Off the Record: 25 Years of Music Street Press
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Off the Record: 25 Years of Music Street Press
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780702246531 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Queensland Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2010 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 388 |
| File size: | 915 KB |
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Off the Record 25 Years of Music
By Sean Sennett, Simon Groth
University of Queensland Press
Copyright © 2010 Sean Sennett and Simon GrothAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7022-4653-1
CHAPTER 1
Hunters & Collectors
Sour record deals, the courtship of America and Australian ugliness
The kinetic energy that defined Hunters & Collectors mixed a near-unstoppable rhythm and brass section with one of Australia's more enigmatic front men, Mark Seymour. The band shared a groupthink philosophy loosely attuned to Western communism. This interview sees the band, on the cusp of commercial success with 1986's Human Frailty, reflect on hard times abroad, the rigours of the road and the difficulties facing Australian bands in the mid-eighties. There is even a glimmer that things might soon turn a corner, not just for H&C, but for the entire Australian music industry.
Mike Waters, trombone and saxophone player for Hunters & Collectors, has taken on the unlikely role of advising the Victorian government on the problems of young rock bands following the recent Four Corners documentary on the plight of young rock and rollers in tackling an industry that, although well established, remains unregulated. Mike said the aim of the program had been to show how tough it is in the rock industry. Hunters & Collectors had been approached because, after five years in the business, the band had experienced most of the frustrations of today's music industry.
Both the Victorian government and Four Corners chose wisely. On the long road to recent success with their fourth album, Human Frailty, and the single 'Say Goodbye', Hunters & Collectors have surely endured their share of hard luck. Determinedly serious in their earlier years together, the Hunnas were intent on 'changing the Western world's consciousness about music' says Mike, a little tongue-in-cheek.
When they first stepped onto a Melbourne stage, Hunters & Collectors became an overnight success. Their brand of rock incorporating a tribal primitivism took Australia by storm. They were deluged with press, raving fans, and even record labels. Virgin signed them up and everything looked perfect – for a second or two.
The relationship with Virgin lasted all of six months before the band was left stranded in a heartless London. The strain fragmented them, their line-up changed and changed again, and the media's praise drifted elsewhere. Mark Seymour, vocalist and songwriter with the band, recalls the period.
'Everyone just lost interest, though we didn't help. When the label signed us, they plied us with cash and champagne. They took us out to dinner at an Indian restaurant and we started telling their general manager that we considered him the capitalist – which made us the union – and we only wanted to rip him off. So there it was: the famous Curried Chicken Incident. They took it all seriously and suddenly washed their hands of us and we were pretty well stuck. Living in England is ridiculous for a serious Australian band anyway. You're never going to get past a tiny inner-city audience there and English punks hate Australian music – except Nick Cave. I don't know why people like the Laughing Clowns bother going there.'
'In Australia we became popular very quickly,' confirms Mike Waters, 'and we thought the same would happen in the UK. We couldn't believe it when it didn't happen. We couldn't work out why. Even the Jaws of Life album ... it got favourable reviews, but it just didn't sell.'
Despite Britain's best efforts to do them in, Hunters & Collectors survived. They returned to Australia, refined their sound into a raw and ragged rock and made their live performances more powerful than ever. Waters says that, back home, the band rediscovered the crucial element in stage performance: to be entertaining and give people a good time. As Mark Seymour readily acknowledges:
'A great Hunters & Collectors gig is something few people forget, including the band. Maybe that's why the band have managed to survive for so long without any substantial chart success. The gigs are so intense that when the time has come to make a record, we haven't always had enough detachment to produce vinyl that sells. So, despite our massive live following throughout Australia, our record sales simply did not reflect our real popularity.
'I think we also suffer from the cultural phenomenon common to a lot of Australian bands like the Mentals. The people who can afford to see the band live don't seem to know that we have records out and don't buy them. What they do buy is records that are pushed out by the whole Countdown television thing: Cyndi Lauper, Bruce Springsteen. They may be great records, but the reason people buy them is because the artists are from over there. It's the same old problems.'
Perhaps, though, audiences are finally catching on that Hunters & Collectors are more than a live experience. Human Frailty has become their first long player to make an impact on the commercial charts as has the distinctive drums and bass rhythm of the lead single, 'Say Goodbye'.
Proving the Curried Chicken Incident is well behind them, the band have entered negotiation with American independent label IRS for the album's release and a tour across the Pacific. Strangely enough, Seymour thinks it is the Australian element in their songs that has created so much interest in the band from America.
'I think they like us because they think we sound a little bit exotic and non-American, which is heartening because we've always aimed to sound Australian, to get a sound that implies a sad mood that exists in an expansive space. I know that some Australian artists reject the idea of landscape these days, but I still think it has a profound effect on our consciousness.'
So just what is an Australian sound?
'There is a thing our drummer, Doug, calls the Great Aussie Tug,' says Seymour, 'that kind of "boompa boompa" feeling you get from people like Matt Taylor or Rose Tattoo – the kind of back beat that works in a pub. When we started, we had a flirtation with that kind of feel, but we stopped because we'd been reading The Face and we thought people might think we were ugly and rockist. But now we've realised we are ugly. What we do these days is simpler and more expressive.'
So, while the Hunnas are being lauded as the next big thing and are preparing material for their next album, they are still touring horrendous distances. When Hunters & Collectors next play Brisbane, they will have spent the weekend before gigging in Adelaide, travelling between the capitals by car.
'We had a chance to come back through Melbourne and stay over,' explains Waters with a shrug, 'but we decided to come through Broken Hill and on to Brisbane that way. The crowds see us so rarely up there, the gigs are always great. We really envy them.'
'In Australia, the pubs are the places where people experience rock and roll,' says Seymour, 'which isn't what happens in America or England. There's a whole cultural thing that interests me about pubs, a whole language you can draw on. There's a lot of ugliness and violence – boys bashing each other up, girls getting raped – in those places, but maybe there's a kind of truth there too.'
Seymour's rather romantic notion of Australia's pubs, though, does not extend to its clubs and discos.
'People who go to those places might like to think they're keeping their hands clean, but they have scurrilous little thoughts, they grope at each other in dark corners. The other thing about clubs that interests me is the people who treat going there as their job, their work ethic. They'll preen and look gorgeous and stand in a corner and not even drink. Those are the kind of people who'll endorse anything that anyone tells them.
'All those people just buy into it voluntarily, but the emotional spin-off from that kind of thing is very short-lived. In a pub, you can hold someone, you can laugh, you can fall in love. You can't do that in a club.'
January 1986 to July 1986. Original text: Shar Adams.
CHAPTER 2The Triffids
Feted and nauseous
Led by David McComb, the Triffids never scaled the pop charts, but their influence runs deep. Starting life in the late seventies, the group compiled eighty to ninety songs on crude cassette albums before they ever cut any vinyl. Music industry stalwart John O'Donnell recently described their early seven-inch singles as naïve gems, 'full of pop smarts and sharp lyrics but with a clumsy, awkward charm'. Truly great songs like 'Beautiful Waste' and the seminal 'Wide Open Road' were to follow, and, with their masterpiece LP, Born Sandy Devotional, the group fulfilled their 'widescreen studio ambition'. By the end of the eighties, the Triffids were no more.
There it was, headlined across the front of the NME: '1985: Year of the Triffids'. Other British media followed suit with the Guardian running a review of the Australian discovery, comparing the band with sixties American sounds, though their 'pugnacious instrumental drive and sense of enormous distances suggest the scorched earth of the bush outback'.
It's true the Triffids have an extraordinarily unique sound. Australian rock writer Clinton Walker described it in Rolling Stone as 'a new bent-dry, indigenous light and air to Australian rock'.
How has all this lauding affected the Triffids and where has it taken the band? From major songwriter and vocalist David McComb's perspective, it's all been a bit much. He views the press cynically, but concedes there were advantages.
'All those magazines like The Face ... if nothing is coming up from the street, they have to invent something by this Thursday's deadline. I think that'd be the biggest reason we didn't stay there. After that magazine [NME] came out, we could have made a killing, squeezed it for every cent, but we just felt embarrassed with the whole idea, nauseous over it. One good thing though is that we can travel to Europe and the promoters have heard of us.'
The Triffids returned to Australia 'hoping everyone would have forgotten about it', but of course the ball was already rolling. A few months later, they were off to Europe where they played England (including a set at Glastonbury) and a host of continental countries, including Belgium to a crowd of fifty thousand, sandwiched between Midnight Oil and OMD.
They also used the time to record in London and mix in Liverpool their best record to date, Born Sandy Devotional. Described by Frank Brunetti from RAM as 'a shimmering multi-faceted jewel of a record', the album is the first example of the Triffids' studio work, with many of the songs never destined to be played on stage. McComb sees the album as a natural progression.
'Our first record was kind of orchestral with strings and stuff like that. Field of Glass was meant to expose a completely different side of the band. Once we'd done that, the trick was to keep the intensity of that and combine it with something more orchestrated and ambitious. So it was in with the vibraphones and keyboards and cellos and stuff like that. It was enjoyable, especially in the midst of this so-called resurgence of guitar bands – another load of meaningless hype. A lot of the songs were written with strings or whatever in mind. A good half – maybe six out of the ten – we'll never do live. It's a real studio album.'
Although David McComb's deep hollow voice clearly provides the focus, the Triffids' celebrated sound comes from the sum of all their members: Alsy MacDonald's intelligent and creative drumming, Martyn Casey's striving basslines, Robert McComb's electric strokes on guitar and viola, Jill Birt's haunting keyboards and vocals, and Graham Lee on pedal steel guitar, whose influence led the band back to their original emphasis on strings.
'When I joined,' says Lee, 'we never wanted to use slide guitar in any sort of conventional way. I think Dave's idea in the first place was to use the pedal steel to make the overall sound more grand and orchestral.'
'I think we'd already decided this album would be very much like that,' adds Jill Birt. 'On Dave's part at least, when he was writing the songs, he was obviously making a conscious effort not to follow Field of Glass too closely. He wanted to do something quiet and I think that might have been a reaction against what people were expecting.'
The Triffids are presently touring the east coast of Australia, before returning to Britain to, they hope, clinch a big record deal. Though they won't say which major label is courting them, any deal will not mean an end to their relations with Hot Records, their independent Sydney label.
'There are good reasons for staying with Hot,' says Rob McComb. 'They are interested in us as artists, not just money spinners.'
While determined to 'make it' in the industry, the band are adamant they will do it on their own terms.
'We're getting there,' says Rob McComb. 'What we would really like is to stop spending the money we make in Australia on jaunts to England, but we'll do it again if necessary. We like to work hard. We've learned that we have to be on the ball twenty-four hours a day. We don't have the attitude of just taking a holiday while we are here. We are all very committed. After all, we've been at it for seven years.'
February 1986. Original text: Shar Adams.
CHAPTER 3Stevie Wright
Moving back into easy street
Stevie Wright tore apart the Australian music scene as front man for the Easybeats in the sixties. It's Wright's voice that punctuates the band's classic material on tunes such as 'Friday On My Mind', 'Sorry', 'Good Times' and a host of others. Originally a writer in the band, he opted to concentrate on his singing while the Harry Vanda – George Young partnership built a head of steam. Later Wright became a solo star when his old Easybeats pals Harry and George penned the 'Evie' trilogy. Check out Wright's mannerisms on old footage and you'll see where Bon Scott took his cues. Sadly, much of Wright's life has been dominated by drug addiction. For years, many music fans wondered if he was still alive or just missing in action. This piece from 1986 shows Wright still on the hard road.
Stevie Wright was only sixteen when he hit it big time with the Easybeats. Now thirty-eight, his voice crackles down the phone line from Sydney. He calls me 'babe' and 'darling' as only the diehard rock and rollers do even when we broach the subject of heroin addiction.
'I don't like to talk about my addiction,' Stevie says wearily, though he continues. 'Basically it was introduced to me the last week of Jesus Christ Superstar [where Wright played Hess for the show's two-year run]. I was at a party and it was given to me in aluminium foil. I accepted it that way. There was no shooting up then. It didn't take long before I was addicted.'
Although Stevie said heroin was never around when he was in the Easybeats ('we didn't even drink then'), he was interested in the drug primarily because of Ray Charles.
'Ray Charles was a very big attraction for me then and I knew he used heroin. It was brilliant, but what I didn't realise was the brilliance was me, not the drug.'
Stevie Wright has had it pretty rough since those Jesus Christ Superstar days.
'I have undergone shock treatment, sedation, two years of rehabilitation treatment with Salvation Army, and two lots of six-month treatments at a rehabilitation centre called Westmount. I was dying really. But then someone suggested that I do this gig. They said I could have anyone I wanted to play with.'
So some one thousand people packed a small suburban hotel to see a one-off gig. Wright was backed by some of Australia's best musos: guitarists Kevin Borich and Chris Turner played along with former Sherbet bassist Tony Mitchell, drummer Greg Hanson and Peter Kerkel on keyboards. And ironically, after twelve and a half years, rock and roll was the one thing that worked for Stevie Wright.
'All the bad things went away. I just flick 'em when I come across them now.'
On the back of his national tour with a top-notch backing band, Stevie Wright will soon be releasing a new solo album called Facing the Music before an Easybeats re-formation tour later this year, which will include all members (including Vanda and Young).
'We already have half a million dollars' worth of work for the re-formation,' said Stevie. 'Now all we have to do is get together and practise so we don't end up with egg on our faces.'
Until then, punters can check out the mix of old Easybeats material with newer numbers in Wright's eclectic set. If you go by Stevie's word, it's something to see.
'I'm totally over the top right now. The crowds love it. I have to play country and western numbers so they'll let me off the stage.'
July 1986. Original text: Shar Adams.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Off the Record 25 Years of Music by Sean Sennett, Simon Groth. Copyright © 2010 Sean Sennett and Simon Groth. Excerpted by permission of University of Queensland Press.
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