? How do you feel about this?
Dick: Never heard of it (Hollyoaks)… I’m just pleased I’ll get the publishing for that someday. We’re equal opportunity, we don’t really care if they use our songs and how. If somebody offered us a Gap ad for a million dollars we’d do it.

G: Musical whores eh?
D: Oh yeah! That’s the thing about our band, you can’t possibly play the intergrity card when you got a song like ‘Gay Bar’ or ‘Danger! High Voltage’, I mean, like what are you gonna do, you’re gonna be sitting in a bar one day saying, ‘yeah, I wanted to preserve the integrity of ‘Gay Bar’ so I turned down a lot of money’. I’d feel like a jackass, you might as well take the money and run.

G: Jackass, yes…So Download then, what happened with Steve-O and the egg attack on the Six?
D: We just kinda won the lottery of being the band that follows them. They had no idea who we where, they had no agenda with us, they just said throw the eggs at the next band that happened to be us. So in retrospect it was a really funny thing to do , but at the time we kinda took it badly, but I’ve become more appreciative of Steve-O’s work since then. We were just kinda pissed off that the 5-year old daughter of one of our roadies got hit in the face, but she’s fine. You should have seen what they did to their own dressing room though, I guessed they pissed and defecated all over it, so that could have been a good story too.

G: What’s the deal with Reuben from Ladytron playing keyboards with you at the moment instead of Tait Nucleus
D: Tait was was working in his office in Detroit and a deer walked in his office and bit him on the forehead - he has lime disease now. He’ll be at our shows in New York. For these five shows (in Europe) we’ve got Reuben…it’s worked out well.

G: You were friends already?
D: Yeah, we met Ladytron last year at the Reading and Leeds festival, they played right before us, so we’ve been friends ever since.

G: Is the rumour of ‘Gay Bar 2’ true?
D: I think that was Tait joking around, but that is a good idea. I think the next should be ‘Gay Bar 2: You’re Not Gonna Believe Were We Take You Now’. I don’t think we’re doin’ a ‘Gay Bar 2’, but we do have a couple of blocks left on the album, we’re pretty much close to wrapping it up, but we need to record 3 or 4 more songs, so maybe it’ll find it’s way in there.

G: Where have you been recording your new album?
D: Back in Detroit. We recorded the first record in Detroit too.

G: Are there any bands that hold a similar sound to you in Detroit?
D: No, not around Detroit. There aren’t a lot of rock bands like us…

G: You’ve got a unique selling point then…
D: That’s what we’ve always strived for, I think there are a lot of bands that are good, but are not entertaining. They’re good on record, but you see them live? We’ve always wanted to put a show on live and worry about a record later.

G: That’ll be why you’ve got a good fan-base in England at least…
D: We must have played 200 shows here last year. It’s good, it pays off. People appreciate it if you bother to go to your Preston’s and your Aberystwyth’s, instead of playing London and Manchester then going home.

G: How’s your fan-base in the U.S going?
D: I was really surprised with our turnout at Coachella. I think there’s always a spill over from having a certain amount of success over here (in the UK), it does translate. You’ll see in New York and L.A. that we do have really big shows. I’m very happy with where we’re at over there, we make money touring over there, and we have a really good time doing it too.

G: How’s your album doing in America?
D: It’s done well, but more on a college level over there. In America you can’t have high expectations because it’s so radically different over there with the way it works.

G: That’s surprising…
D: Yeah, when we were at the Q Awards a guy from Athlete introduced himself, and he was like, “you must be absolutely massive in the states”, and I was like, “no, no, not at all”, and he was like, “how’s that possible?”, and I was like, “are you massive in the states?”, and he was like, “oh, good point!”. The Kings of Leon have no profile in the states and they’re huge over here, so it kinda works that way.

G: Why were you dropped last October?
D: They use the excuse of the music industry’s in a state of shambles right now so radical changes have to be made, it’s (the music industry) a very fluid thing.

G: So what’s your record label now then?
D: We haven’t signed yet, but we’re very close so I guess it’s kind of a gagging order. Within a month it should be official.

G: How did your old temporary bass player, Frank Lloyd Bonaventure, do on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
D: He won $16,000. It’s true it doesn’t sound a lot, but some of those questions are hard.

G: Did he go on as a member of the general public?
D: Yeah, he just auditioned and he got it. They did reference the band a couple of times.

G: Finally, are you planning on doing a Christmas single this year, seen as the idea of releasing ‘Radio Ga Ga’ as a Christmas single last year went upside down?
D: The reason it never came out was because we were dropped, and they (the record company) were still gonna put it out anyway, but we were like 'why release it when you dropped us?’, so they let us hang on to it, we might use it again. For the record, I’ve never really been that keen on it, I enjoy playing it and what not, but it is a good song and I think we do a fun version of it. It’s a good festival song.

G: You’re not going to write a new one for Christmas?
D: ‘Radio Ga Ga 2’!? Being an American the whole concept of a Christmas single doesn’t really keep me up at night. I guess if our new label wants us to we’ll look into it, but we’re gonna have to be prodded.

G: ‘Gay Bar At Christmas’ perhaps?
D: ‘Gay Bar 2: Christmas Time’! Again, we’ll do anything, we’ll do anything to stay in this dirty business.

G: And on that note…