| |
We were obsessed with speed at the time (not the drug BTW, which
none of us ever touched) - in retrospect, rather to the detriment of the music.
Our main criterion was "how fast" rather "how good" so we roared through
Blitzkrieg Bop and others at nearly twice the speed of the originals. I
actually didn't have time to enunciate the words; the opening "we're forming in
a straight line" came out as a garbled "formininstraightline". Ross's hands were
a continual blur as he shot through the chords in supposed imitation of Johnny
Ramone, but this vision was shot to hell a few years later when Ross first saw
the Ramones live because Johnny did nothing of the sort, playing in a tepid
half-arsed manner that didn't come anywhere near Ross's fevered conception.
Ironically, Ross's labours were unnecessary because he always played with
full-fuzz so that the guitar sound was an undifferentiated blur - anyway it
LOOKED good...
As none of us could play particularly well, we kept everything VERY
simple: basic full-pelt riffs and chorus-lines, no harmonies, embellishments, or
anything at all fancy. James's songs were either innocent love-songs, paeans to
trash-culture, hate-rants, or naive political commentary/nihilist musings. In
hindsight, it was quite an original mix because we weren't QUITE a regulation
punk-band. However, we (James aside) lacked self-confidence; we couldn't believe
that anybody would actually want to hear us, let alone pay us for the privilege,
until we were really tight and professional-sounding. In reality, if we'd
dutifully played the role of
Perth's
Very Own Punk Band to the hilt (Hey World! We're not some cultural backwater
populated entirely by inbred cretins! We're really really up-to-date and
with-it! We have our VERY OWN PUNK BAND!) we probably could've gotten away with
it. James was always badgering us to play in public but Ross and I kept on
putting it off; after all, we were only practising a couple of hours a week and
surely we'd be booed off stage at any reputable venue. We didn't realize (until
Alas! Too Late!) that we could've made a virtue of our amateurism if we'd only
courted the right people.
THE VICTIMS? THE GEEKS? THE
DRESDEN WHORES? THE HITLER YOUTH?
In the meantime, we
urgently needed the right name. Band-names had been boring everybody silly for
years but the advent of punk had at last made it de rigeur to have an
offensively eye-catching name - none of this "Eagles", "Supertramp" stuff. "The
Damned", "The Sex Pistols", "The Stranglers" – that was more like it! We were
determined to outdo these as weapons of inflammatory nomenclature and so we
spent hours coming up with suitable names designed to offend/titillate/shock the
Perth public, names that we would've been proud to represent and exemplify, but
we could never fix on the perfect one. We tried "The Victims", "The Geeks", "The
Dresden Whores" and numerous others but these were either not offensive enough
or too forced (" Hey! Look at us! We're REALLY BAD MOTHAFUCKAHS!"). The trick
was an insouciant offensiveness. James commendably suggested "Lloyd And The
Disciples" but I thought I could detect a faint ironical smirk on his face as he
said it. I finally came up with "The Hitler Youth" which met with universal
approbation until Ross started having visions of Simon Wiesenthal comin' after
us and finally vetoed it. But this only happened months afterwards; I'm getting
ahead of the story because we were effectively a band without a name for months
to come...
THE
CHEAP NASTIES COME OUT
One day we found out to
our disgust we weren't Perth's only Punk pioneers; there were a band of usurpers
around called The Cheap Nasties and they were actually going to play a gig. We
hated them for it (this was supposed to be OUR turf); besides, their name was
irritating - demonstrating that they either didn't get it or they were
lampooning punk, which was pathetic in itself because punk was already a lampoon
and was such an easy target why bother to do it?
[Ed.
note: Que?]
Anyway, we rolled up to the Nasties' debut gig at the Rivervale Hotel
in June or July 1977 with a - let's say - rather negative attitude to the
proceedings. And we weren't disappointed. They were all decked out in regulation
punk uniforms - leather jackets, shades, jeans, and sneers – and they played the
gig in front of a large drawing of Nana Mouskouri, the Greek singer who was
considered the essence of "straight" at the time. Nobody with the slightest
vestige of cool would've ever admitted to liking ol' Nana - God! She was great!
Anyway, somebody in the Nasties camp had actually gone to the trouble of drawing
a picture of her (and Punk was supposedly the opposite of contrived) so that the
Nasties could make some lame satirical point. At the "climax" of their show they
all took to the portrait and ripped it to shreds. Wow! Sock it to Her, Nasties!
As for the music, it was kind of limp too, betraying strong hints that the band
had been originally steeped in dinosaur music of the Bad Company sort and had
simply updated it to conform to the latest trends. However, they were much more
proficient musically than us (although vastly less energetic) and as they were
obviously willing to play the game of being Good Little Punks it was clear they
were going to go far...(is that enough bitchiness for now?)
[Ed.
note: I have every confidence you can do even better]
Now maybe we should have joined forces with the Nasties to Advance The Cause Of
Punk in Perth And Join Hands with the Punk meritocracy throughout the world, but
Ross and I had an entrenched aversion to cliqueness. First of all we weren't
really punks, we hated cosy bonhomie and mutual "respect" between bands, and
felt that mutual loathing was a much more stimulating environment in which to
kindle creative endeavour. Well, maybe that wasn't QUITE how we articulated it
at the time. I think we expressed it thus: "Those phoney fuckers are as weak as
piss..."
An example of this (probably lamentable but hey, nobodeeez perfect...)
attitude was furnished by the Nasties' second gig, which took place at the City
Hotel (corner of King and Murray St). We went along not expressly to stir up
trouble (although willing to do a fair bit of sneering, which had evolved into
our favourite pastime), but unfortunately Satan's minions were out and about
because they placed an old school acquaintance of Ross's, a guy called Simon, in our
path and he was PRIMED for mischief-making. After listening to our not
over-friendly assessment of the Nasties he (completely unprompted by us, I must
add) began to heckle the band, calling them "Momma's Boys" and "pathetic"
(amongst a host of vituperation). While neither Ross nor I actively joined in, we
did (it has to be said) bask in his outbursts with a proprietary "that's our
boy" expression on our faces. And Kim from the Nasties wasn't happy AT ALL; at
the break he confronted us, face suffused with rage, and taunted us with
accusations that we were "too gutless" to play in public. Well, perhaps he had a
point, but I felt our tardiness was due to a commendable (and public-spirited!)
reluctance to inflict musical pain on the paying public before we were ready.
Anyway, we were not popular fellows with the tiny Perth punk clique at
this point. The question was: how could we take it further?
KICK
OUT THE JAMS: EXPLODING THE LIES OF PERTH PUNK HISTORY
Maybe it's time to
demolish a myth. Official History asserts that the Punk movement was a case of
the Proletariat finally reclaiming its Rock 'n' Roll Heritage from the effete
bourgeoisie, which had inveigled rock away from its working-man origins and
turned it into such middle-class aberrations as art-rock, progressive rock and
generalized blandness.
If Perth was typical, then this is complete BS. The truth is it
was an avant-garde affair with a mere handful of prime movers and a few
hangers-on. Even at its peak I doubt if there were more than twenty or thirty
hardcore punk fans involved. As for the working-classes, they were oblivious to
our strivings and were still listening to AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, and driving
around in panel-vans. I never saw anybody remotely proletarian at any of the
gigs: we were all well-brought-up middle-class boys and girls. James may have
been nominally sociologically different, but his appearance and manners would
have endangered him at any blue-collar public bar at the time. The rest of us
were students openly contemptuous of the bovine masses; there was a lot of
snobbery and unfortunately it rapidly turned cliquish. Certain things were
ordained as cool and others were demonized and one was expected to CONFORM to
the canon of punkology.
For example, The Saints weren't Officially cool even though their
album was way better than most of the garbage coming out of the UK. Ross and I
were much more influenced by American punk and thought the English bands were
lame by comparison. We had long hair, refused to wear anything "punk" or
new-wave and had utter disdain for anybody following the dictates of English
fashion.
Now why weren't we nicer to all the boys and girls in their ripped t-shirts and
safety-pins? In troth, I know not: inbuilt arseholeness to a large extent, I'd
guess, as well as a hatred of trendiness and a penchant for individuality.
Anyway, punk wasn't about Happy Families, was it? So we relished our position as
outsiders and curmudgeons.
James, however, dearly wanted to BELONG; he felt fellow-feeling
with the groovers and began to cultivate a number of them. Rifts were beginning
to appear amongst The Hitler Youth...[Ed.
note: Lloyd is referring to The Geeks here, not the subsequent formation
that played as The Hitler Youth - confused enough now?]
Meanwhile, we continued to rehearse and even added a second
guitarist (a guy called Kerry) for a few weeks. He was considerably more skilled
than the rest of us but wasn't into punk, so it wasn't long before he left to go
and play Real Music with other "musos". I thought the band's sound peaked while
he was there; the two guitars had a lot more power in tandem and this increased
dynamics and helped the choruses really take off and fly. I'm Flipped Out
Over You fairly ripped along with this lineup.
At the time, Neil and Kim of The Cheap Nasties honoured us with an
impromptu visit to one of our rehearsals. I'm not sure if they were invited
(James?), but they sat around sneering as we went through our repertoire (did
that mean they didn't like us or was that just an echt-punk way of displaying
approval?). Anyway, they showed true dedication to the Punk Ethos by turning up
in their punk uniforms as their regular everyday wear. Let's belatedly give 'em
an honorary Sid Vicious Award For Services To Punk Beyond The Call Of Duty...[Ed.
note: My previously declared confidence in the writer's bitchiness capacity has here been fully vindicated, nyet?]
DAVE FAULKNER FLUNKS GEEKS AUDITION
Just after Kerry left, James
suggested we might consider adding another member, a fellow he'd met on one
of his frequent visits to the public-houses of Perth (James was a noted
imbiber). Dave Faulkner was then playing in the Beagle Boys, who were a
well-known Blooz band at the time and one we hated purely out of principle.
However, James assured us that "he's cool, loves punk, and hates the music he's
playing". Anyway, he rolled up in leather jacket and freshly-punkified haircut,
listened to some of our rehearsal-tapes, and showed a commendable admiration for
the Easybeats in a discussion afterwards at the Floreat Hotel, but unfortunately
he was a keyboard-player and we weren't interested at that stage in adding
keyboards to the mix. So we didn't pick him up; if James had told us that he
also played guitar it might've been different. As it happened, our rejection of
"Flick" quickly brought things to a head...[Ed.
note: Dave Faulkner offers a very different perspective on the situation in a
recent communication - see
Dave
Faulkner's letter]
DEATH OF THE GEEKS,
BIRTH OF THE VICTIMS
At our next rehearsal, James asked
us if we'd mind making a tape of just ‘his’ songs because he wanted a record
of his songwriting efforts so far. We duly did so - completely unsuspecting of
James' Machiavellian intentions. He took his tape away, and a few days later an
ireful Ross called to tell me James and Dave Cardwell had just quit the band.
James was off to join Dave Faulkner in a new venture and had invited Dave C to
be their bass-player. Card was reluctant to leave but Ross was so pissed off
with the proceedings he virtually told Dave to clear off.
However, it explained James's urgency in getting us to record the
tape. As he couldn't play or sing the songs properly himself, he had no other
means of communicating them to Flick and so resorted to subterfuge...
What pissed us off was that he obviously considered them HIS
songs when his contribution was indeterminate apart from the lyrics. The music
was largely Ross's (and I made a number of contributions as well), but it was
difficult to say who wrote what because the songs evolved as we worked on them.
James gave us the lyrics and sometimes the musical kernel, Ross articulated
it musically, and I helped provide the final melodic line. Left to himself, James
certainly wouldn't have come up with the songs as they were and he shouldn't
have claimed them entirely as his own.
Interestingly, James' final songs with us had a much greater
musical input from him because he'd bought a guitar to help him write and had
consequently already come up with the tunes (more or less) before he brought
them around to Ross. I never heard "Chooch The Cat" or "Public Servant" but
Ross commented at the time how inferior they were to the earlier songs.
Unfortunately, James's musical inspiration didn't match his often charming
lyrics.
Anyway, bastardry aside, he made the right decision. Faulkner was
going places and we weren't...
RECRUITING THE HITLER YOUTH
James and Dave were gone, so Ross and
I were in want of a bassist and drummer. Drummers, as ever, were relatively easy
to find - basically the rule was if you wanted to play in a band and had no
musical talent whatsoever you played drums (so the pool of drummers was VAST) –
but bass-players were almost non-existent for a very simple reason. Everyone
wants to be a hero and bassists are distinctly and ineradicably non-heroic. I
mean, who remembers the bass-player?
|
"Ross had now firmly established himself as the resident
Substance-Abuser of the band" |
Anyway, appropriate ads were placed in the Sunday Times Reader's
Mart and we waited for a deluge - ha! - of replies. As they weren't forthcoming
(punk/new wave had still to penetrate the dim consciousness of the Perth muso
community), we had to settle for whatever dribs and drabs were willing - more or
less - to participate (i.e. take orders) in our Vision of the Fastest and Most
Frenetic band ever. Yes, I'm afraid mania had taken over... a mostly drug-free
and Christian mania, I have to say, even though Ross was still not averse to the
more than occasional joint. In fact, Ross had now firmly established himself as the
resident Substance-Abuser of the band, as he also spent at least three nights a
week in an alcoholic stupor. Sure, he wasn't no Keith Richards but he was the
best we could do at short notice...
Our most promising drummer candidate was a guy called Hans and so
one evening we called around to his place in
West Leederville to check him out. Unfortunately he wasn't in but we
were told he'd gone to the City Hotel, the scene of our recent sordid
confrontation with The Cheap Nasties. So we were at home.
I'm not sure how we found Hans as we'd never seen him before, but
I cannot imagine we went around asking everybody, "Is your name Hans?”
Whatever, we found him sitting at the bar in company with a pretty girl wearing
a beret (tres bohemienne!!!). And God! he played it all so supercool, listening
to our entreaties with an air of prime hauteur, as if this was a regular thing
and there were people clamouring night and day for his services. Of course, this
was all calculated to impress the babe beside him and it did the trick very
nicely indeed. She watched Hans with wide-open eyes (and mouth) and what's the
bet Hans got laid that night? Incidentally, Hans did very well as a Lady's Man
because he came from that Hippy
Mecca,
Amsterdam, and so he could recount wondrous and probably apocryphal tales of all
the varieties of great dope available there. AND he could fake sophistication
very well indeed, a commodity in short supply in 70's Australia...
Despite his Mr Cool demeanour, however, Hans DID eventually
consent to audition for us and we found that, away from a rapt female audience, he was actually ridiculously eager to play. And shit, he didn't care what he
played - disco, country, rock, whatever - as long as he was behind the drums it
didn't matter. We could've been playing Bulgarian Wedding Music for all he
cared. He did pronounce his preference for Funk, which made Ross and I both curl
our lips, and once informed us with apparent seriousness that Ram Jam's Black
Betty (at that time on the charts) was a "completely new kind of music". But a
drummer was a drummer - and Hans was a drummer... of sorts. So we let him stay.
Next, we turned our attentions to finding a bass-player. We began
with a rigid list of requirements. He HAD to be highly technically proficient
and musically talented, have a state-of-the-art instrument and amplification, be
able to write and sing with fluency, and be right into punk and energy, as well
as - do I need to mention this? - being willing to take orders. After
surveying the available pool of talent, however, we amended our requirements to
the following:
(1) Must own, or have regular access to, at least sporadically
functioning bass guitar and amplifier;
(2) must be willing, and available, to turn up to rehearsals most of the time;
(3) must not break wind in confined rehearsal spaces.
And - Lord be praised! – a taciturn enigma of a cove called Robert
auditioned and fitted the bill admirably, although debate still rages until the
present day on how fully he complied with (3).
So we were once again a fully functioning unit and we began to
rehearse at the Wembley Scout Hall on Sunday arvos. However, we needed songs,
the great bulk of the material up to then having been co-written with James, and
we were reluctant to play ‘his’ stuff because his new band, The Victims, was
bound to be playing them. James, remember, had cunningly got us to record his
songs for him a few days before announcing he was leaving. Yes, he was a very
Machiavellian fellow and we would've greatly admired him for it if he hadn't
done it to US.
SOURCES OF MUSICAL INSPIRATION
Anyway, we contemplated all possible
subjects for songs and came up with some old standbys: songs about handicapped
people were de rigueur of course (remember this was a pre-PC era and things that
would be greeted with horror NOW were fit and worthy subjects of ribald mirth
and merriment THEN) and murderers and perverts also appeared suitable recipients
for apotheosization in song. Hatred of women furnished another fecund source of
inspiration. And of course, we HAD to do songs about Nazis. After all, what good
is a band with The Hitler Youth as a name without Nazi songs?
So we set to work. I immediately came up with Epilectic Love
which was inspired by a Ross remark about unexpectedly finding out somebody had
a disability - "I thought you were normal" (delivered with a hearty chuckle).
Give that man a course of sensitivity training!
It went:
I thought you were normal,
Now your tongue's hanging out,
You're whining and groaning,
Now you're rolling about.
CHORUS:
This is my chance!
I thank the stars above!
The time is ripe for
EPILECTIC LOVE!
Ross responded with Charles Beamish, based on a composite
character made up of Charles Manson and local legend Darryl Beamish*. If one
murderer is good, two is SO much better! The lyrics to this meisterwerke have
unfortunately been lost in the mists of time but happily a recording still
exists, enabling us to decipher the chorus: "I go MAD!!! I go MAD!!! I go
MAD!!!...". And it was a rather remarkable piece of music, with Nine and Nine
Is-style drumming and electrifying transitions as well.
[Ed.
note: Nine and Nine Is is a song off the album Da Capo by 60s
LA
band Love]
[DISCLAIMER: *Darryl
Beamish has since had his murder conviction officially over-turned. This
article in no way intends to comment on the matter, or to defame Beamish, who
was a convicted felon at the time of reference. As with the name of
the band, The Hitler Youth, and the song titles and lyrics, all was calculated
simply to outrage, with no political, social or other stance intended other than
to shock for the mere hell of it at worst, and otherwise to amuse - hopefully -
those who recognised at play a spirit of irony, black humour and rampant,
wanton, puerile irresponsibility.]
Nothing daunted by Ross's masterful attempt to outdo me in
depravity, I quickly responded with Aryan Boy, inspired by a remark made in the movie The
Mercenaries which had screened as the Midday Movie around this time. In it,
Hardy Kruger, who played a murdering fascist, was described as a "good Aryan
boy". So I set to work:
I'm a blonde l'il Aryan boy
And I do what I have to do;
I listened to Der Fuhrer...
[Ed. note: Enough, Lloyd, enough - we have
the picture; readers who don't will have to access the most twisted regions of
their imaginations, or buy the Geeks CD, which
includes the entire Hitler Youth repertoire...hopefully, the lyrics of Aryan
Boy will be unintelligible beneath the guitar noise onslaught.]
Ross, stunned by this foray into hitherto unprecedented
tastelessness, could only respond with a meek woman-hating number called Oh
Baby (You
Give Me The Shits). I had triumphed!
FIRST PHILOSOPHICAL CRACK IN THE REICH WALL
Around this time Ross and I had our
first philosophical disagreement although, actually, we'd had an argument a few
months earlier about the relative merits of Patti Smith's and Them's versions of
Gloria. The exchange had gone something like this:
Lloyd: Y'know, Ross, I think Them's version of Gloria is
better than Patti's.
Ross: Bullshit!
Lloyd: Bullshit! It's not bullshit!
Ross: It IS bullshit! No way is it better!
Lloyd: Bullshit! It IS...
History does not detail precisely how the preceding argument was
resolved...
However, the new source of contention centred on weightier
matters. While I was happy to confine our attentions to the completely
infantile, Ross was yearning to elevate our oeuvre into the realms of the merely
childish. It happened this way: The Cheap Nasties were performing a
self-composed number called Johnny Is A Heartbreaker which was their hymn of
adoration to Johnny Thunders of The New York Dolls and The Heartbreakers. I
suggested to Ross that we do an "answer" song called "Johnny Is a Windbreaker".
Instead of the cries of empathetic support I expected, however, he gave me a
look of mingled pity and derision, snorted with laughter, said with incredulity,
"that is SO pathetic", and then snorted again. I realized - to my utter dismay -
that Ross had MATURED...
Gone forever were the days when the two of us presented a united
front of unabashed immaturity; gone were the days of innocent japes and ridicule
of those weaker and less fortunate than ourselves...I looked back with
misty-eyed nostalgia to the time, only a few months before, when Ross had
proposed a song to be played to school-leavers after the "Leaving" exams called
"Ha! Ha! You Failed Your Leaving!" It was all too much...whither had my
erstwhile companion in puerility and inanity gone?
SACRILEGE!
GOVERNOR BROOME PUNK ERA BLITZKREIG-BOPPED
Meanwhile, The Victims began to play
around town. Most of their early gigs were in tandem with the Nasties at the
Governor Broome Hotel on the corner of William and Roe Street, Northbridge. I
saw most of these and wasn't impressed (shit! you don't say!), but I gave the
edge to The Victims overall. At least they seemed more authentic than the
Nasties with their dogged obsessiveness, although there was a gratuitous ugliness
about the sound I didn't care for. Flick deliberately played the cheapest and
shittiest-sounding guitar he could find and the overall sound was primitive in
the worst sense of the word.
OVERFLOWING WITH THE MILK OF HUMAN
KINDNESS
The audience for these shows
was meagre, with only forty or fifty in the crowd, but it still provided some
amusement to us connoisseurs of human foible. One time we spotted three
longhaired hippy-types sitting at a table watching the proceedings; the
following weekend they were back there at the very same table but this time
sporting brand-new punk haircuts and outfits...it's wonderful to see
steadfastness to one's beliefs...Another time, a tall fellow (later on to emerge
as Robbie Porritt of The Manikins) got up alone on the dance-floor to perform a
"spontaneous" punk dance by himself - supposedly so drawn-in by the music that
he just couldn't HELP himself. Pity he didn't notice our smirks of scorn; it
might've taught him not to make such a prat of himself. Silly fucker! Yes, we
were still as lovable as ever!
The Victims'
Governor Broome gigs also provided the opportunity for our old mate, Rockin' Rod
Radalj, to make his long-awaited performing debut. On one number, Rod was
Featured Guest Artiste on saxophone and he doggedly let forth a series of
squeaks and farting noises to complement The Victims' roar. Rockin' Rod was an
omnipresent participant in all the multifarious punk to-ings and fro-ings over
the next year or two and over the passing years he has continually and ably
demonstrated to all how persistence and determination can triumph.
What an inspiration he is!
GLAD TO SEE YA GO GO GO GO - GOODBYE
Meanwhile,
the as-yet unnamed Hitler Youth-to-be were rehearsing away quasi-merrily, but in
the process a problem was rapidly coming to a head: Robert the bass-player had
to go!
It was becoming glaringly obvious that the poor fellow couldn't play at all. At
first he concealed this by faking his efforts under the blazing sonic cover of
the rest of the band, but when I asked him to play the basslines alone he
couldn't do so. Ross and I then privately consulted about the best way to sever
our ties with him. While we were acutely sensitive to Robert's sense of
self-worth we were also concerned for the integrity of the band's music. So,
after agonizing for some time about the best way to inform Robert of the
situation without hurting his feelings, we gently told him to..."Fuck off. You
can't play for shit". He seemed quite relieved! No more faking!
Which of course left us once again without a bass-player...it was deja vu all
over again as you can see...the usual "Reader's Mart" ad was placed and we
rehearsed with Hans in the interim - and it was about this time that we
committed ourselves to our first gig.
Finally!
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
Now
an important historical point arises here: Ross, in his recollections, states
that I told Kim Salmon on this occasion that our name was The Hitler Youth, but I recall
it differently. I think I'd told Kim previously about the name and that he
simply assumed that we were still the HY, unaware of our penchant for
incessantly changing identities. I contend that no discussion about names happened that night
at Alberts. Which is why we were surprised a few weeks later when the gig
posters identified us as The Hitler Youth - finally, irrevocably, and
unashamedly. Ross was worried...weren't there a lot of earnest left-wing
types at uni and mightn't they get a little roused about a band called The
Hitler Youth who played songs about blonde lil' Aryan boys on the warpath with
rhymes like gotta preserve the race/gonna kick 'em in the face, and
mightn't they ambush the band before, during, or after the gig and do unpleasant
physical things to us before we had a chance to explain that we were puerile
apolitical black-humoured punk rock schmucks with an agenda to outrage for the
sake of it, or at least be noticed, and all in the cause of fun and blasting
rock n roll? Ross didn't like pain, especially his own.
BACK TO BASS
However,
I'm getting ahead of the story. Remember we still had to find a bass-guy!
Preparing ourselves wearily for the usual bunch of no-hopers, we were amazed to
get a response from a guy called Phil, who only shortly before had been in
Suicide Hotel, a band I'd actually seen on TV! They were glam rockers and not a
million miles from us stylistically so this was progress! And when we heard Phil
play we were dumbstruck! So THIS was how bassists really played! Not that
earnest plod we'd had to endure from our earliest beginnings but with fluidity,
swing and real precision! The only thing was we couldn't understand why this
pro would want to play with US...we, who'd never played in front of a paying
audience. Well, whatever...in retrospect, I think Phil saw how trends were
blowing and wanted to be part of the punk thing even while it was still in its
embryonic stage in stage in Perth (yeah, we're slow in Hicksville, y'all!).
POOF - YOU'RE A PUNK
This
kind of thing was happening all over Australia. I remember seeing The Angels on
ABC TV's "Countdown" at this time performing this very un-punk-like song called You're
A Lady Now. One week they were doing it dressed in regulation 70's-type
rock-muso gear (satin shirts, etc) and haircuts; the next they were in leather
jackets and short hair! It was sooo comical! Musos all over the country were in
a pickle 'cos they were in danger of becoming Boring Old Farts at 22! So would
they stick with the long hair and the Rockstar outfits or would they make the
leap and join the Proletariat? As it turned out, punk/new wave took years before
it became mainstream; in '77 it was still the thinnest of cutting-edges and it
could be argued that it never became Basic Household Fare until at least a
decade later with Nirvana and the "grunge" movement. So they needn't have
worried. But in '77 it appeared for the moment that the Old Wave were doomed and
it was necessary to make a choice - to sink with the Old Buggers or swim with
the new Fascists...
One day there was a panel discussion on TV where around 30 Old-Wave musicians,
journalists and managers earnestly discussed the looming threat of Impending
Boring Old Fartdom that seemed to be engulfing them. Jon English dismissed it as
old hat; he'd seen The Pretty Things and The Stones doing the same stuff over a
decade before. But in general, things were looking pretty gloomy for the rock
establishment. So it's not surprising that a few of them tried to get on board
with the New Thang...and God bless 'em...every one.
HANS SMACKS OUT
There
is something oddly addictive about dismissing somebody from your band,
denigrating their musical ability, making them feel worthless and unwanted, and
possibly ruining their life. How else do we explain - in a fittingly aesthetic
manner - the fact that we booted Hans out of the band only days after we had bid
a fond adieu to our beloved bass-player, Robert? The fact is we had committed to
our first gig in less than a month - at the UWA along with The Cheap Nasties,
The Victims, and Dave Warner's From the Suburbs - and we had no
bass-player and no drummer.
What,
after all, was wrong with Hans? He was a proficient drummer, perhaps not
perfectly stylistically attuned to our maniacal rush, but beggars can't
be...And we could forgive his enthusiasm for funk music, charitable chaps as we
were. He was reliable and perfectly willing to go along with whatever we wanted.
In fact, he made some effort to engage himself in our Nazi Chic oeuvre, seizing
upon a chance remark I'd made that "Hitler was a punk-rocker" to
pen a set of lyrics on said subject, with copious references to ubermenschen,
invading Poland, goose-stepping, along with some rib-tickling allusions to Concentration
Camp mores. Ah, it was enough to gladden the heart! It was, however, witty,
intelligent and erudite – the very thing, in fact, we didn’t want.
Hans,
it was true, had a faintly condescending air - when your heart lies in the exalted realm
of Funk, how else could you look on people playing at punks? - and his
expression constantly wore a "Children! Children!" aspect.
I
didn't mind: we were children - and proud of it. Well, at least I
was. Ross, as it turned out, had aspirations to maturity - which eventually led
to the breakup of our musical partnership.
Of which more later...
But right now - this being a
historical document and all - we're after the reason for Hans' banishment
from the band, and Ross does have an explanation: his story
(never proven) is that Hans had lifted a PA we had borrowed to sell for funds to supply
his gargantuan appetite for drugs and we got rid of him because we simply couldn't
tolerate illegality. Bad boy, Hans! You can't play drums in our band no
more! We can't have criminals in The Hitler Youth! [Ed.
note: Actually, it wasn't Hans' criminality per se that was the issue
- it was that as the only earning member of the band, I felt responsible for
paying the cost of the PA back to the guy we had borrowed it from! Fine to do
what it takes to finance yer drug habit - as long as yer fellow band members
aren't left to pick up the bill!]
Ruminating over the affair
after the passage of thirty years, I'd have thought that such outlaw activities
would've cemented his place in the band. After all, we were punks,
crazy motherfucking punks....well, weren't we? Hans had just provided
us free of charge (apart from the cost of
the PA) with a sorely-needed dose of street cred.....and we kicked him out in
response? I don't believe it! Besides, I don't remember a thing about it and I
usually remember these sorts of things. But then I can't think of any
alternative reason for giving him the boot, apart perhaps from sheer
perverseness on our part. So perhaps Ross is right.
AND THEN ALONG CAME PHIL
But every cloud has a silver
lining, as you will see. Giving Robert and Hans the bum's rush led to our best
line-up yet, short-lived though it turned out to be. After Robert's dismissal,
Ross put his customary ad in the "Musician's Wanted" section of the Sunday
Times Reader's Mart. As usual, it included the phrase "not before
11". Some explanation is required for this cryptic message: every Saturday
night (and, if truth be told, every Friday night as well) Ross passed
in a state of being known to the vulgar-minded as "shit-faced". This
condition entailed in turn a Sunday morning free of outside disturbance, spent
if possible under the sheets of a comfortable bed, gradually restoring his vital
spirits to their full effervescence - in preparation for the Sunday
"session". As a rule, Ross maintained this state of affairs until well
after midday but on those occasions when we needed a new bassist or drummer he
was willing to grit his teeth and take one for the team. But not before
11!
Ross's
post-11 AM sacrifices on our behalf bore special fruit this time because they
resulted in the incorporation of Phil as bassist into our group. We found
this flabbergasting because he was not only technically far superior to any of
us but he was a professional musician, of the kind that actually
expects to get paid for playing - a concept we had trouble grasping
with our pristinely amateur conception of ourselves. And he wasn't a tired,
burnt-out over-the-hill muso just looking for a gig but a young, ambitious
up-and-comer who'd recently been in a popular glam-rock outfit called Suicide
Hotel, who I'd seen on performing on TV. Why the hell did he want to lower
himself to play with us, we thought in our innocence?
The
answer, I think, was that Phil, with his keen perception of what was hip and
(more importantly) what was going to be hip, sensed that the old order
of musos was about to be washed away in the coming deluge and that he
wanted to be in on the new order of things right from the start. It's vital for
any aspiring musician to be au fait with the pulse of things; musical
irrelevance and professional redundancy being the spectre that confronts
all musical laggards and Phil, for one, wasn't going to go down as a
Boring Old Fart without a fight! (Important Note: for the uninitiated,
"Boring Old Fart" is that stage of life intermediate between "Hip
Young Trendsetter" and "Silly Old Bugger". Though unavoidable,
there should ideally be a graceful transition from one stage to the next.
Overnight movement from HYT to BOF can be psychologically shattering.)
[Historical
Note: Phil was largely right about the fate of pre-1977 musicians apres le
deluge. Those who failed to adapt (i.e., continued to play long guitar
and drum solos, didn't cut their hair and moustaches, didn't discard their
"rockstar" garb, pulled emotional or solemn faces when
"caught up" in the music, didn't assume a bored and/or angry
expression, didn't name their band by some short combative title, etc) rapidly
became the target of unprecedented critical and peer derision. The late 70's
wasn't a good time to be a Boring Old Fart.]
[Further
Historical Note: it's a sure sign of the decadence of Popular Music over the
past couple of decades that the concept of "Boring Old Fart" has now
become obsolete. This is unhealthy. It was good for musicians to worry about
such a fate: it kept them on their toes. It seems that the BOF ( a Bad
Thing) has now been superseded by the "Crusty Old Fart" (a Good
Thing). This (almost interchangeable) person is regarded with a (largely
unwarranted) adulation and reverence and has a secure set of fans willing
to swallow every yawn-worthy offering as though it's nectar from the Gods. The
market for the Crusty Old Fart shows no sign of diminishing. The older, the
crustier, the more cantankerous, the more authentic, it appears; the old way of
showering them with scorn and derision has passed from the earth, I can only
observe with regret.]
(TO BE CONTINUED)
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