Carlos Dengler’s Best Quotes – The Acid Wit Of The Interpol Exile

Touring isn't all glitz and glamour, as Carlos once explained in a tour diary for Spin: “People love to paint a picture of touring in a rock band as a nonstop bacchanal of unfettered partying, but they’re not around when the bus is leaving, a pretty girl winks at you and ‘Common People’ comes on. All you have to look forward to is a thrilling game of Playstation 2. Can we talk about a buzz kill?”

In the same diary, the bassist also shared some of the horrors of the European club scene: “People wearing khakis and grinding to trance music is a hideous sight.”

Asked whether Joy Division comparisons plagued the band or were unimportant, Carlos made his feelings crystal clear: “No, it was a plague. It was like the bubonic plague.”

Confidence was never a problem Carlos suffered from, as AT&T found out. “I wish there was more talk about how we were the second coming of alternative or independent music," he lamented to them.

On the attention surrounding Interpol's style: "I walk down the street and this is what I see a lot of people wearing. I don’t see what the big hoobaloo is about us. We’re men in the music industry and an artistic, creative environment, and I don’t think it’s well beyond the capacity of a normal human being thinking correctly that we’re dressed as stylishly as we are.”

He may have been painted as a gloomy goth, but Carlos loves trashy TV as much as the rest of us: “I fucking love Desperate Housewives. If they had any reason to put me on that show, I would be there in two seconds flat. I would love to be abused by Eva Longoria.”

Some solid advice given to Dazed & Confused on the subject of his own uniquene style, holsters and all: “Those of us who are extraordinary should not shirk from saying it. I try to fit in when I can, but that doesn’t mean I can’t indulge in being different.”

In Interpol's first NME cover feature in 2003, Carlos shared one surprising ambition: “I need to be a game show host at some point in my life. I might have to change my image, but otherwise I was born for it.”

On the press talking more about their image than music: “If you look as good as we do, you can’t blame them.”

On drinking for 12 hours in a Palm Springs hotel pool, surrounded by families: “I looked like a dark angel emerging from the fallen ashes of some soul-stealing post-midnight bonfire ritual.”