Tyler’s busy life of chapter and verse is reaching it’s climax..

With a new novel under his belt, an upcoming Irish tour with his band and a sixth solo album nearly in the can, Valentine is proving himself to be an artist of some note

Electric Six are notorious for their raunchy songs about all things sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

But such hedonism is a million miles away from the cleanliving lifestyle enjoyed these days by their legendary frontman Dick Valentine.

Instead of being out partying all night, our hero Dick, whose real name is Tyler Spencer, is usually up at the crack of dawn ever since he became a doting dad.

Dick even scheduled this interview for the ungodly hour of eight am – but finds his train of thought frequently interrupted by his toddler’s cries for attention.

It’s hardily the type of rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle you’d expect from the guy who penned such hits as Gay Bar, Danger! High Voltage and Infected Girls now, is it?

He told Beat, “For the most part, we’re just a working band. We do the gigs and load our own gear and bang out the songs and go back to the hotel. We’re not that exciting.”

Dick’s latest hobby certainly sounds exciting, if somewhat naughty too – that of writing pornographic novels!

This might sound bizarre, but Dick actually credits his two young daughters for inspiring this curious sideline, which has just seen him release the fifth audio book in ongoing series. His new novel is imaginatively entitled ‘Maida Vale Muff Dive’ – whatever the hell that means!

“Before we had kids, I would spend my days tracking music. I would be able to do music all the time. And now that these kids need a nap I can’t make a racket. So, while they’re napping I needed a quiet hobby.

And I always wanted to write detective novels – so I made them dirty and filthy just to spice them up a little bit,” he explained.

Dick Valentine, who certainly picked the perfect stage name for a career as a pornographer, is about to release his sixth solo album just in time for his upcoming Irish tour in May. But just don’t ask him for the name of it.

“I don’t have a title yet – even though the record’s more or less done. I sell them out of my bag at shows. That’s why I do these tours – it’s a good way to get your music to people, sell it directly and sign your CD. I enjoy that,” he said.

It’s certainly a much more old school DIY approach, but there was a time when Electric Six were selling their music by the truckload.

Their first two singles – Danger! High Voltage and Gay Bar – were number two and number five hits respectively in the UK.

Who exactly sang backup vocals on ‘Danger! High Voltage’ has been one of the great unsolved rock ‘n’ roll mysteries ever since its release in 2003.

Jack White shot down rumours it was his good-self singing hysterically on the smash hit. It sounded so much like a foreign woman that they got an actress to lip synch along in the bizarre music video.

But Electric Six claimed it was a guy called John S. O’leary – a mechanic with a good sounding

Irish name – who just so happened to win a competition to guest star on it.

Nevertheless, the rumour has always persisted and a Google search doesn’t offer any more concrete evidence even now, all these years later.

So let’s solve the mystery once and for all – was it The White Stripes star?

“Yeah. He’s a big part of why that song was so big. He was from the same music scene as us. We cut that track before they broke big. I don’t think he ever would have been on our track post The White Stripes getting massive. But that said, he never stood in the way of us putting it out.”

After their first couple of hit singles, Electric Six failed to reach such dizzy heights again on any of their next 17 albums! But Dick is sanguine about it all.

“I just enjoy doing what I’m doing. And I’m very thankfully that I get to do it,” he maintained.

“I get that you have to have a big radio sound to be on the radio. Once I had that for a year, it was good fun. But I realised that’s not (the be all and) end all of life. If it happen as a happy accident that’s fun, but I don’t need to do that again. I don’t need to be on Top of the Pops ever again.”

Dick doesn’t hesitate when asked what was his strangest rock ‘n’ roll moment. He told Beat, “We played a wedding in Prague for a Russian mafia type in 2005. The whole experience was just so bizarre. A couple of years later, he ended up on Russia’s Ten Most Wanted List!

“And he was still married to his first wife! This was just his side wedding. That was the best part of it. That experience stands out as one of the most bizarre and surreal things.”

Dick doesn’t buy into the notion that their hit singles from the early noughties would be too risqué in the ultra PC climate that we find ourselves in nowadays.

“Are you talking about Gay Bar? It just has the word gay in it. It’s not about a gay bar. It’s not about any lifestyle. It’s just some words in a song,” he reasoned.

“I think, as somebody who gets that question every now and then, I don’t really experience that. This band hasn’t really had a lot of controversy at all for a band that’s been around for 20 years. It’s been pretty easy to operate. We haven’t had to deal with a whole lot. If you don’t feel you’re controversial than you’re not controversial!”

But Dick does take umbrage with how some critics dismiss them as a novelty act. Instead, he sees music as vehicle to have fun.

“That’s the whole idea. That’s why I got