THE EASTERN DARK – Guardians of the Dark
By Ian McFarlane
The 4th of March 2026 marked the 40th anniversary of the death of guitarist / singer / songwriter James Darroch from legendary Australian band The Eastern Dark. Melbourne label Grown Up Wrong! Records will reissue the band’s 1985 single ‘Julie is a Junkie’ / ‘Johnny and Dee Dee’ on 17 April.
The band derived the unusual name from Phantom comix (“Evil men… from the Eastern Dark”). To ascribe them legendary status now is not overstating the case. Sadly, the Dark had almost certain universal success snatched from its grasp with the tragic death of leading light and genuinely talented frontman, James Darroch, in a car accident while on tour. Fortunately, however, the band left behind enough recorded evidence to support the case for immortality.
The original 7" release remains one of the greatest Australian rock ‘n’ roll singles of all time, the high energy quotient undiminished to this day. Released during an era when stellar indie guitar rock singles were coming out every week, one after another, it continues to shine like the brightest star. At the time I was buying everything released by indie labels such as Citadel, Waterfront, Au-go-go etc. These names continue to inspire a sense of completeness – Died Pretty, The Screaming Tribesmen, The New Christs, The Lime Spiders, The Stems, The Hard-Ons, Hoodoo Gurus, The Celibate Rifles, Ups and Downs, Scientists, The Moffs, Harem Scarem, The Zimmermen etc… the list is mind-spinning in its goodness, jam packed with a million delights.
Recently I spoke to the Dark’s drummer Geoff Milne, but before we get to that below, and just for the hell of it, here is The Eastern Dark profile from my Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop (2nd edition).
The Eastern Dark
Original line-up: James Darroch (guitar, vocals; ex-Trans Love Energy, Celibate Rifles), Bill Gibson (bass, piano, guitar, vocals), Geoff Milne (drums; ex-Sigh of Relief, New Avengers)
Of all the legendary Sydney-based independent guitar bands of the 1980s (The New Christs, The Screaming Tribesmen, Beasts of Bourbon, The Hard-Ons etc.) The Eastern Dark will be remembered as the most talented, all-encompassing and passionate of the lot. The band was one of the pioneering power trios on the Australian alternative scene. Unfortunately the band never got the chance to fulfil its early promise because guiding light James Darroch died in a car accident on 4 March 1986. It was a tragic end to a classic band.
Darroch’s first band was Trans Love Energy (aka Fifth Estate and Slaughterhouse 5), a three piece playing Radio Birdman/MC5/Stooges/Ramones-inspired garage rock’n’roll. Dean Coulter (guitar, vocals) and Murray Engleheart (drums) completed the line-up. Trans Love Energy did not release any records. Darroch joined The Celibate Rifles at the start of 1982. Engleheart became a rock journalist with Juke, Drum, Hot Metal, Metal Hammer and countless other publications. Coulter went on to join Decline of the Reptiles.
Original 7-inch single picture sleeve, purple variant (Waterfront Records, 1985)
Darroch formed The Eastern Dark in January 1984 following two years as the Rifles’ bass player. One of the band’s earliest ambitions was to play every Ramones’ song ever recorded. Accordingly, over the next two years, the band opened each gig with a Ramones’ song (in chronological order) until the catalogue had been exhausted! The Waterfront label issued the band’s classic debut single, ‘Julie is a Junkie’ b/w ‘Johnny and Dee Dee’ (August 1985), which became a #1 alternative hit. Although it reflected Darroch’s Ramones/Radio Birdman fixation, it also revealed his ability to craft melodic, perfectly structured, neo-guitar pop. At the time rock writer J.J. Adams described The Eastern Dark as the “epitome of inner-city cool”.
The Eastern Dark completed its debut, Rob Younger-produced mini-album Long Live the New Flesh! in February 1986, just days before setting off for its second tour of Melbourne. Tragedy struck on the Hume Highway when the band’s van (driven by Darroch) left the road near Wagga Wagga, NSW. As well as killing Darroch, the accident put Billy Gibson, Geoff Milne and the band’s sound engineer Tim Pittman in hospital. Darroch was 26 years old. Waterfront issued the mini album in July, complete with a dedication to James Darroch. In June 1990 Waterfront issued the double retrospective album Girls on the Beach (With Cars) which compiled live material (including one of Darroch’s best songs ‘Whore’) and unissued studio cuts. Steven Danno included The Eastern Dark’s ‘Stay Alone’ on the Sydney compilation Swingin’ from the Trees (1988).
Once fully recovered from the accident Gibson went on to join The Smelly Tongues, The Surfin’ Caesars, The Hellmenn, The New Christs and, in 1996, Evan Dando’s band Lemonheads. At the end of 1996 Gibson returned to Australia and joined Hey! Charger. Milne played with The Plunderers and The Red Planet Rocketts.
Albums: Long Live the New Flesh! (mini-album, Waterfront, 1986), Girls on the Beach (With Cars) (compilation, Waterfront, 1990), Where are All the Single Girls? (compilation, Half a Cow, 2000).
In conversation with Geoff Milne
IMcF: Thanks for your time, Geoff. This is the 40th anniversary of James Darroch’s death. There’s the new issue of the 7" single, ‘Julie is a Junkie’ b/w ‘Johnny and Dee Dee’, coming out. Your head must be in a bit of a whirl now that people are coming to you to talk about this situation. How are you dealing with it right now? No doubt it brings back memories.
GM: Yeah, I spoke to Bill the other day, and this year I think it’s hitting home more than it has for a while. We always call each other at 12 o’clock on the fourth of March. This year I think it’s just projected bigger, you know, like, yeah, all the attention on it.
IMcF: Did David Laing from Grown Up Wrong! Records approach you with the idea of reissuing the single?
GM: Yeah.
IMcF: He’s a champion.
GM: Oh, he’s a total champion. He saw us play at the Trade Union club. It would have been 1985. He said, ‘I’ve got to get you guys to Melbourne’. And two months later we were down there. And Melbourne just loved it. You know, it was hard for Sydney bands in Melbourne then. Most of them didn’t really take off down there.
IMcF: It’s interesting you say that because my recollection is there was always a huge buzz for any Sydney band that came down to Melbourne, whether it was The Eastern Dark or Died Pretty, The Screaming Tribesmen, The Celibate Rifles, The New Christs. They all came down and yes, it was definitely a Melbourne inner-city thing, not further afield. I believe that you were all well received, even though you might not necessarily see it as, you know, being successful. You played all those inner-city venues. I loved seeing all those Sydney bands. Of course, I always liked Melbourne bands, but at that time in the 1980s, in particular, when all the Waterfront and Citadel bands came to Melbourne, people loved them.
GM: Yeah, it was a golden era. It was just awesome.
IMcF: And one of the things I remember about James on, maybe it was the first tour, he was wearing those big woolly shoulder pads with the bull’s horns.
GM: Oh, yeah! He also had a rabbit fur cape he used to wear on stage. I don’t know what he was on. He used to wear a Duran Duran t-shirt, just to piss people off, you know?
IMcF: Quite a character.
GM: Totally.
IMcF: There’s a quote that I’ve always thought was one of the best things written about the band, and that was from J.J. Adams in RAM (Rock Australia Magazine). She described The Eastern Dark as ‘the epitome of inner city cool’. It was just the perfect description.
GM: Yeah, exactly. She was right on to it. She was one of the first writers to take us seriously. Murray Engelheart wrote an article in Juke and then Jodi wrote the one in RAM. So they were the first ones to really put us on the map.
IMcF: Exactly. From within the band, what was it - why do you think people responded so positively to you?
GM: I just think it was the way we went about things. And the chemistry in that band was amazing. I mean there was tension as well, but that all made what we did more intense. People who saw us would say it was just so focused and intense, you know. James was like, ‘look I don’t care what you do after the gig, but you turn up sober and you play straight’. I think that made a big difference. We were just on a mission. We knew we had something and it was ours and we weren’t going to back down.
Photo by Mark Roxburgh, courtesy of Grown Up Wrong! Records
IMcF: One of the identifying things about the band was that you played a Ramones song at the start of every gig until you’d completed their catalogue. How did that concept come about?
GM: That was James’s idea right from the start. And it wasn’t just every gig; it was every set we did. So if we played three sets, we’d do three Ramones songs. It got tricky when we used to tour because you’d have to learn seven or eight Ramones songs for the week. But they were Ramones songs, so they weren’t too tricky. It was great fun. It was just a gimmick that worked really well, and we can say we played every Ramones song at least once.
IMcF: Now talking about the Ramones, which is an obvious name to bring up, and you had the song ‘Johnny and Dee Dee’… So who were your other influences? Or maybe put it a better way, who were you listening to at the time?
GM: We used to do a lot of covers, probably a third of the set was covers. And Bill or James would bring a tape into rehearsals, with half a dozen songs on it and we’d learn those. Hüsker Dü was a big one for us at the time. We covered a couple of their songs, ‘Flip Your Wig’ was one. We liked the Dictators. I’m trying to think of others. Hüsker Dü had a live album in 1985, and it sounded so similar to what we were trying to do. And they were a three piece, like us. I’ve always loved three piece bands, because everyone’s gotta do their bit, you know, there are no passengers in a three piece.
IMcF: Other bands at the time, like the Rifles and the Hitmen had two guitars and a frontman, so five-piece, and they were great too. Then you had the Hard-Ons who were also a three piece.
GM: Actually, I saw the Hard-Ons last Friday night, supporting Redd Kross in Brisbane. That was the first time I’d seen them with Tim Rogers singing and they were just awesome. They’re more rock now. I was talking to Blackie and Ray, and we remembered that they did their first gig with us. They were so young. It might have been at the Trade Union club. Yes. And they wouldn’t let them use the name Hard-Ons, so they called themselves The Females.
IMcF: When Redd Kross started in the early ‘80s, they were just kids.
GM: That’s probably the best I’ve ever seen them play. I’ve seen them four times and they just nailed it.
IMcF: I saw them in Melbourne, when they did the Dig It Up show with the Hoodoo Gurus (2013). They were probably the best band on the day. All the bands were great that day, the Gurus, Died Pretty, The Sonics. And talking about other bands from the era, Mick Medew’s still doing stuff with his own band, and Rob Younger is still touring with Birdman and The New Christs. One of the things I wanted to touch on, you recorded Long Live the New Flesh with Rob Younger producing, which was the last session you did before you jumped in the van to come down to Melbourne. What was it like working with Rob?
GM: Rob is awesome. We did the single with him too. I’d grown up in Tweed Heads listening to Birdman and then got to meet the guy and work with him. He was just amazing. Such a humble guy.
IMcF: I’ve met him many times over the years and got to interview him probably half a dozen times. And I’m always gobsmacked how humble he is and such a lovely guy.
GM: When I was playing in The Plunderers, he produced the first couple of singles.
IMcF: Do you remember any specific demands he had for you? I ask that because he told me a funny story about when he produced The Psychotic Turnbuckles, and he made them wear their coloured fright wigs to get them in the right frame of mind.
GM: In their costumes, that’s right. No, we were sort of… I don’t want to say we were cocky, but we were pretty accomplished. We were well-rehearsed and we’d worked the songs out. He might have said, ‘you can do that better’, or whatever but no he was great to work with.
IMcF: Could you tell me about recording the first single with Rob?
GM: Well, that was a bit of a Frankenstein situation. We were booked into a studio in north Sydney that was supposed to be 16-track and when we got there the guy only had eight tracks up working. So we did all the beds on the eight tracks and then this guy just disappeared. I don’t know what happened there, it was a bit dodgy. Luckily Rob found Tony Espy and he saved us. He was working at Canterbury Studios, so we went in there and dumped it down to make 16 tracks. I had to overdub all the cymbals on it. They said, ‘can you do it?’. I said, ‘I don't know but I’ll give it a go’. That worked out, and I think we did the vocals there too, and mixed it. I’m trying to remember the rest; it was a long time ago.
When David Laing said he wanted to re-release the single, we wanted to go back in and tweak it a bit. We wanted to remaster it, and we did a bit of remixing. Only just to bring the drums up and some of the vocals. We found that the floor tom was coming through the kick drum mic, which was a bit dodgy. But I think it sounds modern now, I guess. With the original single, we’ve been on a few compilations, and we noticed every time our track came on it dropped down from every other track, so we wanted to address that.
IMcF: Now, ‘Julie is a Junkie’, I believe that Julie was James’s girlfriend?
GM: That’s right. She was Dave Morris’s sister, Dave from the Rifles.
IMcF: And was it James just telling it like it was?
GM: Yeah, well, I look at it as being a love song, you know. Julie lives up in Lismore now and I’ve caught up with her. I know she was pretty upset at the time. And all the Rifles just sort of disowned us. I remember Kent saying to me one time, he said ‘you’ve got better songs than that, why are you putting that out?’ It was James’s band and it was a huge decision for him to make. People are still playing it and listening to it, so...
IMcF: This might sound like a bit of a cliché, but in your mind how do you reckon the single has stood up to the test of time?
GM: It’s amazing, I don’t know. I can’t believe it. There have been so many covers of the songs, especially ‘Johnny and Dee Dee’. I was talking to the crew from the Glycerines at Redd Kross the other night, and they were just wrapped, there were hugs everywhere. The original stands up really well. All I ever wanted to do when I joined bands was to release a single. That people still want to listen to our single after 40 years; it just blows my mind every day. I’ve got goosebumps right now talking about it.
IMcF: You were on the Waterfront label. How were the guys at Waterfront like to work with? Was it Steve Stavrakis then?
GM: It was Steve and Frank and then Chris Dunn came on board. Yeah, they were great. We had Au-go-go in Melbourne chasing us, John at Citadel wanted it. We had a meeting at a pub and we thought, ‘we’ll go with these guys’.
IMcF: Waterfront had a pretty good track record, but you probably wouldn’t have gone wrong with Citadel either. But it certainly sounds like you were more suited to Waterfront.
GM: Yeah, exactly. It was right from the word go.
IMcF: Just getting back to Redd Kross, have you ever met them?
GM: No, I haven’t, but... when The Lemonheads came out to Australia, I got to meet Evan Dando and he was a huge fan on The Eastern Dark. It must have been 1991 and I was playing in The Plunderers. I said I was going to America and he said, ‘well come and stay with me’. I went and hung out on Martha’s Vineyard with him and his family for a couple weeks. That was lovely. Evan gave me a copy of the first Lemonheads single, so I thought I’ve got to give him something. I had my Eastern Dark t-shirt, the black one that came out, so I gave it to him. Then lo and behold, when Nic from The Plunderers joined The Lemonheads, just about the next year, there was Evan on Letterman wearing the Eastern Dark T-shirt. That was worth giving to him. And another time when I was in The Plunderers, we supported Dinosaur Jr. and I said to the drummer, ‘you’re a legend’ and he said, ‘no no no, you’re the legend’. That just blew my mind.
IMcF: That is fantastic. I love hearing those kinds of stories. Another interesting thing about the 7" on Waterfront, it had four different colour combinations on the cover. Who came up with that concept?
GM: It’s the oldest marketing trick in the book, isn’t it? Collectors wanted every colour, so they’re gonna buy it. And now there’s gonna be four different colours of vinyl, too, on the reissue. There’s the yellow one for Record Store Day, then there’s green, blue and purple. Another great marketing tool.
IMcF: I’m guessing it will be an exact replica of the original single picture sleeve?
GM: No, it’s a bit different. When it first came out, the Dutch East Indies licensed it for release overseas and when it came out it had a different cover. It’s more like that cover. Thinking back, we never got any money from them. And that’s also why we lost the master tapes for ages; we’d sent them overseas. We eventually found them and got them baked and digitized. That’s how we were able to tweak it.
Reissue 7-inch single picture sleeve (Grown Up Wrong! Records, 2026)
IMcF: Oh, you must have been spewing when you realised the masters had gone missing, but where did they turn up?
GM: I don’t know, Bill found them somewhere. When we’d remastered all the stuff before and it came out on CD, I think we had to do a disc dub off the original vinyl.
IMcF: With the original single, sometimes it’s listed as ‘Julie is a Junkie’ b/w ‘Johnny and Dee Dee’ and other times it’s listed as ‘Johnny and Dee Dee’ b/w ‘Julie is a Junkie’.
GM: We called it That One and The Other One. We couldn’t really pick an A-side or a B-side. We’re playing both, you know.
Original 7-inch single back cover
IMcF: Is Bill doing interviews as well?
GM: No, I put my hand up to do all the promo stuff because Bill’s not so good on the phone. He did a lot of the organising for the reissue. So I said, ‘I’ll do the promo’. David did say in an email he sent me that there’s more requests for interviews coming up. I was talking to Judy Jetson from Triple ZZZ in Brisbane, I saw her at the Redd Kross gig, so I’ll go in and have a chat with her. I remember when we first went up to Brisbane in ’85, Tony Biggs interviewed us on Triple ZZZ when it was at the university. Then a few years later he interviewed me in Sydney when it was still Double JJ.
IMcF: Tony Biggs is still on Three Triple RRR in Melbourne. And I know that Neil Rogers on his show The Australian Mood has often played The Eastern Dark.
GM: All the community radio stations back then were the only ones who played our music. I don’t think I’ve heard it played on Triple J. But I did hear a song of ours played on the ABC one night, that was crazy.
IMcF: Since the Eastern Dark days, you’ve played in quite a few bands. You’ve mentioned the Plunderers and there was also The Red Planet Rocketts. Are you still playing?
GM: I’m in a band now called the Bombed Alaskans. My mate Jock Lee is the guitarist. Years ago, after the accident, I couldn’t walk for a couple of months and Jock lived across the road from mum and dad’s place. He used to come over, and he helped me get back into playing. Later on, we shared a house. We got a band going and we’ve had Brian Seymour on bass for 20 years.
Then probably about 15 years ago, Dave Morris from the Rifles moved up near us. I knew his girlfriend she said, ‘oh look Dave’s really keen to play’. I said, ‘send him over’. He came over and I said, ‘let’s have a jam’. He said, ‘I don’t jam’. I said, ‘well, have a beer, I know you have a beer’. And two songs in he said, ‘give me a guitar, you guys aren’t jamming you know what you’re doing’. We’re just doing all covers. We do Alice Cooper, Dictators, Ramones. Just good rock stuff. Last year we did two gigs and that’s pretty good going for us. We rehearse nearly every week. Everything’s set up at Jock’s place. We just walk in and start playing. It’s great fun. We do it for ourselves. It’s like our men’s shed, if you will.
It was through Dave Morris that I got to know James in the first place. He was playing bass in the Rifles. I was in a band called The New Avengers, this was Sydney in 1983, and we used to do a lot of gigs with the Rifles. We were all mates and then I had a jam with James. About a month later he left the Rifles, or he got tossed out as it were. He rang me up and said, ‘I’ve got a bass player, I want you drumming’, so that’s where it all started. Right from the outset we were on a mission, we all had the same mindset.
The Eastern Dark single and other forthcoming Grown Up Wrong! releases, by the Breakers and Beathoven, and the label's recent Lipstick Killers live album, are available to order from Grown Up Wrong! – sound-merch.com.au