 Lemmy, California, midget porn and Desperate & Dateless balls. Is your interest piqued? Well, dear readers, accompany JEAN NICOTINE into the wild world of THE CASANOVAS. Guitarist/singer TOMMY BOYCE is on the phone – and he sounds like he's doing the dishes.
So, you opened for the Motley Crue/Motorhead tour a while back – I've got to ask you if you met Lemmy or not…
The Motorhead guys were really lovely – in stark contrast to Motley Crue – they were really friendly and would hang out with us. Lemmy was very cool. He came up to us after the show and was like, “That was fucking great – anyone that plays a ZZ Top cover is all right by me.” So, yeah, he was really into us, which was cool.
And another interesting thing you've done recently were the Desperate & Dateless balls, which you did in January. Was that any different from playing a normal show?
Yeah, well obviously half of them didn't give a fuck and who can blame them? It's their only chance to get laid. But that didn't worry me – sometimes you've just got to play shows to get money.
Yeah, well fuck it, you know?
You don't have to write that in the interview, do you? (laughs)
What, that you played Desperate & Dateless balls? Why?
I dunno, it's a bad kind of gig, isn't it? (laughing)
No, that's hilarious! Come on...
Okay. All right.
Okay, well, you've been around since 1999, have you achieved any goals you've set out for yourselves and if so, what were they?
I wouldn't say that… if we had have, we probably would have stopped. We're always striving to play better and write better songs – commercially, we'd like to be able to do what we do and be able to live comfortably off it.
Yeah, I don't think there's any shame in that.
Totally. And that would enable us to keep doing it and doing it. Whereas, if you're on the breadline, then I think it's harder to write songs.
Yes. If you're making an okay living out of your music then I guess you can concentrate on that and making that better, instead of focussing on a day job and where your next meal is coming from.
This is very true – but I think it's a dangerous thing too. You become complacent – you lose the hunger, the drive to come up with better stuff. Lots of bands have had overnight success – and have never been able to follow up with anything that matches the quality of their first stuff.
The sophomore slump.
Yeah, there's no recapturing of the first album glory. Then there are some bands that get better with every release.
So this All Night Long is the DREADED SECOND ALBUM for you guys – do you think any of that dreadful musical folklore has applied? Any difficulties with getting anything across?
I think the record we've just done is by far and away better than our first one – we started six or seven years ago and started playing live after about four or five rehearsals – so we really grew up in the public eye – a small one, mind you. We were kind of just mucking around. So, the first album has a couple of songs on it from our first year of existence. We've had a lot of line-up changes in our first five years – I think now it's very settled and we play well together. I think our new record is kind of like a first record of sorts – the first Casanovas record with a settled line-up and I think we're really hitting our stride.
The Casanovas' latest LP, All Night Long is out now through Rubber/Shock They're playing again in Brisbane in September.
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