Nevertheless, the Festival promotions manager coerced me into agreeing to the interview. I foolishly consented.
Meldrum and I spoke live to air and he launched into a strange rant—even though he intro’d me as ‘a mate of mine’—while I unwittingly looked like a lamb being slaughtered. A million people watched this circus.
We disagreed about how late I was—I said 20 minutes, he insisted on 40—and then he brought up the press piece, insisting I only agreed to do the show ‘because your manager ordered you to’.
‘What are your feelings about Countdown?’ he asked me.
‘I’m not really sure,’ I replied. ‘That was a spontaneous remark that was made and I didn’t expect it to be in the press. My attitude to everything that happened was to make it cool, calm and collected.’
Molly pushed me again about whether Chuggie forced me to do the show.
‘I enjoyed doing the show,’ I said, ‘but there seems to be deep connotations about those events on the day. I wasn’t even there when a lot of it occurred.’
It was all a bit of a pointless set-up. Molly ended by asking me to watch how the show handled my performance of ‘Ace of Hearts’, which I performed on set soon after, and come back and talk about it.
For weeks the tabloid press slashed into the Countdown myth with razor sharp cynicism. It was hardly a surprise that Molly and I never became especially close.
We embarked on what should have been a short but busy tour. One night in Adelaide four of us were preparing to go and eat. Diane and I sat in the front of the rental car, Chris and Michael in the back seat. We were staying at a very seedy rock venue, the Arkarba, which had its own motel. Noddy, the lighting roadie, and Michael Wickow, the soundman, were staying in the room above mine.
Diane put the car into reverse and as soon as she touched the accelerator, there was a series of loud cracks. I had noticed a large number of people standing around the car park, but didn’t think much of it. Now I realised they were police—we were in the middle of a shoot out! I looked up and saw Noddy come out of his room to see what was going on. Within seconds, the door near Noddy and Michael’s room flew open and a masked gunman with a sawn-off shotgun charged out, barking obscenities at the cops.
Wickow rugby tackled Noddy and dragged him back into their room just as all hell broke loose. The police shot the first bad guy dead and he dropped over the balcony just like in the movies. A split second later a second Bandido flew out of the room. Suddenly, the Richard Clapton Band was caught in the crossfire.
I bolted around to the motel manager’s office and screamed at him like a banshee; he told me that the cops had moved everyone to safety an hour earlier. Well, almost everyone. Finally, we made our escape in a taxi, but it had been too close for comfort.
Chris Pinnick, being a Hollywood native, was forever harping about the lack of drugs on the road.
‘Whoever heard of a rock band with no drugs, you bozos!’
In the final stages of the tour we were to headline yet another huge outdoor hippie festival, this time in the northern NSW town of Byron Bay. As we pulled up, a roadie came running out to greet us and led us to our caravan. Somebody offered up some sort of exotic substance and that night, beneath a starry sky, Pinnick blew everyone away. I’ve since met people who insist it was one of the greatest gigs they have ever experienced. Then again, most of the 20,000 people in the audience were on some sort of substance or other and I’d guess that would have greatly enhanced their experience of the gig.
Sadly, things were beginning to go awry. I had Michael Hegerty and Diane on one side questioning the accounting and accountability of the tour, while Chuggie and Zev Eizik were insisting we add more dates because the tour was losing money. I was running out of patience; I still had opportunities back in Los Angeles. I had to get back there.
My allies in the local industry were telling me to forget America and pick up the pieces here. Merv Goldstein and Chuggie, meanwhile, had a particularly acrimonious falling out. Now I’d lost my American manager.
Diane and I found a flat in Vaucluse but kept it sparsely furnished. We wouldn’t be staying long; we had to get back to LA. Michael Hegerty returned to America and we planned to regroup as soon as I could get the money owed to me from the tour. But it soon became apparent that I wouldn’t be returning in a hurry.
I had befriended Andy Durant, from the band Stars, arguably one of Australia’s best songwriters. Festival, meanwhile, was back in the mix, insisting that I record another album. I tried a couple of days recording with my old sparring partner Richard Batchens, but it just didn’t work out. A short time later I met a guy named Mark Moffatt, who’d just started as Festival’s in-house engineer, and he and Andy Durant served as the catalyst for me to remain in Oz and record the album that would become Dark Spaces, with me in my first role as producer. My production work on Dark Spaces was apparently the real reason that INXS wanted to work with me as their producer.
Andy had become depressed about the beast of an industry he found himself in, so he and I talked about forming a partnership. He moved up from Melbourne. I’d already written about an album’s worth of material and was eager to co-write with Andy, something I’d never done before.
However, Andy just wasn’t functioning most of the time. I couldn’t tell if he was stoned or sick. The only time he seemed happy and functional was when he was hopelessly drunk on bourbon. I was scared to ask if he was using anything stronger.
Leglessly drunk, he and I went into Festival’s studios and recorded a savage indictment against the music industry called ‘Everybody’s Making Money (Except Me)’. We played so loudly that the walls were shaking. That night Andy was throwing up every few minutes and I was getting very concerned. I had such respect and love for the guy that I really wanted to help him.
Andy headed back to Melbourne, moving in with his brother.
Not long after, Mal Eastick, the guitarist from Stars, called me.
‘Andy’s got melanoma. He’s only got a couple of months to live.’
I was shocked. Andy was 25 years old. For the first time in my life I was faced with the Big Question. How was I going to deal with the impending death of a hugely talented and genuinely beautiful friend? What could I do to help?
Mark Moffatt and I continued working on the album under this strange dark cloud. I found solace in work, holing myself up in the studio where I’d spent so much time since 1972. I’d check in with Mal or Andy’s family every couple of days, but I could feel him slipping away.
Back in the studio I stubbornly insisted that I wanted to use Kerry Jacobson, Dragon’s drummer. To offset Kerry’s wild ways, I employed Clive Harrison, arguably the father of all modern bass players in Australia. Every morning, Diane and I would get out of the house by 8 a.m. and begin our search for Kerry. Dragon had just been unceremoniously dumped by CBS; the record company had repossessed Kerry’s drums and belongings. He was homeless and would latch onto a different girl every night at the Bondi Lifesaver.
The dilemma for Diane and me was where to start looking. We’d thump on doors until we found him. Invariably I would have to get Kerry to down some warm flat beer to get his day started. I would get him washed, try to feed him and then drag him off to the studio. Every morning Clive wou
ld be patiently waiting for us.
Clive was a Scientologist, a teetotaller, a bemused observer of rockers and their bad behaviour. Every morning, the greetings would play out like this.
‘Morning, Kerry.’
‘Morning, Clive, you shit bass player. Did you hear what I said, Clive? You are the shittiest bass player in the world. No, make that the known universe. No, make that the entire cosmos.’
Together, volatile Kerry and phlegmatic Clive made for an amazing rhythm section.
Despite all this apparent chaos, the album sessions were wonderfully creative; these intangibles gave the album its edge. We had hours of fun recording the song ‘Dark Spaces’, my first and only attempt to recapture some of the electronic experimentation I’d learnt all those years back in Berlin. We were also incredibly lucky to have American group The Fifth Dimension—known for hits like ‘Up Up and Away’ and ‘Let the Sunshine In’—to do all the backing vocals under a pseudonym.
Mark taped the two Southern black girls talking about seeing ‘Missy’s mercy sake’ under the table at a Thanksgiving dinner. (This curious phrase turned out to be slang for vagina.) Mark and I laughed our guts out. It was a hell of a story.
Dark Spaces was released in August 1980 and was yet another example of a record of mine being loved by the critics but failing to set the charts on fire. The reviews were probably the best of my career, and sales were ultimately pretty good, but only because I formed a great new band, under the management of Peter Rix (who’s worked with Marcia and Deni Hines and Jon English), and built up a very strong live following.
I somehow managed to convince Kerryn Tolhurst, from the Dingoes, to join; we played together for a couple of years. Along with Mark Meyer on drums, the band had a spirited Stones-y/ Black Crowes kind of vibe. Chris Copping, who’d played with the English band Procul Harum, was my keyboard player. This was the beginning of a fantastic run that sustained me throughout most of the eighties.
Andy Durant died on 6 May 1980. On 19 August, the famous Andy Durant Memorial Concert was staged in Melbourne. It was a profoundly sad event. Sure, there was much bravado and camaraderie between all the crew and the artists—the guys from Stars, Renée Geyer, Jimmy Barnes and many others—who presented the concert, but because of my relationship with Andy, I found it all incredibly difficult.
I’d never before had to confront death so directly, so profoundly. I kept hiding from the others; I felt strange and disoriented, constantly fighting back tears. I had to rationalise his death before I could learn Andy’s songs. Being as obsessive as I am, it was simply too difficult to concentrate.
I don’t know how I survived the gig. I was worried I might break down. By the time I actually made my entrance I was so nervous that I knocked over a chair and tripped on stage. I was dead sober, but so nervous I could barely function. To this day I can’t watch the DVD of the show or listen to the live recording. It’s just too hard, too painful.
Out of the blue, my ex-manager Chris Murphy phoned and asked me to come and see him. He’d just begun to manage a new band called INXS, who’d recorded an album and were building a following.
‘Come and check them out,’ Murphy insisted.
But when he described their style of music and the nature of the band, and said he’d like me to think about producing them, I thought Chris had lost his marbles. When we’d worked together, Chris and I were into Neil Young and Bob Dylan; I couldn’t believe he was asking me to take an interest in a new wave band, a style of music to which I couldn’t relate.
Chris was as insistent as ever, however, and I reluctantly turned up at the Paddington Green Hotel at one o’clock in the morning to see this band of hairdressers. When I walked into the venue, I found that aside from Chris and his business partner Michael Browning, the crowd comprised about nine middle-aged drunks who were there because it was the only place to get a beer after midnight.
The band came leaping out on stage as if it was Wembley Stadium and my mood changed. I was bowled over by their enthusiasm and passion. They played a song called ‘On a Bus’ which was almost pure Steely Dan. For such young guys they were great players, and I was swept up by their awesome power. By the end of the set I was a convert and met the guys, gushing praise. Much to my surprise, I learned that their influences were not wildly different to my own. We forged an immediate rapport.
I was in.
We agreed to go into the studio and try recording one song together, a sort of test run. The band had decided they wanted to record a cover version of the old Loved Ones song, ‘The Loved One’, a hit from the mid-1960s. I jumped right in.
Conditions in the studio weren’t really ideal, but the band was inspiring to work with, wildly enthusiastic. They made my production work a dream. There was no hint of negativity; everyone was focused, knew exactly where they wanted to go and were fiercely committed.
So why was I there? They needed the type of experience and information that I had access to, that I’d learned over the course of the previous decade. The one-day session played out like a dream, and I was asked to produce their second album. So began my high times with INXS.
Nineteen-eighty was one of the most eventful years of my life; I was involved in so many different things, although forging a career in America was placed on hold. I was a new man, trying to give up cigarettes, drugs and drinking and pursue the Taoist philosophy. I jumped head first into tai chi/kung fu classes.
I was approached by Mark Opitz to leave Festival, after eight years and eight albums, and sign with WEA Records. I had met Mark through Jimmy Barnes and Cold Chisel; he’d just landed the job as head of A&R. Mark had a brilliant strategy, to sign one act at a time. He signed Cold Chisel and then when they reached a certain level of success, he signed Billy Fields, who sold lots of records, and kept up this approach, signing Swanee and the Divinyls and then yours truly.
Opitz was undoubtedly the hippest producer of the early eighties; to be in with him was to be part of the most elite gang in Australian rock’n’roll. I had no hesitation in signing a three-album deal, believing it would help me build an American career without having to leave Australia.
As far as I’m concerned, this was the beginning of the greatest period of Oz Rock. It was all happening. The Divinyls were hot, acts like Midnight Oil were just starting to hit the gas. Venues like the Manly Vale and Royal Antler and Bombay Rock and the Venue in Melbourne were bursting at the seams. Millions of dollars were flying every which way; the industry was partying on cocaine and French champagne and trashing shiny new five-star hotels.
Mark Opitz, his girlfriend Vicky, Jimmy Barnes and his partner Jane moved into a big house in Brown Street, Paddington; the atmosphere reminded me of Chelsea in 1968.
Peter Rix and Chris Murphy planned a fairly long tour with INXS as support. The gigs went great; my audience responded really well to INXS. Their drummer Jon Farriss and I did tai chi every morning.
But INXS had no money. My band and I were staying at the Old Melbourne, a four-star hotel, while they were at Macy’s, a real dump, sleeping virtually on top of each other and fighting off the roaches. While in Melbourne we were to shoot a live-to-air recording at Bombay Rock for the TV program Nightmoves, a very grown-up contrast to Countdown.
I arrived at soundcheck that afternoo
n to find a distress message from INXS’s Kirk Pengilly, saying that Premier Artists, my booking agency, had replaced INXS with the Goanna Band. I spat the dummy and tried desperately to contact Peter Rix, but he avoided me all day. There were also problems with the road crew; suddenly this happy train was coming off the rails. That night after the gig I drank myself into a complete stupor, and the next day Rix and I parted company. It was time for a new start.
Tour manager Neil Wright looked after both INXS and me. The last gig of the tour was in Kempsey on the NSW North Coast and it was party time. At the end of the night I asked INXS to come back on stage and we did a couple of songs together. The place was going nuts. Michael Hutchence was very out of it and proposed an idea.
‘Let’s give the crowd a brown-eye.’ (For the uninitiated, that involves dropping your strides and exposing your anus.)
The lighting guy threw the room into blackness and then threw a ‘follow’ spot on Kirk Pengilly, who was naked save for Kerryn Tolhurst’s coat. Kirk threw open the coat and did his very own full monty. Then both bands went on stage in the darkness and assembled themselves into a straight line. Hutch and I stood at the front of the stage, jeering and laughing, while a group brown-eye was thrown.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Michael grabbed the microphone and invited any keen young chicks in the audience to get on stage and flash their vaginas. I’m pretty sure that a few willing nymphets lifted their dresses and dropped their panties. Or did I just imagine that? Anyway, there was a riot.
Neil Wright was in a panic; he screamed that the police were on their way. Some people in the entourage were in possession of illegal substances, so getting out of there was a good idea. Both bands went screaming back to the motel and hightailed it out of Kempsey with a contingent of police and parents chasing us. It’s said that no rock band ever played Kempsey again. Definitely not INXS, that’s for sure.
The Best Years of Our Lives Page 14