About six and a half years into their career as a band, The Datsuns were thrust into the white-hot spotlight of critical acclaim. Holed up in London, recording their self-titled long-playing debut, the band suddenly found their shows swamped with industry types and their cell phones ringing with offers of free food, hotel rooms and god knows what else. This despite the fact that the quartet of long-haired New Zealanders continued to mine an array of deeply unfashionable influences -- AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Deep Purple, T. Rex and Sweet -- and bludgeon its live audiences with an unholy loud blast of straight-up, irony-free rock energy. The Datsuns remained remarkably level-headed during this disorienting period, using their newfound leverage to license The Datsuns rather than signing away the rights, taking fawning NME reviews in stride and bracing for the backlash in two songs ("Sittin' Pretty" and "You Build Me Up (To Bring Me Down)" even as they rode the cresting wave of hype.

We recently caught up with guitarist Christian Datsun to talk about his band's meteoric rise, why regular people like hard rock more than critics, what you're missing if you dismiss glam out of hand, and how to sneak a song called "Motherfucker from Hell" onto the radio. We enjoyed talking to him about our hard rock guilty pleasures nearly as much as we liked his band's ass-kicking album, and encourage anyone who's got a stack of numbered Zep albums, old Kiss vinyl or Cheap Trick's Live at Budokan hidden away to check The Datsuns out right now.

Splendid: So...you've all taken the name "Datsun". That must be a Ramones reference.

Christian: No, it has nothing to do with the Ramones, actually. It was kind of a fun thing. We used to have other friends in bands, as well, with the same first names, so to avoid confusion we would call them -- whatever their last name was, we changed it to their band name. And our friends started doing it to us as well. It became kind of a joke. And then when we were writing the album credits, we just decided to put it in for fun.

Splendid: So, nothing to do with the Ramones.

Christian: No.

(There is a short pause as I skip through my next three Ramones-related questions.)

Splendid: Okay. I really liked your album, and it seems like the kind of record that maybe 20 years ago, 15 years ago, might have been a huge thing that went all across the culture. Now the whole hard rock/garage category is seen as sort of a niche. Do you think that label helps or hurts you? Do you see yourself as garage or just as a rock band?

Christian: We think of ourselves as a rock and roll band. Garage -- I think that a band like The Hentchmen, I think of that as garage rock. I think of that as, like, stuff that sounds like the original '60s garage rock. I think that, too, if you look at the bands that get lumped under that, you get bands like the Strokes, the White Stripes, the Hives -- they're all really different from each other. It's kind of like somebody reads the term "garage rock" and then each band that comes along is just shoved into that category without much thought.

Splendid: It's also typically a Nuggets-y 1960s influence, whereas you guys seem to have more of a 1970s hard rock vibe?

Christian: Oh, definitely, we're more Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.

Splendid: It seems like the last really huge hard rock band was Guns 'N Roses, and now it doesn't seem that those kinds of bands really dominate -- or do you think that maybe it's time for a resurgence?

Christian: I don't know. It's so hard to predict what's going to be popular and what's not. The world is so cyclical. Things come and go so fast. Who's to say what's going to be big, and whatever is big, how long it's going to last? With Internet access and downloading and the television and everything, things just come and go like boom. And sometimes fashions dictate the music. People can go on a TV show or a game show and become a big star now. The whole thing is screwed up. In some ways, you can't -- it's so hard to become a huge, successful band like these bands of the past. You might have one record that's big these days, just because you're in the right place at the right time.

Splendid: Does that kind of thing scare you? I know that you guys have gotten a lot of very positive attention in the UK. Are you worried about the backlash?

Christian: We're not worrying about it. We've been a band for eight years. We were a band when people thought we dressed funny and were terrible -- they didn't like what we were doing, because it was out of fashion, and we didn't care about that then. So now that people like us, and we get nice things written about us, that's great. But if they change their minds and go back to saying we suck, that's fine. We've been there before.

Splendid: Yeah, I know a lot of ordinary, normal people who like the old hard rock bands like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin and maybe Thin Lizzy, and it seems like people who are in the rock criticism area don't. Do you feel that the fact that you're drawing on this tradition that people like, but that doesn't get much respect, is that why your music is so polarizing? It seems like people really love it or really hate it.

Christian: I think there are certain elements of that that are true. But if you look at all those bands that you mentioned, they were all very popular, huge bands. All of those bands, the critics hate. They were totally trashed by critics. I think it's always been that way. Rock and roll has always been more popular with people than with the critics. From day one.

Splendid: Yeah. Now, I was looking at your guest book on your web site, and the consensus seems to be that "you fucking rock". Is that all people need to know about you? Are they missing something? Is it more complicated than that?

Christian: Well, no, most of the people that write in the guest book are people that have come to see us play live, which is the best place to see us and come see who we are. And then they come and write in the guest book. If you think we rock, and that's enough to inspire you to go and write something about it, that's enough. If you enjoy our shows, enjoy our albums, then that's fine. We're not looking to set up a cult or some sort of empire -- we're just making music in the hopes that someone will buy it and enjoy it and come to the show and enjoy that as well.

Splendid: Okay. Let's talk about some of the songs on the album. The one that I like the best is "Harmonic Generator", which has maybe more of a punk feel to it than the rest.

Christian: Maybe. I think of it as more glam. I like stuff like T. Rex and Sweet, though ironically, that stuff started off as being a new wave song -- using the drum machine and the robot voices, disco robot voices -- but when we did it as a band, it become more glam, more like T. Rex.

Splendid: Do you guys listen to a lot of that stuff?

Christian: Yeah, I like it. We've got this cool video box collection of English glam bands playing Top of the Pops. It's really great.

Splendid: Did you see that movie -- what is it, Velvet --

Christian: Goldmine, no. I wanted to see that, but I haven't had time.

Splendid: It's kind of silly actually. But that's interesting, because glam is another one of those genres that I think people have sort of forgotten about.

Christian: Yeah. There's a lot of great stuff. At the time, it's kind of like it got a critical hammering because of the crazy costumes and shallow subjects, but there were some really catchy songs. Once you can kind of step back, 30 years later, and take the best of it...those are the ones that we really look to.

Splendid: I have this early Tyrannosaurus Rex record. Do you listen to any of that stuff?

Christian: That's the acoustic stuff?

Splendid: Yeah, it's acoustic. It's unbelievable. But you're talking more about "Bang a Gong"?

Christian: Yeah, stuff like Electric Warrior. All that kind of stuff.

Splendid: And that's the Von Bondies singing backup on "Harmonic Generator" right?

Christian: That's correct.

Splendid: They sing on a few of your songs?

Christian: Yes.

Splendid: How'd you hook up with them?

Christian: Well, we were in England last year doing our album. They were on tour there at the same time. We were recording at RAK studio, which produced a lot of records in the '60s, and we were recording there. When you recorded at this studio, you could stay at a house next door to the studio. So we were staying in this house, and the Von Bondies were touring, and they didn't have anywhere to stay. So we said, oh, you can stay at this house with us. We were just hanging out, and we were saying, well, it would be really cool if we could get women to sing with us, and of course, the Von Bondies were there. So we asked them, hey, do you want to sing on this song? And they said, yeah, sure.

Splendid: And you guys also both have some sort of connection to the White Stripes, don't you?

Christian: Yeah, we've toured with them and the Von Bondies are one of these Detroit bands. We seem to run into quite a few Detroit and Swedish bands. I don't know how that worked out that way.

Splendid: Some kind of karmic thing.

Christian: Some kind of karmic thing. Detroit and Sweden.

Splendid: There are so many great bands coming from both those places now. (pause) I also really liked "Motherfucker from Hell". And one of the things that I love about it is the guitar riff. Is that how the song started?

Christian: Yeah, I had the riff. I had all the music. As soon as we started playing, it worked straight away. It came together very quickly. It's an interesting song because you know it's really popular live. I think it works on two levels. Half of the audience is going -- you know it's a really loud, fast song, it's pretty energetic, and they love the music and they can sing along, but without realizing that the song's actually not about...some people think it's about, you know, "We're the motherfuckers from hell." Like we're really hard. It's not about that at all. It's about being in a relationship with somebody else, who makes you feel bad, who makes you feel like an asshole. Or something like that. Nobody picks up on the line before it, "You make me feel like a ... motherfucker from hell." It's like being in a situation, where you're involved with another person who is making you feel like an ass. There are all these different things. But then again, you can just go to a show and have a few beers and enjoy the song. Get your rocks off.

Splendid: Do you care that -- I'm guessing that one's not going to get played on the radio much.

Christian: Well, apparently, it's going to be our next radio single, though obviously, it will have to be edited a little bit.

Splendid: (laughing) How are they going to do that?

Christian: Well, they want to do it so that it will be a single in England. And they've been talking about this and we're just saying "no". But they're saying, you know it's going to be really good and it gets a big reaction at the shows, so we capitulated. So we'll make up a masked tape, isolate the vocals, and take out the "f" word. You know how they do with rap songs.

Splendid: So there will just be a beep or something?

Christian: No. Beeps are horrible. They just took out the word. And it works quite well. You can still tell what we're saying, but it's less ...

Splendid: Yeah, I remember listening to the radio when Nine Inch Nails came out with The Downward Spiral, and that song "Closer" came on, and it was a series of beeps.

Christian: Beeps are horrible. I think it's way less horrible if you just take out the word.

Splendid: But you wonder what they think they're accomplishing, you know, because everybody knows what it is.

Christian: I know. Especially when you can turn on the TV and see a guy shooting another guy, even at 5:00 o'clock when kids are watching, but you can't hear profanity, which kids hear in their homes every day. It's ridiculous.

Splendid: Yeah, well, we have to protect the children, I guess.

Christian: What's more harmful though, hearing someone use a four-letter word or watching them shoot someone?

Splendid: Well, I'm with you. I think the violence is the worst thing you can show a kid. But it's harder to quantify.

Christian: There's a really old saying -- sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. That kind of applies in this situation.

Splendid: Yeah. Do you want to talk about "Fink for the Man"? That's a great song, too. Is that about somebody you know?

Christian: That's a phrase that came from The Mod Squad. We were sitting around watching one day, someone says, "You just a fink for the man." And we were like, hey, that sounds like a chord, and so we put that in and worked everything out so that it fit around it imagery-wise.

Splendid: So is that how it starts -- you have this phrase in your head or a sound or something.

Christian: It depends what you're going for. Two-thirds of the songs on the album are about something particular about relationships. The other third are just kind of like words that fit with the song. Which is like a glam thing. Often in T. Rex songs, the words don't make so much sense but the imagery just fits with the tune. A song like "Harmonic Generator" is very much like that. Just the words with the music. They don't necessarily mean anything. They just fit with the flow. A stream of consciousness thing.

Splendid: So, even if I knew what a "Harmonic Generator" was, it still wouldn't make any sense?

Christian: It still wouldn't make any sense. A harmonic generator is actually a guitar effects pedal. We had one hand-made by this guy while we were writing the music, and we were trying to think of something for the lyric. I had this pedal sitting on the desk, and Dolf saw it and saw the name of it, and he just loved the name of it. It's like "Metal Guru" by T. Rex. What does that mean? But in the club, everybody's singing along to it. If the song just needs something like that, you can do that. If there's a way, like the first track on the album, "Sittin' Pretty", is more like an autobiographical kind of song, what was happening to us at the time we were recording.

Splendid: I understand that "Freeze Sucker", which is the last song on the album, was also one of the last ones you wrote?

Christian: No, no, no. "Sittin' Pretty" was the last song. We wrote that in the studio. Which is why it was kind about what was happening to us. "Freeze Sucker," we had had for about a year.

Splendid: What was happening in the studio?

Christian: Well, we recorded the album in England. We had been there -- we went out to play some shows and do a Peel session and then come home. We were supposed to stay for a week. We ended up staying for a month and a half. The second show we played, we had people swarming all over us, which we totally did not expect. And all of a sudden we were getting taken out to dinners and lunches, trying to get signed. But it was good because we were sleeping on people's floors and then all of a sudden we were getting put up in hotels. So we were going through all these kind of crazy things. We were staying up all night, sleeping in the day and playing shows. Weird things -- like lawyers were coming up to us and handing us their cards. We were just going "This is really crazy." And the song is talking about how people were thinking, oh, these guys are going to do something stupid, but they're totally sitting pretty right now. So the song is about that. Going out at night like hazy days. Like waking up and not being quite sure what was going on at the moment. It was kind of us and what we were going through.

There's another song on the album, "You Build Me Up", which is kind of about that.

Splendid: Yeah, that's an interesting song; it's got that kind of blues break in it.

Christian: Yeah, and it's kind of like we had the music and then Dolf came up with the lyrics, which are about the English press as well. They have this tendency to hype a band, then totally destroy it six months later. Oh, we don't like the band. It sucks.

Splendid: Like what they're doing with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Christian: Yeah, and it's really awful. If you really liked something, what changed six months later? It's still the same band. They quite often they build them up to bring them down. It's what they do to everybody.

Splendid: What I love is when they deny that they liked the early stuff. It's not enough to slag the new record. They have to pretend that they never liked the stuff in the first place.

Christian: We were kind of weary of that at the time, because we were starting to see that happening to us. All the hype. So we wrote a song about it. It may be a preemptive strike against the backlash.

Splendid: But it sounds like you did a really smart thing at the height of that, that you licensed your record rather than...

Christian: Oh, yeah, yeah, we were lucky to be in a position to do that. Because so many people were interested in us, we were able to call the shots. "Well, if you want us, we're going to license our album to you." We're not going to give you the rights to it. People would pay to let us do that. Ultimately, I think that's the best thing to do if you're in the position to do that, because then you can control your local marketing and your copyrights. I couldn't actually see us doing it any other way, because we had been a band for so long. We had done everything ourselves. I don't see any need to give that up.

Splendid: So Hellsquad Records?

Christian: That's our label.

Splendid: That's just basically for your stuff, or do you do other bands as well?

Christian: That's where we used to do our singles. We assigned ourselves to that. At the moment, it's just for us. When we're not so crazy busy, we're hoping to do stuff for other people. We're very interested in turning into a fully-functioning label.

Splendid: You know, when I heard you were from New Zealand, it was kind of surprising to me, because when I think about New Zealand, I think about the whole Flying Nun contingent -- the Bats, the Clean, the Chills. Obviously, what you're doing is very different. Is there much of a hard rock or punk scene in New Zealand?

Christian: I don't know about now. I haven't been back there in about a year and a half because we've been on tour the whole time. There wasn't much of a rock and roll scene there before. There were some bands, but not much of a scene. There's not that many people. There are a lot of really good bands in the garages. Everybody is in about three bands. There was a lot of that kind of stuff, the Flying Nun, although that has died out recently. A lot of people OD'd on that stuff. But when we started in the mid-1990s, it was a lot of those kinds of bands. People were put off by us because we didn't sound like that. They'd say, "What are you doing?" We were just doing what we liked to do.

Splendid: Right. Australia, though, has this great punk tradition, Radio Birdman, the Saints.

Christian: That's true. It's always had a good rock and roll scene. They don't care whether it's fashionable or not. There rock and roll is an institution. It never comes and it never goes. It's always there. We toured Australia quite a few times and ended up being more popular there than we were at home. The Australians just got us straight away. They were like, all right, rock and roll, that's good.

Splendid: It sounds like such a great place. I want to go there some day.

Christian: Yeah, we just did a tour there before we came here. It was a lot of fun.

Splendid: Oh, yeah, I looking at the Lord of the Rings map of New Zealand, and it looks like you guys are from near where they filmed the Hobbit Village.

Christian: Yeah, that's about half an hour away.

Splendid: So it must be very quiet and peaceful and rural.

Christian: Yeah. We're from a town called Cambridge. 11,000 people. Very picturesque. Very nice, but very boring, which is why we started playing rock and roll -- to entertain ourselves more than anything else.

Splendid: It's interesting how some bands come from big cities and then others come out of nowhere from places that you really wouldn't expect.

Christian: I think that's where Detroit and Sweden come in. Because Detroit, if you ever go there, it's like a hole. It's like a bomb went off there. There's not a lot to do but play rock and roll. In Sweden, they've got like nine months of winter. It's freezing. So they play rock and roll.

Splendid: I grew up in Indiana, so I know about boring and winter.

Christian: You're a Hoosier?

Splendid: Yeah, you guys were just in Indianapolis, right?

Christian: We're here today.

Splendid: How is that going?

Christian: Well, I've been sitting in this room for the last day. I haven't seen anything.

Splendid: There's not much to see as I recall. So what are you guys doing next? You've been touring for the last couple of years.

Christian: Yeah, the last year and a half, solidly.

Splendid: Are you able to continue writing songs?

Christian: We've got a few new songs. We're hoping to record the next album at the end of the year. We're on tour until the end of the year and won't be able to do it. So we'll record at the end of the year, then have it released at the start of the next year and go back out on the road.

Splendid: Do you think you'll go back to England to record?

Christian: We're not really sure at this stage. Possibly. At the moment, that's probably the likeliest situation, but who knows what will happen between now and then?

Splendid: Do you see what you're doing changing very much?

Christian: It will still be very much a rock and roll album, although we feel like we can do things that we previously wanted to do but couldn't. The first record is kind of just what like we're like live. It's very uptempo and energetic, because at that point, when we played, people didn't know who we were, so we would try to win them over, and usually faster songs were better than ballads. But now that we're a band and we put out albums and people can listen to songs before they come to shows, we feel like we can diversify a little more like we've always wanted to. So it will be slightly different, but still very much a rock and roll album. A little more diversity, stylistically speaking.

Splendid: So you might have a "Beth" on the next album?

Christian: We were talking about -- it's funny, Dolf and I were just talking about writing a "Beth" song for Matt, our drummer -- "We're going to get a song for you. We're writing you a 'Beth'. It'll be a hit with the ladies when you come out and sing it." Just like Kiss wrote "Beth" for Peter Criss and the Beatles wrote songs for Ringo Starr. We're going to carry on that tradition. And of course it's going to be a ballad, because he's a crooner.

Splendid: Do you do any cover songs?

Christian: We do a couple of covers, sometimes, live. Sometimes we do a Cheap Trick song called "Hello There". We sometimes do the song, but we change the lyrics to "Goodnight". We also have recently started doing this song by an Australian band from about 1979 or 1980 called the Fun Things. The song is "(I Ain't Got) Time Enough for Love". We started doing it because it kind of sums up what our personal lives are. Being on the road for the last year or so, it's very difficult to have any sort of relationship. We started singing that song, because it kind of tells our story.

Splendid: Huh. Yeah, I understand that your live show is just ferocious.

Christian: That's what we're about, really. Rock and roll, I think, is very much a live music. It's best expressed and best experienced live. I very much enjoy playing and seeing people enjoying themselves.

Splendid: But you must get pretty tired doing that night after night and different cities.

Christian: It is a little tiring. It keeps you in shape, though. You sweat off the pounds.

Splendid: Oh, yeah, I wanted to ask you about Thin Lizzy. Are they a band that you like?

Christian: I recently bought one of their records for the first time, about six months ago. I hadn't really heard them much. But a few times, people would say, "Oh, yeah, you remind me of Thin Lizzy." And I bought Jail Break.

Splendid: "What Would I Know" -- the guitar riff is similar to the one in "The Boys are Back".

Christian: I can't see that. I think it's more of a glam thing for me. It sounds like a cross between a Kiss shuffle and a glam song. But I think people hear a little of Thin Lizzy. So I go there -- the last time I was in America, I bought this DVD of them playing live in Australia, and that was pretty cool.

Splendid: They're sort of deeply unfashionable, but I keep hearing about them. Like I hear that Stephen Malkmus is a fan, and I think there's a Thin Lizzy cover on the new Dump album, and there's a Dirtbombs cover of a Phil Lynnott song.

Christian: I've heard that song before --

Splendid: Yeah, the Dirtbombs do "Ode to a Black Man", which is not a Thin Lizzy song. It's from Phil Lynnott's solo album.

Christian: Yeah, some of their stuff is pretty cool, but I do think they have a bad name.

Splendid: I'm wondering if they're about to get another 15 minutes.

Christian: They have a bad name with the critics. All of the bands that I loved always had a bad name with critics. I was a huge fan of Led Zeppelin. And critics trashed them in the 1970s. But they made great music.

Splendid: Yeah, and the thing about Led Zeppelin is that they were a lot more complicated than people give them credit for.

Christian: It's the kind of rock music that has always been popular with people and not with critics.