Bohemian Like You Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth We Used To Be Friends The Dandy Warhols

Bohemian Like You Album: Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (2000)
Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth Album: Dandy Warhols Come Down (1997)
We Used To Be Friends Album: Welcome to the Monkey House (2003)
by The Dandy Warhols

According to the Independent newspaper July 22, 2011, Bohemian Like You was inspired by a girl that Courtney Taylor-Taylor, the Dandy Warhols' guitarist and principal songwriter, found himself fantasizing about. He recalled how he was idly looking out of his apartment window watching traffic pull up at the lights below. "An early Eighties BMW 320i with a primer-grey front-left quarter panel stops there with an amazing looking young woman behind the wheel," Taylor Taylor said. "Her elbow was hangin' out the window at a jaunty angle and her roots were showing. She had a cool tattoo for that time and her face was exquisite." A one time car mechanic, the Dandy Warhol found himself desperately daydreaming her car might break down and he could spring to the rescue. "I sat there willing steam to pour from the hood of her car. I almost gave myself a hernia I was willing so hard."

As the lights changed and she pulled away, Taylor-Taylor started strumming some chords on his guitar. Then he began to fantasize about what a relationship would be like with the mystery girl, in the shape of a one-sided conversation. "My silly little brain ran amok with the dream of love and vintage motor malfunctions," he recalled. "It was only natural to weave it into a song on the spot. I was overwhelmed, ya know?" His fantasy about the vision of loveliness at the traffic lights became "Bohemian Like You."

So did he ever find out who the car girl was? "Sadly I never saw her again, although I asked around a lot with my German-car buddies," said Taylor-Taylor. "One dude told me she was a pastry chef. Needless to say I ate a lot of pastries that week."

Many people, especially those in the UK, know this song because it was featured in a Vodaphone commercial. It was also featured in more than a dozen films and TV shows in North America, and guitarist Pete Holmstrom is OK with the commercialization of the tune. When we talked to Holmstrom in 2012, he said, "as far as I'm concerned, anyway that works is fine by me."

Holmstrom added that royalties the band made from Bohemian Like You's advertisements paid for some of the creative luxuries they enjoy. Holmstrom claimed the tune "paid for our independence" and said that the band wouldn't have been able to build a studio called the Odditorium in Portland without the extra cash.

When Bohemian Like You was first released in the UK in 2000, it failed to chart. After its prominent placement in a Vodaphone commercial, however, it was re-released and it eventually reached #5. The success of this tune helped The Dandys sell over 200,000 copies of Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia in the UK alone.

The music video for Bohemian Like You is very controversial and contains depictions of full-frontal male nudity as well as topless female nudity. The clip was rarely broadcast without the offending images pixilated.

Bohemian Like You is the theme music for the BBC Radio Five sports phone-in show 6-0-6.

The lyrics in Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth seem to speak to a specific person, so in 2012, we asked The Dandy Warhols who the tune was about. Guitarist Pete Holmstrom said that it was indeed about a specific person, but added, "let's just leave it at that."

In 2003, lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor admitted to UK magazine Mojo that Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth was written about one of his ex-girlfriends who actually became a heroin addict over the course of just one week while he was on tour with The Dandys. Taylor-Taylor went on to explain that the two had been together for four years and that at one time, she was "the coolest, smartest, hottest chick" in Portland.

After discovering that his longtime girlfriend had become a heroin addict, Courtney was determined not to write a sad song about it. The singer claimed he "didn't have enough respect for that s--t" to be saddened by it. Instead, he wrote this song as an upbeat rock number and mocked his girlfriend in the chorus, saying "heroin is so passé."

At the time, "Heroin Chic" was in fashion, so there was plenty of work for skinny models who could pull off a strung-out, vacant look. Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth seemed to mock that trend - the video shows dancing syringes and overdose victims.

Frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor wrote We Used To Be Friends about a friend of his named Mark. The singer says Mark also inspired The Dandys' song "Ride," which appeared on their first album The Dandys Rule OK. In our Dandy Warhols interview, we asked Taylor-Taylor about this song and he told us that he and Mark had gone through a little mix-up that accidentally led to them not talking for many years.

We Used To Be Friends was the theme song to the TV show Veronica Mars during its run from 2004 to 2007. The funny part is that lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor has no idea how it became the theme song in the first place. He told us that his best guess was that the writer/director of the show heard the tune and thought it was perfect for the show.

The B-side of the single for We Used To Be Friends contains two covers: "Relax" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and "Call Me" by Blondie. It wasn't the first time The Dandy's released a single with a cover song as the B-side. The B-Side for the 7" vinyl single of the band's popular song "Bohemian Like You" was a cool, alternative cover of AC/DC's "Hell's Bells."