Andy Dick |
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Mon. August 26.2002 4:00 PM EDT |
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Andy Dick’s Not Stalking You, He’s Just Calling A LotComedian gets seriously absurd on his debut album. by Gil Kaufman |
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Andy Dick (VH1) |
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Andy Dick is out looking for something special, and he’s pretty sure that it has to be 9.5 inches in length. Over the course of a two-hour phone interview that finds him driving around several L.A. neighborhoods, the comedian berates a friend for
Hey, get your mind out of the gutter. The comedian is stressing precision because some mattresses are 10 inches thick, and some are only seven or eight. The vintage 1950s furniture he recently purchased demands a strict nine and a half. And Dick just can’t get the phrase out of his mind. This guy, who hosts his own self-titled show on MTV, is certainly not above, pardon the pun, a dick joke. A veteran of sitcoms (Newsradio, Get Smart) and films (Loser, Bongwater), the comedian has recently earned himself a new persona: recording artist. He and his band of crackpots, the Bitches of the Century, have been gigging around L.A. for almost 15 years. The group’s self-titled debut disc is dotted with quips regarding myriad bodily functions and bleak drug humor. The combination would probably have both Dick’s analyst and AA sponsor banging down the door if they didn’t know their pal’s comedy was key to dealing with a sometimes troubled existence that has included drug-related deaths and tangles with the law. None of that matters, though - not when you’ve got both porn king Ron Jeremy and pop queen Christina Aguilera inviting you to come out and play. Dick does, and he waxes about both during a slightly disjunctive chat during which he sizes up bedding, professes his love of Marilyn Manson, and recalls meeting up with Ozzy Osbourne in a very unglamorous situation. VH1: Could this new album be used as evidence someday? Andy Dick: Of what? That I’m crazy? VH1: Say you get arrested creeping outside someone’s window, like the song says... Dick: Yeah, it could be used if some girl was trying to sue me for that. But I don’t do that. I have done a few shady things in the past. I drove by houses, I peeked over fences. VH1: So "Stalker Song" isn’t just a joke? Dick: It’s totally based on this relationship I had with this girl named Lina. She came and watched the show and was crying. I told her it’s supposed to be kind of funny and she was like, ‘No, it was so real.’ [He cackles] She was crying about the song! Even the guy’s name was Kevin. The only thing that’s not true is that I didn’t get the guy to suck my d*ck. VH1: Is it therapy for you? You had to get it out so you’d stop doing it? Dick: Yeah. When we wrote that I was in the middle of it and I had to start making fun of myself to stop doing it. I was really obsessed with this girl. It was driving me crazy. I was so upset and stressed out all the time, like I had butterflies in my stomach all the time. I was sh*tting blood. [Dick excuses himself for three minutes to speak with the mattress retailer] Dick: Hey, I’m back. They had to know the height of my bed because they’re custom making one for me. It’s really inexpensive, only $1,200. That’s as much as you pay at IKEA ... once you get the mattress and everything. I’m getting it from this great place called “‘50s Furniture” and most of it really is ‘50s furniture! VH1: Complete with pee stains and everything? Dick: No, because they redo it impeccably. It’s wood, a lot of wood. VH1: What does your AA sponsor think of a song like "Hole Burns?" Dick: It freaks a lot of people out. I do a whole thing in my show about my sponsor, but that guy’s not my real sponsor. I thank him for coming to the show, but then the spotlight goes on him and he’s not in his seat. Then I do some jokes and he starts heckling me. He weighs 500 pounds and he’s drunk. It’s so uncomfortable, people think it’s real. I push him off the stage, and then I punch him and he projectile vomits into my mouth. We use cream of chicken soup, not real vomit. But it’s so gross that I really dry heave. VH1: You specialize in playing spazzy guys. Is making an album like this your way of trying to be a cooler, more rock and roll Jim Morrison type of guy? Dick: What did you say about Morrison? VH1: You’re normally the spazz. Is this your rock move? Dick: No, I consider myself more of a Frank Zappa or Lou Reed kind of guy. VH1: Still a geek, but a hard-rockin’ geek. Dick: More like David Byrne. But I think he really rocks ... VH1: Fame has its perks, right? Dick: Yeah, I do things sometimes just because they’re fun. [Porn star] Ron Jeremy wants me to do this host thing where everyone’s going to be naked. That sounds like fun. Plus, they are paying me. VH1: What is it exactly? Dick: I don’t know, it has something to do with that Ponderosa steakhouse. It’s supposed to be one of the 50 most fun things to do in the U.S. It’s a contest for naked men and women at a nudist colony so everyone’s naked in the audience. I guess I could be naked, too ... VH1: People seem fascinated with your amorphous sexuality. Why do you think that is? Dick: Because I talked about it. I should never have talked about it out loud. VH1: Back to the idea that you might be gay... Dick: I just like to prove that everyone is [gay], just like Cobain said. [He cranks up the car radio] Hey, is this that pirate radio station?’ Oh, man, we listen to this pirate radio station, Pirate Cat Radio. It’s true pirate radio. They have hour-long bits of dead air where I think they’ve been shut down, but they must have just fallen asleep at the bong or something. They played Jello Biafra talking about Columbine and they just swear ... they were shocking me! They’re breaking every law. How do they get away with that? VH1: Did you ever see Pump up the Volume with Christian Slater? Dick: I was an extra in that movie! See, my career’s not that ... I had just started back then. I used to sign up to be an extra just so I could eat from the craft service table. Wait, do the pirates have to have extensive equipment to put that shit in the airwaves? VH1: No, you could probably do it for $500. Dick: Are you kidding me? Maybe we should do a little pirate station ... Do they stay in one place? VH1: Sometimes they have it in the back of a car, or they move it around ... Dick: In the back of a car? Like a van! I wonder if that was that weird van-like truck I saw? It looked like it came out of Men in Black V. It was totally blacked out and it had the weirdest chrome boomerang antenna. VH1: How did you end up with a Marilyn Manson portrait of you on the cover? Dick: He didn’t do that for the cover. He painted that and gave it to me a year ago. I asked him if I could use it for the cover because it’s the prettiest picture I ever saw. VH1: Any idea why he gave you such abnormally large nipples? Dick: They don’t really look like that, they’re not all inflamed. My nipples are really nice, actually. Aren’t they? [His friend replies, ‘They’re really suckable.’] You don’t know if they’re suckable! You never sucked them. I really don’t like people to suck them, they’re a little too inflamed. No, I’m kidding, they’re not inflamed! VH1: How did you meet Manson? Dick: I saw his videos a long time ago, and liked him as an artist. I thought they were so pretty. Then I read his autobiography. I thought he was an interesting character, because I prefer non-fiction over fiction most of the time. [He lowers voice as he goes into “‘50s Furniture.” ‘I’m talking on the phone. I know that’s rude.’ I love it so much in here, I wish you could be here with me.’] His life was so weird and interesting. I was just hoping that I would meet him one day and I’d befriend him. I wanted to get to know him more because I’d read the book. I actually saw some similarities between us. I finally met him at the Whiskey Bar and it turned out that he was a fan of my show. He took me outside and this is exactly what he said to me, ‘Those little black kids with you at the beginning [of the show]? I get it.’ I was like, ‘You get what? There’s nothing to really get. He turned it into something and I don’t really want to know what he turned it into. Ever since then we’ve been pretty good friends, if we see each other. I think he still parties and I really don’t. He doesn’t seem to have a problem, though. That’s the most interesting part. VH1: The show features a lot of music parodies: Kid Christ, System for the Revolution and Such. Do guys in real bands ever get mad at you for poking fun at them? Dick: Yeah, Christina [Aguilera] is hot and cold about Daphne Aguilera. She’ll go from, ‘Why didn’t you come to my party and dress up like me?’ And I’m like, ‘That’s not what I do. I’m doing this thing that’s a parody. It’s not you.’ It was all weird the way she said it. She wanted me to go to her birthday party and do Daphne. But it takes three hours to do the make-up and I just wanted to go to her party. Like, “Why do you want to make me your f*cking monkey?” So I said “no” and now she’s mad or whatever. She gets it, but she’s always a liiiiiitle bit rude. But I’m not going to stop. We’re doing a Daphne movie. It’s all in good fun and I’ve told her I think she’s the most talented one out there - she can’t be touched. VH1: There’s a lot of scatological humor on the album. Dick: What, like "Little Brown Ring?" Well, the song is about buttholes, so there’s going to be some sh*t involved. VH1: What do you think your therapist would say about that? Dick: They haven’t heard it. Maybe I’m afraid to show it to them. I don’t care about the Freudian stuff. I love little butt holes. Not little ... I mean, I like little brown rings. VH1: The song "I’ll F**k Anything That Moves" makes it seem as if you’re not so discriminating. Dick: My friend came up with that concept because that’s really not true for me. I will not fuck anything that moves. You have to be really pretty. I’m really shallow like that. I have a lot of problems still - don’t think I don’t. VH1: "30 Days 30 Nights" mentions Scott Weiland. Did you guys really hang out in rehab? Dick: No, he jumped the fence. He fled the scene. I was in there when a couple of big namers made their getaways. Maybe they were running away from me. Ozzy didn’t run. He couldn’t f*ckin’ walk away. He didn’t know where he was. I was in rehab with him years ago and it doesn’t look like it really worked. I just thought he was some old man with wet brain and the shakes. Then, I saw the "o-z-z-y" tattoo and I thought, ‘Oh, and he’s an Ozzy fan on top of it?’ But it was really Ozzy. [Hey, there goes a guy in a wheelchair]. VH1: Thank you for a perfect segue. Dick: Did you ever see that Richard Linklater movie "Waking Life?" There’s this part that always gets me when they animate this commercial with a woman in a wheelchair. It has this jingle that goes, [sings] ‘Now I’m free to see the world!’ That kills me. VH1: That inspired you to do the "Stephen Hawking" song? Dick: No, not at all. I just love that movie. That song came a couple years before because a friend really did tell me I drag my feet and I said it was because I was sick of walking. That ties into the whole laziness thing. Lately I’ve been thinking that I actually could retire if I wanted to. I wouldn’t go out to eat all the time. But then I thought, would Hollywood clamor to have me back? No, they wouldn’t give a sh*t. VH1: Okay, well I can see that this thing is falling apart. Let’s do some word association. Ready? Nipple. Dick: Ring. VH1: Spiderman. Dick: Timmerman. VH1: Martha Stewart. Dick: Pillowcases and sheets. VH1: Crack. Dick: Alley. VH1: Money. Dick: Hungry conniving manipulative masochistic ... Sorry, I shouldn’t have gone there. VH1: Keanu Reeves. Dick: [long pause] I’m just trying to figure out how he got on this list. That’s you trying to be funny. Next. VH1: What about hell? Dick: What about heaven? VH1: Bush. Dick: ... Full circle to your fucking red inflamed nipples and we end it. Cut! For news, bio, and to listen to clips from Andy Dick & The Bitches Of The Century go to the Andy Dick Artist A - Z Pages |
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