Life in the fast lane for the Datsuns

By GRAHAM REID


A couple of days before Christmas and Dolf de Datsun is back home to see family, then flying back to Britain to do some final vocal tracks for the new Datsuns album.

It's the glamorous, jetsetting lifestyle of a rock'n'roll star all right.

Oh yeah, he laughs dryly. The other misconception is that they are really coining it in.

"It's another of those things which has a nice media spin, just like we spend every night with two girls each and a line of coke. The lifestyle is actually hurry up and wait. It's 'Get in the van! Get in the train! Get on the plane! Get in the bus!' Then you get to the next place and wait an entire day to do your 45 minutes at a festival, or an hour and a half if it's a club show.

"I think that's why people turn to doing stupid shit, you are just so bored."

For the past 18 months - with time out to record the new album in Surrey with former Led Zeppelin bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones as producer - the Datsuns have been on the road seeing the world. Although for rock'n'roll bands usually it's just the world outside the hotel or tour bus window.

But Dolf makes the effort to get out and about. This time last year he was in Seville for New Year's Eve and he admits he's "such a tourist when I get the chance to be".

"We're mostly working, but when you've got a partner in crime it's better. When we toured with [Detroit rockers] the Von Bondies in September [their bassist] Carrie and I used to go and do stuff like museums because I had someone there getting me out of bed going, 'C'mon, we should go and see this place'. Or we'd be in Copenhagen and we'd rent a bike.

"But if everyone's tired it's different. If you have someone helping you it's better."

The past year has been a good one for the Datsuns. They started in late January playing a blinder of a show at the NME Awards in Birmingham, then joined a 12-date NME tour; mid-year they played festivals in Europe and Britain (25,000 at Roskilde in Denmark, 40,000 at Reading); they recorded a couple of tracks for a single at London's ToeRag Studios (where the White Stripes recorded Elephant), played the Ozzfest in the States; partied with the likes of Metallica's Lars Ulrich who was tipped as interested in producing them; did a lightning tour of New Zealand, then headed back to Britain to start recording with Jones at a farmhouse-cum-studio in October.

"Last year we just tried to keep the momentum going. We had all these people hyping us up and we had to kind of live up to that. Yet you can only live up to others' expectation to a point. Everyone's view is subjective and you're never going to be the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world, no matter how much they say it. There's a different 'best rock band in the world' every night. It's always changing."

Despite the hype and hoopla, Dolf says they never felt things were getting out of control.

"Not really, we just rode the thing. We concentrated on just playing really great shows because that's what we're in it for and enjoy doing. And writing music. We tried not to concentrate on the bullshit too much.

"We run everything ourselves on our own label and we just have the one manager, we don't have a business manager. We didn't have a tour manager for a long time as well, so it's a really small unit. Sometimes we felt a bit out of our depth because it's just the four us and Tom the manager talking to huge labels.

"But I think we finally found our feet in the past year."

They also managed a rapid recording of their second album with John Paul Jones, a man whose credits not only include Led Zeppelin but work with Diamanda Galas, scores for film and television, writing arrangements for Peter Gabriel's US album and REM's Automatic for the People ...

Jones is a heavy-hitter and his skills and professionalism meant they had the drum and bass tracks done within days, which gave them the luxury to explore different guitar sounds.

They recorded at Jacob's Studio, a residential farm in Surrey, about 50 minutes from London's Waterloo Station, where Stevie Wonder, Radiohead, Blur, Robbie Williams and the Music have recorded. Living on site meant the band could wake up and go straight to work.

"I was woken every morning by Christian playing guitar underneath me. My room was right above the barn where the studio was so he'd be down there doing some kind of searing solo or trying out some stupid combination of five different guitar pedals or some weird effects box John Paul Jones had brought along.

"That told me it was time to get up."

And go to work?

"Yeah, but it's not really work, it's just a bunch of boys and John Paul Jones, big kids playing with toys in the studio. Once all that rhythm stuff was done it was very much, 'Let's see what happens when we plug this in, or try this microphone here'. So it was just playing with things until we'd go, 'Yeah, that's pretty cool'.

"It would be easy to be intimidated by someone like John Paul Jones but he's not an intimidating fellow at all. You can be, 'Oh God, I just screwed up in front of this guy' but after a day with him we just felt at ease. He'd seen us in New Zealand on that short tour and the main strength was we felt he was another one of us and we were totally comfortable saying anything we wanted.

"To get all the drums done in three days, to have us playing at that level, was because we were comfortable. There was a lot of laughing in the studio."

Dolf says the album contains no surprises - then contradicts himself and says there may be a few, "I bet some people go, 'Wow, your singing!"'- but that it is no great departure from their debut.

"It's different from the first record but not phenomenally, it's still very much high energy rock'n'roll but there are some pop songs in there. And a waltz. I think people will say [Jones] got a great performance out of us, that he really captured what the band is about."

All that need happen now is it arrive in shops. Maybe next month at the latest, given it's all done?

"Yeah," he laughs, "you'd think so. But there's so much lead-in press which you start three months out, and photos and videos, all that kind of ... well, bullshit, to be frank."

The Datsuns are looking at a late May release, and after their Kings Arms and Big Day Out shows - and supporting Metallica on three dates in Australia - it's back to Britain to do media, record some b-sides, make videos and start talking things up again. They'll fit in a New Zealand tour before things really kick in for the European summer festival season. More hurry up and wait but it has to be done, the window of opportunity can close and there is a lot of competition in the rock'n'roll world.

The Datsuns know it better than most, and that's why they like their singles and albums on vinyl.

"It will be nice to look back on when we've retired, when this isn't cool - in a year," he laughs, then says more seriously: "Things come and go, and it will be interesting to see how viable it is making rock'n'roll soon. It may be totally uncool, but we'll still be doing it. Or maybe we'll jump on the bandwagon and make a new wave record."