Parts 21 to 25
It’s all rock and roll to me – Part 21
The white lines on the Hume highway stretched out languidly behind me and in teasingly front, as I sped along towards Sydney. The country towns of Yea, Wangarratta and Gundagai were distant memories now as I slowed down to enter the city limits at Liverpool. This time around I had stopped at Gundagai for a break and to look at the famous statue of the Dog On the Tuckerbox. Been there done that.
I had my new demo on cassette tape in the glove box. I had finished it with the ‘wannabe producer’ only days ago and now I had appointments to see the A&R guys at all the major labels.
The thing I hated the most about these long trips was not the endless hours of driving but the truck stop food. How many ways can you abuse a potato? I was up to about 50 so far.
Once again I found myself in beige offices with record company dudes listening to my tape. My heart was palpitating faster than one of those new fangled Roland drum machines.
This time around their ears started to twitch a little. The EMI guy was cryptic but seemed interested. He thought I had quite a bit of attitude – was that in a good sense or in a bad?? There was a signed picture of Chrissie Hynde from ‘The Pretenders’ on his wall. He was the one who pushed the song ‘Don’t get me wrong’ to hit status in Australia. EMI were also looking at signing a new band called Geisha, he told me. All good.
I went away very unsure and it was only when I followed up that I get the lowdown on what was up. EMI was interested, they wanted to come and see a gig in Melbourne.
I had a bite, but no band!! AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!
It’s all rock and roll to me – Part 22
The A&R guy from EMI was coming to see ‘my band’ in early December. It’s was now October and I had no band. Battle stations – code red. I needed one set of songs, about 20 minutes, for a show case.
To Do List:
- Find a backing band
- Find a venue at short notice, preferably a venue on ‘the gig circuit’
- Get my outfit together
Firstly the band. One of my friends brother was in a band called Bounty. I had been out to see them play a couple of times. They were good players and thank God they agreed to do it. I also roped ‘Keyboard Man’ into the gig as we were becoming good friends by this stage. I also needed a couple of backing singers so Nightingale came to the rescue as did a friend of hers who was good with harmonies. A couple of rehearsals – no worries – under control.
Finding a venue was a hairy challenge. I remember getting all dressed up and rocking down to the Prince of Wales in St Kilda to have a word with the manager. I can’t remember why I chose this venue but it was certainly on the map in the music scene then and it’s even bigger now. In those days is was a grungy old place with carpet stickier than fly paper mixed with velcro. The manager and his secretary were surprisingly helpful.
The secretary checked the booking schedule, they had a band booked, on the date that I wanted, but they said I could do my set before band. YES!
As I walked out the manager said to me ‘You’re a touch of Hollywood’. I said ‘What does that mean’. He said ‘You look like a movie star’. OK. All good so far.
So what to wear. At the time Madonna was just starting to hit the scene in a big way. I had it in my head that I would put together something funky and street so I got this jacket and ripped fabric into strips and put bows all over it. It’s sounds better than it looks, but at the time I thought it was pretty cool.
The big day was approaching. All was quiet on the western front. I could only wait and hope all would go well.
It’s all rock and roll to me – Part 23
The big day arrives and I’m as nervous as a mouse in a pit of vipers. How on earth are you supposed to put on mascara in states like this? The phone rings –bugger!!! So now I’m running down the hall to catch the phone (pre cordless and mobile phone days) while wiping mascara off my cheek.
It was the A&R guy from EMI. He’s having a crisis in his life, he is on the verge of splitting up with his wife and he is in a bad way. He can’t risk leaving the situation to get on a plane to come down to Melbourne tonight. So instead he is sending a woman from the Melbourne office to check out my gig. He’s really apologetic, over and over.
NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I think, but I say – oh that’s okay, I hope it all works out with your wife. I put the phone down, all is not lost, maybe she’ll like it, maybe it’s all okay.
The soundcheck goes smoothly, everybody is really vibey and we’re all set to go. Half an hour to show time and I duck back stage to change into my schmick home-made pop diva jacket.
Back out front, I’m mingling with friends and the woman from EMI comes up and introduces herself. I got a really bad feeling there and then. I wasn’t being psychic, I could see that she was into something totally different to me, just by the way she dressed. She struck me as having an inner-city kind of grunge mentality and that was so far from where I was at the time. If this was going to come off, it would be a miracle.
We played really well. About halfway through, four drunken skinheads started playing up. It was pretty noticeable and I can’t remember what I said from the stage but I got them to calm down and back off. Later people told me that I handled the situation really well but it was just a fluke, it could have gone either way.
What a day this was turning out to be. The rest of the set went off without a hitch and the crowd responded really well. Offstage, it was such a relief that it was all over. I could finally wind down and we all had a laugh as we went off to Fitzroy Street for pizza. In my mind, I was starting to second guess everything; especially the jacket. If only I’d have…… If only I’d have…….. If only I’d have…..
The only thing for me in now, was once again, to wait and see what the outcome would be.
It’s all rock and roll to me – Part 24
It was December 1983, just hours before Christmas day, when I got the call. The A&R guy from EMI was on the end of the line. Apparently the weather in Sydney was great and I informed him that Melbourne weather was up and down, hot one day cold the next, but that’s Melbourne…. Finally we got around to brass tacks.
Firstly, he was really into what I was doing (all good so far but I had an impending feeling of doom) BUT (oh ooh not the dread BUT) he could get some people really excited about what I was doing and other people around EMI were not so much. He was really sorry but he could do nothing for me at the moment.
It would not have been so bad but for the fact that it was just before Christmas. Merry Christmas to me.
After collapsing into a deep funk for a couple of weeks, I picked myself up, had a good strong cup of tea, and looked to the future. I was still pretty resilient at this time and rest of the Christmas break gave me a chance to think about the next step.
All of these experiences were giving me valuable feedback and I guessed that I must be doing something right but perhaps another approach would be better.
Australia has always had a huge live scene and playing live music was so integral to being an artist that I decided that it was time to have my own band playing my original music. I also came to the conclusion that the management side was too much work and that an artist shouldn’t be trying to manage. That is what managers did.
It was time to step out on the limb a little further. I needed a band and I needed management ASAP.
Rally the troops, man that the battleships and hoist the sails, it was time to take charge.
It’s all rock and roll to me – Part 25
Armed with a new reserve of enthusiasm as having come so close to a recording deal, I set about hustling for band members. I put the word out and I also put an ad in The Age newspaper.
While all this was going on I decided to join a cover band, any cover band with work in order to generate a few dollars. Around about this time, line dancing was making a big impact on the scene and bands were catering to this country infused pop music trend.
I ended up joining this strange little line dancing cover band made up entirely of one family. Mom, dad and a brother and a sister made up the drums, guitar, keyboards and vocals and now they needed a bass player. Female bass players who could sing (lead and harmonies) were a big bonus in those days and so I got the gig. They were working regularly and had bookings way into the future.
This was a dream gig for me. The material was really simple, the family handled all of the gig bookings and administration and I was just a hired hand. Little did I know that I had ended up in a hotbed of the Christian right.
This made rehearsals is a little bit precarious for me. We would get through our work and then inevitably I would have to duck some kind of lecture or right-wing tirade. I wasn’t pro or con anything I just wanted to do the gig and go home.
I was still young enough to be drawn into these fencing matches and didn’t know how to defend myself against the father who was obviously very strict with his family and somehow thought that I was a part of his brood by default. I really felt for their son who was the singer in a band. He seemed to bear the brunt of his father’s rants which bordered on the abusive in a very passive aggressive way. Don’t get me wrong, the father didn’t scream and shout, he was a very likeable man but that didn’t stop him from being relentless and manipulative.
I have nothing against Christianity, but in this case it was being used by the father in a less than Christian way. Some people will hide behind anything to justify being a tyrant. I was beginning to believe that the previous bass player had probably escaped the band rather than left the band.
They had another quirk which was quite interesting. They had played as a band for so long that if they made a mistake, they all seemed to make the mistake together. Let me give you an example but first some explanation to set it up.
We were playing at 12 bar pattern. This means 12 bars of music with four beats in each bar played in a particular chordal pattern. The pattern that I was playing on the bass guitar was a standard 12 bar riff, much like the bass riff under the song Route 66. There is no way that I can lose a beat while playing this as the riff has four notes and each bar has four notes.
So we are playing along and we get to last bar of the cycle and I’m playing the riff and the whole family, as one, drop the fourth beat and go straight to the first beat of the next cycle. The mother, who was playing guitar next to me, turns to me in mid song and says ” Try to keep up darling”.
Normally I would have a good laugh, but it creeped me out. I realised that I really was being drawn into the vortex of this family’s world.
Needless to say I didn’t stick around for too long. There is a sad footnote to this story, a couple of years later I came across someone who knew the family and apparently the son had committed suicide.
In the meantime, I was starting to audition some great players for my new original band.
