Kevin Borich - The Indefatigable Master Guitarist Still Shines

KEVIN BORICH

By Ian McFarlane

Thanks to Kevin Borich

This article was originally published in RHYTHMS magazine (Issue #307 Sept/Oct 2021)

Kevin Borich is one of our greatest musical champions. The indefatigable master guitarist has weathered all sorts of challenges – including surviving cancer in the late 2000s – and is still raring to go!

It’s a Saturday afternoon in May and I’m down at my local watering hole in rural Victoria. I’m sitting next to legendary guitarist KEVIN BORICH, and I’m struggling to hear him speak. Not that there’s too much extraneous noise going on, it’s just that he can barely talk above a hoarse whisper. His road crew is busy setting up the equipment and he’s due to hit the stage in a couple of hours to sing and play a gig.

In between COVID lockdowns, he’s been on tour with the Kevin Borich Express, the current line-up being KB, John Carson (drums) and Chris Gilbert (bass). Gilbert, in particular, is concerned about Borich’s resilience in the face of possibly having to pull the gig at the last minute. Rest assured, after he’s mentally and physically prepared himself for the task, KB and his sterling rhythm section take to the stage for two fine sets.

The crowd is small, in comparison to past glories – I guess you takes what you can in these times – but every person there is thrilled to see one of our very best players up so close. There’s no issue with KB’s playing ability, but what about his vocals? He’s swigging straight Manuka Honey from a pot to sooth the vocal chords and he makes it through the night, possibly a little worse for wear, but triumphant.

The set list incorporates the likes of ‘Lonely One’, ‘Soapboxbitchinblues’ and ‘Rollin’ & Tumblin’’ in the acoustic set, then ‘The Place’, ‘Heart Starter’, ‘Gonna See My Baby Tonight’ ‘Goin’ Downtown’ and more in the electric set... with maximum slide the order of the night. I’ve seen KB play so many times over the years – going back to the La De Das at Festival Hall in 1974 as an impressionable 14 year old – and his performances never fail to impress me.

To try and explore his career authoritatively is a difficult task, there’s so much to cover. A couple of weeks later, I catch up with KB over the phone. We jump around all over the place in our conversation so here is a semblance of the Kevin Borich story.

It was great to see you guys play recently at my local watering hole. You got to do a tour in May. I think everyone was just champing at the bit to go and see bands play live again. You were really struggling with your voice, how did you go with the show at Archie’s Creek?

That was tough but somehow I won the crowd and they really enjoyed it. I was so eager to play I didn’t think about the match fitness. It was four shows in a row. I don’t do that much anymore, no one does; three if you got the weekend. It shocked me and the thing I forgot about the week before I did 2,000 kms to play a Newcastle gig and I hadn’t fully recovered from that drive. Then driving down to Melbourne, I thought ‘what a fuckin’ idiot’ but because the gigs were there I thought ‘what a blast! Let’s go, let’s do it!’.

You’ve got a great rhythm section, John Carson (drums) and Chris Gilbert (bass).

Yeah, they’re great. Chris plays the upright bass too which is really something.

How do you pick the songs? You’ve got so many songs in your own repertoire, plus all the blues tracks you can pick from. You did ‘Rollin ’ and Tumblin’’, you could have done ‘Little Red Rooster’, ‘Stormy Monday’...

Well I pick the ones that go over well, and then I try and introduce new ones as I go along. If you start playing covers, you slip one of your own in to try and test the waters. So now I do 98% all my own stuff. Obviously you pick the ones that work but you can’t keep doing that all the time, so then you try and introduce other ones with a similar feel basically. You can do that when you’ve got regular gigs. It’s all a shambles at the moment, there’s no regularity of work. ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin’’ is great because of that ompah-ompah feel and so I just have to write something else with that feel. I’ve done ‘Little Red Rooster’ a lot.

Would you consider revisiting some of the older La De Das songs? People love to hear ‘Gonna See My Baby Tonight’, which you still play. The one I really love is ‘Morning, Good Morning’ and also your version of ‘All Along The Watchtower’. Would you consider revisiting them?

I’d do ‘Morning, Good Morning’ but ‘Watchtower’ I played it so often at the time... it’s a great one to get people up to jam because you can get other people up to take a lead and that’s what usually happens. I’d pull it out if I was doing something special with someone. But that just takes up time for something of my own. When I was doing a lot of Hendrix stuff I got canned for doing that, a Hendrix copier. I thought ‘bugger that I’ll leave that behind’ because they kind of find a way to pick at you.

People do still want to hear you.

Well, I’m still breaking through, it’s a really tough cocoon. I’m trying to get out of this cocoon. I’ve got an antenna out, that’s why you’re talking to me. But I’ve been around that long there’s not that many of my age still doing it. I must be one of the oldest. Someone like Mossy, he’s a bit younger. So really I’m the old dude, I’m the dinosaur!

Tell me about your new album, which you’ve been working on steadily for some time. Will it be out by September or October?

Well, it’s been on drip feed. We tried to do a song every couple of months, a new single with somebody different each time. That sounded like a good idea but then COVID came along and then we had to stall releasing stuff because everyone’s in a pickle. Things have slowly settled down because it’s become the norm. Next song will come out in October. It’s already done, the flip’s done and then I’ve got about four or five other people already recorded. The idea is to get the highest profile person last. It’s somebody pretty famous so that will turn heads because everyone’s sick of me. You know what it’s like, ‘ah, not you again Kev, you’ve been around for so long’ (laughs).

I’ve got a song called ‘Down In The Bunker’, that’s a good one. Also a new version of ‘Soapboxbitchinblues’, which was originally on Totem. I played the National on that and I had Doc Spann on harp and that’s a beautiful version. About a year later the bank tried to do a shifty on me so I thought I’ll do a heavy metal version of that, really saying I’m angry. So who do I get to sing it? The lyric is ‘I’m angry’, I’ll get Angry Anderson to sing it!

You released ‘Call A Friend’ with Russell Morris last year. That’s a great song.

Yeah, it was really timely. The roadie thing was going on and I was thinking of doing this album. A lot of roadies and other people are doing it tough and they need to talk to each other. I was thinking ‘who am I going to ask to do this?’. To break the ice, like the lyrics go, so it turned it into a more detailed thing than I started off thinking. The way it grew as far as meaning and being related to the current situation, it turned out to be quite strong.

I think Russell was the perfect person to do that with, it really struck a chord. Russell is one of those guys who’s been able to reinvented himself, so the two of you together was a fantastic combination. Did you know Russell from back in the day?

Well, he was always a Melbourne guy and I was a Sydney guy so we wouldn’t have been that close at the time. I’ve got a great story that points out Russell’s humanity. I went to LA in the late ’70s, alone, just to go and see what was going on. Michael Chugg was managing me at the time and he gave me a list of about four people over there, Aussies. So I rung them all and the only one who turned up was Russell in his BMW and he drove me all around LA (laughs). He was just that sort of guy. When I asked him he said ‘sure, no worries Kev’, no big deal.

Now that he’s moved up to the Gold Coast, I just went down there. I had the track finished and my vocals were on so we cut his vocals in among my vocals and it was just done in his lounge room. I just watched him go through the song and put his vocals on, over a few takes. It just showed his talent of how he gets into a song. It was quite neat to watch.

So the title is Duets?

Yeah, it’s just gonna be called The Duets Album. That explains everything. We’ll follow up with another album because we’ve been recording as much as we can. I’ve found an engineer / producer right near me, 10 minutes away, Nick O’Donnell. I’m up in the hills and I had all this gear because my guy was from Brisbane and he moved to Melbourne. There I was stuck with all this great equipment, a manual in my hand and it just didn’t work did it! I went to the local computer shop and I was telling my woes to the guy at the counter and he said ‘why don’t you give a couple of tracks to Nick, he’s a musician and he fixes computers, so he knows all about that stuff’. So I got the two tracks back and it sounded fantastic and I went ‘hallelujah!’ (laughs). We’ve been working ever since; he comes over every week and we put down another track, or work on what we did last week. So it’s just growing and growing. I come up with so many bits so to have another person to go ‘well, why don’t you do that one and maybe this one’. Arranging stuff really has helped me immensely because I get a bit bored with myself trying to do things, so bouncing off is really fantastic.

Going back to the late ’70s, when you did a lot of overseas touring with the Kevin Borich Express, in the US and Europe. Did you find people were accepting of you in that environment?

Unbelievably so, that’s what was so good about going away at that time. I came back heaps in debt but mentally it did me great because people were asking me, ‘where’s all your music, where can we get it?’. I was getting good reactions, after they’d heard it three or four times. Some of the big shows if they didn’t know you, you’d get stuff thrown at you. I turned them round and they were getting into it. That was good for me because it wasn’t just Australian audiences, it was people who didn’t know my history but they were genuinely loving what I was doing. Even though there was no great commercial breakthrough, it was a breakthrough in my mind.

When I was 18, one of the very first big outdoor gigs I went to was Rockarena at Calder Park Raceway, with Santana and Fleetwood Mac. Tell me about jamming with Carlos Santana?

Yeah, that was pretty amazing for me, when you think about it. I didn’t know that was going to happen. We’d done the Sydney show the week before and he must have heard me but there was no contact there. I was watching from side stage at Calder Raceway. I’m watching him and a roadie grabbed me and said ‘Carlos wants you on’. I’m going ‘wow, really?’. So I’m getting shoved over to the other side of the stage near where he was, and the roadie plonked one of his guitars over me and plugs it in and there you are. So the drum solo was going on which was a good time for the swap over. Then I turned around and when Carlos made it obvious I was gonna play, the crowd went nuts! They were acknowledging a local.

I wasn’t on for long but it was long enough to really spark the audience because the music that was going on was amazing anyway, that was the icing on the cake. I was just starting to get into it and something happened to the amp, my sound started dying down. I don’t know if that’s a trick they do when they’ve got someone up to jam, if the guy is gonna go on for too long they just turn the amp down, get the hook out, turn down the volume. Who knows? He pointed to me and he motioned ‘go for it’ and I played some of these lines, quite unusual, and he just jumped on with the harmonies and I thought ‘wow, this guy knows what he’s doing’. It just showed how much of a good musician he was because he heard me, not just what you can do with a blues scale. It wasn’t for long.

I didn’t get to talk to Carlos there. Funnily enough he came through later and he had Buddy Miles playing drums with him and they got me up again at the Entertainment Centre. That was the closest I ever got to Hendrix, with Buddy. Two steps removed, six degrees of separation.

Did you enjoy playing with Joe Walsh when he came out to Australia to tour with The Party Boys?

It was amazing, fantastically beautiful because he’s such a character. We’d started rehearsals and Joe rings me up and says (adopts Texan accent), ‘hey Kevin, you got a couch?’. I was living in Bondi then and I had a spare couch. Playing ‘Rocky Mountain Way’ with him was great. He’d showed me what he wanted to do. I’ve listened to a lot of his stuff but he showed me a few things that I hadn’t caught on to properly. Later on he came out and did a gig with me in Taree. Down the track after that he came and visited us here. He’d just done this 50th anniversary gig in London and he flew out and stayed with me in the ‘Joe Walsh Suite’ in my studio.

I wanted to mention and commiserate with you on the recent passing of Ronnie Peel, such an important part of the La De Das.

Yeah he was, a wonderful character and a real great supportive dude to have in the band. He had his own persona, Ronnie was great, a great bottom end bass player, he put a great bed on the sound which is what you want from a bass player. I first met him in New Zealand when he was in The Pleazers, the Australian Pleazers. There was also an NZ Pleasers. They had two singers and we saw them at the Galaxy club, a great venue with two stages. One band would play one end and then they’d change over to the other band up the other end. I’d see Ray Columbus and the Invaders, the ‘She’s A Mod’ guy, and they had two great guitar players, two different styles. It was educational to go and see them. Then you’d see Max Merritt and the Meteors on the other stage, a sensational band.

The classic track from the early La De Das was ‘How Is The Air Up There’. Then you changed with things like ‘Morning, Good Morning’. On to Rock And Roll Sandwich which I still think is one of the great albums, an absolute classic. Funky as all get out, with tracks like ‘The Place’, ‘To Get Enough’ and ‘Searchin’’.

That was my first three piece stuff with Ronnie and Keith Barber, a wonderful drummer. My first Express album I suppose, being a swap over from the four piece when Phil Key had left. I was doing more writing. It’s been successful.

That whole era and leading up to the Kevin Borich Express, you were playing that tough style of blues rock but it was also very commercial. You had the hits with the La De Das, ‘Too Pooped To Pop’ and ‘Honky Tonkin’’. Then you had a hit in the Celebration! era with ‘Goin’ Somewhere’, another classic song. My absolute fave KBE track is ‘Celebration!’. I love that, the way it changes up.

Thanks man. There’s a version I recorded at the Basement with my son Lucius on drums and Clayton Doley plays organ, he was in a band before us and I said ‘you wanna get up and play?’. We did ‘Celebration!’. Also Leo Sayer was in the crowd and we were doing an encore and Harry the bass player goes ‘Leo wants to get up’ and I was going ‘Leo De Castro?’. The great Maori singer who was incredible. So he goes ‘no, Leo Sayer’, so he got up. I tune a semi tone down and that usually kills half the harp players because they don’t have a flat harp but Leo had the right harp and he went for it. It was really fun. we did ‘You Got Me Running’ and ‘KB’s Boogie’ which is a real up-tempo one.

I also saw you at the Continental in the late ’90s when Lucius was playing and you had Ben Rosen on bass. You got Ross Wilson and Wendy Saddington up to sing. So you did the rocking blues stuff and Ross got up and you did the R&B stuff with him and then Wendy just did jazz blues fusion; it was a lovely night.

We only had an afternoon rehearsal and she’d just come off from being in the Hari Krishnas and it was her first performance. She hadn’t been singing for a long time and she was going ‘should I do it?’. She died a few years ago too. She was so unique, there was no one else who approached anywhere near how she sang, with the force of her voice. Janis Joplin had that thing but Wendy had her own style, not just like Janis.

Jumping back again to Rock And Roll Sandwich, what do you remember about recording it? The album credits say it was recorded live at the Doncaster Theatre?

Right, we’d gone into EMI studios and in those days the studios they didn’t really have any live reflection rooms and that’s half the battle. In those days they sucked everything up by dampening it and we set up and we heard it back and we said ‘that’s not us, we don’t sound like that’. We wanted to go to a place and put the beds down and put the vocals on later. We went to this place, a rock venue, called Greensleeves, somewhere in Sydney, the Doncaster Theatre. I can’t remember where it was (Ed note: formerly a cinema, in Kensington, City of Randwick). It had a high roof and we took a 16-track tape machine and there was a room off to the side of the stage and we miced everything up like playing a live set and we went right through our songs. I think the only one done in the studio was one I wrote on piano, ‘No Law Against Having Fun’.

You were such a great performance band in those days and you had Renée Geyer and Bobbi Marchini on backing vocals on the album.

Yeah, Renee was on Lonely One too and we did a whole album with her, Blues License. We did that mini album Shy Boys/Shy Girls and she was singing on that too. She’s an amazing singer. She’s a tough lady. I toured with her, in those days she never picked on us though. We almost came to blows one time but we worked that out. I’m writing a book at the moment and I’ve got a bit about that in it.

Tell me about your book; do you have a title yet?

Um, I’m still fishing for that. It’s gonna have ‘Without Prejudice’ underneath (laughs). I’ve just been jotting down my recollections and I’m starting to have trouble remembering things. I also went through radiation treatment for cancer and I must have done something wrong. I’ve now married an angel, Melissa, she’s a meditation and yoga teacher. She got me on the right path in about 2005 and she said you should do what I do, so I’ve been practising that since then. Being on the road takes it out of you so I’ve gotta get back into my routine.

For more on Kevin Borich, go to his website www.kevinborich.com.au

You Am I - The Lives Of Others

YOU AM I - The Lives Of Others

By Ian McFarlane

Thanks to Tim Rogers, Russell Hopkinson, Kaza Black

This article was originally printed in RHYTHMS magazine Issue #306 (July August 2021)

One of Australia’s longest running bands, ’90s Alternative heroes YOU AM I, have stamped their mark with a contender for Album Of The Year, The Lives Of Others.

“I scored a goal but I missed the point” and more wordplay from Tim Rogers

Photo: Kaza Black

You Am I’s current album, The Lives Of Others, made its debut on the ARIA Chart at #2, kept off the top spot by Delta Goodrem. This is the band’s highest album chart placement since the glory days when they made Australian music history by scoring three consecutive albums debuting at #1 on the national chart – Hi Fi Way (1995), Hourly, Daily (1996) and You Am I’s #4 Record (1998).

That bastion of commercial radio programming Triple M has been playing the single ‘The Waterboy’, which is actually a first. I was thinking, surely they had been played on Triple M back in the day. Certainly on Triple J, 3RRR and 3PBS, but I could have sworn You Am I had some commercial airplay in the past?

Singer-songwriter-guitarist-vocalist Tim Rogers sets me straight, “No, we just got told the other day that Triple M have been playing the band for the first time ever. I love the irony of that. Maybe they might have played ‘Heavy Heart’ once late at night. I say that with no malice at all, it’s absolutely fine. We’re not particularly well known in the way that some of our contemporaries are, or other bands before us who did get a lot of commercial airplay. The little bit has definitely helped and we’re grateful for it but we’re not at a level... we really have to work hard to get heads through the door you know, or to sell records. It’s just a little stroke of luck that it’s worked this time, for no other reason than everyone’s looking for a reason to be happy these days.”

I remember an interview Rogers did with Andrew Denton (Enough Rope) where he was asked “how come you’ve never had a hit single?”, to which he replied, “have you heard my voice?”.

“Yeah well, it’s true. I don’t have a great voice after all. I get bagged all the time; every single show we do someone will barge backstage and say ‘you’re an alcoholic, you’re a drunk, you can’t sing’. It hurts because I try. You Am I are a very powerful band and they’re very difficult to sing with and I haven’t got a strong voice but I’m 25% of the band. I do what I can. If that means we don’t get a big stinking hit then it also means that we don’t have to play the same set every night.”

We’ll get to the live component of the band experience below, but for now let’s examine the new album. As much as I enjoyed those early albums – with the guys in all their alternative rock / mod rock glory – for me The Lives Of Others as well as 2015’s Porridge & Hot Sauce rate as the band’s most consistent and best releases. On The Lives Of Others, tracks such as ‘The Waterboy’, ‘The Third Level’ and the title cut are archetypal You Am I rockers: bold, tough, tuneful and accessible. The acoustic ‘Manliness’ examines the age old conundrum of macho cool. On ‘Rosedale Redux’, ‘DRB Hudson’ and, in particular, ‘Rubbish Day’ they’ve gone all psychedelic. ‘Lookalikes’, as drummer Russell ‘Rusty’ Hopkinson puts it, is “the quiet hero of the record”. (“He’s a very smart man,” Rogers chuckles.)

Those are all Tim Rogers penned tunes. Guitarist/vocalist Davey Lane – no slouch in the song writing stakes – contributes two sterling numbers in ‘We All Went Deaf Overnight’ and ‘I’m My Whole World Tonight’ in which he delivers on his Todd Rundgren / Roy Wood / Raspberries / Cheap Trick mode to perfection. His guitar playing is also pivotal to the overall sound. One only has to listen to his astonishing lead break in ‘Rubbish Day’ – like he’s channelling Jeff Beck circa 1969 – to confirm that he is one of the country’s foremost players.

GETTING THE ALBUM COMPLETED

Because the year 2020 was predominantly taken up with Covid-19 lockdowns, it’s commendable that they got to complete the record. How did they get the album done?

“What a trip it’s been,” says Rogers. “Davey and I managed to get together in Melbourne for a couple of afternoons and Rusty and Andy (Kent, bassist) got together in a room for about two days in Sydney. It seems we talked a lot more than actual performance time. Davey reminded me that all my vocal takes and guitar takes were first or second takes. I was in and out of there pretty quick. Rusty and I like to work fast but Davey and Andy like to take a bit of time.

“Andy’s playing incredibly well. His countenance is very assured, he’s methodical in the way that I’m impulsive. I never tell that guy what to play, haven’t since 1996. Russ creatively is a massive part of what we do and his record collection is our education and his intelligence is our education and his drumming, there’s no one who plays like Russ. And, well, everyone’s in love with Davey, as they should be.”

The first thing you notice is the sonic qualities, as if the musicians have unleashed their inner arena rock predilections. There have been hints of it in the past but this one in particular has a huge drum sound.

“I think a large part of that was Russ being in command of the his own domain really. When we were making records in the States we were instructed by record companies to straighten up. I think Russ felt he was being brow-beaten because he can be a marvellously contained, straight drummer who is right on top of everything but when we’re in a band we get excited and egg each other on. Russ had his own time and own agenda and could play the uber-Hopkinson. Then when we gave the tapes to Paul McKercher, he’s such an old friend of ours, he just knows us inside and out, he worked his magic. I don’t think it’s an accident that it sounds so great and alive, because that spirit is inside us.

“For ‘Rubbish Day’ I had an idea of how I wanted it to be and I told Russ the way I thought the beat should be. He didn’t tell me but he disagreed and did the inverse of what I suggested. So him doing that it’s a far better idea by a million percent. And that inspired Davey to play the way he did. Davey’s and my original demo for that was nothing like the song came out; maybe there was a hint of it. So Russ’ musical knowledge is so far beyond mine. We do have an intuition with each other; I guess that’s 3000 shows playing together. After 30 years we’ve worked out what our relationship is in a lot of ways. When we’re playing in the same room, we have conversations but ironically we figured each other out by not seeing each other.”

Hopkinson’s presence is definitely a major force behind the album. When I spoke to him in Sydney, he explained: “Tim and Davey had sent us a bunch of guitar and vocal things, the bare bones of songs. Andy and I went into Forbes Street studios and we played through those for a couple of days. We ended up doing nine rhythms tracks there. I took the drum tracks home and did some editing or whatever, chose the best takes, all that pre-production stuff. Knocked them into shape, sent them down to Davey. Andy did the same with his bass parts. Davey and Tim just jumped on top of them and fleshed them out. Quite a few songs weren’t at all what Tim was expecting, so it ended up being quite a lot of fun.

“Then I had to move to Perth for the summer, for family reasons, so I found Tone City Studios there with Sam Ford, a good engineer. We just sat there for a few days and I did some drums and percussion and finished everything off and Paul McKercher mixed it in Sydney. He had this system set up where he could stream what he was mixing in real time. I was in Perth walking around the streets with headphones on, listening to tracks. I’d pull out my phone and text Paul, ‘can you EQ the kick drum like this’. It was a weird collaborative but not collaborative approach. Not by our design, there was no way to get together. In the middle of the year we realised that couldn’t happen, so it came together by just passing it around. It’s been really good, a testament to the understanding of how we play that we could do that. I think it does sound like a band.

“When we recorded Porridge & Hot Sauce it was at a place called the House Of Soul in New York, owned by Daptone Records, with this little 8-track machine set up in a house. Just like, I imagine, how people would have recorded at Chess in 1957 and we were all elbow to elbow in a room playing. That was a different way of recording. In some ways that was more difficult because you can’t be loud, you have to respect the process and the playing. There were other times where we’ve recorded in a piecemeal fashion.”

Another part of the process that informed the album’s sound was Hopkinson’s listening habits. “Yeah, I don’t listen to much music that was recorded after about 1972,” he reveals. “I said to Paul I want it to sound like ‘Send Me A Postcard’ by Shocking Blue which is arena rock before there was such a thing, 1969. I just wanted to make it like a big rock thing, it’s what some of the songs deserved. I collect a lot of psychedelic records, and when I heard ‘DRB Hudson’ I’d been listening to things like The Moving Sidewalks’ version of The Beatles’ ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ a heavy rock version, so that inspired me.

“I was also inspired by a lot of different drum fills. John’s Children’s ‘Remember Thomas A Beckett’ has those big rolling drum fills, so I wanted to keep things lively and exciting. Other tracks then had a different feel to them, taking on other influences. With ‘Rubbish Day’, I’d been listening to a Mexican band called La Revolución de Emiliano Zapata. They’re like Santana on bad drugs. They have one song called ‘Shit City’ and another called ‘Nasty Sex’ and they’re super wild. I just wanted that wigged-out sense, like why is it all of a sudden going Latin. I was saying we’ll do that and everyone’s hitting stuff, it was fun. There’s that searing guitar line that Davey does in the percussion breakdown part. He was saying that’s the closest we’re ever gonna come to sounding like Parachute era Pretty Things.”

GOOD ADVICE

Obviously Rogers’ song writing is a big part of the band’s make-up. You just have to think back on the likes of ‘Berlin Chair’, ‘Purple Sneakers’, ‘Mr. Milk’, ‘Good Mornin’’, ‘What I Don’t Know ’Bout You’, ‘Heavy Heart’, ‘Kick A Hole In The Sky’, ‘Good Advice’ etc, to know that his songs are instantly catchy and indelible. Rogers learned his craft via his love of the likes of The Kinks, The Who, The Move, The Pretty Things, Rush, The Replacements etc., and he’s never shied away from acknowledging that. The irony is that on this album you get all that but there’s little in the way of traditional song structures. He keeps the listener guessing.

“I think it’s because my songs all started out as folk songs,” he explains. “I had the lyrics done and they dictated a lot of the way the structure of the songs came out. I had to do a little bit of shoe-horning but for once I wanted the lyrics to dictate where the songs went. No one’s asked me about that before; we talked about it with the band obviously but I guess a lot of people don’t notice those things like you have. I kind of enjoy that, it can be a little irritating for the listener. I think again after those years when we were with the American companies, they hammered home the structure to me so much. If it was a dozen times it was 12 hundred times.

“It was just maddening because we’d record songs how we heard them and then we’d go back in next day to the studio and it had been chopped up and rearranged by an engineer because whatever record company of the 600 we’ve been on said, ‘no, this is the way a song should be structured’. That destroyed my confidence for about a decade but now it makes me not want to let traditional songs structures be the predictor. If you just feel that this is where the bridge should come in, just do it because no one’s gonna tell us otherwise. There’s no reason to change arrangements just to make it a radio song.”

The Tim Rogers wordplay is alive and well too. He gets to throw out such intriguing lines as: “I scored a goal but I missed the point / Statement made I left the joint” (‘Manliness’); “Geddy Lee on a crutch in a hell of a Rush / I’m goin’ nowhere and he’s got somewhere to be” (‘Lookalikes’); and “Edinburgh, Galway, Nashville, Ulladulla breakin’ my heart in four places” (‘The Waterboy’).

“Yeah, word play amuses me. It keeps me happy and the black dog away and if I can just scribble down some ideas I’m really happy and ready for a drink. So, again that’s my thing and it just gives an extra edge to the songs. Davey brought a lot of other songs. I brought 10 and Davey brought five. He, as much of a musical wunderkind / maestro he is, knows what’s good for the band and he listens as well, he excoriates.”

So then who is the “... Scottish man fronting an American band / Now he lives in Dublin tho’ and I’m in Rosedale lookin’ for ghosts” (‘The Waterboy’)?

“It’s Mike Scott from The Waterboys. Yeah, I’d been listening to a record of theirs called Modern Blues. I was down fishing and drinking beer with my mate Nick (Tischler) who my brother and I started the band with. There were a lot of metaphors clashing. I was in a tinny, out in the ocean fishing with my mate and then we’d get back on land and in my hotel room I’d be sitting and listening to this record over and over again. I’m a big fan of Mike Scott’s. From very early on it seemed he was just someone who’s heart’s so big and he just tried big ideas. Sometimes they don’t work but when they do they’re just beautiful. That song’s about, not seeking inspiration but getting it at exactly the right time.

“And using Australian place names, I think often Australians got told early on, or warned off in rock and roll anyway, to stay away from place names. The likes of Mississippi, Tennessee and Kansas City, they’re all over the American song book. There are examples, someone like Paul or Don and Mickey Thomas would use Australian geography and I thought I want to own this. It’s taken a long while to get it. Coincidently, something like Ulladulla is onomatopoeically so beautiful, it’s brilliant. Those kinds of indigenous names have such a swing to them, they’re just gorgeous, using their vernacular and trying to use it in a respectful way. I was just luxuriating in those beautiful words.”

TAKIN’ IT TO THE STAGE

As I queued up outside The Night Cat, in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, for the band’s first of two sets that night, the air was palpable with excitement. Not only was it the chance to get out and see a band – before the May lockdown hit – but also it was the mighty You Am I. They’d been interstate, playing two shows in Brisbane, then a sold out, 1,500 capacity show at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre.

The Night Cat is a club about a fifth the size of the Enmore but the band played like they were fronting a whole arena. The stage is in the round, so the audience surrounded the band on all sides. They put in a remarkably assured and commanding performance, one great song after another. For all their wild ’n’ woolly urban bluster, they’re a top notch rock ’n’ roll band with the interaction between band members a joy to behold. Russell Hopkinson, in particular, was an unstoppable force on drums. The audience loved them, spontaneously singing along to the likes of ‘The Waterboy’, ‘Good Mornin’’ and ‘Berlin Chair’. For one band member touring again has been a bittersweet experience.

“Um, it’s been quite confronting actually, yeah,” Rogers reveals. “The plague last year affected my family quite disastrously, overseas and here. My sister’s husband dying from it, my daughter in New York right in the middle of it and my family in Spain being decimated by it. So touring, ah, I’m a little flipped out about being around humans, again. When we toured last time before the plague I was ready to go, I didn’t want to tour anymore, I didn’t want to get on a plane anymore. I just wasn’t interested in being a musician really. I thought it was time to get a job and drink beer, get a bit of sleep every now and then.

“But I love playing with my friends and I love going through this experience with them. So going out and touring, I love not sleeping and not eating, I love all that shit. It does take a bit of a toll but then about the third day in I start getting very jittery again. I want the whole thing, I want the crap food and the mucking around and the no sleep. I love all that but maybe I’m just not match fit. Yeah, I can’t pretend that I’m anyone other than who I am but being on stage, people looking at you, all that noise, it’s actually an uncomfortable experience. Oddly it’s also the only time in the day when I am comfortable, so I make it my mission to do the best I can. If no one was there it would almost make it easier; I’ve done plenty of those shows believe me.”

For Hopkinson, it was an almost cathartic experience to be on the road again. As Willie Nelson sang, “On the road again / Just can’t wait to get on the road again... with my friends”.

Photo: Kaza Black

“It’s great! It’d been the longest I’ve gone without playing gigs since I was about 16, and that was 40 years ago. Literally over a year without being in a venue and stepping on a stage. It’s work, it’s a fair bit of effort, especially when you’re getting older. We’re loving it though, finishing the night feeling satisfied that we made a bunch of people happy. The feeling from the crowds has been overwhelming in a way. I’m going ‘holy shit, this is fun!’.

“You can rehearse as much as you like, but playing a gig is a different beast. It’s driven by a lot of emotion, a lot less calculated thinking. It’s not off the cuff necessarily but we don’t really rehearse. We don’t stick to a template with every song. We’re just building up to that thing where we’re comfortable again and feel like we’re on top of it all. It takes a while, I think I’m playing pretty well but there’s always room to improve. People seem to be digging it.

Because the stage was in the round, the guys had to walk out and back again to the band room through the audience. In their excitement, punters were trying to hi-five the guys and engage them in conversation. Was that confronting because they were intent on just getting to the stage and then backstage again?

“Well, I don’t know what people want. Do they want to be my best friend? No, we’re a fucken rock band and we cling to each other, we’re best friends, we just want to get backstage and have a drink together. We don’t necessarily play nice on stage, we don’t feel nice on stage, and when we finish we do get a lot of gyp for being impolite and not going out and signing records. I’m so grateful that people are there and I appreciate that they’ve chosen to see us, and three hours after at a pub I’d buy anyone a round of drinks. I’d buy you dinner, talk to you till the sun comes up. We’re there to do a job and despite all appearances we’re actually pretty serious about doing the best show we can.”

They finished the set with a rousing version of ‘Berlin Chair’. Then to a wail of feedback, they did the arena styled salutation to the audience, a series of four-man bows with Rogers kicking out his right leg, just as Lemmy would do at the end of a Motörhead concert. It was a final way of saying, “We are You Am I. We play rock ’n’ roll!”.

Lipstick Killers - "Hindu Gods are calling you!"

With the imminent release of the Lipstick Killers’ anthology Strange Flash Studio & Live ‘78-’81 on Grown Up Wrong Records, I get the lowdown from guitarist Mark Taylor.

By Ian McFarlane

The first time I'd spoken to Mark was back in the early ‘90s, when I interviewed him for a feature I wrote on the Lipstick Killers for Prehistoric Sounds ‘zine. He was a great interviewee so this was an excellent chance to reconnect.

I never saw the band play live, but I had bought the ‘Hindu Gods (Of Love)’ 7 inch and the Mesmerizer LP when they’d come out. I had to backtrack and search out a copy of the Psycho-Surgeons single ‘Horizontal Action’ – with the legendary blood covered sleeve – so it's gratifying to have these items in the record collection.

Strange Flash is a comprehensive collection, gathering the released singles tracks, the live Mesmerizer set, two sets of demos and another live recording from Adelaide , plus some more surprises besides. The full collection on Double CD comprises a whopping 49 tracks, while the Double LP drops the 16 Adelaide live tracks – obviously due to time restrictions – and will get its own LP release.

The band’s story is laid out in the liner notes but for a brief history lesson, this is the excerpt from The Encyclopedia Of Australian Rock And Pop 2nd Edition (Third Stone Press, 2017).

LIPSTICK KILLERS

Original line-up: Peter Tillman (vocals; ex-Filth), Mark Taylor (guitar; ex-Psycho-Surgeons), Kim Giddy (bass; ex-Precious Little), David Taylor (drums; ex-Psycho-Surgeons)

Lipstick Killers grew out of the ashes of two of Sydney’s most notorious late 1970s punk bands, Psycho-Surgeons and Filth. Inspired by Ramones’ first album (issued July 1976), import record shop owner Mark Taylor formed a band called the Frozen Stiffs with Ronnie Pop (vocals), Charlie Georgees (guitar), Craig Amiet (bass) and David Taylor (drums).

After a few months of rehearsals Pop and Georgees wandered off to form The Hellcats. Pop later re-emerged as Ron Peno in Died Pretty.

At the start of 1977 Taylor, Taylor and Amiet recruited singer Paul Gearside and began to play gigs. Rechristened Psycho-Surgeons after a newspaper headline, the band’s street-level punk credentials were based around a crude measure of musical proficiency and a full quota of Stooges-derived material in the live set. Until Filth came along a year later, Psycho-Surgeons earned a reputation as the most despised band in Sydney. Alongside The Hellcats and Johnny Dole and the Scabs, Psycho-Surgeons were one of the first bands to become associated with the scene that grew up around the Oxford Funhouse, the legendary venue in inner-city Sydney run by Radio Birdman.

Gearside left the band in late 1977 after being severely beaten up by three Hell’s Angels during a gig at the Oxford Funhouse. As a result of the violence, which was not symptomatic of the Funhouse itself, the owners closed the venue’s doors to rock gigs. Psycho-Surgeons issued their debut single in September 1978. ‘Horizontal Action’ / ‘Wild Weekend’ was a crudely recorded but intriguing release pushed along by Taylor’s hard thumping beat. Its collectability as a punk artefact was assured from the outset due to its limited edition of 500 copies, and because the band members splattered real cow’s blood over all the sleeves!

Not long after the single’s release Psycho-Surgeons mutated into Lipstick Killers with the arrival of Peter Tillman and Kim Giddy. Tillman had sung with Filth alongside teenage guitarist Bob Short for a year. To many observers Filth was the most nihilistic band on the scene and Short was known to take his Iggy Pop obsession to unhealthy extremes. Lipstick Killers’ Americanised brand of glitter/hard rock drew as much on late 1960s acid punk as The Stooges and New York Dolls circa 1973 for inspiration. Another of the band’s stated musical influences was UK glam star Gary Glitter. Lipstick Killers played the Sydney scene alongside The Passengers, The Other Side, Flaming Hands, Hitmen, Sunnyboys and The Visitors. In November 1979 the band issued the classic Deniz Tek-produced, independent single ‘Hindu Gods (Of Love)’ / ‘Shakedown USA’ which was atmospheric, hard’n’fast rock at its best.

In late 1980 Michael Charles (ex-Shy Impostors) replaced David Taylor on drums. Lipstick Killers then spent a year living in Los Angeles and became involved in the burgeoning Californian hardcore scene that had already thrown up the likes of Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Flesh Eaters. During that time Stephen Mather (ex-Playboy Lords) replaced Giddy on bass. The inspiration for the move to LA had come about after Greg Shaw (of Bomp! fame) had re-issued ‘Hindu Gods (Of Love)’ on his Voxx label, also adding it to his Bomp! Various Artists collection Experiments in Destiny.

The band, however, made little headway and was living in poverty. Following a Christmas dinner that consisted of boiled onions and refried beans, Lipstick Killers broke up and the members limped home to Australia at the start of 1982.

(Ed Note: I'm speculating here but I don’t think the ROIR label having issued a cassette compilation of New York Dolls early demo material called Lipstick Killers at that time did the band’s cause any good.)

Mark Taylor moved into computer graphics, Mather joined Decline of the Reptiles and Charles joined Angie Pepper Band and later on The Screaming Tribesmen. Citadel Records issued the live album Mesmerizer in December 1984. It had been taken from a cassette recording of one of the band’s infrequent Los Angeles gigs (in the manner of The Velvet Underground’s Live at Max’s Kansas City). As such the sound quality was rough’n’ready but the energy and atmosphere were enough to gain an insight into the band’s true spirit. The independent Vi-Nil label also issued the single ‘Sockman’ / ‘Pensioner Pie’ (January 1985), which was taken from demos the band had recorded at the end of 1978.

Lipstick Killers reformed for a brief Sydney tour in January 1989. In April 1995 Mark Taylor, Tillman and Mather formed 1960s acid punk revivalists Doctor Stone. Bil Bilson (drums; ex-Sunnyboys) and Chris Willing (Farfisa organ) completed the line-up. The band played a few gigs around Sydney during 1995. Doctor Stone issued the EP Purple Slice in December 1996 on the Appointment label. It contained three new songs and a re-recording of Lipstick Killers’ ‘Hindu Gods (Of Love)’.

IN CONVERSATION WITH MARK TAYLOR

Congrats on the new comp Strange Flash. David Laing has put it out on his Grown Up Wrong label but I guess you did all the remastering, that being your thing?

Mark Taylor: Well yeah it is. I did the remastering because I had some of the original tapes on hand but Dave really put it together. He decided what was going to be on it. He was the impetus behind the whole thing. He's a good lad. I don't know why he likes us (laughs) but there you go.

He's into all that. I've ordered the LP, the first will be the double album and then a single album of the Adelaide live stuff which is all on the CD. The thing I was impressed with, not that I wasn't expecting it to be good but the sound quality is sensational, given some of the original sources.

MT: That's great to hear. I always thought it was a bit rough because a lot of it was recorded on cassette.

Sure, the live stuff does sound like a cassette recording but I went back to the Mesmerizer LP on Citadel and that always sounded pretty good but now this new redoing is phenomenally good.

MT: I just happened to have, I don't know how I got it, but I had the original cassette. I suppose John Needham must have got it to me somehow. When I looked in my box of junk there it was! That was great, I put it on and it sounded so much better than the previous release. Funnily enough, the Adelaide tape was reel-to-reel so it was the opposite way round from what you think.

Okay, the Adelaide live stuff sounds more garagey. And you had the original drummer at that time too, right?

MT: Yeah, David Taylor.

And so his drumming was a lot different from Michael Charles drumming, who played on the Los Angeles live recording.

MT: Hence the whole sound of the group when Michael joined it was like two different bands really. So it was Michael and Kim on bass, he was there from the beginning of the Lipstick Killers. Michael only joined after Dave left.

That certainly is the difference. I want to stick with the live stuff for now, we'll get on to the studio stuff. So the earlier live tracks with David, that maybe informed your guitar playing a little bit more?

MT: Do you mean garage rock?

Yeah, the Adelaide tracks to me are a bit more garagey, with the punk energy etc.

MT: I suppose in those days the big influence was The Stooges and the MC5. We didn't know too much about garage rock because we only had what was available in those days and that wasn't a lot. There was the Nuggets album and I think the first Pebbles might have just come out.

Had The Sonics’ albums been reissued at that point?

MT: The original albums weren’t available in Australia at that time but a compilation called The Explosive Sonics had come out. We had got it in to sell to our customers at the White Light record shop. We were well acquainted with The Sonics from that comp.

You were well placed with being at White Light and you were there from the beginnings of the Sydney punk scene, the whole Birdman scene. You'd had the Psycho-Surgeons going by the end of '76.

MT: It could have been, might have been early '77. I think we had a different name originally, late '76.

Even back at that time did you feel you were part of something happening?

MT: Oh god yeah. I had a strong feeling of something happening. Even the Funhouse itself, I remember thinking it's great to be part of this because it's going to be something that will be talked about for years to come. Not because of the Psycho-Surgeons but all the bands, in particular Radio Birdman and The Saints that played there.

We'd heard about Birdman and The Saints down in Melbourne because we'd started reading about them in RAM (Rock Australia Magazine) and there were articles in Juke – I didn't get to see either of them when they originally toured Melbourne in early '77 – but there was definitely that Sydney-Melbourne divide. The Melbourne punk scene which I was able to see burgeon was very different from what was happening in Sydney. By the time you got the Lipstick Killers going and you were playing with Rob Younger's band The Other Side, The Visitors, Sunnyboys were forming... How did you see the Sydney scene by the 78-79 period.

MT: Um, well, I suppose we differentiated in broad terms. Sydney was more rock 'n' roll / hard rock / garage punk and American influenced. Melbourne seemed to be more attuned to the British punk and post punk scene; that's the broadest difference I remember noting at the time.

I'd agree with that, Melbourne was a bit more arty maybe. By the time you got cracking with the Lipstick Killers it seems that you'd made a big leap in the quality of you playing maybe. By the time you did 'Hindu Gods (Of Love)' you'd mastered your instruments (laughs).

MT: Yeah. It was a bit of a fluke that we managed to play pretty good on 'Hindu Gods'. We were still pretty rough, but having the Radio Birdman guys in the studio was great. Ron Keeley tuned Dave Taylor's drums. Deniz was there producing and Pip was there, and I think Rob Younger dropped in for a while. So we were on our best behaviour, put it that way. Trying our hardest.

So 'Horizontal Action' has that classic early punk sound, whereas 'Hindu Gods' had a radically different sound. That's an archetypal hard rocking song but still garagey, you know?

MT: Well it definitely had a garage influence because the riff itself was influenced by a track by Teddy and His Patches, called 'Suzy Creamcheese'. I'd bought a copy of that in Sydney. In fact somehow I'd found three copies and it turns out it was a hard to find record. To us it was just an oddity. But it had this really pounding riff, so when I got hold of that I twisted it around a bit. So 'Hindu Gods' is definitely 60s garage punk influenced. The earlier one wasn't.

The other thing I like on that single, the B-side 'Shakedown USA' has that fantastic boogie woogie piano. Was that Steve Harris from The Visitors?

MT: It was. He just took to that like a duck to water. He's a fantastic player and he was able to knock that off straight away. We were so grateful to Steve for having done that.

And the difference also, coming back to the live in Adelaide, what guitar were you playing at that stage?

MT: I think I had a Fender Strat at that stage. If it's covered in bandages it was my Fender Strat.

So what I'm getting at, you had a very different sound from other guys like Deniz. And then even for the '81 recording from Los Angeles you had a very clean but still vicious tone.

MT: The earlier stuff has that sound, the crunchy sound, not so much because I had the Strat but because I played it through an Acoustic solid state bass amp. That head is not a valve amp so it had a completely different sound. I knew nothing about amplifiers, I just somehow got hold of this amp that was solid state which nobody else was using at the time. It was also a bass amp, so anyone plugging into that thing would get a sound like that, it just doesn't have that slashing normal rock sound. That's what makes it so distinctive and it's only in retrospect I can see that. At the time I was just trying to get the best sound out of it I could get. It's more like the sound the LA hardcore bands ended up getting.

I was gonna come to that. I've listened to a bit of that stuff, not a huge amount, Black Flag but I'm struggling to hear the parallel there, you reckon it's closer to that sound?

MT: Well, yeah I think so. I think that sort of grinding, crushed guitar sound is to me more like the early Psycho-Surgeons which was that solid state amp sound. Then by the time we were playing in LA, I'd gone through Vox amplifiers and then a Fender amp. When I got to LA I bought a Fender Super amp, a nice vintage small amp because we wanted it to be portable, we were carrying our gear around. We only had a car, not a van. I also bought a semi-acoustic Gibson guitar. So the combination of the ES-335 guitar and this vintage Fender Super amp is what gives the Mesmerizer sound, a totally different sound.

I guess from memory, having asked you about this years ago, my thought was that you might have felt out of place on the LA scene? It was when all the early hardcore guys were starting to hit big.

MT: Yeah, it was. Bands like Black Flag and the Circle Jerks had been going for a while I guess, but that kind of sound was really taking off. In fact the Circle Jerks came to our shows. Keith Morris, the singer, really liked us and he was a great guy and we really liked them. I said to him that the Lipstick Killers is nothing like the sounds that were coming out of LA. He said he liked it because it was rock 'n' roll, he said ‘you guys are the Rolling Stones, like real rock 'n' roll guys’. He didn't mean we were like the Rolling Stones but... I forget what he said about his own sound but he put us in a totally different category.

David Laing has pulled a quote from Keith Morris for the one-sheet promo about how much he liked the band (“The Lipstick Killers were easily one of the greatest live bands I've witnessed in my 65 yrs, on this planet”).

MT: Yes, I think David's friendly with a lot of people and he managed to get that quote from Keith which I thought was fantastic.

I'm jumping all over the place but there had been articles in RAM at the time and there are lots of flyers around, but I'd not seen that article on the Madame Wongs show, by Byron Coley from New York Rocker magazine. That's a great piece of writing.

MT: Yeah, it is. Well Byron was in LA at the same time we were and he and Peter Tillman got on really well. I mean I got on well with him but he was particular friends with Peter and he came to see us at the Madame Wongs show. I think Keith Morris was there as well, the Mesmerizer show. But they liked it, even though it wasn't like the sound that was going around LA at that time. Byron just wrote a good review for us.

There are extra tracks that didn't make it to the Mesmerizer LP. Were they just on the cassette too?

MT: Yeah, so Chris D was the lead singer for the Flesh Eaters and he produced that for us. We played with them a couple of times and he really liked the Lipstick Killers as well. He'd produced the first Gun Club album and he wanted to produce our studio album. I don't know why we didn't do it, maybe because we ended up breaking up instead. Um, so Chris produced Mesmerizer from the cassette tape; I don't know why? Maybe he had the tape. The tape had been done from the mixing desk at the gig and then we just left it there and Chris somehow kept it and he must have played it to John Needham and John wanted to release it. He must have asked Chris if he could produce it from the cassette and that's how that happened.

You mentioned Chris D producing the Gun Club album. I reckon that Peter Tillman sounds like Jeffrey Lee Pearce; maybe where JLP got his vocal phrasing? That's a long shot I suppose? Do you reckon that Peter sounds like what JLP came to sound like, or have I got it the wrong way round?

MT: Well, there are some parallels. We played with them in LA; the first album might have just come out, or just about to come out. They were playing very small venues then, well they were playing with us and there was only about 40 or 50 people coming to the shows so they obviously hadn't made it to any level of success at that stage. But JLP was unique in many ways. One time I remember him dancing around on stage cutting clumps of his hair off with a Bowie knife! And tossing it into the air. An interesting character. But his guitar player was the guy my eyes were fixed on, Ward Dotson, he was incredible. There were only a couple of guitarist that I saw in LA that really blew me away.

The other guy that had a super high energy approach was the guitar player in the Misfits, Doyle. We saw them at the Whisky A-Go-Go. The guitar player had used his guitar to hit someone over the head, it was a big scandal in all the papers. They came out on the stage at the Whisky, they had that gruesome aura to them already and the bass player, the minute they got on the stage, was flailing his bass around his head. I thought, god he's gonna let go of it and it'll fly into the audience. The guitar player was just pounding these power chords that sounded amazing. The original guitar player from X, Ian Krahe, had that power thing too. He was the guy I saw and thought he's got high energy, he's a fantastic player. Him and Ed Kuepper were amazing. Then Ward Dotson and the guy from the Misfits, they all had that fantastic power in their playing.

I love the sound of the early Gun Club albums, the first two or three...

MT: Yeah, me too.

I’m not so much a Misfits fan, I've only come to listen to them much later but I get what you're saying.

MT: After I saw them at that gig, I never listened to them again. I'm not a big Misfits fan, it just impressed me on that night.

Did you see recently there was a series of docos on the history of punk, they were shown on SBS. There was the English one and the American hardcore one and there were a lot of comments that it missed the mark, or that people didn't like the bands. Did you see that one?

MT: I did watch something recently about the Californian hardcore scene. I thought it was okay, filling me in on things I didn't realise. Although we did participate in the scene we were only on the periphery and it was only for a very short time we were there. So half the gigs we played weren't with those hardcore bands anyway. We played with groups like The Unclaimed, The Gun Club, others that I can't remember. We played at Godzilla's and that was known as a hardcore punk venue and we were in there with the bands with Mohican cuts, covered in studs and leather, the whole audience was dressed up that way. We were long haired Sydney guys. They didn't really respond to us in the normal way. They didn't boo us off, they just politely waited for us to finish and the hardcore group came on and then they were happy.

That photo on the back of Mesmerizer, Peter's holding up the skull on a stick with stuff hanging off it. You must have tried to present a gruesome image?

MT: That was actually from a show at the Civic Hotel in Sydney before we'd left. It was the Rock 'n' Roll Safari theme show, we rented a whole of stuff from the Opera Company.

The big revelation with this release... so every band that might have put out one or two singles must have recorded heaps of demo so the real crux of this album are the demos, the ’78 demos and the Trafalgar demos from 1980. You must have had a lot of songs?

MT: Well we did, we wrote constantly. Obviously we thought that one day we'd have an album but it never happened, mainly because of our ill-fated trip to LA. We broke up there, we'd tried to continue but we just didn't have the resources. We had the master plan there to put an album out but it was cut short.

So the demos are with Lobby Loyde and Dave mentions in the notes that he kind of toned you down a bit, which is interesting because he'd recorded X very raw.

MT: He did. I think what he was trying to do was to decide whether or not we had the potential to be stable mates for the Sunnyboys. So his thinking at that time was very much based around the success of the Sunnyboys. The Sunnyboys set that up for us, it was an audition tape really. He wanted to hear how I was playing my guitar, so he set one half of the split of the guitar directly into the desk and one into the amp, so it sounds like two guitars but it was just the one split. He wanted to hear the way I played the strings without the amp.

I really like them, it might dilute the sound but it makes you out to be bit more of a power pop band maybe? You probably didn't want to be that?

MT: Well, we were a bit disappointed with the sound because it wasn't our live sound. I do think it's okay. What I do sometimes when I play them I flip it to mono and it sounds just like us again.

Okay, interesting. Listening to this, the live tracks, the demos, you're actually a toe-tapping band. You've got some rockin' songs, there's a bit of structure to the songs, I think you were on to something. Do you feel that?

MT: Sure, we thought they were good. Maybe they would have been a bit better if we had completed them for an album. They were really played live. Lobby was pretty good generally with grunty guitars but we were only in the studio for an hour.

That tells the tale.

MT: I don't even think I met Lobby, he was just behind the console. We carried our instruments in, set up. I probably didn't even know who he was at that time. I mean, I know now but... we walked in, played 12 songs in a row and walked out again.

Unfulfilled potential but I like the songs. I think you reference other bands, things like 'Hide and Seek', 'Bongo Flip' have that garage surf sound, they've got lots of reference points without saying you're directly copying someone else.

MT: Well, 'Hide and Seek' is a cover of a song by The Sheiks; they were actually The Strangeloves. That one wasn't written by us. It's got that pounding beat, they'd done things like 'I Want Candy'. 'Bongo Flip' was an original we wrote after we'd gone up to Newcastle to do a gig. Jim Dickson was in the car with us, he must have been playing as well. On the way back we had all of our gear, the four of us in the band, Jim Dickson and maybe one other guy and we were in the Bongo van, that's the model van. We came around a corner. Peter was driving and he just rolled the thing over. It's a true story and everyone in the back of the van and all the equipment went everywhere. It all ended up on the ceiling of the Bongo van. Once we survived that we thought why not write a song about that.

The travails of a touring band. There have been many instances of crashes while touring. Sadly the guys from Eastern Dark didn't come out of it so well, James Darroch dying in '86.

MT: Fortunately we all survived. Jim was bruised and battered. I was in the front seat so when it rolled on to the side I got all this gravel in my face. It slid along the road for about 50 feet and the window was open so all this gravel was spraying into my face. It was pretty bad, I got a few minor injuries and cuts.

I'm glad you're still here. I like that mystical fantasy themes in songs like ‘Hindu Gods (Of Love)’, ‘Driving The Special Dead’, ‘Twilight of the Idols’, ‘Date With a Thing’. You had themes going on there.

MT: Yeah, I suppose we did. That would have come from the 13th Floor Elevators I think, they were a strong influence at that time. We didn't want to emphasise that drugs angle which they did; we wanted to have the same mystical angle but without the drugs. The mix of garage rock and the mysticism without the drugs was just as valid.

I just remembered with the influences, there was also Gary Glitter; you used to come on stage to 'Rock 'n' Roll'.

MT: Peter and I were huge Gary Glitter fans. We'd seen him at the Hordern Pavilion in about 1972, well we found out that we had both been there and just couldn't stop talking about it. So the idea of using it for the band coming on stage, which we did all the time, we got that really from Radio Birdman because they used a Kraftwerk song, I've forgotten which one it was, but we just thought 'well what can we do which is even crazier and stupider than that?' We came up with Gary Glitter 'Rock 'n' Roll Part 1'. That was way before they used it for the football. It got done to death after that.

Jumping around again, you've related the story for me before, but tell us about the ‘Horizontal Action’ single covers and the blood. It's such a classic punk thing to have done.

MT: (Laughs) it is. I got the idea of splattering blood on the covers because of the band name, Psycho-Surgeons, it just made sense. I couldn't get the full sleeves, I had intended it to be a solid white sleeve with blood splattered on them but we could only get hold of the die-cut sleeves. We took those 500 sleeves to our rehearsal space in Henderson Road, which was just a really decrepit area of town where we could get cheap rent. It was also right above a printing factory where they printed pornographic magazines. They printed these mags 24 hours a day (laughs). We also did some gigs there.

We laid out all the sleeves on the bare floorboards and the blood was in a quart milk container. I'd said to my cousin I wanted to do this idea with the blood on the covers but how can I possibly get blood and he said ‘leave it to me’. He got on his motorbike and drove out to somewhere in the Western suburbs, found an abattoir and said to the manager ‘I'm at university and we need to study blood’, some story he made up and they filled this quart container for him with cow's blood. He arrived back a few hours later with this milk container of blood. We left it there for a couple of weeks while we got everything else ready, then we just spread out all the covers on the floor. There was the four band members involved and their girlfriends and wives. We just splattered the blood on the covers, just using our bare hands. Some of them came out looking fantastic and some only had a bit on them, it didn't work out all that well.

We left them there to dry but the blood got into the floorboards. Obviously there were gaps in the floorboards and it started leaking onto the pornography factory (laughs). On to their stacks of porn mags there. We copped a bit of flack for that. They might have thought we'd murdered someone up there. The thing is it got all over me and all over David, well most of us got some of the blood on us, into our jeans. It was pongy for sure.

The next day we had a band practise organised and we turned up all except Dave. He'd never been late for practise before so we waited and waited and then went home. This was before mobile phones so we had no idea where he was. Later that evening I got a call to say that Dave was at the police station, he'd been held there. He'd got into a cab after doing the sleeves and after he'd got dropped off at home, the cab driver had called the police because he'd decided it was very suspicious that he was covered in blood. The police descended on Dave's house and held him at the station all day. They had to do the forensic tests on the blood. He got out eventually when they found it was cow's blood.

You guys created such a legendary story. My copy of the single still smells a bit.

MT: Yeah it was unusual. I did end up getting infected from the blood that got on my jeans. I mean we'd often get cuts and scrapes on us because of the way we played, the things we used to do generally. So the blood got into this cut I had on my leg, so I got infected with Streptococcus, and I had to get a shot of penicillin to get rid of that. Putting out the blood sleeves was never easy.

The other thing I wanted to ask you about, because you've been a big collector of garage punk singles; have you pretty much picked up everything that you've ever wanted?

MT: Pretty much; it's almost impossible to collect every garage punk 45 that came out, because there were so many of them released. Many of them are just one known copy or two or three, and you can’t get them, those ones are just never going to move from the guy who might have them.

What are a couple of these big ticket items that remain out of everyone else's reach?

MT: There are lots... let me think. The Human Expression singles are very difficult to get hold of. Adrian Lloyd ‘Lorna’ on Charger Records. One that I'm still chasing is the third Tennalaga label release by The Peabody Hermitage, called ‘Something So’. One of the most desired records is called ‘City Of People’ by The Illusions on Michelle Records, very hard to find. Another one is The Mods’ ‘I Give You An Inch (And You Take A Mile)’. And the other side is just as good, ‘You've Got Another Think Coming’. I could go on.

I guess you've got all the well known Aussie ones. But what about something like The Stooges’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ released here on the Astor label?

MT: Yeah, look that's a great one but I've really only collected singles from the band's country of origin, like American bands on American labels.

Happy hunting, Mark.

STRANGE FLASH Studio & Live ’78-’81 (Grown Up Wrong)
2-CD Track Listing (* CD only tracks)
DISC 1
(Lost In Space/Voxx 45 – 1979 – produced by Deniz Tek)
1. Hindu Gods (Of Love)
2. Shakedown USA
(Mixdown Studio Demos -1978)
3. Sockman
4. Pensioner Pie
5. Teen Police
6. Hindu Gods (Of Love) (demo) *
7. Rot In Love
8. Accidents
(Live In Adelaide – May 1979)
9. Shakedown USA *
10. Dying Boy's Crawl *
11. Master's Words *
12. Bully *
13. Teen Police *
14. Wild Weekend *
15. I’ve Got Levitation *
16. Mercy Killer *
17. Pharmaceutical Au-Go-Go *
18. Human Crash *
19. Crush On You *
20. Hindu Gods (Of Love) *
21. Head Off *
22. Sock It To Me – Baby! *
23. Sockman *
24. Horizontal Action *
DISC 2
(Trafalgar Demos 1980 – Produced by Lobby Loyde)
1. New Hard Fun
2. Mesmerizer
3. Driving The Special Dead
4. Bongo Flip
5. Twilight Of The Idols
6. Strange Flash
7. Hide & Seek
8. Date With A Thing
9. Liquor Fit
(Live In Los Angeles – 1981)
10. Dying Boy's Crawl
11. Driving The Special Dead
12. Bongo Flip
13. Strange Flash
14. Twilight Of The Idols
15. I’ve Got Levitation
16. Date With A Thing
17. Sock It To Me – Baby!
18. Shakedown USA
19. Pharmaceutical Au-Go-Go
20. Out Of Our Tree
21. Liquor Fit
Psycho-Surgeons
(Wallaby Beat 45 -1978)
22. Horizontal Action *
23. Wild Weekend *
(Rehearsal – 1976)
24. Falling Apart *
25. Crush On You *

STRANGE FLASH Studio & Live ’78-’81 (Grown Up Wrong)
2-LP Track Listing
SIDE 1
(Lost In Space/Voxx 45 – 1979 – produced by Deniz Tek)
1. Hindu Gods (Of Love)
2. Shakedown USA
(Mixdown Studio Demos -1978)
3. Sockman
4. Pensioner Pie
5. Teen Police
6. Rot In Love
7. Accidents
SIDE 2
(Trafalgar Demos 1980 - produced by Lobby Loyde)
1. New Hard Fun
2. Mesmerizer
3. Driving The Special Dead
4. Bongo Flip
5. Twilight Of The Idols
6. Strange Flash
7. Hide & Seek
SIDE 3
(Trafalgar Demos 1980 – produced by Lobby Loyde)
1. Date With A Thing
2. Liquor Fit
(Live In Los Angeles – 1981)
3. Dying Boy's Crawl
4. Driving The Special Dead
5. Bongo Flip
6. Strange Flash
7. Sock It To Me – Baby!
SIDE 4
(Live In Los Angeles – 1981)
1. Twilight Of The Idols
2. I’ve Got Levitation
3. Date With A Thing
4. Shakedown USA
5. Pharmaceutical Au-Go-Go
6. Out Of Our Tree
7. Liquor Fit

Daddy Cool and the 50th Anniversary of ‘Eagle Rock’

Daddy Cool and the 50th Anniversary of ‘Eagle Rock’

By Ian McFarlane

This article was originally published in Rhythms magazine March-April 2021 (Issue # 304)

The Australian dance classic ‘Eagle Rock’ stirred the nation in 1971. What makes the song still resonate to this day? I get on the good foot to find out.

The Band: Daddy Cool

The Single: ‘Eagle Rock’ / ‘Bom Bom’ (Sparmac Productions SPR008)

The Songwriters: Ross Wilson / R. Wilson-R. Hannaford

The Facts:

• Released in May 1971, peaked at national #1 for a staggering nine weeks (10 July to 11 September), 25 weeks in the national Top 40

• Released in the US and the UK (Reprise K 14112) in November 1971

• Reissued in 1982 on 12-inch EP, reaching the national Top 20

• Issued on CD, July 1992, as ‘Eagle Rock (Dance Mix)’

• In 2001, the Australian Performing Rights Association (APRA) appointed ‘Eagle Rock’ the Second Best Australian Song of All Time (behind The Easybeats’ ‘Friday On My Mind’)

The Story:

When a song still captures the imagination and holds your attention after 50 years, there’s a reason for such enduring appeal. After multiple airplays on Classic Hits radio, there might be a tendency to try and cancel Daddy Cool’s ‘Eagle Rock’ from the memory banks. There’s a saying that goes ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, and while that holds true for some people why is it that many more want to hear it again and again? What makes the song still resonate with listeners to this day?

First and foremost, ‘Eagle Rock’ is a master class in elation. The youth of the day danced to it with wild abandon. The older generation nodded their heads appreciatively when they heard it. Even baby Australians took it in with their mother’s milk. It’s so ingrained in the collective Australian psyche as to have become almost a folk song. It’s the whole package: the hand clap intro; the signature guitar lick; Ross Wilson’s opening invitation of “Now listen! Oh, we’re steppin’ out”; his charismatic vocal delivery; the rockin’ rollin’ dance beat; the simplicity of the chord structure; Ross Hannaford’s indelible two note lead break; the effortless joie de vivre of the words, “Well, I feel so free, hmm, what you do to me” etc. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Singer-song writer-guitarist Ross Wilson has given more to the institution of Australian rock ’n’ roll than can ever be repaid. He began his career in 1964 with Melbourne-based, teenage R&B band The Pink Finks, going on to form The Party Machine in 1967. In 1969 he travelled to London to front expatriate Aussie psych pop band Procession (at the invitation of bassist Brian Peacock). On his return in 1970, he formed esoteric progressive rock band Sons Of The Vegetal Mother which morphed into the rollicking Daddy Cool in October 1970. When DC had run its course, he had Mighty Kong on the road for a year before reviving DC.

Wilson turned his hand to song publishing and record production, producing Skyhooks’ astonishing run of three classic albums, Living In The 70’s, Ego Is Not A Dirty and Straights In A Gay, Gay World. He then hit the road with Mondo Rock, scoring numerous hits along the way. If there are too many other musical adventures to list here, all you need to know now is that he is still active to this day, recently delivering his Living In The Land of Oz concert at the Melbourne Pavilion on Survival Day 26 January 2021.

Because the flowering of what became Daddy Cool came out of the hotbed of activity that was Sons Of The Vegetal Mother, it’s worth investigating here. The Sons were part of the emergent Melbourne underground scene, a way for Wilson to put some of his latest inspirations into practice: Frank Zappa, Zen and macrobiotic foods.

The band featured a fluid line-up but mostly comprised Wilson, his fellow Pink Finks guitarist Ross Hannaford, the rhythm section of Wayne Duncan (bass; ex-Rondells) and Gary Young (drums; ex-Rondells), Mike Rudd (guitar; ex-Party Machine, concurrently in Spectrum), Trevor Griffin (organ; ex-Procession), Jeremy Noone (aka Jeremy Kellock; tenor sax, piano; from Company Caine), Ian Wallace (alto sax; from Lipp Arthur), Bruce Woodcock (tenor sax; from Lipp Arthur) and Simon Wettenhall (trumpet; from Lipp Arthur). They appeared at such venues as the hallowed T. F. Much Ballroom (Cathedral Hall, Brunswick Street, Fitzroy) playing the likes of the primal rock rants ‘Make It Begin’, ‘Love In An FJ’ and ‘Love Is The Law’ (“Do what you like, love is the law”), seriously heavy freak rock songs that challenged audiences perceptions. Fortunately, audiences of the day were willing to listen.

It wasn’t all heavy vibes; the Sons also played ‘Brown Rice’ (“Brown rice is better than white rice, chomp chomp chomp”) and a proto-type version of ‘Eagle Rock’ which got audiences dancing. As he was also into vintage rock ’n’ roll and doo wop, Wilson sensed an even greater opportunity to entertain audiences. Quickly realising that some of his fellow band members were ready and willing to roll with it, Wilson coalesced with Hannaford, Duncan and Young as Daddy Cool. As soon as the band took off they were able to sideline the Sons.

‘Daddy Cool’ was the title of a 1957 hit by American doo wop group The Rays, although Wilson has commented that he named the band before he’d heard the song. Still, as a rock ’n’ roll revival outfit, DC was just a way of having fun on stage, a humorous and entertaining diversion from the serious business of advancing the horizons of rock music, a chance to wear amusing costumes, leap about, making a visual impact as well as impressing with the music.

DC’s first booking was actually interstate at the Aquarius festival, Glenelg Town Hall (SA), on 12 October 1970. Two weeks later they played on the bill at the T.F. Much with Spectrum, Chain, King Harvest, Sons Of The Vegetal Mother and Lipp Arthur, playing a benefit for Melbourne drug rehabilitation clinic Buoyancy Foundation.

Regular gigs followed and in January 1971, DC took off on outdoor stages with their appearances at the Odyssey Festival, Wallacia (NSW) and Myponga Festival (SA). When ‘Eagle Rock’ exploded on to the Australian charts in May 1971, they became the biggest band in the land with the rock press falling over themselves to cover their every move.

A Defining Song

When I interviewed Wilson on the occasion of the song’s 30th anniversary, he had this to say about ‘Eagle Rock’.

“For me, ‘Eagle Rock’ was a defining song. Quite often first songs are like that; they define what you’re about. It’s the distillation of everybody’s consciousness or whatever. ‘Eagle Rock’ does say a lot about my influences, what I was listening to at the time.

“The song came about while I was in England playing with Procession. I was trying to improve my guitar skills, which are still pretty limited. I came up with this riff. Actually, there was a song we used to play in Party Machine called ‘Woman Of The World’ which was the first time I’d used that kind of finger picking style. I’d developed this finger picking style, like a rural blues style. I was trying to copy some of those players from the 1930s, but I never got passed just using my thumb and one finger. I could never get the other fingers working (laughs). With the ‘Eagle Rock’ riff, people work out these funny, complicated ways to play it, but it’s just a basic ‘A’ chord and open ‘E’ on the top. I had this riff, but because I was so deficient in being able to move my fingers around on the fretboard, I just wanted a chord where I didn’t have to move around too much, just move one finger. Just work on the syncopation.

“Most guitar players will play a more complicated version but the way I play it, you get the droning thing going. So I was doing that and I came up with this riff. There was this article in The Sunday Times and it had a picture of people dancing in a Juke Joint, and the caption said they were ‘Doing the Eagle Rock and cutting the Pigeon Wing’. This is the way songwriting works; I’d got the title and that was the key to unlocking what was in my subconscious. The title just seemed to connect with the riff I was playing.

“I got back to Australia and I finished off the chorus. I’d play it to people and say, ‘Do you like this riff?’. ‘Have you heard it somewhere before?’. It seemed so good, I was thinking, ‘Gee I hope I haven’t pinched that from somewhere’. After a while I figured I must have come up with it myself. I’ve read similar stories like with Paul McCartney when he wrote ‘Yesterday’, or Keith Richards with ‘Satisfaction’. Those are quintessential songs. It’s something that’s there inside you. With ‘Eagle Rock’ it formed the foundation for everything I’ve done since. It summed up a philosophy I had, just have fun with this music, you know.

“‘Eagle Rock’ certainly still means something to me because it’s such a groove to play it, you know? It’s the kind of song you don’t wanna mess with. There are other songs I’ve written where I mess with the arrangements, but that particular song was so defined by the time we came to record it that there’s no point in changing it, I usually play it the same way. Depends who I’m playing it with, certain guys can nail it each time, certain guys can’t.

“With the original Daddy Cool guys, it was the perfect combination of players. It was absolutely the right group of guys to play that song, and they just latched on to it straight away. It was that combination that made the impact.”

Drummer Gary Young explained the rhythm section’s modus operandi:

“The main feel, the thing that made Daddy Cool sound like Daddy Cool was the shuffle beat. The shuffle is almost identical to what was called swing in the 1930s. It originates from this little tish-ta-tish-ta-tish rhythm on the hi-hat, sorta like a jazz thing. It would swing. When blues musicians moved from the Mississippi Delta up to Chicago in the ’40s and started to shuffle the blues, drummers would play the shuffle all together, hi-hats and snare. The good thing with the shuffle, if you use that technique and put a bit of rocking to it, it picks up.

“If you slow down a jazz swing shuffle, using the cymbal and the snare, you get the beat and rhythm for ‘Come Back Again’. Then if you attack it with a bit more aggro and just use the hi-hat and the snare you get the definitive shuffle on the one that sold the most records for Daddy Cool, ‘Doin’ the Eagle Rock’. Wayne plays a throbbing bass, I do the shuffle, ‘Now listen! We’re steppin’ out’. That major shuffle is the most typically Daddy Cool feel and it was right for ‘Eagle Rock’.”

A Watershed Year

The year 1971 certainly seems to have been the watershed year in the development of Australian music. The multifarious and radical social changes brought on by the 1960s were being felt. Anti-Vietnam War sentiments were on the rise, with 100,000 people having marched in the streets for the 1970 Vietnam Moratorium in Melbourne. Various sections of Australian society were fed up with over 20 years of continuous Liberal-Country Coalition government; the election of Gough Whitlam’s Labor was just around the corner in 1972.

Musicians were coming out of the 1960s engendered with a sense of their own self worth and a willingness to take their music to new heights. The heavyweight, underground bands of the day like Tully, Tamam Shud, Aztecs, Chain, Spectrum, Blackfeather, Company Caine and Carson were forging their own identities, the pub scene was beginning to burgeon and the festival / concert circuit was well under way.

In addition to ‘Eagle Rock’ hitting national #1, Spectrum had done the same with ‘I’ll Be Gone’ while Chain had gone to #1 in Melbourne (Top 10 nationally) with ‘Black And Blue’. The impact of ‘Eagle Rock’ was immediate because it worked on so many different levels.

There was a number of other astonishing Australian singles released in 1971. I can think of Healing Force’s rhapsodic ‘Golden Miles’, Blackfeather’s mystical ‘Seasons Of Change’, King Harvest’s enthralling version of Jimmy Webb’s ‘Wichita Lineman’, the Master’s Apprentices’ evocative ‘Because I Love You’, the La De Das’ funky rocker ‘Gonna See My Baby Tonight’ and Ted Mulry’s sunshine pop classic ‘Falling In Love Again’.

Then there were the albums of the day: Spectrum’s Part One, Chain’s Toward the Blues, Daddy Cool’s Daddy Who? Daddy Cool!, Blackfeather’s At The Mountains Of Madness, the Masters’ Choice Cuts, the Aztecs’ Live, Company Caine’s A Product Of A Broken Reality, Kahvas Jute’s Wide Open, Lobby Loyde’s Plays With George Guitar, even Russell Morris’ Bloodstone and Hans Poulsen’s Natural High. All remarkable works in their own right.

Essentially ‘Black And Blue’, ‘I’ll Be Gone’ and ‘Eagle Rock’ have come to represent a significant development in the annals of Australian rock ’n’ roll. It was the first time that previously underground acts featured on the mainstream charts. ‘Black And Blue’ was the first blues single ever to lodge itself in the Top 10, let alone make #1 on any chart. And by applying a commercial outlook to the prevailing underground trends of the day Wilson came up with a winning formula. And it was just a hell of a lot of fun!

When ‘Eagle Rock’ was reissued in 1982 and became a hit again, it produced an unlikely new dance craze. Dubbed ‘Eagle Drop’, it involved guys in bars, when the song came on the juke box, spontaneously dropping their pants and dancing around with their nuts out. As soon as the song finished, bar etiquette ensured that daks were returned to their rightful position.

“Doin’ the Eagle Rock”

It’s time to dig deeper into the hidden meanings of the words ‘Eagle Rock’. Clearly, as he has outlined, Wilson didn’t invent the phrase. Eagle Rock was a 1920s Afro-American dance performed with the arms outstretched and the body rocking from side to side. In a further cultural context, extending the arms in the shape of an eagle’s wing was a gesture by friends urging a slave to fly from the master’s whip.

“Doin’ the Eagle Rock” is also a metaphor for sexual intercourse (as was essentially “Rock ’n’ Roll”). Wilson has said that, at the time of writing the song, he had no knowledge of the connection and it was only years later the penny dropped.

The first mention of ‘Eagle Rock’ in a song was the 1913 ragtime and jazz standard ‘Ballin’ The Jack’, written by Jim Burns with music by Chris Smith. “Then you do the Eagle Rock with style and grace / Swing your foot way ’round then bring it back / Now that’s what I call Ballin’ the Jack”. The song was recorded numerous times, by the likes of Danny Kaye, Fats Domino, Rosemary Clooney etc.

Wilson’s use of the opening invitation “Now listen! Oh, we’re steppin’ out” also references the 19th century Anglo-Irish folk ballad tradition which often incorporated a “Come all ye...” refrain as a way of catching the listener’s ear. The Australian bush ballad ‘Ned Kelly Was Their Captain’ even opened with “Come all you wild colonial boys”.

By extension, Irving Berlin knew the value of a good opening announcement as his 1911 song ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’ so eloquently put it: “Come on and hear / Come on and hear Alexander’s Ragtime Band”. In the 1940s jump blues group The Treniers announced “Rockin’ is our business / Rockin’ is what we do oh yeah / Come on everybody we want you to rock with us too” (‘Rockin’ Is Our Bizness’).

Various rock musicians had similar ideas. For example, in 1959 Eddie Cochran declared “Oh well, c’mon everybody and let’s get together tonight” (‘C’mon Everybody’). Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad knew how to get an audience going with “Are you ready? / You can trust me all the way” (‘Are You Ready’, 1969). English ska pop legends Madness opened their second single ‘One Step Beyond’ (1979) with the reverb heavy statement “Hey you! / Don’t watch that, watch this!”. I’m sure you can think of many other examples.

‘Eagle Rock’ was promoted by one of the first Australian rock film clips, directed by Chris Löfvén who had also done Spectrum’s similarly styled film clip for ‘I’ll Be Gone’. The black and white footage features Wilson and two girls dancing in the Aussie Burgers malt shop as ‘Eagle Rock’ plays on the juke box. Hanna, Duncan and Young are seen smiling and miming to the music. This is intercut with footage of the band’s boisterous performances at the Myponga festival and the T.F Much, showing people dancing madly. Also – rather helpfully, so that we make the connection – there are wedge tailed eagles strutting their stuff and flapping their wings. The final frames show the guys leaping into their FJ Holden and tearing off up The Esplanade (Luna Park just out of shot).

Elton John is said to have heard ‘Eagle Rock’, and maybe even seen the film clip, during his October 1971 Australian tour. Legend has it that it inspired him and his lyricist, Bernie Taupin, to write their own version which became his #1 hit ‘Crocodile Rock’. Heavily nostalgic, ‘Crocodile Rock’ definitely wears its influences on its sleeve.

There’s also the story of Wilson’s encounter with UK glam rock hero Marc Bolan. He’d likewise heard ‘Eagle Rock’, and while on his November 1973 Australian tour with T. Rex Bolan insisted on meeting Wilson. He wouldn’t perform until Wilson had been summoned. As Wilson came face to face with the diminutive rocker, Bolan pointed his finger and declared “Oh, so it was you that ripped off ‘Ride A White Swan’!”. If there might be some correlation with the hand clapping / three chord simplicity of each song, Bolan knew a kindred spirit when he met one, laughing it off by declaring Wilson to be a “superstar”.

Remembering Greg Quill (18 April 1947-5 May 2013)

Remembering Greg Quill (18 April 1947-5 May 2013)

The Critic and The Producer

By Ian McFarlane © 2003

This article was originally published in RHYTHMS magazine, April 2003

It was one day in 1982 that singer / songwriter Greg Quill strummed a last chord on his guitar before putting it away in its case. Nothing unusual in that, it’s something he had done every day of his musical life up to that point.

What was unusual was that 18 years passed before he took that guitar out of its case again in order to play. During those 18 years he had established himself as one of Toronto’s leading music and arts journalists, having lived and worked in Canada since leaving Australia in 1975. During March this year, he was back touring the country with partner Kerryn Tolhurst promoting their new album, So Rudely Interrupted.

I caught up with Quill during the Melbourne leg and asked how he’s been enjoying the tour. “It’s been an absolute ball, more than we dared hope for,” he explained, barely able to conceal his enthusiasm. “You gotta understand that this whole enterprise has been a giant act of faith on Kerryn’s part, as well as mine. He’s more attuned to the Australian market because he comes back here regularly to produce other people and a couple of years ago he saw that there was an opportunity because the roots music infrastructure had grown independently, it didn’t depend entirely on radio airplay or record company promotion.

“He believed that we still had an audience and that if we came up with a bunch of new songs that met our own mature standards, meaning my ability to play them, we’d move to getting a release and organise a tour. Given the fact that I’m a critic and he’s a producer who exercises critical facilities all the time, we had fairly high standards but it came together piece by piece. It was a big thing for me to start playing again. When we met up again in Melbourne in 1999, over at Kerryn’s place, I was incredibly rusty. He really worked on my guitar playing and pushed me, eventually it all fell into place. In the intervening years he’s become a really good producer, he’s incredibly patient, committed and focused.”

Prior to his retirement from performing in 1982, Quill had been on the road for almost 15 years having started out on the NSW northern beaches folkie scene (he ran the folk club the Shack in Narrabeen during the late 60s). Between 1970 and 1974 he led the fondly remembered and highly regarded Country Radio, one of Australia’s pioneering country rock outfits. In 1975 he launched his solo career with the brilliant and criminally underrated album The Outlaw’s Reply. With the aid of a travel grant from the Australian Arts Council (under the auspices of the Whitlam government), Quill left for Canada at the end of that year. He struggled to keep bands on the road in Canada, returning only once to Australia, in 1978, in order to tour with Southern Cross (featuring Chris Stockley and Sam See).

In the meantime, Tolhurst, who had been a key member of Country Radio as well as the Dingoes, had never stopped playing. He’d co-written with Quill Country Radio’s biggest hits, ‘Wintersong’ and ‘Gypsy Queen’, and helped define their sound with his delightful mandolin and steel guitar playing. “I’ve always loved Kerryn’s playing,” says Quill. “From the first time we played together in a motel room in Melbourne, it was something we understood about each other. We’d listened to the same muse or something; we knew what each other was going to do next. It was very intuitive. It was like when we wrote songs together, we liked exactly the same changes. We improved each other’s songs in a way that made each other feel better about them. I always trusted his musical instincts, he had impeccable instincts from the time I met him. When he left Country Radio it was devastating to me. It wasn’t just the instrumentation because I replaced that, but it was that sensibility, that profound understanding. Our emotional radar was continually engaging. I missed that more than anything else.”

Tolhurst too had left Australia, in 1976 with the Dingoes, eventually finding his feet as a songwriter (Pat Benatar had a huge hit in 1988 with his song ‘All Fired Up’, a track he’d previously recorded with his band Rattling Sabres), sideman for hire and as a producer. In that role he’s worked with everyone from the Black Sorrows and the Pigram Brothers to Chris Wilson, Jeff Lang and Cindi Boste, as well as taking the reins for the new Quill Tolhurst album. He continues to divide his time between working in the US and Australia. With their partnership re-established, the album turned out so well that they booked that Australian tour, which has since delighted all those who caught gigs around the country. The album itself took 18 months of painstaking work to piece together.

“We paid for it all ourselves,” Quill reveals. “We didn’t have any backing and it was done when we could beg, borrow or trade studio time. We got some studio time in New York and Toronto, but most of it was done on Kerryn’s portable A-DAT machine. It’s about as big as a small suitcase. He just travels around with it and he’s really good at editing and recording on the fly, that’s another of his incredible talents. We started out by matching up bits and pieces of lyrics and melodies and he’d record a bed track, whether he was in New York, Melbourne or Broome. These were only meant to be guide tracks but we ended up using every one of them when we started adding other parts. They were so good, the groove was so solid and the conceptualisation of the song was so strong we decided that we could never risk losing it by trying to replicate it again in the studio, so we just built on these bed tracks.”

The album features a delicate yet buoyant acoustic sound. All the same, many of the songs are built around minor key arrangements, with the lyrics to ‘Back This Way’, ‘The Killing Heart’, ‘Always to the Light’ and ‘Come to Me’ displaying a yearning sense of nostalgia. Hence the album is tinged with a great deal of melancholy.

“Yes it is,” Quill agrees, “But it didn’t occur to us until after we’d finished. I think in every song, well at least eight of them there is mention of ‘home’. They’re all songs about separation and reconciliation and finding a way home. Not necessarily physical, but spiritual and metaphysical homes. So there is a very melancholy tone to it, but that’s okay because melancholy and wistfulness were also a big part of Country Radio too.” One old Country Radio song they revisited on the album was ‘Fleetwood Plain’. “We wanted somehow to trace a line from the present to the past without making it too obvious. I’ve always liked that song… there’s a line in ‘Always to the Light’, ‘I can’t forget how it all began’, and so ‘Fleetwood Plain’ is where it all began for me. That was the first song I ever recorded and it was the first song that I was really proud of, the first song that allowed me to think that I could be a songwriter.”

‘The Boys of Narrabeen’ (featuring the Pigram Brothers on harmonies) is a song rooted in the classic folkie / bush ballad narrative tradition. In it Quill pays tribute to the spirit of courage displayed by his late father and his mates, war veterans who had become heroes of the surfing community around Narrabeen because they had endangered their lives whenever possible to save people’s lives. With its tale of bravery in the face of adversity (a boat crew stays out all night in a cyclone to help rescue people lost at sea) it’s a rousing song that concludes in the first light of dawn with the rescuers riding down the face of a 40 foot wave to safety.

Two songs, ‘Always to the Light’ and ‘Come to Me’ had almost ended up on the soundtrack to Phillip Noyce’s film Rabbit Proof Fence. “They were the first songs we’d recorded. The film’s executive producer David Elfick had asked us to write a couple of songs. He was really enthusiastic. We actually used a line from the script for the title ‘Always to the Light’, which was the instruction to the girls on how to get home, ‘always travel to the light’. We didn’t hear from him for a while, and in the meantime Kerryn had also worked up a whole suite of beautiful instrumental music for the film, of which ‘Jigalong’ we ended up using on the album. Then we heard back that Phillip Noyce had been talking to Peter Gabriel, so he got the gig. But that’s okay, it didn’t matter because we redid them and they turned out perfect for the album. I think ‘Always to the Light’ is the pivotal song on the album.”

The first show on the recent Australian tour was at the Port Fairy Folk Festival, during which they invited Chris Wilson up on stage to play the Chris Blanchflower harmonica parts for ‘Wintersong’. The set for the tour ranged from most of the songs off So Rudely Interrupted to Country Radio classics (the aforementioned ‘Wintersong’, ‘Gypsy Queen’, ‘Fleetwood Plain’), from ‘Almost Freedom’ off The Outlaw’s Reply to covers of John Prine’s ‘Speed of the Sound of Loneliness’ and John Stewart’s ‘July, You’re a Woman’. They were wonderfully relaxed affairs, with Quill’s warm and assured voice always complemented by Tolhurst’s sympathetic and astonishingly beautiful steel guitar, slide dobro and mandolin accompaniment. If you missed the gigs, search out the Quill Tolhurst album So Rudely Interrupted for an exquisite listening experience.

GREG QUILL R.I.P. (18 April 1947-5 May 2013)

By Ian McFarlane © 2013

This article was originally published in RHYTHMS magazine

For the Australian music fanatic, it’s been a somewhat emotional time in recent months with the deaths of Chrissy Amphlett, Yunupingu, Kevin Peek and Greg Quill. I have to say that, on a personal note, the passing of Greg Quill has hit me the hardest. I first got to know Greg in March, 2003 when he toured Australia with Kerryn Tolhurst to promote their Quill Tolhurst album So Rudely Interrupted.

Greg and Kerryn had first performed together in 1972 as part of Country Radio, the highly regarded country-rock band whose hits ‘Gypsy Queen’ and ‘Wintersong’ still sound fresh and appealing today. Greg was one of the first local roots music practitioners who knew that to focus on the ‘song’ could be the key to longevity. He also managed to sustain a parallel career at the time as a features writer with Go-Set magazine.

As we were chatting away and I asked the guys to autograph various album covers – including Fleetwood Plain, Country Radio Live and his solo album The Outlaw’s Reply – I mentioned to Greg that I viewed him as a mentor in some ways for my own career as a music journalist. I presented him with a copy of my Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop (published in 1999) and he said, “wow, of course this is a fantastic book; so you’re Ian McFarlane!” With that he got me to sign my book for him. A couple of days later I spent further quality time interviewing him about his career and the recording of So Rudely Interrupted.

Greg had been living in Toronto, Canada since 1975 and having put his music career on hold in 1982, had established himself as a high profile entertainment columnist and staff member of the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper. In 1999 Kerryn encouraged Greg to get his guitar out again and revive his music career which eventually led to their 2003 album and tour.

In the article I wrote for Rhythms at the time, entitled ‘The Critic and the Producer’, Greg commented: “This whole enterprise has been a giant act of faith on Kerryn’s part, as well as mine. He’s more attuned to the Australian market because he comes back here regularly to produce other people and a couple of years ago he saw there was an opportunity because the roots music infrastructure had grown independently, it didn’t depend entirely on radio airplay or record company promotion. He believed that we still had an audience and that if we came up with a bunch of new songs we’d move to getting a release and organise a tour. Given that I’m a critic and he’s a producer who exercises critical facilities all the time, we had fairly high standards but it came together.”

Of course, as much as things have changed in the intervening ten years, there is still a demand for quality music as witness The Dingoes’ new album and successful tours of 2010. Having revived his music career, Greg went on to perform regularly on Canada’s roots music scene, both as a solo artist and with a loose collective dubbed the Usual Suspects. He also compiled and hosted the weekly roots music specialty program River of Song on Sirius Canada satellite radio. He returned to Australia in 2009 and again during 2011 when he was joined on stage by former Country Radio band mates Orlando Agostino and Chris Blanchflower.

I’d maintained only sporadic correspondence with Greg, but re-established contact via email this past April when there were plans in the wind to reissue the Country Radio back catalogue on CD. As I was quizzing him about his career with Country Radio, he could barely contain his enthusiasm and his lengthy recollections confirmed the importance of that time for him. He has never forgotten his early years touring Australia.

When I asked him how Country Radio had avoided the heavy blues rock sound that many Aussie bands of the day embraced, he confirmed they played what he’d learned by exploring the British and American folk / country universe. “We didn’t sound like anyone else but none of that was planned as such. The blues is a musicians’ art form, a place where you learn guitar licks, tone, timbre and groove. What interested me about the roots music I was listening to back then was the progress of the narrative song... words and melodies, not the mechanics of guitar. I think you can follow only one route or the other, not both.”

It was the last word I heard from Greg Quill, as not two weeks later he passed away suddenly from complications due to pneumonia and a recently diagnosed case of sleep apnoea. The Australian music industry has lost another inspirational musician and dedicated musicologist.

Splendid Isolation - A John Dowler Retrospective

Splendid Isolation - A John Dowler Retrospective

Originally published in Rhythms magazine (Issue #300, July-August 2020) A Sounds of the City Production

By Ian McFarlane © 2020

Photos courtesy of the John Dowler Collection and David Laing Publicity

Singer / songwriter JOHN DOWLER recently released his ninth album, 12 Stitches, the second with his current band, John Dowler’s Vanity Project. We look back at his career with Young Modern, The Zimmermen and beyond.

In 1988, John Dowler was at the metaphorical musical crossroads. He’d been fronting bands since 1974 and his band, The Zimmermen, had just signed a lucrative deal with Mushroom Records. Mushroom was one of the biggest labels in the land, having steered the likes of Skyhooks, Ol’ 55, The Sports, Renee Geyer, Split Enz and Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons to major success during the 1970s/early ’80s, then boasting an enviable roster of Jimmy Barnes, The Angels, Models, Hunters & Collectors, The Church and Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls. Oh yes, and they’d just signed a new pop starlet called Kylie Minogue.

Dowler was unsure of where his band fitted into the Mushroom scheme of things, and was convinced the label had no idea of how to promote his brand of American influenced jangly power pop. The band’s second album, Way Too Casual (April 1989), was a more consistent effort than the debut, Rivers of Corn (February 1987), containing some of his best songs to date: the single ‘What Really Hurts’, ‘Ties That Bind’ and ‘Corsican Dreams’. Somehow it fell through the cracks.

“Lobby Loyde produced the album and I think he got Michael Gudinski to sign us as a favour,” Dowler recalls. “We all thought it was a good idea to be on Mushroom but they didn’t really know what to do with us. They spent 20 grand on a film clip for the single and flew me up to Sydney for a day of press and radio interviews, but no one in the office up there knew who I was. At one stage Marty Willson-Piper from The Church walked in and they were all over him. So they stuck me in this board room with a phone to do these interviews. I felt like a fish out of water. One of the great things that came out of the Mushroom connection was that we got to support Neil Young in Adelaide.”

Dowler’s profile has rarely been commercially upfront (i.e. no Top 40 hits) but he remains a pop classicist in the mould of an Alex Chilton, a Gene Clark or a Brian Wilson. Obviously not as well known internationally – or even in Australia, for that matter – but his attention to song detail and presentation is such that the comparison stands.

Issued on Nic Dalton’s Half a Cow label, his new album with John Dowler’s Vanity Project, 12 Stitches, keeps up the melodic, jingle-jangle power pop quotient of his past but ups the ante with the tougher guitars and thumping back beat of the band: Justin Bowd (guitar), Mark McCartney (guitar), Stephen O’Prey (bass) and Michael Stranges (drums).

Accessible songs with lovelorn lyrics such as ‘Work of Art’ and ‘That’s Not Me’ vie for attention with angrier tunes such as ‘Centipede’ and ‘The Next Voice You Hear’. ‘Free of Wine’ features hilarious, tongue-twisting lines such as “crawling from the wreckage like a rusty terminator with an incandescent fear of flying”. The re-arrangement of the old Split Enz Phil Judd gem ‘Time for a Change’ boasts a jamming coda like Neil Young and Crazy Horse in full Zuma mode.

Before he joined his first band, Spare Change, in 1974, Adelaide-raised Dowler had spread his wings by living in London and Amsterdam. He’d been swept aside by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Donovan, John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, Cream, Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac etc. and was keen to experience things first hand.

“I left school in December, 1968 and that same month I caught a ship to England. I got there in January 1969. All I did was see lots and lots of gigs. I did have to get a job to make a living but I saw Joe Cocker and the original Grease Band, Status Quo when they were still a psychedelic band, Dave Edmunds’ band Love Sculpture, Bakerloo Blues Line. I saw The Band, Crosby Stills Nash & Young and The Byrds, they all played at the Royal Albert Hall. I saw Lou Reed too, pre his Transformer days. I liked his first solo album and I was a huge Velvet Underground fan as well. I saw Spirit as a three piece, they were amazing. Randy California had so many effects on his guitar it was like a symphonic sound, and he was a really good singer as well.”

Dowler met fellow Adelaide travellers Graeme Perry and Chris Langman and having moved to Amsterdam they began laying plans to form a band. Back in Australia in 1973, Dowler was listening to Roxy Music, Big Star and the Flamin’ Groovies. With Perry (drums) and Langman (guitar) they formed Spare Change in 1974, having added Tony Murray (bass) and Robert Kretschmer (guitar).

“We were doing songs by the MC5 (‘High School’, ‘Shakin’ Street’), the Flamin’ Groovies (‘Slow Death’) and Dylan. We did quite a few songs of his with a reggae feel ’cause some of the guys were really obsessed with Bob Marley as well. John Cale’s ‘Sky Patrol’. We did songs by Lou Reed, ‘Sweet Jane’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Waiting for the Man’, ‘Vicious’, all that. I guess we were contemporaries of Radio Birdman but we had a much wimpier sound. They were heavy, we were much more melodic and probably a lot more fiddly in our arrangements with too many time changes. By the time we moved over to Melbourne we’d started writing our own songs. I got to contribute a few lyrics but the songs were mostly written by Tony, Chris and Robert.

“We fitted right into the Melbourne scene, we got on really well with all the other bands. People liked the fact that we dressed really well. Other bands generally speaking weren’t sartorially... what can I say, they tended not to dress up, whereas we’d dress up really well. We had blazers and caps, we had back projections on stage and all sorts of stuff. Our music wasn’t really that great frankly. I think The Bleeding Hearts blew us off stage, they were an amazing live band. The Millionaires were pretty good too, they’d dress up and had good songs. The Sports were fabulous, an amazing band. The scene was fantastic back then, there were gigs every night of the week, huge crowds everywhere you’d play.”

Spare Change signed to Champagne Records, issuing the single ‘The Big Beat’ in November 1976. They recorded an album at Armstrongs, produced by Aztecs’ drummer Gil Matthews, but Dowler left and returned to Adelaide. The album was shelved (until 1979) while the other guys continued on as Parachute with Rick Grossman (bass; ex-Bleeding Hearts). Before he left Melbourne, however, Dowler met another aspiring song writer, Paul Kelly. Kelly’s career is a whole book in itself, so while he went on to play with the likes of High Rise Bombers, The Dots, The Coloured Girls / The Messengers and enjoy a long running solo career, the connection remained via the likes of Langman (who played in The Dots), Steve Connolly and Michael Barclay.

“With Spare Change, we were all living in a share house on Hoddle Street and a mutual friend of ours, Phil White, had given Paul our address. He pulled up one day having arrived from Adelaide. He played us a few songs and he sounded very much like Dylan. He slept on the floor in my room for a few weeks. He and Chris wrote ‘Fool’s Road’; it didn’t have enough verses so I wrote one more and got a co-credit. Likewise with ‘The Ballad of Good and Evil’ which Chris and I recorded later with The Glory Boys. Yeah, Paul had some great songs even then. We could tell that he was going to be great. I think he could tell too, so it was cool to have known him so early.”

Within a matter of months of his return to Adelaide in 1977, Dowler had his new band Young Modern on the road. Having derived the name from Young Modern, “Adelaide’s magazine for the younger set” (News-Review Publications, 1962-65), Dowler’s focus was strictly on a sixties sound. He imbued Young Modern’s music with a sprightly, tuneful and accessible pop sheen, in contrast to the harder edged kick of the emergent punk movement. The band members – Dowler, Vic Yates (guitar), Michael Jones (guitar), Andrew Richards (bass) and Mark Kohler (drums) – decked themselves out in sharp suits, white shirts and black ties. And Dowler was the first singer in Australia to adopt the blonde Brian Jones / Keith Relf haircut as a way of life!

“I loved that ’60s sound of ‘Shake Some Action’ by the Flamin’ Groovies so I was keen to do that melodic, Beatlesque type guitar sound. I met these young guys in a school band called Suggestion. They were playing things like Deep Purple, Cream, a pretty heavy sound. I sang a couple of songs with them. I was experienced in these things, I was 25 at that stage and they were all like 18 and just wanting to have a good time. I said, ‘look we can write our own songs, forget about this Deep Purple shit, we’re going to play lighter guitar sounds, be more melodic’.

“They sort of went along with it at first but one of the guitarists said ‘nah, I’m not gonna do that’. Then after about two weeks when everyone else had said yes he came back to the band. I didn’t have many tunes, the guitarist and bass player were the two guys who wrote most of the music. I wrote the words to the music and came up with the melodies sometimes, depending on what they had. It was just one of those really fortuitous things where everything clicked into place and within three months we had seven, eight songs.”

Young Modern played its first show on 26 November 1977, supporting Sydney legends Radio Birdman at Adelaide’s Unley Town Hall. There was the infamous gig review in Adelaide punk ’zine Street Fever which ran, “the support band, the Young Moderns, played to an audience of a single drunk swaying on the floor in time with the music (?). I didn’t like them either”.

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t expect Birdman fans to like us, you know,” is Dowler’s pithy comment now.

The band forged on, gradually becoming an Adelaide institution via their long-running residency at the Tivoli Hotel, a beautiful old pub on Pirie Street.

“We played there every Saturday night. We wouldn’t come on ’til one o’clock in the morning and we’d play two sets and we wouldn’t finish till 3.30. We started getting a huge following, big crowds, a really nice vibe. People would get pissed but there was never any trouble. We built up a huge following and then Dirty Pool in Sydney got interested in us because of the vibe the band had at the time.”

The Dirty Pool Agency also booked Cold Chisel, The Angels and Flowers. Making the move to Sydney was something of a wrench for the young musicians but they were willing to give it a go. Along the way they issued the classic power pop single ‘She’s Got the Money’ (produced by The Sports’ Stephen Cummings) and recorded a batch of demos that eventually appeared as the album Play Faster (December 1979). ‘She’s Got the Money’ features one of the great opening couplets in “She’s a high class girl from a broken home / She don’t spend too much time on her own”.

“We got gigs all the time, we’d be playing seven nights a week. We had our own lighting system, our own PA and truck, it was an expensive operation. We’d be supporting The Angels and they’d be raking in $20,000 a night. We’d get paid $100, and have to lug the gear in and out afterwards. Then we’d go down to Melbourne and people loved us. We played the Crystal Ballroom and Laurie Richards asked us to come back. He paid us $1,100 which was amazing, given that we normally got paid a hundred. We drove down from Sydney, headlined that Saturday night and it was absolutely packed, then drove back the next day.”

Playing regularly sharpened up the band’s stage craft and they were able to match it with all the other big, as well as up and coming, acts of the day such as Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, Models, Eric Gradman Man & Machine etc. In fact, I saw them on a bill featuring the above three bands at RMIT’s Storey Hall (March 1979); it was a fabulous gig. They never got the chance to record many of their stage favourites, such as ‘New Wave’ and ‘Do You Care’.

Despite boundless promise and a swag of snappy, finely crafted pop songs on which to call, Young Modern failed to make an impact on a Sydney scene still besotted by the spectre of Radio Birdman and in which Cold Chisel, The Angels and The Radiators currently held court. The band broke up following a gig in July 1979.

“We’d been working so much we were pretty burnt out by then. I always seemed to have a bad throat and a bad cold. Michael had left and we got Mark Carroll in. He was a really good guitarist, probably the best musician in the band but it didn’t quite gel like we did with the old line-up. After six months he said, ‘no I’ve had enough, I’m going’. When he left I couldn’t face the idea of auditioning other people. I’d been newly married when we left for Sydney, we were living in abject poverty, it was a miserable existence. I thought ‘ah fuck it, time to move on’. I never liked Sydney, still don’t like it much really, it was a nice place to visit. So I moved to Melbourne.”

His next venture, The Glory Boys, was basically a Spare Change reunion with Langman, Kretschmer and Perry plus a young Nick Seymour on bass. Seymour left and the band was renamed Talk Show but soon fizzled out. Seymour went on to join Crowded House while Kretschmer became an integral part of Icehouse circa the massive selling Man of Colours album.

“I’d started writing my own songs, words and music, by then. I formed Everybody’s So Glad, wrote a lot of songs, rehearsed a lot, played about half a dozen gigs. Then I’d started recording a solo album with producer Martin Armiger. It looked likely at that stage it would come out and I thought I should get a band together and actually try and record stuff and that became The Zimmermen.”

The solo album languished unreleased but The Zimmermen (a pun on Bob Dylan’s real name) became a shining power pop beacon on a Melbourne scene dominated by The Birthday Party, Hunters & Collectors, Corpse Grinders and all manner of gothic, shockabilly and hard funk bands. There were regular line-up changes but the 1984 version of the band – Dowler, Michael Holmes (guitar; ex-Negatives, Man & Machine, Paul Kelly and the Dots, Fatal Attraction), Steve Connolly (guitar; ex-Cuban Heels), Peter Steele (bass; ex-Fatal Attraction) and Michael Barclay (drums; ex-Little Murders, Runners) – was a crack outfit playing a mix of Dowler and Connolly songs. An archival live album available on iTunes, Rivers of Q’uorn Live in the Suburbs 1984, displays their ability to deliver a vibrant mix of power pop and tough, country influenced rock. (The gig had been recorded in Quorn, a South Australian township just outside of Port Augusta, hence the pun in the title.)

At the end of 1984 Connolly and Barclay left to join the Paul Kelly Band. “Yeah, well, Paul poached them basically,” reveals Dowler. “Things were going well, we’d written new songs and had started recording an album. Paul talked them into going to Sydney with him and they became The Coloured Girls. So ‘Don’t Go to Sydney’ sort of came out of that. The song’s not about them, but the title came out of all that. It just gave me a chance to vent about Sydney.”

Peter Tulloch (ex-Wrecked Jets) came in as Connolly’s replacement and the band finished recording the album, Rivers of Corn, eventually issued on Au Go Go in February 1987. The single ‘Don’t Go to Sydney’ (December 1985) was an instant classic, an exceptional slice of harmony-drenched guitar pop with vitriolic lyrics (“Don’t go to Sydney baby / it’s a city without a heart”). It became one of the most successful independent singles of 1986; even Sydneysiders loved it!

Reviews were upbeat:
“Protest song of the year!... this is a sublime pop song” (Richard Guilliat, The Age); “The Zimmermen’s ‘Don’t Go to Sydney’ is a lot more than just this summer’s best single” (David Laing, B-Side); “Well written song with all the right ingredients... they also earn a nomination for the best group name for 1986” (Al Webb, Juke).

The album included more of their stage favourites, such as Dowler’s ‘I Like to Fight With My Wife’, ‘Ordinary Man’ and ‘I Shall Return’ and Tulloch’s ‘Happy Heart’. The band presented quite a stoic image on stage, content to let the music do the talking. Only Holmes played up his part, with leather gear, low-slung guitar and throwing all sorts of shapes and moves. The Keith Richards of the band, maybe?

“More like the Ariel Bender of the band!” Dowler cracks. “He was great, right into all that. He was the only person I’ve played with who wore leather trousers. And that was his regular street gear.”

I first interviewed Dowler around the release of Rivers of Corn. We got into a rave about the importance of the ‘song’. As we finished up, he pressed a cassette into my hand containing Big Star’s #1 Record and Radio City. He said “You need to listen to this”. He was furthering my musical education. When I reminded him of this event, he said “Yes, I was known for doing that kind of thing”.

Dowler pulled the plug on The Zimmermen in early 1990. There were a number of mitigating factors, one being, says Dowler, that he was sick and tired of the guitarists always playing so loud! He assembled a collection of recordings, going back to his aborted solo album plus a cover of Alex Chilton’s ‘Holocaust’ recorded with The Sunset Strip, which he put out as the album Low Society (1993). He had a band called O’Hara’s Playboys for a while, then there was a brief Glory Boys reunion around 2003. In 2006 Aztec Records released Young Modern’s Play Faster 25th Anniversary Edition, combined with a couple of reunions which resulted in the studio album How Insensitive (on Mick Thomas’ Croxton label, 2006) and the live album Live at the Grace Emily 22.12.2010 (on Grown Up Wrong!, 2011). English writer Kris Needs wrote in Shindig magazine, “Captured live last year but sounding like it could have been recorded back in their day, such is the energy and passion... of course, Young Modern most recall the Flamin’ Groovies which can never be a bad thing”.

The singer linked up with guitarist Mark McCartney and together they assembled the Vanity Project in 2015. Debut album Splendid Isolation came out in September 2017. Featuring a mix of new tunes from Dowler (‘Off the Coast of Me’) and guitarist Justin Bowd (‘The Untouchable’), plus covers of Lowell George’s ‘I’m the One’ and Terence Boylan’s ‘Don’t Blame it on My Wife’, the album also presented three leftover Zimmermen compositions, Tulloch’s ‘Sentimental’ and the Dowler / Holmes co-writes ‘Dark is the Night’ and ‘Something Good’ which originally had been lined up for a prospective third album.

In my review at thirdstonepress.com.au (Archives) I described Splendid Isolation as “a thing of genuine beauty. With his plaintive, sorrow-laden voice gliding effortlessly over an enticing run of songs, Dowler has crafted an album brimming with jangle pop chime, folk rock melodies and rawer power pop moves”.

John Dowler’s Vanity Project keeps him busy for now. Songs still drive his desires. He’s always believed in the power of the song. As he sings in ‘Ties That Bind’, “This is the recipe we choose in the fullness of time / An overpowering sense of trust in the ties that bind”.

COL NOLAN & THE SOUL SYNDICATE - Whatever It's Worth

COL NOLAN & THE SOUL SYNDICATE Whatever It’s Worth

By Ian McFarlane © 2020

“Having long contributed to the evolution of contemporary Australian Soul, Funk and Jazz, Lance Ferguson (The Bamboos, Lanu, Menagerie ex Cookin’ On 3 Burners), now aims to revive its history with a new reissue label, Pacific Theatre Encore. The first release on the label is undoubtedly one of Australia’s rarest and funkiest jazz albums.” (pacifictheatrerecords.bandcamp.com/album/whatever-its-worth)

COL NOLAN & THE SOUL SYNDICATE – Whatever It’s Worth (CBS SBP 233621) 1968

Side 1
1. Shades Of McSoul
2. Rivera Mountain
3. Angel Of The Morning
4. Ode To Billy Joe
5. Got My Mojo Working
Side 2
1. Sunny
2. Green, Green Grass Of Home
3. Blues For Madeleine
4. Whatever It’s Worth
5. By The Time I Get To Phoenix (vocal)

COL NOLAN & THE SOUL SYNDICATE – Whatever It’s Worth (Pacific Theatre Encore PTE002LP/2CD) 2019

I was unaware of this rare album until very recently, not being a Soul Jazz fanatic or Funk DJ (although I love both those genres). So my musical education continues with this lil’ beauty.

Renowned jazz keyboardist Col Nolan was often billed as “Australia’s King of the Hammond Organ”. Taking inspiration from the likes of US Hammond giants Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff and English jazz / R&B kingpin Georgie Fame, Nolan & the Soul Syndicate were resident band at the legendary Whisky A Go Go club in Sydney’s Kings Cross.

The history of the Whisky is a whole other story, suffice to say that it was not only the Swinging Sixties but also the height of the Vietnam War, so Sydney was R&R central for American servicemen. They flocked to the Whisky for entertainment. The combo developed a repertoire to suit their audience best, so this ultra-rare, mostly instrumental album includes swinging covers of Chip Taylor’s ‘Angel Of The Morning’, Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Ode To Billy Joe’, Red Foster’s ‘Got My Mojo Working’, Bobby Hebb’s ‘Sunny’, Curly Putman’s ‘Green, Green Grass Of Home’ and Jim Webb’s ‘By The Time I Get To Phoenix’.

All tried and trusted material but the Soul Syndicate stamp them with their own mark. Add to that a brace of band written tracks, ‘Shades Of McSoul’, ‘Rivera Mountain’, ‘Blues For Madeleine’, ‘Whatever It’s Worth’, and it combines to make Whatever It’s Worth the Holy Grail of Aussie Soul Jazz. The funk and the groove throughout are palpable, there are break-beats to die for, even touches of psychedelia. The other players were John Sangster (drums, percussion), Jimmy Doyle (guitar), Col Loughnan (sax, flute) and John Allen (bass). Loughnan also contributes vocals to one track, ‘By The Time I Get To Phoenix’.

When the Soul Syndicate’s Whisky residency finished, the newly installed resident band was Barrie McAskill and Levi Smith’s Clefs. A later version of The Col Nolan Soul Syndicate – Nolan, Johnny Nicol (guitar), Roger Sellers (drums) and Laurie Lewis (saxophone) – issued Live At Jason’s in 1973. Sangster followed his own career; his Lord Of The Rings series is stupendous. Doyle and Loughnan went on to guide jazz fusion heroes Ayers Rock in the ’70s.

For swinging, rare-groove history this is the one.

Postscript – In an odd twist to the tale of the album’s original release, the parent record company (CBS) issued the Eddie Boyd album 7936 South Rhodes (on Epic in the US, Blue Horizon in the UK) with exactly the same cover photo, at the same time!

COLOURED BALLS – Rock Your Arse Off (Live)

COLOURED BALLS – Rock Your Arse Off!
Live at Festival Hall 10 Nov. 72

Side 1
1. God
Side 2
1. Johnny B. Goode
2. Liberate Rock

Out now on San Francisco-based Just Add Water Records (LP) Coloured Balls - Rock Your Arse Off! Live at Festival Hall 10 Nov. 72 (JAW-045).

“Stunning quality live recording documenting COLOURED BALLS tearing the roof off Melbourne's venerable Festival Hall - available on vinyl for the first time! This gig was recorded by Armstrong's Studio and engineered by John Sayers, who also did their "Ball Power" LP. This album has the entire 3-song, 30 minute set they played that night, including the only known recording of "GOD." with vocals!!!”

(It seemed a great idea to use a previously proposed but never utilised album title.)

Thanks to Jason Duncan at Just Add Water

https://justaddwaterrecords.bigcartel.com/products

And Aztec Records

Here are my liner notes for this album of live goodies!

Rock Your Arse Off!

By Ian McFarlane © 2020

Guitarist Lobby Loyde (born John Baslington Lyde in 1941) formed Coloured Balls in March 1972. The redoubtable Loyde (who died in 2007) was already a 12-year veteran of the Australian music scene, having worked his way through rock ’n’ roll bands The Devil’s Disciples and The Dominoes, Shadows-styled instrumental combo The Stilettos, pioneering R&B legends The Purple Hearts, psychedelic heroes The Wild Cherries and onto the bluesy Aztecs (with Billy Thorpe). He remains one of the true legends of Australian rock ’n’ roll and has often been cited as the “godfather of Australian heavy rock”.

The full story of the Balls’ career has been told elsewhere, so it’s not my purpose here to restate the legend. The band lasted a mere three years but established an identity as a phenomenal live experience. Rock Your Arse Off! documents the band’s blazing performance from Melbourne’s Festival Hall on 10 November 1972. In some ways it’s difficult to impart just how influential the band really was, suffice to say that this recording goes a long way in proving their importance in the pantheon of tough Aussie rock.

The Balls were never bound by genre restrictions. Although a hard-hitting blues rock band with progressive overtones in the live situation, when they hit the recording studio they were able to traverse expansive, guitar heavy psych, proto-punk rave-ups and rocked up vintage rock ’n’ roll on to stomping glam rock and chiming guitar pop with ease.

They also tapped into the same kind of vital and direct energy that fired the punk onslaught four years later. Less a case of being ahead of their time, they were merely a symptom of it. Like Radio Birdman and The Saints soon after, the Balls remained at odds with the musical establishment yet in a perfect world they would be recognised as one of Australia’s supreme bands.

When overseas writers try to explain the importance of an Australian band such as AC/DC, for example, there’s often been a tendency to open with a statement along the lines of “Before AC/DC emerged to ignite the Aussie rock scene there was nothing happening Down Under”. It’s a writer’s conceit employed to home in on the exception that proves the rule, without checking the facts, and it’s simply a myth. We all know how important AC/DC is in the worldwide history of rock, so there’s no need to try and put their emergence in a false context.

What you really need to know is that the Australian underground rock scene of the 1970s was an incredibly vibrant, fertile and varied milieu. Coloured Balls were merely one of hundreds of bands that played regularly to appreciative crowds across the land. Bands could play seven nights a week, often fitting in three gigs in three different locations on a Friday or Saturday. All of which is why local bands were so tight and well drilled. Coloured Balls were no exception but by their intrinsic nature they delivered music that has endured, sounding fresh and vital to this day.

Initially billed as Lobby Loyde & the Coloured Balls, the band comprised Loyde (guitar, vocals), Andrew Fordham (guitar, vocals), Janis ‘John’ Miglans (bass, vocals) and Trevor Young (drums, vocals) who had replaced ‘Big’ Jeff Lowe. They spent 1972 honing their craft, playing all the usual Melbourne haunts of the day from Sebastians and the Roundhouse to the Q Club and Garrison, as well as touring Sydney twice. Over the years they went on to share club, pub, concert and outdoor stages across the land with all the other big name bands, including Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Fraternity, Carson, La De Das, Chain, Company Caine, Pirana, Healing Force, Bakery, Band of Light, Buster Brown, AC/DC and Skyhooks.

The Balls’ first major appearance took place at the Mulwala ‘Rock Isle’ Festival, held over the Easter weekend, 1-3 April. Originally billed as a Wild Cherries appearance, it was the ideal opportunity for Loyde to launch his new band. While not held in such high esteem as the Sunbury festivals, Mulwala was a successful event attended by up to 30,000 rock fans.

A couple of other high profile Balls gigs during the year included support slots to the Aztecs at Melbourne’s Festival Hall for the Long Live Rock ’n’ Roll concert (13 April), alongside Fraternity, Blackfeather, Carson, Ticket and compere Gerry Humphrys, and their Farewell concert in November (just prior to the Aztecs leaving for the UK), alongside Carson, Madder Lake and Friends.

Armstrong Studios, on behalf of radio station 3XY, recorded the entire Aztecs Farewell Festival Hall concert for live-to-air broadcast. Radio DJ Trevor Smith was the MC for the night (in fact he MCed every 3XY concert of the day). Remarkably the tapes were preserved, unheard for over 45 years. Renowned audio engineer, and head of reissues specialist label Aztec Records, Gil Matthews has transferred and remastered the material and it sounds so good sonically it’s as if you’re right there on the night it was recorded. This is the first time the Ball’s half hour, three song set has been issued on vinyl.

The tracks represent a significant historical statement and document a band at the peak of its live powers. You get two sides of the Balls: their progressive tendencies mixed with their rock ’n’ roll roots, the crushing guitar riffs coming at you like a relentless wrecking ball, the rhythm section like a runaway locomotive, the whole thing a potent mass of energy. It’s raw, it’s primal, it’s unhinged (like all good rock ’n’ roll should be).

Loyde introduces the first song as “the first movement of an electronic symphony, this is called the first movement of ‘God’. This may not be your thing but you can’t win ’em all”. The 14 minute version of ‘God’ is comparable to the legendary Sunbury 1973 Summer Jam version but with an additional mid-section during which Loyde barks out a set of declamatory lyrics. It’s difficult to determine what he’s actually saying and it sounds ad-hoc, as if he’s making them up in the heat of the moment.

‘Johnny B. Goode’ and ‘Liberate Rock’ maintain the fever pitch and with so much energy expended something had to give – the concert ends with amps blown and minds well and truly fried. They may be standard 12-bar rockers but all up it’s a riveting and astonishing performance with loud guitars being the order of the day. Loyde introduces ‘Liberate Rock’ by saying they have to curtail their set due to Festival Hall time restrictions so it seems they went on after the Aztecs to bring the concert to a close.

Coloured Balls continued to play live on a regular basis, issuing four albums (one posthumously) and seven singles along the way. Eventually they fell prey to the vagaries of the corporate rock machine, disbanding in mid-1975. They remain a much respected and loved band to this day.

COLOURED BALLS - Liberate Rock Singles and More 1972-1975

COLOURED BALLS Liberate Rock Singles and More 1972-1975

Side 1
1. Liberate Rock (Single A-side 1972)
2. Slowest Guitar On Earth (Single B-side 1972)
3. Mr. Mean Mouth (Single A-side 1973)
4. Love Me Girl (Single B-side 1973)
5. Mess Of The Blues (Single A-side 1973)
6. Devil’s Disciple (Single B-side 1973)
Side 2: Live at Sunbury ’73
1. God
2. Johnny B. Goode
Side 3
1. Flash (Single A-side 1973)
2. Dave The Rave (Single B-side 1973)
3. Love You Babe (Single A-side 1974)
4. Shake Me Babe (Single B-side 1974)
5. Bama Lama Baby (Single A-side 1974)
Side 4
1. Be Your Lover (Single A-side 1974)
2. Flying (Previously unreleased on LP, cancelled single A-side 1975)
3. Around And Around (Previously unreleased on LP, cancelled single B-side 1975)

Out now on San Francisco-based Just Add Water Records (Double LP) Coloured Balls - Liberate Rock Singles and More 1972-195 (JAW-044).

“COLOURED BALLS by the barrel-full, a double album with 16 tracks clocking in at 77 minutes. This collects all six of their singles released on the Havoc and EMI labels between '72 and '74, two live tracks recorded at their legendary Sunbury '73 festival appearance, and a canceled single from their final recording session in early '75, shortly before the group split.”

Thanks to Jason Duncan at Just Add Water

https://justaddwaterrecords.bigcartel.com/products

And Aztec Records

Here are my liner notes for this double album treasure chest of goodies!

LIBERATE ROCK!

By Ian McFarlane © 2020

Guitarist Lobby Loyde (born John Baslington Lyde in 1941) formed Coloured Balls in March 1972. The redoubtable Loyde (who died in 2007) was already a 12-year veteran of the Australian music scene, having worked his way through rock ’n’ roll bands The Devil’s Disciples and The Dominoes, Shadows-styled instrumental combo The Stilettos, pioneering R&B legends The Purple Hearts, psychedelic heroes The Wild Cherries and onto the bluesy Aztecs (with Billy Thorpe). He remains one of the true legends of Australian rock ’n’ roll and has often been cited as the “godfather of Australian heavy rock”.

The full story of the Balls’ career has been told elsewhere, so it’s not my purpose here to restate the legend. The band lasted a mere three years but created an enduring legacy of four albums and seven singles. As this compilation is entitled Liberate Rock: Singles and More 1972-1975, I’ll focus on those seven singles and some live material for good measure.

The Balls were essentially an album oriented band but because the Australian music industry was driven by commercial considerations, they were also obliged to produce singles. The singles, specifically the A-sides, were lively and accessible but the band was never bound by genre restrictions. Although a hard-hitting blues rock band with progressive overtones in the live situation, they were able to traverse expansive, guitar heavy psych, proto-punk rave-ups and rocked up vintage rock ’n’ roll on to stomping glam rock and chiming guitar pop with ease. All of which has kept their music sounding fresh and vital to this day.

They also tapped into the same kind of vital and direct energy that fired the punk onslaught four years later. Less a case of being ahead of their time, they were merely a symptom of it. Like Radio Birdman and The Saints soon after, the Balls remained at odds with the musical establishment yet in a perfect world they would be recognised as one of Australia’s supreme bands.

Originally billed as Lobby Loyde & the Coloured Balls, they were most commonly known as Coloured Balls. In 1974 Loyde decided to lop the letter ‘u’ out of the name, perhaps as some kind of nod to American spelling conventions or just another of his whims. So, for our purposes the names Lobby Loyde & the Coloured Balls, Coloured Balls and Colored Balls are interchangeable and refer to the same entity.

LOBBY LOYDE & THE COLOURED BALLS

Credited to Lobby Loyde & The Coloured Balls, ‘Liberate Rock’ / ‘Slowest Guitar On Earth’ came out on the Havoc label (H.1015) in August 1972. At the time of the recording session in January, Loyde’s band (the three-piece, second version of) The Wild Cherries was in the process of breaking up but he was keen to lay down new material. Also, as he had yet to formulate the Coloured Balls who better to call on than his old muckers The Aztecs – Billy Thorpe (guitar), Paul ‘Sheepdog’ Wheeler (bass), Warren Morgan (piano) and Gil ‘Rats’ Matthews (drums).

Recorded during a break in the same session that produced The Aztecs’ hit single ‘Most People I Know Think That I’m Crazy’, ‘Liberate Rock’ became something of a mission statement for the veteran guitar master. “Liberate rock and let it be / Liberate rock and set it free” was a clarion call if ever there was one. The Aztecs’ sound is all over this laconic 12-bar rocker but Loyde leads the charge with his blazing guitar tone and relaxed vocal delivery... “Holy smoke!” he quips at the end, as if to say “it’s all just a bit of a lark, isn’t it”. The flip side is a quick fire studio jam with Loyde and Thorpe trading lead guitar licks.

As ‘Liberate Rock’ hit the charts (#20 in both hometown Melbourne and Sydney), the Coloured Balls line-up of Loyde, Andrew Fordham (guitar, vocals), Janis ‘John’ Miglans (bass, vocals) and Trevor Young (drums, having replaced original drummer ‘Big’ Jeff Lowe) was in Armstrong studios cutting an album with engineer John Sayers. At the end of 1972 the band’s record label manager, Rod De Gruchy, announced the album was due for release on Havoc as Rock Your Arse Off.

Havoc issued ‘Mr. Mean Mouth’ / ‘Love Me Girl’ (H.1018) as the lead-off single in March 1973. The A-side is a hard rocking country hoedown, like Hank Williams welded to gutsy rock ’n’ roll riffs and all-in-the-gang vocals. Lyrically it’s a hoot, Loyde playing around with a twisted character study. Running to 3:52 it’s an edit of the full album cut of 5:43, ‘Mean Mouth Lives’. The single cut features a different vocal take from the LP version and a dry mix. Changes were made and phasing added when Graham Owen did a remix in 1975 for the LP release

Fordham takes lead vocals on ‘Love Me Girl’, a genuine slice of chiming guitar pop with sweet harmonies and layered guitar riffs. It’s far removed from the Balls’ usual rabble rousing hard rock sound but a great example of their sheer diversity. As with ‘Mr. Mean Mouth’, ‘Love Me Girl’ differs from the LP version, ‘Love Me Girl Because’, via a different vocal take and a dry mix.

Aside from their studio sessions, Coloured Balls were a phenomenal live band. They played regularly to appreciative crowds, the Australian underground rock scene of the day being an incredibly vibrant, fertile and varied milieu. The Balls shared club, pub, concert and outdoor stages across the land with all the other big name bands, including Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Fraternity, Carson, La De Das, Chain, Company Caine, Tamam Shud, Healing Force, Bakery, Band of Light etc. Swiftly reaching the peak of their live powers, the band’s music was raw, primal and unhinged – like all good rock ’n’ roll should be – with the whole presentation a potent mass of energy.

By the beginning of 1973, the band’s standing was such that they’d put in an astonishing performance at the second annual Sunbury Festival, held over the Australia Day weekend in late January. It was here that they also took part in a jam session which yielded the live album Summer Jam, released in November 1973. Recorded at 3am on a balmy, summer’s night one side of the album featured Loyde’s searing cosmic heavy metal epic ‘God’, their 16-minute, faster-louder showpiece which surely stands as one of the greatest performances ever recorded by an Australian band of the era.

There’s not much of a ‘song’ here, simply an ascending guitar progression that continues to evolve and peak with blinding intensity. At about the 12-minute mark, the towering riffs and pulverizing drums give over to five minutes of scorching guitar feedback and sonic white noise so concentrated it’s a wonder that audience members hadn’t collapsed with ears bleeding profusely. Sonic Youth and Neil Young: eat your hearts out! The Balls were entirely in their element in the live situation and this track bears testimony to their greatness.

“Man, that was awesome stuff,” Loyde recalled with much enthusiasm. “I called it ‘God’ – Guitar Over Dose – because that to me was the ultimate send-up of the guitar hero. It was based on a piece of Beethoven classical music using minor chords against one note, using the rising fifths against the E note. It’s a sequence of suspensions, you’re ascending and descending against open strings in a cyclical way. You can’t really hear the finger picking but it works because it’s based on the circular fifths that keep peaking. That feedback at the end was five minutes of hard work! It was singing like bloody hell.

“When I played that with the Balls we’d get on top of that fantastic, building, climactic churning, continually adding dynamics. With everybody playing well and firing, that piece of music came to life and it could turn into a 20 minute jam. If we’re merely just going through the motions, it was the most tedious piece of music to play because nobody’s on the case and it would last for a couple of minutes. I could only play ‘God’ properly with Trevor, Janis and Andy and then Bobsie. Those guys were intense.”

The buzz-saw rendition of Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’ also comes from their Sunbury ’73 performance. The musicians were all fans of vintage rock ’n’ roll, having grown up on Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Bo Diddley etc. As well as ‘Johnny B. Goode’, they covered the likes of ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’’, ‘(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care’ and ‘So Glad You’re Mine’. With their simple 12-bar structure they could just rip into them and drive them hard.

COLOURED BALLS

In April 1973, De Gruchy resigned from Havoc to set up his own management company. He took the Balls with him and Havoc subsequently folded. In July, he negotiated a new recording deal for the Balls with EMI Records. EMI passed on releasing Rock Your Arse Off – deeming it “uncommercial garbage” in Loyde’s words – and sent the band into the studio to record a single. The album was shelved until 1976 when it was released as The First Supper Last, or Scenes We Didn’t Get to See on Rainbird Records.

With guitarist Ian ‘Bobsie’ Millar having replaced Fordham in March, the Balls were prepared to go the commercial route, for now, in order to get their name in the charts. De Gruchy even decked them out in matching denim and satin space suits with a flash across the front, in order the push the commercial angle. In the long run, however, the Balls deemed such trappings as unnecessary to their function as an energetic rock band.

They picked the Pomus/Schuman song ‘Mess Of The Blues’ as the A-side (EMI-10297). Originally made famous by Elvis Presley, as ‘A Mess Of Blues’, the Balls’ snappy and accessible rendition gets the full treatment with rocking guitar, pumping piano and lots of “ooo-doo-wah” female backing vocals. Trevor Young takes lead vocals this time and does a creditable job. The single was a hometown hit at #7 and #39 nationally in August.

For the B-side, ‘Devil’s Disciple’, the Balls were able to kick around the antithesis of commercial intent, unleashing a raucous mix of savage, hard rocking riffs and aggressive bravado far more indicative of their potent, hard-edged style. It’s got an arrogant disposition with two fingers raised to the establishment, the Balls at their most primal.

“I loved ‘Devil’s Disciple’,” enthused Loyde. “That song was a send-up of all the negative media attention we started getting. ‘They call me the devil’s disciple / They say I’ve got the occult ways… All the crap you’re saying is just / The mud from the flood of the life I’ve lived and left behind’. Those lyrics were very sarcastic. It was a great song. I didn’t like the recorded version so much because live it was a killer. We used to play it a lot faster and with a lot more energy on stage.”

Millar says, “I guess some of those more commercial things where to satisfy the record company, they wanted us to do more pop songs. Things like ‘Mess of the Blues’ and ‘Love You Babe’, audiences loved them. Then, to please ourselves, on the B-sides of the singles we’d have these heavy songs like ‘Shake Me Babe’ and ‘Devil’s Disciple’, that was the whole juxtaposition of what we did.”

With the Balls having completed new album Ball Power, EMI released ‘Flash’ / ‘Dave The Rave’ (EMI-10344) as the lead-off single in November. Sung by Miglans, ‘Flash’ combined a commercial touch with a radical rock ’n’ roll edge. Essentially built up from a studio jam ‘Flash’ was a memorable song, all slashing guitar chords and layered vocal hooks sort of like a supercharged Rolling Stones on speed. The band rocks hard and steady, very much in the manner of the MC5 and The Pink Fairies.

“Sometimes you’d get those magic moments in the studio with a really good song and ‘Flash’ was one of those,” says Millar. “It was amazing how it came together. Lob was the main creative person behind the songs but the whole thing would come together with the band’s input. John the bass player sang that. Lyrically, I think it was about a flash from a girl. So I guess it’s a love song!”

‘Dave The Rave’ is another of Loyde’s jocular character songs, about a bunch of guys hitting the highway in a “high class, fancy Ford” with a stash of home grown goodies. Once again, the all-in-the-gang vocals push the chorus to greater heights. “Dave the Rave and Holy Joe spread the word wherever they go / Dave the Rave and Holy Joe the word they spread is all they know / You’re gonna find they’re in your mind / Talking, talking, talking to your mind”.

‘Flash’ failed to chart, however, so the EMI suits insisted that the guys get back into the studio and come up with a “hit single”. ‘Love You Babe’ / ‘Shake Me Babe’ (EMI-10440) hit the shops in March 1974. Loyde and Millar wrote ‘Love You Babe’ to order so it emerged as a quite respectable slice of stomping glam-infused pop, reaching #14 in Melbourne and #38 nationally. It was enough to make the Coloured Balls the bona fide pop stars EMI had always wanted them to be.

True to form, ‘Shake Me Babe’ pushes the Balls’ subversive tendencies, being another aggressive hard rocking tune fuelled by hellish riffs and Loyde’s torturous vocals. Maybe in these times of ‘political correctness’ the lyrics are a step too far – “Shake for me babe, rocking is my disease / I’ll take you up I’ll take you down / Shake me babe I love you down on your knees” – but in the day it seemed par for the course.

COLORED BALLS

The non-album single ‘Bama Lama Baby’ / ‘Be Your Lover’ (EMI-10570) came out in September 1974. It was something of a stop gap measure before EMI released the Balls’ second album Heavy Metal Kid. Written by the Loyde/Millar team, ‘Bama Lama Baby’ was just as commercial as ‘Mess Of The Blues’ and ‘Love You Babe’, with its Leiber / Stoller influenced rock ’n’ roll vigour and hand clapping hook, but it sank without a trace. The flip side is perhaps a riff looking for a song but it’s got that proven full-throated Balls backing. The single label announced the title as ‘By Your Lover’ but because Loyde sings “I wanna be your lover / I wanna be your man” we’ll opt for ‘Be Your Lover’ as the correct title.

EMI issued Heavy Metal Kid in October 1974 but by that stage had such little faith in the band they refused to lift a track for singles release, and barely promoted it. For their part, the Balls still made a decent living on the Melbourne suburban dance circuit but by the end of the year the Australian music scene was undergoing an enormous change. New, more commercially minded and teen-oriented bands such as Skyhooks, Sherbet, Hush, Ted Mulry Gang and AC/DC were emerging and laying claim to the rock crown once owned outright by the likes of Coloured Balls and The Aztecs. Combined with the added pressure of coming under the glare of the national media who were blaming the Balls for the rise of violence at their gigs, something had to give. It was the end of an era and the end of one of Australia’s all-time classic bands.

“The feeling in the band around the time of Heavy Metal Kid was pretty good,” says Millar, “but by the end of 1974 things started to implode around all that negative skinhead publicity stuff that came out in certain newspapers. Lob and I wanted to keep the band together at all costs but it was basically in demise. We weren’t getting anywhere with the record company, the management was going through different hands and there was no continuity. There was a bit of, dare I say it, almost sabotage from different people. I’ll leave it at that. In the end I was quite glad to get away from it all.”

The band limped on into 1975 but there was actually one more Balls single lined up for release. It would appear that two tracks were the very last recordings undertaken by the band, for a proposed live-in-the-studio album called Eight Dollar Deal which never eventuated. The master tapes for the full album have never surfaced but a 10-inch, 15ips singles master (dated March 1975) containing ‘Flying’ and ‘Around and Around’ was discovered in a dusty vault and added to the 2006 CD reissue of Heavy Metal Kid on the Aztec label.

No doubt due to EMI’s lack of interest, the single was cancelled. Conceptually the songs offered little new to the listener, yet melodically they found the Balls at their most tuneful, the guitars sounding almost unconsciously sweet at times. The seven and a half minute ‘Flying’ demonstrates their more progressive rock tendencies with several distinct yet inter-related segments. Following a gentle start it builds up a head of rock steam as the twin guitars lock in unison riffing and Loyde lays on a sequence of his patented lead breaks.

The six and a half minute ‘Around and Around’ conveniently appropriates the melody of ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’. Lobby plays around with his new found toy, the talk box effects unit (as utilised by the likes of Peter Frampton, Joe Walsh, Jeff Beck, Joe Perry etc) but oddly the track never seems to get out of second gear. Nevertheless, the songs provide the perfect note on which to end the whole Coloured Balls saga.

By mid-1975 Loyde was assembling his new group, Southern Electric, which included ex-Balls members Janis Miglans and Andy Fordham, and a new chapter in his career unfolded. And that is another story...

The Victims - Perth is a Culture Shock

THE VICTIMS - Perth is a Culture Shock!

THE VICTIMS - PERTH IS A CULTURE SHOCK!

By Ian McFarlane © 2020

Thanks to Dave Faulkner and David Laing

American label In The Red Records have issued The Victims compilation The Victims and their freshly recorded EP Horror Smash. With all this Victims activity going on, I was fortunate enough to conduct a lengthy interview with Dave Faulkner in May 2020, where he opens up about all things Victims related. But first, some background...

The late 1970s punk rock explosion spread its shock waves far and wide across Australia. The country’s most isolated city, Perth (Western Australia), was the centre of a small but vibrant punk scene. The Victims were Perth’s third punk band, following on from The Cheap Nasties (with Kim Salmon) and James Baker’s band The Geeks. The Victims only existed for ten months yet managed to release two of the landmark Aussie punk records.

Dave Faulkner aka Dave Flick (guitar, vocals; ex-Beagle Boys) and James Baker teamed up in May 1977, following a fortuitous meeting at a Cheap Nasties gig. With Rudolph V (real name Dave Cardwell) on bass they got underway. Their acknowledged mentors included US pioneers like the New York Dolls, The Stooges, Ramones and Flamin’ Groovies, plus UK pop primitives The Troggs. With their frantic, explosive sound backed by a solid melodic bent, The Victims became the premier punk band on the Perth scene. Faulkner played with equal parts precision, power and melody. Baker’s furious drumming was already legendary around Perth, his troglodyte thump setting the new three piece ahead of the pack.

The Victims staked out such punk haunts as the Governor Broome Hotel and Hernando’s Hideaway as their own. They consolidated their fierce live reputation with the release of one of the first Australian punk singles, ‘Television Addict’ b/w ‘(I’m) Flipped Out Over You’ (1,000 copies, issued February 1978).

‘Television Addict’ ranks with the first records by the likes of The Saints, Radio Birdman, The Leftovers, The Scientists, News and Fun Things as one of the great singles of the Aussie punk rock era. Just as ‘Television Addict’ hit the record shops, The Victims decided to break up. The band’s final recordings appeared as the five track EP, The Victims (500 copies; Studio Side - ‘I Understand’, ‘Open Your Eyes’, ‘High School Girls’ b/w Live Side - ‘T.V. Freak’, ‘Disco Junkies’), in July 1978. Some copies of the EP came in hand-drawn and painted sleeves which are ultra-rare and highly prized collector’s items. All the tracks from the single and the EP (plus the previously unissued ‘Perth is a Culture Shock’) were later compiled on the album All Loud on the Western Front (December 1989).

With the breakup of The Victims, Baker joined Kim Salmon’s band The Scientists where he remained until January 1981. Faulkner joined fellow Perth band Midget and the Farrellys, before travelling to the USA for an extended holiday. On the eve of his departure for the USA in early 1979, Faulkner reformed The Victims in order to play a farewell gig for their fans.

Following his return to Australia in late 1979, Faulkner joined fellow Perth band Manikins. At the end of 1980 he travelled to Sydney where he formed Le Hoodoo Gurus with Baker and Roddy Radalj (ex-Scientists, Rockets). Hoodoo Gurus have carved out a career as one of Australia’s most enduring bands and that’s a whole other story I hope to explore in the future. Baker went on to play with Beasts of Bourbon, The Dubrovniks and Satellite 5 among others.

The Victims’ legend has continued to grow over the years. The single and EP have been bootlegged as stand-alone 45s on several occasions while the individual tracks have all appeared on the bootleg compilations Murder Punk (Vols 1 and 2), Where Birdmen Flew and Where Birdmen Flew Revisited Vol. 1. In 2011 Japanese label 1977 Records reissued the single and EP as well as issuing the compilation Sleeping Dogs Lie in a Limited Edition of 300 CDs and 300 LPs (with a second print run of 100 copies). It combined all their studio recordings with the nine track ‘Bad Demo’ which had been recorded in a lounge room around August 1977. 1977 Records also issued a live album, Culture Shock (200 CDs, 200 LPs on black vinyl, 100 LPs on splatter vinyl). The eleven tracks had been recorded live to video at Hernando’s Hideaway on 5 January 1978, subsequently converted to digital for the release.

More significantly, in 2017 Faulkner and Baker revived The Victims with bassist Ray Ahn from The Hard-Ons, and recorded a new EP, Horror Smash. Recorded and mixed in Perth (November 2017) and Sydney (January 2018) the four-track, 7" EP came out on American label In The Red Records in November 2019. In The Red also released the compilation The Victims on LP, packaged in a gatefold, foil-stamped, embossed cover, basically a reissue of Sleeping Dogs Lie. The band played gigs in 2017 and there are now plans for more recording sessions.

In Conversation With Dave Faulkner

Thanks for your time Dave. We’re talking today about The Victims. I’m familiar with the basic history of the band so I wanted to start with your pre-fame career. I believe you formed your first band, Savage Messiah, at high school?

Yes, that’s it, from the Ken Russell movie. Silly name for a bunch of Catholic schoolboys but at that time it was pretty rebellious (laughs). We weren’t really thinking that way. I used to go the State Reference Library in Perth, and I used to read these exotic European film books and there was one called Film Review, like an annual wrap up of European films. I love films and you’d see these photos of half naked people so it was kinda racy for a schoolboy.

I used to read the same kind of books in my local library in Melbourne.

Right, so I read about this Ken Russell film called Savage Messiah. It was about a French artist whose name actually eludes me (Ed: sculptor Henri Gaudier Brzeska). He was a bit of an iconoclast, a bit of a difficult character and Russell made this film. I just loved the name.

Then I guess after you’d left school you talked your way into the Perth blues band The Beagle Boys.

Before that I had a duo with Neil Fernandez. He was in Savage Messiah at school and went on to be in The Cheap Nasties and the Manikins. At school we’d play at high school socials, and we were cheap. We played songs that we all liked, T. Rex, Creedence, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper. Even though we were in this rock band we weren’t really friends at school. Neil was very associated with sports, he loved cricket. I wasn’t sporty at all, my group of friends were far away from the sports jocks types. We were kinda the outsiders.

Then we both went to university. I mean, I liked Neil but we weren’t mates. It was only at university that I became close friends with Neil. That’s where we met Kim Salmon. We met him through Ken Seymour actually. Ken I met through his sister, Sue Seymour. She was at university with me, we were actually in the university dramatic society together.

That was a very good meeting with Sue. Through her I met Ken and his best friend was Kim Salmon so we all became friends and we ended up jamming together occasionally and talking music. We’d go to the University Tavern, after uni, and drink cider and discuss music. Those days all the news you got about music was from the English papers. You didn’t pay attention to Countdown, that was nothing to do with what we liked. Everyone watched it of course, but we were into other things. We’d read Sounds and Melody Maker, New Musical Express. We’d get them like a month later because they were an overseas shipment.

We’d also get Rock Scene from New York and that’s how we’d read up on what was happening in music. That’s how we first started hearing about this scene at CBGBs in New York. That was at the end of ’75. We were desperate to hear this music, it sounded crazy and wild. The descriptions you’d read sounded savage. So we finally got to hear it when the Live at CBGBs album came out. I’m pretty certain it came out before the Ramones first album. It was a double album and it had bands like Tuff Darts, Mink DeVille.

The Dictators?

No, they weren’t on it but they’d been going for a while. Their first album was Go Girl Crazy and it had already come out but I didn’t know them until later. They’re a band that has not received their due as far as their importance to punk rock. The Ramones were influenced by The Dictators immensely. They did ‘California Sun’ like The Dictators, for god’s sake and stole ‘Surfin’ Bird’ from The Cramps. All a far cop I suppose. Then the Ramones influenced The Dictators back.

It’s interesting because Perth’s always painted as just Top 40 covers bands but there was a big blues scene in Perth in the ’70s. There was Sid Rumpo, Dave Hole, The Elks, Western Flyer.

Yeah, Dave Hole was the guy I was watching a lot in that ’75 era. We’d go to this hotel in Nedlands near the university, and he had a regular spot there and he was like our Rory Gallagher, he was a huge star. It still boggles my mind as to why he didn’t become a bigger star globally because he was insanely talented as a performer and player.

He’s an incredible player, I saw him play a few times over the years.

Yeah, he had a bit of success on Alligator Records but it didn’t quite translate. He should be seen as another Stevie Ray Vaughan in my mind, you know. It’s a fairly specialised genre slide guitar but man, what a player.

He’s got that unusual technique because he plays it over the top of the fret board.

Right, and a great singer. So the blues thing... The Beagle Boys, I used to see them play because they’d formed long before I joined them. Robert Searls came from Sid Rumpo, so he’d been around. Sid Rumpo had broken up, and he came back to Perth a little bit tail between his legs, I suppose. He formed The Beagle Boys purely out of passion, he loved blues and R&B and that was his dream band. He was in his late 20s and I was still just 18 when I’d joined. They had Michael Fagan on harmonica, he was an incredible musician, one of the greatest harmonica players I’ve ever heard.

So I’d been listening to blues, I loved things like John Mayall but I was listening to punk music by the time I joined The Beagle Boys. We’d got hold of the Ramones’ first album by then. I’d had a little flirtation with The Cheap Nasties, had a few rehearsals with them but then I quit in this fit of pique. That was my moment of high dudgeon. I was a keyboard player at this point. I went to a junk shop and bought a cheap guitar, it was a Maya, I think it cost me about 80 bucks. Like an SG copy, and that was my guitar I played in The Victims. It took me about a year to learn.

So I kinda talked my way into The Beagle Boys. I went to one of their rehearsals. The bass player, Phil Bailey, I knew his girlfriend from uni and I went around to their share house. No one took any notice of me so I just sat down on the couch and just watched them rehearse while they were all playing around me. They were correcting themselves, you know, ‘the timing on that was wrong, do it this way’. I couldn’t hear any difference but they seemed to know what they were doing. My ears weren’t that finely attuned to all the nuances they were hearing. I was a very raw musician at that point, self taught keyboard player. They finished rehearsing about half an hour later and they started packing up and no one’s talking to me which was kind of awkward (laughs).

They were getting ready to go to a gig that night and I thought ‘jeez I better say something’. I said to the drummer ‘I hear you’re looking for a keyboard player’, and he looked at me funny and like ‘right, so you’re a keyboard player’. They were a really uptight band, Robert was very motivated and talented. They were all dedicated blues fans and they had their own scene, they were quite well known, stars in their own right. So it was quite unusual for them to give me the time of day really.

That just gave me an entrée. They gave me an audition and I got the gig. They asked me at the time ‘what kind of music do you like?’ and I said ‘punk rock’ and they went ‘what’s that?’. Anyway, I was teaching myself guitar all the way through The Beagle Boys. They were a professional band, they were making enough money to pay themselves a small wage each week. I was 18 and I had a paying gig, I was enjoying it. I probably squandered the opportunity to benefit from all their incredible knowledge because they had incredible record collections. There were things that took me decades to get my hands on and others that I got around to discovering for myself, it was all there. But you know, things like the first Damned album had came out. I didn’t really care about checking out early Howlin’ Wolf or Slim Harpo or whoever. I sorta did, I played it and liked it but my mind was occupied with punk. Ramones songs and playing guitar.

So you got your guitar chops down, so tell us about meeting James Baker who was quite a catalyst for the whole scene.

Totally. Well, The Cheap Nasties had got to the point where they wanted to do a gig and that was early ’77, April maybe, at the Rivervale Hotel and it was billed as a ‘Punk Rock’ show. There was another band called Wrok Bottom, I might have that wrong. Anyway, they thought of themselves as being edgy, they thought they were kinda punks themselves, they related to the street scene. So they put on this ‘Punk Rock’ show and advertised it as such. So anyone who was interested in punk rock went; ‘Great! There’s other people into punk rock, someone else knows about it!’. There weren’t that many people but they all came to this show and James was one of those. Of course I was there because I knew The Cheap Nasties anyway. So we struck up a conversation and pretty much straight away decided to form a band.

I get the feeling that his knowledge seemed to be beyond everyone else at that point.

He was like our Marco Polo, with tales of the exotic east, you know. He’d already been overseas. He set off maybe the beginning of ’76 and he went to Los Angeles, New York and then to London. So he was right there at the beginning of the London punk scene. He went to the 100 Club to see the Sex Pistols, he auditioned for the Clash and they wanted him to join, but obviously he had to come back because he’d run out of money. One of those things, like sliding doors. He went as a glam rocker because he’d been into the Dolls and he had his hair teased and coloured, stuff like that. He got to LA and I think it was there that he decided to get rid of that look. For some reason, and you’d have to ask him about this, but he bought a Beatles suit and started wearing the Brian Jones haircut, which pretty much became his trademark after that. He went to New York and went to Max’s Kansas City and saw the Flamin’ Groovies, the Ramones and stuff like that. He must have gone to CBGBs, I don’t remember him mentioning that specifically.

So he was very knowledgeable and he had that primitive drum beat that suited your purposes naturally.

His favourite bands were #1 the Dolls and #2 The Troggs. He loved the Groovies, but Reg Presley and Johnny Thunders, they were his icons.

There was that punk groundswell in Perth, it happened in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and elsewhere, anyone from there will tell you originally there was a very small scene. So when was The Victims’ first official gig and where did you play?

Our first gig was at our house, Victim Manor. It wasn’t literally a squat but we were renting this cheap house, it was in an industrial area, in east Perth, near the big railway yards at Claisebrook. We were surround by light industry, it was quite a derelict area, not now, but it was then. So at night there’d be no one around except us and some drunks, homeless people on the street. We could play to our heart’s content, we could make a racket and no one cared. That was our house. We just threw a party, just word of mouth and all these people turned up and that’s what it was, our first show.

I can’t remember our first official gig, it might have been the Governor Broome hotel. James liked a beer and he went to this watering hotel, in Northbridge, and he just saw this little stage in the corner of the room and they didn’t have bands on so he approached the publican about putting on a gig on a Sunday afternoon. We’d take the door and he’d keep the bar and that’s what happened. We had four Sundays in a row as a residency. The party at Victim Manor, that was the birth of The Victims’ punk scene, lots of people came to that gig which was the nucleus of the scene. But, um, the Governor Broome was a bit more official and it ended up being the place to go. Then we started playing at Hernando’s Hideaway, this was a Spanish restaurant located in an alley and the owner, Andy, let us take over Wednesday nights and that became The Victims’ home.

It’s like The Saints in Brisbane, before they headed over to London. They had their own Club 76 in their terrace house. They’d been playing gigs there because they couldn’t get gigs anywhere else. There are parallels.

We knew that we weren’t going to get gigs in proper venues. We didn’t want to, we didn’t relate to that scene, we weren’t out to convert people and become well known. We were just having fun and trying to get away with it. We didn’t want to be around people who didn’t understand us. People had to find The Victims for themselves and lots of people did. We weren’t looking to reach out for anyone.

So how did you come to record the first single?

I guess we wanted to do some proper recordings because we’d done this bad demo, we just set up in a lounge room and we had the mixer for The Beagle Boys, Vin, record us. Vin had bought the PA and a truck for The Beagle Boys but then the band broke up and it left him at a loose end. He ended up forming his own sound company and was very successful for many years doing that. Because of my acquaintance through The Beagle Boys he’d mix The Victims. So through Vin we got a reel-to-reel tape recorder and set up with a desk in someone’s house and decided to record a demo. We didn’t know what we were doing and it was pretty rugged. That was the first stuff we recorded, the songs on the B-side of the album, the compilation album we’ve released on In The Red Records.

Following that you actually went into a studio to record the single.

What happened, one of the fans of the band, Tony Watson, he actually came from a fairly nice area, like Claremont or something. His parents were well off so he asked them for some money to record his favourite band. It was about $3,000, that included pressing 1,000 copies. He said he wanted to make a record, He loved the band and he wanted us to do the record. We went into Sweetcorn Studios and made ‘Television Addict’. We did three songs, blasted it out, it didn’t really have that much finesse about it. We just knew that we wanted to be powerful and somehow we lucked out. We had an engineer who did a great job. Every step of the way because that single was just perfect.

Absolutely, you’ve hit the nail on the head, it’s a classic of Aussie punk. I love the story line of the kid that got thrown away. I started at uni in ’79, and I was doing sociology and one of the big things at the time was about the influence of TV and the effects on kids’ behaviour. There were all sorts of studies and books written about that subject. So it was a very timely release.

Right, well it was a specific story about Ronnie Zamora, this 15-year-old kid and his lawyers tried to mount this defence against murder. He was watching Kojak, so he claimed, and there was some murder and he decided ‘I’ll go and kill the neighbour, just like I’ve seen on TV’. He went and murdered his neighbour and he said ‘it wasn’t my fault, the TV hypnotised me, it was temporary insanity’. So he was copying this thing on Kojak, so it was called the Kojak Defence.

In The Victims we all loved television. James and I had a common love of TV sitcoms and all the names of the shows in ‘TV Freak’, they’re all the shows I loved. James wrote the lyrics, but I loved all those shows. I was the typical latch key kid, both my parents worked and I’d come home from school, let myself in and just plop in front of the TV and watch sitcoms non-stop from 3.30 ’til 7.30 at night. You probably had the same experience (Ed: Yes!).

You’d watch McHale’s Navy, all the old black and white shows. The Munsters, The Honeymooners, It's About Time, Car 54 Where are You?, Get Smart, Gilligan’s Island. On the ABC you’d watch F Troop and My Favourite Martian while the news was on the other channels, you know. They were all things we loved. So when this kid Ronnie Zamora started this Kojak Defence, we were horrified, ‘how could they besmirch television!’. So James wrote that lyric in defence of TV.

It’s brilliant! Then once the single came out it created a lot of interest but it wasn’t too long after that the band broke up. And you got the EP out as well, but before we got on to that tell us about what the band was like live?

Well, we knew we were good, we were the real thing and we felt like it. We were as happy as pigs in shit. We had our own scene, we were a good band and we had lots of friends that would come and see us play, a regular gathering of the tribes, or whatever you want to call it. We loved all the other bands that were playing with us, some were kinda crappy, but we loved the bands and the people who were in them and it was all one big community.

So the scene was real to us and everyone was equal and the audience was just as important and people in the audience formed their own bands and they’d be on the same bill or you’d go and see their shows.

One of your most high profile fans was a young David McComb who wrote a glowing review of the band which got printed in RAM.

Yeah, we met all those guys, they were still in Year 10 I think when they started coming to see The Victims. David and Alsy had their band Blok Music going by then. I love that Blok Music tape, I still have it. David was very prolific even then. We actually got invited to his house for a party. Once again they came from a nice area, similar to the guy who invested in the band for ‘Television Addict’. It was in Nedlands. So they were private school boys who came from a wealthy neighbourhood. They had this party and they invited all these punk rockers, that was the scene they were in to and we were their friends. And the parents were horrified, it was like the Hell’s Angels had turned up. They were frightened out of their wits for the kids, ‘who are these people? what sort of influence are they having on our kids’ lives?’.

David was obviously a brilliant song writer even then, just one of those people that pops up, could be anywhere. David in particular was a Victims fan and we’d buy their cassette tapes, from White Rider Music. They changed the name to The Triffids and we’d buy those tapes as well. In the early days they reminded me of The Modern Lovers.

I loved that first Modern Lovers album, it had a big influence. Recorded 1971, didn’t come out until ’76. That was another one of those albums that was like the gospel of the new music. And a link to the Velvet Underground who were part of what shaped everything afterwards. We all listened to White Light/White Heat, and also Funhouse by The Stooges. I was drawn more to the American bands. The Ramones blazed the trail and everyone else followed. There’s no fucking doubt that without the Ramones, none of this would have happened. Of the English punk bands I loved the Buzzcocks and The Damned. The Ramones were a big touchstone for them.

Fortunately I’ve got a copy of the single. I don’t have the EP but I do have All Loud on the Western Front which Timberyard issued in 1989. It’s got the extra track, ‘Perth is a Culture Shock’. How did that come about?

That album... I was approached about that and I didn’t say I didn’t want it to happen but there was never any fucking agreement, they never paid me any money. So that was kind of a screw-up. I don’t mind that it came out. I mean, The Victims have been bootlegged a lot.

God yeah, you’re on those Murder Punk and Where Birdmen Flew bootlegs, I’ve got all them.

Someone actually did a reissue of the single, an actual recreation, got it pressed up, they copied everything down to the label and the thing they did which I thought was very respectful was they made the label yellow. That was some American label. That was fine, I thought ‘that’s cool’. At least they didn’t try and pass it off as one of the original 1,000 copies. But I’m sure that’s been done as well.

I’ve also got those albums that came out on the Japanese label 1977 Records, Sleeping Dogs Lie and the live Culture Shock. Were you involved in that? How did they get hold of that?

We were involved in that, unfortunately once again, there was no money. The guy screwed us over. It was very strange, we were shocked by this. This Japanese guy was a huge punk fan, he’s a well known person in the punk scene, which was cool. We got some copies, that was it, but no money. He came to Perth, we were doing the Television Addicts reunion at that point, he came and saw us, we took him sightseeing, took him up to The Pinnacles (a scenic area with unusual rock formations, a couple of hours north of Perth) and all that sort of stuff. Basically, he burnt us. And being Japanese that manifested in him basically being unable to stand the shame so he didn’t talk to us and he didn’t do anything for us. It’s like having an enemy now, because his dishonour is apparent to us so he can’t deal with us. So it was a really bad thing in so many ways, being taken advantage of, having someone who we thought was a good person that we had a good relationship with, someone that now doesn’t want to know us, has done nothing for us. Horrible.

That’s a shame, because he’s got the original demos on one side of the album.

That’s right, we trusted this guy and gave him everything. Then he said ‘can I put out the live album?’. We went ‘what live album?’. He said ‘the video you did at Hernando’s’. He converted that into a live album. Not a sausage our way, we never even got a copy of that one. I did the liner notes for the compilation, so I was collaborating completely with him. That was a big aggravation between David Cardwell and James and myself. We informed him that there was no money and somehow he interpreted that as James and I had kept all this money, not given him his share. He started writing hideous things on Facebook, it was just awful.

I’m sorry I brought up this subject, we’d better flick past this episode, because it sounds like you’re quite happy with the In The Red reissue.

Oh yeah, Larry is wonderful. He’s got a great label, he’s a great person, couldn’t be nicer. We’re happy to say that down to him it’s sold out quickly. He’s getting another pressing done. Larry’s an upright citizen, more power to him. He does it purely because he’s a fan. That’s why he did it in the first place, he just wanted to hear this music on his label, have it be heard by the people. He was really excited by the idea of doing the new EP. It wasn’t like we had to twist his arm, like ‘you gotta have this one too’. He was happy to have that.

So before we get to the EP, I’m wondering how is it that these overseas guys are rediscovering this music that is over 40 years old. It just keeps re-appearing, new lots of people seem to discover it. What is it about the music or the band that fascinates people? Is it the legend? The actual music itself? The aesthetic? I don’t know. In your mind why does it keep reoccurring and people say ‘fark, I gotta reissue this’?

Well three things. Firstly, they’re good records. That’s undeniable in my opinion. People can still enjoy the music and not just the original artefact. It’s actually good music. Secondly, The Victims were real, we weren’t created, we weren’t fake, we were doing it for real. And we felt it, we lived it and we meant it. We still do. That’s how we felt about music and we put everything into it. Young men, that explosion of testosterone, all that pent up energy was just all there. Number three, you’re right, there’s a huge curiosity factor, like ‘how did this fuckin’ happen in Perth, at that time?’. People just don’t understand and I don’t blame them because I don’t understand it either. Perth was very conservative and still is in many ways.

And the isolation of Perth. Complete isolation and the fact that... it took a while for The Victims to get going but we were fans of punk music from the get-go, before there was a fuckin’ record. We read about it, loved it and got it. We were elated about what it actually sounded like, it was exciting and new and we wanted to be part of it. Being in Perth it wasn’t easy but we eventually did do things and made it clear that we understood what we were doing, in our own way. It wasn’t designed, it was pure accident because the record came out because someone threw some money our way. We may never have been heard of again, like some little news clipping, there was this little band apparently playing back then, around the same time as Birdman and The Saints. Luckily we had the records to show the evidence and that blazed the trail for us.

I’ve got a funny story I can tell. I went to New York in 1979. James had already done his overseas thing in ’76. All of us were a couple of years younger than James. We loved his lyrics to things like ‘Culture Shock’ and we approved of that, so it was like ‘okay, let’s get the hell out of Perth and see the world’. We’re trapped here, that feeling of isolation. So I travelled in ’79. I was 21 years old. Basically I spent 10 months away. I went to New York for five months. I did some other trips away. I saw all those other great bands like The Cramps, The B-52s, The Fleshtones. I’d gone to London first and I saw the Buzzcocks. I saw The Specials when I came back through London. It was a complete musical odyssey, like James had done three years earlier.

I was in New York and I was in a place called Bleecker Bob’s, this really famous record shop, the White Light of New York. And he’s famously a kind of a ‘Soup Nazi’ character, very irascible, a very difficult man. And I’d had some of the singles sent over to me in New York. I wanted to give some copies to friends, I got maybe ten copies sent to me by James. I’d met the dB’s and people like that, I was friends with them. I went into Bleecker Bob’s with this little bundle of 45s under my arm. I was looking through the records. I was listening to a lot of ’60s punk at that point, so I was looking at ? (Question Mark) and the Mysterians albums, Paul Revere and the Raiders.

He looked at me and he says in this gruff voice, ‘what’s that under your arm?’, ‘what’s that you got?’, ‘give it to me’. So I gave him a copy of ‘Television Addict’ and he played about 30 second of it and he said ‘I’ll take 20!’. So that was how it got to be stocked in Bleecker Bob’s in New York in 1979. I’m sure that was how The Victims ended up being more well known. Obviously we’d been known in Australia but Bob was connected to everybody, he knew Lenny Kaye and all those people.

Here’s a thought... what if Lenny Kaye had picked up a copy?

I don’t know but I do know that John Holmstrom, one of the guys who did Punk magazine... maybe this was a couple of years later, he was right into the hardcore scene by then. At CBGBs it was one hardcore band after another, it was horrible to me actually. I guess ’82, ’83. There was this hardcore magazine and they had this listening party of all these punk singles and for some reason someone had put ‘Television Addict’ in there, and he was like ‘nah, I don’t get this’ (laughs). If it was Legs McNeil I’d be worried, but John’s an artist, he’s not a fuckin’ musician. A cool guy but I don’t take his view on music.

Dave, let’s talk about how you got the new EP Horror Smash going. What prompted you and James and Ray to get together?

Well, basically James had been asking me for a long time to do some Victims shows and I kept saying no for one reason or another, I couldn’t figure out how to do it. James and I had had huge misunderstanding and difficulties since I’d kicked him out of the Gurus. This was a huge thing, it happened decades ago, I had hoped he’d settled down about that. We never actually discussed it believe it or not. At one point he just brushed it aside and said ‘that’s alright’, he didn’t want to dwell on it. The simple answer, obviously we’d been cordial and friendly for a long time but I couldn’t see a way of doing it because The Victims had broken up because of David Cardwell, we didn’t like him. I couldn’t see a way of working with him again.

In 2011 I had an idea for the Hoodoo Gurus 30th anniversary. I mentioned to James, ‘let’s do a Gurus reunion where we get all the old members back’. We’d get all the line-ups to play and we’d do this big tour and have fun, you know. And he said ‘oh, I don’t know’. I said ‘don’t make your mind up now, I’ll come around and we’ll talk about it and explain what I’m thinking’. I was supposed to see him the next day and when I rang him he just said ‘no, I don’t want to talk about it’. He’d been quite friendly up to this point and I thought, ‘well, gee’ and he’d been wanting me to do a Victims reunion as well and I said ‘well fuck, you won’t even discuss this, you don’t even want to hear about it’. I just thought ‘you want to be free to hold this big grudge and don’t want to be part of this yet you want to be able to like me as the guy from The Victims but want to hate me as the guy from the Hoodoo Gurus, I’m only one person, I can’t be both’.

I let it go for a couple of years. I’d see James but we’d say nothing. He actually came up to me at a gig, a Scientists show in Sydney, he said ‘you know that Hoodoo Gurus idea, I’ll do it’ and so we did this thing at the Vivid Festival (in Sydney) a few years ago, maybe five years ago. As soon as he did that I thought ‘well, gee, I have to do a Victims show, if he’s come this far to meet me half way, I’ve gotta meet him as well’. Then when I said ‘let’s do a Victims show’, he said ‘well, let’s get Ray Ahn to play bass’ and I went ‘oh, of course we should do that!’. He’s a huge fan and he’s also a fuckin’ legend, it was just ridiculous. So all things happen in their own time I guess, ’cos that was perfect to get Ray in the band, it was ideal.

And we are The Victims. We played and it was the same energy with the same spirit that we always had. It’s a new line-up and we’re all older but all the other bullshit was gone. When it came to getting the songs down, writing new ones, it’s all there. We’re playing better than ever. We had a gig a couple of years ago at Mojos in Fremantle, and that was the best Victims gig ever, certainly in the way we played. Obviously gigs back in the day were in the chaos of punk rock and people doing crazy shit, that whole energy thing. As far as what we were doing and how it felt, it was as good as anything we ever did in the band, at any point.

That was why the idea of doing the EP was very easy. I’d always had a bee in my bonnet about these songs that never got recorded properly, things like ‘Horror Smash’. If I had my one time over again I would have squeezed that $3,000 into recording a whole album for that ‘Television Addict’ session, just record everything properly. Bang it all out, put on a couple of overdubs and put it out as an album, it would have been awesome. But it never happened.

Then there was the thing with Ross Buncle who’d been with James in The Geeks before The Victims formed. He’d written the music and James had written the words. When James came to us he said he’d written all these songs, but it turned out that he co-wrote them with Ross. They were all his inspiration... because he’d sing these melodies to me, like ‘here’s the tune’ and (because James wasn’t much of a singer) it would sound like one note and I’d interpret that and make the song. James did the same thing with Kim in The Scientists. It gave us inspiration and I’d thought ‘well, he did write those songs’ but it turned out that Ross wrote these great riffs and James would sing the notes of these riffs (to me).

So there was this brouhaha years later where Ross was saying ‘The Victims stole all my songs’, blah blah blah, as if we knew what publishing was at the time. The credits on the single and EP were just The Victims, like the Ramones, we didn’t think this is a legal statement and that we’re stealing someone’s music; ‘we’re The Victims, these are our songs’. So it was only later that I thought ‘well, maybe James did have some help with some of those songs’. Things like ‘(I’m) Flipped Out Over You’, I loved that, that’s why we recorded it but at the same time, if I’d have known I’d be like what other songs are there? I could do without this bullshit. We weren’t doing it because we thought we’d get famous, and to make money, we didn’t think we’d get a crack at the big time. We got the money back from the single but the band was breaking up and we said ‘thanks Tony for that money, it’s wonderful, here it is’ and he said ‘no, no, I want you to make another record’. So that’s when we made the EP. The band was in the process of breaking up, it was on shaky ground and we had actually broken up by the time we got the EP back.

I loved the fact that you did some individual covers of the original EP.

Yeah, it was Ken Seymour, Mark Betts and myself. We were sharing a house at that time and Mark was very artistic and I was pretty good at art when I was a kid, everyone thought I was going to be an artist, not a musician when I was growing up. Music was just something I did but it ended up becoming my career. So the three of us did some of the covers, I did most of them, the others helped. We did collages, all these different techniques. Also for the ‘Television Addict’ single we’d done the rubber stamp for the band name. We thought we should make a cover and we went and bought some cheap rubber stamp sets from Coles. We didn’t even buy enough so we had to stamp some more letters individually. We left a gap and stamped those letters with a different colour. Making a virtue out of a necessity, so that’s why there’s two different colours on the cover of The Victims single. So we had the same idea of doing hand-made covers for the EP, but of course we ran out of puff after a while, we did about 200 covers I guess, certainly not 500.

So, are you planning on doing some more shows with James and Ray?

Yes, of course, after all this COVID-19 stuff. We were supposed to have been doing some gigs right now, but that went out the window.

Well I’m glad you got the new stuff out.

There are two more songs laying around actually. We recorded them at the same session, so we’ll release that as a single for Record Store Day next year. That’s the plan. I mean Larry will do it on In The Red, but who knows if we’ll be able to do any gigs at that stage but that’s the plan at the moment.

Thanks so much for your time Dave, we’ve covered a lot of territory, really enjoyed your insights. What are you doing with the Gurus at the moment?

We’ll be rehearsing soon and we’ll be recording two new singles. It’s funny, before the lockdown we started rehearsals and these songs just popped right out, obvious A-sides. We’ll be doing one for October and then one for March next year. We did that one called ‘Answered Prayers’ in December last year, that was pretty cool. We’re gonna do an album next year, that’s our plan. Hopefully we’re not forced to separate again and have to hide in our holes. It’s the 40th anniversary of the Gurus next year so we’ll do something around that for sure.

Grace Cummings - Refuge Cove (Flightless Records)

GRACE CUMMINGS - Refuge Cover (Flightless Records)

Originally published in Rhythms magazine, May/June 2020 (Issue #299)

Grace Cummings - Refuge Cover (Flightless Records)

By Ian McFarlane © 2020

Listening to an album that’s so stripped back musically yet so powerful in delivery can be refreshing and invigorating. Melbourne singer/songwriter Grace Cummings’ debut album, Refuge Cove, is a case in point.

The album has been out a few months now and the original vinyl pressing of 500 copies sold out swiftly. It’s still available for download from Bandcamp and there’s talk of a second pressing.

Cummings’ music can be described as a mix of acoustic folk and blues. It’s tempting to draw parallels with other singers so for some reference imagine a blend of Tim Buckley melody and Johnette Napolitano vocal soul, with a touch of Jacques Brel fatalism, and you might be getting close. While unique might be an overused term to apply, the music does possess an otherworldliness that finds its own orbit.

The music hinges on Cummings’ gently strummed acoustic guitar and her astonishingly emotional vocals. Most of the tracks feature only one or two additional instruments and occasionally another voice. ‘The Look You Gave’ features subtle, bluesy electric lead and harmonica; ‘The Other Side’ and ‘Paisley’ add extra acoustic filigrees and backing vocals; ‘There Flies a Seagull’ features only ghostly harmony vocals; ‘Lullaby for Refuge Cover’ and ‘Sleep’ present piano and for mine are the standout tracks. The unadorned ‘Lullaby for Buddy’ and ‘Just Like That’, on the other hand, are so fragile musically they’re almost not there and then Cummings’ voice is a powerhouse over the top. The effect is mesmerising.

Lyrically it’s not all confessional, introspective angst, although there’s an element of that. There’s a wracked grace to be found and savoured: “I'll never be Meryl Streep / but someday I might believe in my own life” (‘Sleep’); “There flies a seagull / shoot it down so that you might smile / so that you might be happy now” (‘There Flies a Seagull’).

The album is only nine songs long, clocking in around 30 minutes, but by the last song, the piano ballad ‘In the Wind’, her voice is so world weary and cracked you feel she’s ready to expire. “Stop your pissing in the wind / it’s dark outside again” are her last words here but I feel we’ll be hearing more from Grace Cummings.