‘This is the last time you’ll see us!’ Rose yelled unscripted, her shoulder blades digging into my back. There was a cry of crowd confusion and my brain seared red, white and black with fury. I lobbed my mic hard towards the wings, where it landed with a deafening thud, but a roadie trotted on with it again a few seconds later. It was hopeless, like trying to dispose of a stick with a labrador around.
It was all over.
The band went into one of those bombastic endings, with the guitar, drum and bass all crashing down repeatedly until I gave the cue. I didn’t even have my guitar on like I was supposed to, so instead I jumped on to Craig’s back and rode him across the stage. Like our previous guitarist, he probably fancied he played well enough for both of us anyway. Craig hooned blindly forwards, past the gerbs, which exploded in sync with the final bass-drum kick. Our promised pyrotechnics. I’d forgotten about them, but Craig hadn’t even known they existed. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time—the story of my life.
My fractured rib punctured my left lung and one kneecap orbited my leg. Craig broke my fall, but still, the photographers’ pit was a good two-metre drop. And in the split second that I hurtled towards it, when I accepted my fate and stopped struggling, it was the most blessed moment of relief of my entire life.
•
TENDER HOOKS BY THE DOLLS (2014, GRANDIOSE)
I am literally the only journalist in our office who agreed to review this album. Everyone else passed up on it because they go out drinking with The Dolls and didn’t want to upset them. Well, more fool them, because Tender Hooks is nothing short of brilliant.
The parental advisory label on the front of this album declares ‘explicit content’, but relax—The Dolls are done with the deliberate shock tactics and have emerged with something way more real. Tender Hooks is the twelve-song journal of a band that has braved some rough terrain amid the dizzying highs—and with the chalk-and-cheese vantage points of Nina and Rose Dall, it’s compelling listening.
‘Ermine Queen’ is Rose’s tip of the hat to her cousin’s pluck and bad luck, and a surprisingly moving one at that. ‘The Last Laugh’ could only be about Aunty Alannah’s dramatic farewell from the music industry back in 1989, and it’s delivered with a menace that Dall Snr would be proud of. Equally brooding is ‘Svengali’, in which Nina intones, ‘Set the controls / Locked in your room / Pulling the strings / Making us sing . . .’ over a rustling snare, before hitting those jaw-dropping high notes—‘Captured . . . Raptured . . . Tape me up’—with a fervour that would make Phil Spector blush.
Full marks also to album closer ‘Gilded Cage’, which reveals an unusually contemplative side to Rose Dall. The message of being too frightened to take off a mask is a deliberate tear-jerker, but it’s also an insight into the brave new world that this humble band from Dingo’s have found themselves charting. Encore, Dolls, encore. Lance Lobotomy, 5/5
THE SCORE
24
NO NO NO
With the benefit of hindsight, my songs were getting increasingly instructional: ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself / Won’t learn from nobody else’. But do you think I was taking my own advice? At war with the band, the label and myself, I should have known it could only end in surrender.
POUR ME ANOTHER—ALANNAH DALL (SABRE BOOKS)
Visitors’ day was the last Tuesday of the month, but I didn’t plan on sticking around for more than one.
For the first three weeks at Dry Cedars I’d quite enjoyed regressing to childhood, throwing fits at the staff and refusing to do as I was told. There was plenty of time to think and too much time to smoke, out in the grounds of the old whitewashed building. It used to be a nunnery; now every patient had a nun’s cell to sleep in and a patch of garden to tend.
Some people here took sobriety far too seriously, like they’d had all the humour sucked out of them through a five-dollar note. With them it was all about the rhymes: ‘Recovery is a lifestyle, not a turnstyle,’ ‘Practise an attitude of gratitude,’ ‘Fake it till you make it.’ These were painfully rudimentary couplets for a songwriter. I avoided those people in the kitchen and sat across the room from them at movie time, biting my nails on my favourite beanbag.
I was looking forward to seeing Rose after the morning sharing session, because my efforts to make amends to her had gone well. That was part of your karma work during your stay at Dry Cedars. You were supposed to just ‘take care of your side of the street’—say sorry to the people you had wronged, without explanation or justification. I wasn’t keen on that idea, because I had plenty of solid-gold excuses to back me up, but it was no time to play who-had-it-worse.
‘I’m sorry, Rose,’ I said, the last time she rang, just as she was about to hang up. ‘I guess I’ve always been jealous of you and you haven’t deserved it.’
Which wasn’t as hard as I thought, but then, I hadn’t accounted for people’s natural need to play devil’s advocate. If I’d said, ‘. . . but it’s not like I had a four-bedroom house and a dad with a Benz or anything,’ Rose would have come back with, ‘Oh my god, Nina, as if that’s an excuse. I have problems too, you know.’
But because I didn’t, she actually said, ‘Oh my god, Nina, it’s not your fault. I’ve always felt so sorry for you, but it’s hard to show you sometimes . . .’ (Big sniffle) ‘I need to step up and be someone who’s actually there for you.’
It was a useful tactic for future reference. I might try it on Alannah and see what she blurted out.
Rose couldn’t be seen to be deserting me now, anyway. Every news outlet had run footage of me being carried out of Flood Aid on a gurney, busted up and broken. Even Grayson insisted Rose stay—he’d given up his latest role to join her in Australia as her personal roadie. And besides, as I told her from my bed when the nurse brought the phone in, we had Japan to look forward to.
‘You’ve fucked Japan,’ was Mickiewicz’s take on it, but he also sent me a giant bunch of orchids, and was presumably footing the Dry Cedars bill, because at twenty-five grand a month, I sure wasn’t.
We hadn’t fucked Japan—he was always coming out with foreboding statements like that. As soon as I’d done my thirty days, we’d be back on track with the promo schedule. Our guitarist Craig, on the other hand, was fucked and still in traction. I had written to him as part of my amends, but I hadn’t heard back yet.
By week three I was able-bodied enough to roam around the retreat without my wheelchair. There was a blanket ban on internet, but via Jenner I knew that my friends in the press had turned the accident into speculation. Would I or wouldn’t I make it to twenty-seven, the age rock stars were supposed to die? Of course I would; it was six years off, plenty of time to get my shit together. Rehab was just a gesture these days, made by the record companies. Kane had very publicly been packed off three times around an album release and came back with new songs about troubled girls with low self-esteem—and I was a way heavier drinker than him.
I was already writing a few conceptual songs: ‘Checking Out’ would be a classic revenge fantasy, which meant trench coats, machine guns, lashing rain and diaphanous blouses getting ever more diaphanous. I was thinking Wheels & Dollbaby, if they’d sign up for another year.
We were encouraged to write our feelings in a regulation notebook, so I used mine to scratch out these lyrics. It had been my life’s mission to adequately express my psychic pain in a three-minute burst. When you considered that a chorus must be repeated a minimum of twice and a middle-eight must portentously be inserted halfway through, the lyricist was left an average of fifty-six seconds in which to explain themselves. That wasn’t including any possible refrains or faffing around with ‘fa fa fa’, ‘oochie coochie’ or ‘ram-a-lama-ding-dong’. This should give you some idea of why absolute articulation still eluded me.
I quickly discovered that P!nk had already used the obvious stuff—‘nurse’, ‘pill’, ‘fix’, ‘high’, ‘bad trip’—but kept my ears open in the sharing sessions anyway, just to see if there wer
e any interesting turns of phrase. Right now I hoped Kane was crying into his beer and still trying to come up with something cool to rhyme with ‘Nina’.
•
The morning session was at nine sharp, to try to get us back into the swing of life and all its timetables. That was a joke, though, because few people at Dry Cedars had the sort of proletarian job that required leaving the house before noon. At breakfast I always sat with a couple of soapie actors, who would probably have some incredible information about India Arbuckle if I could be bothered asking, and some heirs to various fortunes, from the very leafiest suburbs. I’d done a recce on the first day and there was no one I found attractive.
The main lounge room was painted a cool green so as not to enrage anyone, and the couches were the sort you struggled to get up from again. I headed towards what was my favourite seat by the water cooler, because it was nearest the door, but Shawna got there first. Shawna was always hanging shit on me for bludging cigarettes off everyone when I was a platinum-selling artist. But no one got per diems in rehab—all people were equal. The clinicians were all recovering addicts, even the nurses. It made it more enthralling; any of them could lose it at any minute. Today’s group leader was Richard, who was really into deep-and-meaningfuls. I preferred Dean, who sang the Ride of the Valkries theme whenever he saw me.
At the kitchen hatch, I accepted my mug of coffee pleasantly. I had to be careful or they’d wind up putting me on the same pills as Rose. In my head, Molly Meldrum had switched from asking me interesting questions about myself to shouting inappropriate words at bad times. Like FAT NONCE when I was talking to Richard, who wasn’t even, and OLD CRONE whenever the nurse took my blood pressure. It was all I could do to keep my face steady.
As Richard started the session, I sat cross-legged on the floor. In my experience, people had little tolerance for childhood hard-luck stories. It was like talking about drug experiences or dreams—everyone reckoned they could go one worse. Yet in here, we were encouraged to talk about all three. Even so, my fellow inmates were unwilling to give up their own medals for endurance. I could practically hear everybody’s choruses and refrains buzzing through the frequencies:
Who hasn’t done that?
You think that’s bad?
I nearly died.
One leg going like the clappers, on all of them.
Today’s word was ‘acceptance’, and we were all to riff on that in turn. It was about accepting your powerlessness and handing over your life to a higher power, as though you hadn’t employed every ounce of your own grit to not drink for the past twenty-two days. It was about ‘letting go, and letting God’ (this could be a ‘god of your own description’).
Giving up, then.
These people didn’t understand that artistic drive was all about struggle. Nick Cave kicked against the pricks. Iggy drew blood. Fleetwood Mac torched their memories. Alannah Dall crowed about ‘Kinetic Energy’, even when it took her in a downward spiral. At least she was moving. That’s what I told the group, when it was my turn to share.
‘Isn’t Alannah Dall dead?’ Shawna asked, addressing her question to the group rather than to me. She needed to familiarise herself with Google. I’d already googled her based on the bits and pieces she’d given away and discovered she was the daughter of a rock star herself. My aunt had probably slept with him.
But somewhere in my share I’d taken a wrong turn. Now we were arguing about John Villiers and I was wishing I hadn’t said anything.
‘He didn’t take advantage of me,’ I clarified. ‘He was taken advantage of. He’s the good guy. What’s wrong with you people?’
‘You were seventeen, when you first “pashed” him?’ repeated Richard. Richard was American, so he didn’t get half the stuff I said.
‘Exactly,’ I said coldly. ‘I was of age.’
‘It’s just that you’ve been calling everyone else a paedophile, Nina. It’s a word that comes up a lot in your script.’
‘Well, I won’t say that again, then.’
Progress, not perfection.
‘But, it’s an interesting point,’ he said. ‘Perhaps it’s something to think about; self-sabotaging behaviour and the fact that all the men you are drawn to are middle aged and emotionally distant.’
I sighed. My approach in group sessions was to never give anything away and just talk in circles about nothing, but on this day they needled me. That was how I wound up sharing about the night of recording alone with John Villiers, and what happened after I left Glasshouse, after I’d joked that he shouldn’t try to kiss me while he was our producer.
It was more of a ramble than a share. And we wouldn’t call it a rape, we’d call it a blackout.
After I’d walked away from John, wondering what the hell I was doing, I’d gone to Dingo’s to get hammered. I suddenly needed the familiarity of Hank, but Hank wouldn’t come out and meet me, even though it was only around ten-thirty. I knew he was up to something with somebody, or if not that, he was letting me think he was. So, I stayed out and I outlasted his mates, who didn’t mind drinking with me at all. After they went home I went on somewhere else, probably to the Roundhouse. Somewhere with a courtyard.
I wore: black lace dress with brogues and white ankle socks. It was slut, but, like Manga slut. The switched-on rapist—we’ll say attacker—should have known the difference.
There was a gap between me inviting the bloke with the Marlboros to walk me home to Hank’s, and me sitting in the alley with him silhouetted at the end of it, casting one last look back. It was like I’d been beamed down from some malevolent mothership, into that puddle. My fishnets were strewn linearly after him as though imploring him to stay.
I’d always thought that any experience was an experience worth having. I prided myself on rolling with the punches. But every time I got back up I was madder than before.
My more pressing concern was the coverage The Dolls were starting to get in all the music magazines. This man would see pictures of me and laugh with his mates. He might have already known who I was. He would have been your garden-variety opportunist who only happened across a punk-rock star drinking alone in white ankle socks—not someone who left the house that morning with a roll of gaffer tape and a balaclava in his backpack. I mean, he probably listened to Coldplay and made love to his girlfriend, the creep.
I sat back in my chair.
‘Please continue, if you would like to,’ said Richard after a moment.
I pulled my calf up across one knee and hung onto my foot. Plenty of people had it worse, I told them. I’d feel like a fraud, seeing a counsellor. Imagine, sitting there, like I was desperate for attention. It wasn’t like I was dragged into the bushes and beaten with a crowbar. Nobody abducted me and kept me locked in a windowless room. And the kid stuff . . . it was abuse, not incest, and by Tony, not a Catholic priest. And the cops were never even called and there was so much of it I couldn’t remember. Nobody ever broke the distinctive Dall nose anyway, right?
People shouldn’t think it didn’t affect me, though, because it did. And yet still I kept on getting drunk, going out, acting up. I went straight out to the pub that next morning like I was running into a fist.
All my life I’ve wanted to say to people, ‘I’m not really like this.’ But I am like this. All the time.
It hurt to laugh. My busted rib.
Everyone stared at their coffee mugs, keeping their faces non-judgemental. You drank a lot of coffee in rehab.
‘Thank you, Nina,’ a couple of them mumbled.
‘Thank you, Nina,’ said Richard, nodding at me in appreciation. ‘We’ll wind up for today, but remember—it works if you work it.’
He didn’t even have to conduct them in. ‘So, work it, you’re worth it.’
•
Seeing Rose felt like being reunited with your mum after your first day at school. There was a rush of emotion and gratitude—and old-school excitement—that pulled the rug from under me. After we broke from our hug I had
to turn away to hide my face.
‘How’s that nurse at the front desk?’ she said, scanning my cell, which they called a guest room. She was all crackling, gum-snapping energy, but I could tell she was nervous. ‘What a bitch.’
I put away my Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book in the top drawer and sat on the bed. ‘Her thing is always, “I think you’re being a bit self-righteous”,’ I mimicked. ‘I’m like, “I’m not self-righteous, I’m right.” There’s a difference.’
‘So stupid.’
‘How can you be in the wrong when you’re talking about things like . . .’—I hesitated—‘sex?’
‘That’s really irresponsible of them,’ Rose said, tracing a finger down the doorjamb. It came away dusty.
‘They’re always on about taking personal responsibility,’ I told her. ‘Like, “Have you really never manipulated someone sexually yourself?” I’m like, “Yeah, where we come from it’s called a hand-job.”’
‘You’re a girl. You can’t manipulate someone sexually,’ Rose scoffed, turning around.
I agreed. ‘I’m many things, but I’m not a manipulative person.’
‘Who are these from?’ Rose asked, stopping her circuit of my room to stroke the flowers on my nightstand.
‘Mickiewicz.’
‘Get well or get off,’ Rose read from the card. ‘What does that even mean?’
I wasn’t sure myself, but I was hoping it meant last chance, rather than I’ll get you back, twice as hard.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but they’re expensive, and he paid for my holiday here as well.’
‘He’d want to,’ she retorted. ‘We’ve entered the charts at number three.’
She checked my reaction, but I already knew, and it was in no small part down to my spectacular swan dive. Jenner had told me that the commercial stations had picked up on ‘The Last Laugh’. They’d probably back off again once they found out how dark the rest of the album was, but it was a great start. The TV syncs were doing well, too: the chorus to ‘The Last Laugh’ was the sort of breakneck riff that stations just couldn’t leave alone, matching it to video blooper shows and sporting segments alike. The fact that my ride off stage had been turned into an animated gif was a small price to pay.
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