In the early noughties, Dirty Sanchez was the most destructive show on television. Grown men kicking the ever-living shit out of each other for a laugh – not to mention all the gross stuff they put in their mouths (and other orifices). Next month, Pritchard and Dainton will embark on their first-ever UK spoken-word tour, revealing the stories and reliving the experiences that made them the most dangerous men on screen.
Also, they’re goddamn metalheads. Don’t believe us? We asked the gruesome twosome to pick the albums that changed their lives, and it’s hard to argue with any of them.
Queen – A Kind Of Magic (EMI, 1986)
Pritchard: “I was obsessed with Queen when I was younger – still am, really. I was a member of their fan club and everything. I remember buying A Kind Of Magic with my paper and milk round money, and I loved the cartoon drawings on the cover so much I actually got some paint and drew the band exactly as they appeared on the album on my jeans – I used to wear them around town! The songs on that album are some of their best as well: One Vision, A Kind Of Magic, Friends Will Be Friends, Who Wants to Live Forever. And I’d say out of all of those songs, Who Wants To Live Forever is probably my favourite. After what happened to Freddie later on, it gave the song an added weight and poignancy.”
Beastie Boys – Licensed To Ill (Def Jam, 1986)
Dainton: “From the album cover, to the hip-hop and rap mixed with guitar riffs and beats, their style just blew me away. I came from an electro/hip-hop background, so when I heard that album for the first time I’d never experienced anything like it. I remember them coming to the UK for the first time and there being uproar because everybody started copying them by pulling the VW badges off the cars and shit. It was flat out anarchy and it all sat inside my brain as the perfect mix for me. And then there’s the songs: Fight For Your Right, No Sleep Till Brooklyn, She’s Crafty, Slow And Low. I love that shit!”
Motorhead – Ace Of Spades (Bronze, 1980)
Pritchard: “I know it was a commercial song for the band, but it’s certainly the one I enjoyed the most when I started getting into them. I actually remember going to my first Motorhead gig in Newport with Dainton, and some guy in the row in front of us had a load of snuff. I had some and he had some, and we ended up with snuff all over our faces watching Motorhead on stage, going fucking mental with the big Bomber plane above them. I was like, ‘Oh my God! This band is fucking insane.’ I fucking loved it. And we’ve since become good friends with Phil Campbell, who incidentally has the teapot that we used for Dirty Sanchez: Get High on his mantelpiece next to his Grammy Award.”
Metallica – Master Of Puppets (Elektra, 1986)
Dainton: “The second album I got for my Sony Walkman. By that point I’d moved from the town where I grew up in up in to the Valleys, and everyone was into thrash and heavy metal music. I just didn’t get at first – I didn’t know what the fuck they were on about. They all had long hair and denim jackets and that just wasn’t my style. I didn’t get it at all. Then one day a friend said to me, ‘Listen to this!’ He gave me Master Of Puppets and I was instantly addicted. I played it over and over and over and fucking over again. The energy tapped straight into my brain like nothing I’d ever heard before. That was the album that took me from listening to straight-up hip-hop into flat-out thrash. It was my baptism of fire.”
Slayer – Reign In Blood (Def Jam, 1986)
Pritchard: “When the original Pritchard Vs. Dainton skate video came out, the song Raining Blood was on there. We were at a lake and we were fucking wrecked, there was a thunderstorm going on, and it was the perfect track for that moment. The album’s got all my favourite tunes on it as well, from Raining Blood and Angel Of Death to Piece By Piece – it’s a fucking unbelievable album. Every time I listen to it I just want to smash my house and my head up! I just want to smash the world and everyone I don’t like up, too. That’s why I love listening to Slayer – it turns me into an angry motherfucker!”
Slayer – South Of Heaven (Def Jam, 1988)
Dainton: “After I got into Metallica, the next band that I fell in love with was Slayer. As with the Beastie Boys, their album South Of Heaven came out on Def Jam Records and was produced by Rick Rubin. Whatever that fucking guy’s got, he’s definitely ran with the devil because he tapped into a whole different energy source with Slayer on this album. I’ve just noticed that all my albums link to energy – I can’t explain why. I guess you can have all the drugs in the world, but if you play me a certain tone of music it just makes me want to go mental and smash everything up. I’d never seen anything like that artwork before either. It had everything going for it, and nothing switches me on and turns me into a nightmare quite like Slayer to this day.”
AC/DC – Back In Black (Atlantic, 1980)
Pritchard: “When I first heard that guitar intro I thought, ‘That fucking song’s banging! Who’s that?’ That more or less led me to the band and I became a huge fan of them right away. I had to choose this album because the title track was the song that first got me into them, and also because there’s a story about Brian Johnson that still boggles me to this day. I was on the Gumball Rally with Dainton one year, and we were driving along in the fast lane in some country when I got a text on my phone from some weird number and it said, ‘Hiya Pritch. This is Brian Johnson from AC/DC.’ He said he loved Dirty Sanchez and that he wanted to do something with me. I turned to Dainton and said ‘Who have you been speaking to?’ because I thought it was him stitching me up, but it turned out it was actually for real and Brian Johnson was a big Sanchez fan who thought I was fucking hilarious. He actually asked me to introduce them on stage at one of the shows they were playing, but suddenly one of them became really ill or something and in the end it never happened. He texted me to send his apologise and that was the last I ever heard from him, unfortunately. But it was incredible to even get a text from him in the first place, especially to say that he was a fan of the show!”
Nirvana – Nevermind (DGC, 1991)
Dainton: “I remember being on a bus one day and my mate gave me this tape by a grunge band named Nirvana. In Bloom was the first song that I heard and it was another one of moments where I was like, ‘Wow! I’ve never heard anything like this before.’ You gotta remember I’m from The Valleys and I’m musically uncultured, but when I first heard Nirvana it hit all the right spots. I used to listen to Nevermind on the way to Newport to go skating and it was like a different direction of energy that was completely untouchable. I’d been listening to nothing but thrash metal for quite a while before I was introduced to Nirvana, and when they came along it was like ‘What the fuck is this?’ I can’t explain it, but their music just spoke to me on a visceral level.”
Black Sabbath – Paranoid (Vertigo, 1970)
Pritchard: “Why? Because I love Black Sabbath. And I love Ozzy Osbourne. I’ve got a copy of his book in my house that he signed for me which says, ‘To Pritchard, You’ll never be as hardcore as me!’ How cool is that? They decided to choose me as one of the Seven Wonders of MTV back in the day as well – why, I don’t fucking know – and Jack Osbourne was the narrator for my section. But the band, to me, were just working-class rockers who loved getting twatted off their faces. They’re the epitome of great British music in the days when rock ‘n’ roll was dangerous and bands lived the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle – unlike today.”
Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (Harvest Records, 1975)
Dainton: “Pink Floyd are the holy grail of other-worldly sounds for me. As a kid growing up, my dad listened to a lot of Pink Floyd so I was around them from an early age. And Syd Barrett lost his fucking mind, which you can really hear in Shine On You Crazy Diamond (This song is about him, it doesn’t feature him - Ed). That song crushes any anxieties in my head and just floats me away – it’s complete escapism. If you don’t like Pink Floyd then you’re fucking nuts.”
To celebrate 15 years of Dirty Sanchez, Pritchard and Dainton are heading out on a UK tour in April for their first-ever spoken-word shows – hosted by Matt Stocks. Details in the poster below.
