Dan Sartain Interview

Growing up, Sartain’s parents listened to singer songwriters like Jackson Brown and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. “What better way to rebel against your hippie parents than become a greaser?” he laughs. “So I got obsessed with all that rockabilly stuff. Maybe my kids will be into Jackson Browne when they’re rebelling against me!”

Sartain started performing aged 13. “I was playing whatever had that three chord 50s pattern: a lot of Elvis. Buddy Holly. Little Richard. Chuck Berry. They all had the same chord pattern - it was just a difference in delivery. I kind of adopted those chord patterns and started writing my own stupid, silly songs! Then I eventually started playing a bunch of minor chords and playing them faster and faster, getting more confident. And it turned into my style.” His signature quiff was already in place. “Yeah, man it was way bigger then, I’ll tell you that much! I wouldn’t step out of my room without a big pompadour!”

His early records (Dan Sartain & The Crimson Guard and Romance in Stereo) were self-releases, financed by day jobs like working as a gas station attendant, barber and construction worker. He vehemently hopes those days are behind him.

“I’m not going back to work. I’d sooner become a bum and just live on the street than go back to work, ” he spits. “It’s just a dead end street for me. I’m really small: I can’t work these manual labour jobs. There’s guys been there 10,15, 20 years and they’re going to be cynical assholes. I’m not going to be able to show up at their job and have them respect me. This little skinny asshole coming in thinking he can work on cars or labour work. They’re going to kick my ass from the first day I walk in there! Nah, I ain’t going back to work! I don’t have a skill except for music.”

The artwork for The Serpientes features not one but two images of Sartain with a noose around his neck. I ask him why. “It’s about Alice Cooper, man. And I saw some pictures of James Dean and he did that. He looked really cool. I took these pictures, and I actually did have to hang myself for five - ten seconds while my friend went click click click, then I put my toes back on the stairs. But they cut my fucking feet off the album cover, so you couldn’t see that I was actually hanging! So I did all that shit for nothing! I guess my neck got real stretched out. When my mother saw ‘em (those photos) she was horrified. But on the next album cover I’m blowing my brains out! I’m not into self-mutilation — I don’t cut my arms or anything. Ever since I’ve seen Alice Cooper do it - killing yourself on stage, that’s so fucking cool, man!”

An article in The NME claimed Sartain suffers from agoraphobia. “I’m a self-imposed agoraphobic: a wannabe agoraphobic,” he admits. “I want to sit around all day. Masturbate about twenty times. Smoke about five blunts. Watch movies and not do shit. Self-imposed rainy days sometimes, I guess. It’s not any kind of Kurt Cobain / Last Days-type thing where you don’t want to see anyone and mumble - I just don’t want to go outside sometimes. I’m pretty happy just to sit around my house!”

I admit that I’m disappointed he’s missing his trademark suave / sinister pimp-tastic moustache - the kind that looks like its drawn on with an eyeliner pencil.

“They come and go. Moustaches are kind of flavour savers. I smoke a lot of cigarettes. If I keep a moustache for more than a couple of months it starts to retain flavour. It’s really nasty. Have you ever looked at an old man who’s completely white haired and has a beard, but the bottom of his moustache is brown? You got to get rid of ‘em and grow a new one.”

Was it a tribute to Little Richard?

“Mine came out looking more like Little Richard, but I was looking at Chuck Berry, too, man.”

Or John Waters.

“I guess it’s cause I’m white I end up looking a lot like John Waters. My girlfriend is crazy about John Waters, but I don’t think she sexually desires John Waters.”