The Timothy Taylor gallery is currently running an exhibition for the late, great Andy Warhol until 29 Feb. The exhibition focuses on the pop-art innovator’s black and white photographs of daily life in Britain the late 60’s. We wanted to get our friends Betty and The Werewolves down there because a) they look like they could have stepped straight out of that period and b) they make some of the catchiest 60’s inspired pop / rock music we heard since everybody stopped doing that and bought fluoro leggings and Korg miniTritons instead.
Conversation touched on bands, art, Warhol and the socio-economic effects of war on third world societies in the modern technological age (I made one of those up – can you guess which?). Here is a selection of the Warhol’s images and our conversation:
It may look like a picture of a car but it's not, it's actually a Warhol so it's worth BIG bucks and if you knew anything about art you'd know that.
DP: “So you guys must be into your pop music then. I guess there are parallels with pop music and pop art. A lot of people in music are way too obsessed with looking cool and underground these days…”
EMILY (guitar): “We want to write music that means something, but we want to be able to look out at the crowd and see people smiling. We want to be able to write the sort of songs people can dance to. A lot of the time you can hear a song and recognise that it’s good and the sort of thing you like but it’s not dance-able. It’s not something you can move to and when you’re a live band that sort of thing can really spoil the energy of the room.”
LAURA (Guitar): “You don’t always quite know if they’re laughing with you or at you though.”
DP: “I guess you can try and meld the two. Warhol was pretty underground at the same time as being the king of everything pop.”
LAURA: “That scene was underground in ways but that’s not necessarily the aesthetic. A lot of dying-in-a-squat-with-a-needle
This store is offering 20% to 50% off due to a storewide clearance: FACT.
DP: “You do get bands that manage to breathe new life into the pop format.”
LAURA: “We embrace pop in our music and in every day of our lives. I will often ring Emily screaming about having written a new pop song, just something really catchy and immediate that sums up however I was feeling at the time. You can be pop and still mean something.”
DP: “So you get a lot of inspiration from pop. Are there any particular bands or periods in time you take inspiration from.”
LAURA: “For me it was mainly the 80’s. I like the band Heavenly, Talulah Gosh, The Shop Assistants and other fun bands like that.”
HELEN: “With our music we mainly want people to have fun. We wanted to be a fun girl group, until our drummer Douglas, who’s a bloke, ruined it of course!”
DOUGLAS (drums): “Yeah, sorry about that.”
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Another work of absolute genius by Warhol. Wow, that guy is good!
HELEN: “Hopefully we’re going to put out a single soon and earn enough off it to organise a sex change for Douglas. Then we’ll have a perfect pop girl-group and we’ll take over the industry!”
DP: “And one man’s penis is all that stands in your way…”
HELEN: “For now maybe but there’s three of us and only one of it. It doesn’t stand a chance.”
DOUGLAS: *Crosses legs*
The Portraits & Landscapes Warhol exhibition will be running at the Timothy Taylor gallery until 29 Feb www.timothytaylorgallery.com
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