Dat’s entertainment

Who said it was easy being a rock star?

"No one," yawns Dolf de Datsun.

It’s been a tough night. Dolf had been on the wagon for the opening ten days of The Datsuns’ European tour, only falling prey to the temptations of red wine and dice gambling the evening prior to this interview.

But if he does sound a little worse for wear, then so would you if you’d screamed and shouted your way through the best part of 191 gigs in the last 12 months.

"That’s not including travel, studio, TV or radio days," he adds, self pityingly.

The Datsuns shot to fame on the back of a media revolution, finding themselves swiftly lumped in with The Vines and The Libertines as the next generation to follow on from the Strokes/Hives/White Stripes trinity. ("We all play guitars and we’re all boys. That’s the only fucking similarity," spits Dolf, airing his distaste.) However, the Kiwi quartet set themselves apart from the herd by way of an album that, at least, hints at their incendiary live appeal.

"I don’t think we quite captured it on record," says Dolf, of the band’s on stage energy. "I don’t think you ever can. We just went in and recorded this album as quickly as possible. It only took ten days to record. It’s the same engineer who did the new White Stripes album. They’re not simple songs, but it’s simple music.

"Besides, we’re about playing shows, not making records," he adds "We go on stage and deliver as much energy as we possibly can in that 45 minutes or hour. We want to have people going away saying ‘fuck yeah’!"

The Datsuns may well have been pinned down as an AC/DC covers band, but Dolf is quick to set the record straight.

"To me, it’s just the four of us doing it our way. As far as early heavy metal and hard rock goes, I think that even though we do those kind of sounds, we always try to make it with a pop hook and we always try to make it catchy. We’re not scared of pop music. One of Chris’ favourite bands is Abba and ‘Dancing Queen’ is one of his favourite songs! One of my favourite songs is ‘Baby Love’ by The Supremes. That’s the kind of thing we dig. Then again, it’s ’60s and ’70s pop as opposed to shit from the ’80s and ’90s. But in a lot of ways, we’re just a traditional rock ‘n’ roll band. Also, in our show what we do is kind of varied. Not every song is foot to the floor."

The Datsuns’ devil-may-care approach extends to their studio habits. Their self titled debut album was recorded in a ten day blitz, and they don’t care much for precious production techniques either.

"That’s been going on for years," says Dolf, speaking about rock’s increasing reliance on studio technology. "Putting everyone’s vocals through a harmoniser. It’s just fucking pathetic. They can’t play. These young bands do it all the time and they’re like ‘we sound amazing’ then they try and do it live and they just sound dreadful. If you can’t cut it live, it doesn’t matter how good your record is, in our opinion.

"In the studio, I find that if you’re doing a song and it gets dissected down into all these little parts, you lose that spontaneity. You lose the thing that made that song great in the first place. Thing is, we’re human beings – we do go out of time and we fuck up. But all those little things make the record greater. Even if the notes aren’t perfect, you can’t get that feeling if it’s done to a click track. Especially in rock ’n’ roll."