Hailing originally from New Zealand, The Datsuns are in the middle of a whirlwind tour promoting the United States 2009 release of their latest, Head Stunts, which debuted around the world a year earlier. The band, who at one point had been called “The future of rock and roll” by Dave Grohl, continues to draw crowds as they bounce from continent to continent. Their swaggering rock ‘n roll stage presence brings out those brave enough to enjoy some energetic tunes up close, while bearing the risk of being hit in the eye by a strand of swinging long hair.
After dealing with the debacle of being poorly slotted as a mainstage act of Ozzfest and an opener for Metallica in Australia, the Datsuns decided that playing the second show of their tour to the pompous crowds of Los Angeles would be a cakewalk. China Shop caught up with The Datsuns before they took the stage at the Echo and was enlightened by tales of their lack of preparation for the tour, psychic stalker fans, and terrible past booking decisions by members of their management.
So you guys are from New Zealand?
Phil: Yes. Well, two of us live there but we’re all from there. Dolf lives in Sweden and Christian lives in England. We organize tours every now and then and then we meet the day before. Like yesterday, we met in San Francisco, everybody came.
So you just get together for a little while beforehand to rehearse?
Phil: Well, we just don’t practice. Like, we had a show last night and it was like practice. We were hoping we were gonna have a soundcheck but there was no soundcheck. It was 2 ½ months before we had played.
Christian: That’s how we like to roll – seat of the pants!
That’s very rock ‘n roll. Did it go well?
Phil/Christian: Not bad
Phil: Better than expected. We were expecting it to be utterly shit but it was actually good.
So, have you guys played in the States a lot?
Phil: From about 2002 to 2004 we played there quite a bit. But we haven’t played here that much in the last few years. We’ve been touring Europe and England quite a lot. We do New Zealand and Australia once a year or every 18 months.
Tell me about the new album versus previous releases.
Phil: We got a new drummer. So that’s changed the dynamic a little bit.
Christian: It’s an evolution from previous releases. It sounds like us. When you make your first couple records people always say you sound like this or that. And now we’ve made four records and I notice people started saying “Oh this sounds the Datsuns.” We’ve kind of got a sound now. So I think this record is kind of more a representation of what we actually sound like to other people.
So starting out, you guys won the battle of bands at a local radio station and then released an album on your own label that you guys started called Hell Squad Records…
Phil: Yes we did. (Phil and Ben laughing).
You’re laughing…
Phil: Oh it’s funny because it’s such a silly name. We went thru a phase watching really shitty movies. We were watching a movie called Hell Squad. Christian: The movie is so awesomely bad that it had to be used. It’s about a bunch of women models from Vegas that were recruited by the army to fly to the Middle East to do rescue operations of down pilots. They had to have their briefings scantly clad in the saunas because there’s not that much water in the middle east so they had to sauna together for the debriefing.
Nice, so you named your label after it?
Christian: Yes. And now we’re stuck with it, alright!?!
Tell me a little bit about your experience at Ozzfest. How was that?
Phil: I didn’t have a really good time. I don’t know why we were put on there. We had some American management and for some reason we ended up on these tours that we weren’t really suited on. We were the only band that tuned to E; we were the only band that didn’t wear make-up.
Christian: The best thing was we were playing and we were in between songs and someone yelled out “Go and eat some food!”
Phil: We were like the skinniest guys there. Everyone else was like just buff. They were all these metal bands and we we’re like “We’re not metal.” We didn’t really understand how we fitted into it.
Where would you say your best audiences are?
Phil: I’d say more around Europe. We seem to play a lot around Belgium and Holland. Sometimes we have some good shows in Germany, and France is really good. I mean we have alright shows everywhere we go. We play between 100 and 800 people. I guess we’ve been hitting the same places once every year or once every 18 months or something. People now know what they are getting so they either like it or don’t come. We had some good shows in Japan as well.
How did your career change after you signed with V2 in July 2002?
Phil: We’re not on V2 anymore. They didn’t really do us any favors. We still make records and we still tour. We don’t have like a super marketing machine behind us anymore. We used to have people that would put posters up about us and do stuff for magazines. We don’t have that anymore.
Christian: We went around the world a couple times, lost our minds. My hair’s a bit longer from when we signed the record deal.
Phil: We kinda spent the first seven years of our career building up everything hat we did and then when we signed the record, that’s when we ran into heaps of problems. There were heaps more arguments. And the record company would try to push people onto you or try to market you in different ways and that forced lots of arguments between the band.
Christian: “You’re bringing me down here man.”
Phil: I guess our first record sold something like 60,000 or 70,000 and we were happy and they were like “Yeah, it’s a total failure.”
Christian: That’s like when our first record – the album went to number 19 or something in the English charts and I rang up my mum and said: “Mum, our record is number 19” and she said “Oh maybe, you’ll do better next time.”…but to her, everybody goes to number one.
You guys had John Paul Jones produce your second record? How was that?
Phil: It was awesome. It was a great experience.
Christian: He’s a super nice guy. I mean obviously I’m a huge fan of Led Zeppelin and it was really nice to meet him and he turned out to be really nice.
Phil: He brought some cool toys for us to use – some good guitars. He came to New Zealand for two weeks and hung out with us while we practiced.
Christian: He told us some cool stories. We had some jams.
Phil: We got him to play on the record. He sang on the record and played organ.
Christian: He can play anything. It’s really quite frightening how many instruments the man can play.
Phil: And we had never worked with a producer before so it was an interesting experience. And we haven’t used a producer since (Phil & Christian laugh).
If we had to pick some bands you would like to tour with, who would you pick?
Christian: We played some shows with the Helicopters, guys from Sweden. That was awesome. It was fun touring with those guys. And they’re nice guys. They’ve got long hair too.
Phil: We did some shows with the White Stripes ages ago. They were nice. The Von Bondies, we toured with them, a lot of Detroit bands for a while. The Sights, Paybacks, Star Spangles, Bad Wizard we did some shows with. Bands that are our similar kind ….I’m into playing with anyone obviously. We normally prefer just playing with our friends (laughs).
Do you guys have any crazy fan stories you can share?
Phil: I had this one lady who claimed to be a psychic and she used to contact me and in the subject thing of the email she’d write these kind of quotes. And within a day or so someone would say that quote to me. Then she would tell me these things in an email, like trying to give me some kind of spiritual psychic advice. I replied once and I never replied again. She continued to send the stuff though and it weirded me out for a while. And one time she rang up my mum in New Zealand, somehow got the phone number and told her that I had given her one of my guitars. So my mum thought she was one of my friends so she gave her my phone number and then she tried to call me. I thought she was gonna come out to one of the shows one of these times and I was like: “Oh I can put you on the guestlist and we can meet or whatever” and she was like: “No. I can’t leave the house.
She wanted you do to a “house call?”
Phil: (Laughs). I don’t know but yeah it was really weird.
Christian: Well she said some things that came true. She predicted some things.
Phil: She asked me in email “How’s your friend’s knee?”…Something like that. And Christian hurt his knee. And quotes from a movie…I was watching American Beauty and there was some kind of quote from that movie and I hadn’t seen it before and she said some kind of quote from there and I hadn’t seen it before and a couple of days later I watched it.
Just randomly?
Phil: Yeah, yeah, and it was in that movie. It was really weird.
Christian: Psychic stalkers are the worst because they know what you are doing. They know what you’re thinking man.
This is a random question, but I’m just curious about the song “Fink for the Man.” What is that about?
Christian: That’s a good question. Some of the songs on the first record, there is a lot of imagery and stuff like that. And I think some of the titles on some of the stuff come from that…things/phrases that sound really cool. And I know the title came from something like that. Some TV show that Dolf and I were watching…I think Mod Squad and that was a phrase. We thought that was kind of funny and it became the title of the song.
Phil: I guess you could phrase it like: “Stick it to the man” or something like that.
Well, have a good show. Is this the second show of the tour?
Phil/Christian: Yeah
So, the second show after the “soundcheck” also known as San Francisco?
Christian: Ahh yeah…right. (laughs).
Words by Nicole Jones, photos by Sidney McMullen
