Just before reaching Port Macquarie on the NSW North Coast, I was snoozing in the back seat when Thommo was pulled over for speeding. Harvey had been given this evil-smelling pot back at the commune; the rental car reeked. I came to and looked at myself in the rear vision mirror. I still looked like shit.
But Thommo was in real trouble, and Harvey certainly wasn’t helping, so I made a concerted effort to get out and make my presence known. The cop was stunned.
‘Richard Clapton!’
He simply couldn’t believe that he was booking my band.
‘Me and my brother are your biggest fans,’ he raved. ‘We grew up on your music.’
He told us he’d be happy to rip up his paperwork and forget the whole thing, but only if we agreed to have dinner at his brother’s restaurant that night. I agreed in a heartbeat. Talk about The Great Escape.
But the tour dragged on, as long and money-bleeding tours tended to do. By the time we reached Selina’s in Sydney, my band had started to get distracted, too. Harvey brought along a small black and white TV and placed it on a chair on his side of the stage.
At soundcheck, I spoke with the roadies.
‘What’s with the TV?’
They had no idea.
That night, in front of 2000 people, I bounded on stage, only to see my guitarist with his eyes glued to a TV set.
Between songs, I shouted at him over the noise of the crowd.
‘What the fuck are you doing, Harvey?’
‘Ralph,’ he yelled back, pointing at the screen, ‘it’s the FA Cup!’
I’d forgotten just how loyal a Pom Harvey really was. He spent the night both playing his heart out and watching the soccer.
Despite our boozing, we maintained a consistently high playing standard. In a strange way, the booze enhanced the great emotional depth of the band and the songs. The venues started filling up again.
But a rift started to grow between Harvey and me. One night in Tasmania, Harvey began gesturing at me on stage, making ‘rabbit ears’ behind my back as I was playing ‘Goodbye Tiger’. Bad move. I exploded. As soon as we came off stage I started hurling chairs and anything I could lay my hands on at him. It was an ugly scene. I fired Harvey and then the whole band threatened to quit. Frankly, we’d all had enough.
A new tour manager named Tom Keogh somehow kept my sanity, and the band, intact. He even managed to control the excessive drinking and occasional drugging.
I had parted ways with Diane quite some time before and met a beautiful girl in Melbourne. Typically, I was instantly besotted with her. I moved into her rented house in Melbourne; being on the outskirts of the city, away from the ‘scene’, probably kept me from having a nervous breakdown.
But she was inclined to get very drunk to mask her shyness. At one of the leading venues in Melbourne, she got so drunk she actually curled up and went to sleep undetected. When the gig ended there was no sign of her. I frantically searched everywhere and was aghast to find her curled up beneath the bass bins, the huge speakers on the bottom of the PA.
I played Selina’s in the Sydney suburb of Coogee. Bob Dylan was in town and a friend of mine who knew Dylan well had introduced him to my music, from Goodbye Tiger onwards. The word went out that Dylan would come to see me play. I had a full house and the gig was going really well, but I kept running over to the side of stage to ask if anyone had spotted Dylan.
‘Where’s Dylan?’ I shouted. ‘Is he here yet?’
The show ended and after numerous encores I still couldn’t confirm whether Dylan made the gig.
I wasn’t told the truth until afterwards. Dylan had in fact turned up at the front door, with an entourage of a dozen people.
Some genius bouncer said to Dylan: ‘I don’t give a flyin’ fuck who yer are, mate, yer not comin’ in ’ere with all yer fuckin’ hangers on! So fuck off!’
Another golden opportunity blown—and not through any fault of mine.
Late in what seemed like a never-ending tour, Chuggie began appearing at gigs and bringing me gifts to lure me away from my manager. He didn’t need to work too hard; despite our chequered history, Chuggie was a dream compared to the other guy. I moved back to Sydney, along with my girlfriend, who got a job in radio.
Chuggie looked at the books and had to break it to us that we were deeply in debt. Fortunately, because we had the touring company well set up, we just went belly up and liquidated it.
Women, as you’ve probably noticed by now, have always been great stabilisers for me, and my girlfriend and I quickly and happily set up house. She was an urban hippie and brought out all those good characteristics in me. She calmed me down, coerced me into a healthier lifestyle, at least enough to curb the self-destructive tendencies I had lapsed into.
I had been skirting around the fact that ‘I could have been a contender’ in America, but had probably missed my chance. But now it really hit home. And with the combination of Diane and me parting ways and Andy Durant’s death, I became uncontrollable. But instead of diving headfirst into the nightlife, I poured what money I had into new equipment for my home studio. I also began to write again, songs that I felt were among my best.
Chuggie didn’t push me too hard, having learned from past mistakes, and I developed a positive attitude to work. Unfortunately, the staff at WEA had changed a great deal since The Great Escape. The new A&R man and I didn’t have a great rapport.
I realised that he had very little empathy with my music, and treated what was the most serious factor in my work—the songs—as an excuse to call meetings and get wasted.
To make matters worse, he began using me as a pawn to lure INXS to sign with WEA. Consequently, I became disenchanted with the label, as did Chuggie.
The crunch came when Chuggie and I met with the A&R guy and asked for $10,000 to record a video for ‘The Best Years of Our Lives’. We were bluntly turned down. This outraged Chugg, who was not going to accept rejection from this newbie. Mid-sentence, Chuggie spotted someone higher up the WEA food chain, and locked into stride with him.
The two disappeared into the executive bathroom. In less than five minutes, Chuggie returned to the A&R office and gave me the nod.
‘Cool,’ he jubilantly exclaimed, ‘we’ve got our budget.’
But our time with WEA was running out. I left and moved to Mushroom Records.
In 1983 I was recruited into The Party Boys, a so-called ‘supergroup’, a really popular live act. From the outset, this band was, as the name implied, the hardest-living group of musos in Australia. Talk about the party that never ended.
My first night with them took place at Tharen’s, a very upmarket restaurant in Darlinghurst. EMI Records was hosting the night; the band’s first album had just gone gold. What could have been a great meal was left untouched while band and label raised hell. We then moved on to James Reyne’s room at the Sebel Townhouse—I was filling in for James in the band—and proceeded to trash it, doing silly rock star stuff like pulling paintings and mirrors off the walls, tossing things around, just wreaking havoc.
At the first rehearsal, I arrived and patiently waited for the rest of the band—Kevin Borich, Harvey James, bassist Paul Christie and A
ngels’ drummer Graham ‘Buzz’ Bidstrup—who eventually arrived several hours late and then proceeded to party on. Before I knew it we were on stage at the Manly Vale Hotel, drunk as skunks and playing like maniacs to a full house.
I wasn’t too enamoured with the band’s music, which was all famous covers, because PC, the band demagogue, would insist everything we played be transposed. Consequently, as James had warned me, I had to struggle with ludicrously inappropriate keys, which left me sounding either like Mickey Mouse or Satan. The tour ran for two long weeks, and although we each made fantastic money, to me it felt like artistic prostitution.
There are two very funny stories from this period, however, which should be recounted. During that first tour, Buzz Bidstrup (the Angels drummer) and I became good friends and maintained each other’s sanity throughout all that pressure. One night Buzz and his wife Kaye invited me and Jimmy and Jane Barnes around for a small, intimate dinner party. Everyone was drinking fine and expensive wine, but unfortunately I have always been very allergic to the histamines in wine. Jimmy began ribbing me for not partaking but I stood my ground because I knew that pretty soon I would go red in the face and become very inebriated. Nevertheless, much to my chagrin, I allowed myself to be talked into having a few glasses of wine. Just as the wine was taking effect, I realised that it was unusually strong and immediately regretted drinking some. To make matters worse, Jimmy insisted we get stuck into the vodka.
Jimmy then produced a home video camera he had hidden away and methodically began setting it up on a tripod in front of me.
‘Whaddya doin’, Jimmy?’ I asked, my brain turning to jelly.
Jimmy said nothing, then suddenly joined me on the lounge and introduced The Jimmy Barnes Tonight Show. My mouth was dry, and I could hardly speak. I just wanted to curl up and go to sleep.
Jimmy began doing takes of his Tonight Show, with me as his special guest, much to the hilarity of everyone else. Jimmy is actually fantastic at this stuff, and could very easily make a successful talk show host if he ever chooses that fork in the road. (He did have his own TV show in the new millennium.)
However, by this stage I was catatonic and we sat there doing take after take, with Jimmy intro’ing his show and me pissed out of my brain. The only words I could utter were: ‘Whaaaaat are ya doin?’, ‘Why?’, or ‘Switch that fuckin’ thing off, for Chrissake.’ I guess you had to be there but it sure was funny at the time.
A certain guitarist came out on my next outing with The Party Boys. The guitarist was renowned for leaping off a PA stack at the Newcastle Workers Club, and during the ensuing solo, exposing himself to the audience. His nickname was The Beast.
I’d planned a return trip to Berlin straight after the tour. The tour ended in the rural NSW town of Taree; we all woke up quite late in a seedy motel. I had an impressive camera, complete with an expensive motor drive. I took about a dozen shots of the band, then forgot all about it.
I arrived in Berlin some weeks later. I’d completely forgotten the photo shoot in Taree. Volker and I went out soon after my arrival, and I finished the roll of film by shooting the old Gestapo HQ, the Reichstag and other prominent Nazi buildings that I thought might be demolished. I was very serious about the shots, taking light readings and being careful with my exposures.
I left the film with a laboratory close by the apartment where we were living. A young, pretty Berlin girl was working behind the counter and insisted on going through every shot with me to ensure that I was satisfied with the processing. She worked her way backwards through the shots of Berlin, diligently asking for my approval of the colours and exposures.
Then she burst out laughing, and asked me who this was in the first dozen frames.
‘Oh,’ I said nonchalantly, flashing back to Taree, ‘you see, I’m a rock musician from Australia, and this is a band I play with called The Party Boys.’
‘Ach ja!’ she said, then proceeded to giggle.
In the band shots, The Beast was progressively rolling up his short shorts to reveal his penis in the last half dozen shots. Here I was, 20,000 kilometres away, trying to explain (in German) about this amusing character, and how this wasn’t common behaviour for Australian men.
I’d decided to make a last-ditch effort to make some inroads in the German music scene. I moved back into Volker’s apartment and renewed my old European contacts, and began making new ones. At first I seemed to be received remarkably well and it was all very exciting. One valuable ally was a Hamburg-based record company exec, a guy named Hans, who worked for Polygram. He loved my albums and pledged to put his full weight behind my European career.
I spent a lot of time in Hamburg and Amsterdam; people like Bruce Cockburn and J.J. Cale were popular throughout continental Europe and I fitted better there than in the UK. I assured Hans that if he helped me secure a deal, I’d focus strongly on Europe.
I set myself up in a wonderful little pension in one of the better areas of Hamburg, and started working the phones. After a couple of days, Hans phoned to tell me that after a long period of disenchantment with Polygram, he was so frustrated with the company that he’d quit. He had plans to set up his own independent company operating out of a recording studio complex in Hamburg. I was a little disappointed, but within the week he’d lined me up a meeting with his successor at Polygram.
It proved handy that Volker and Georgie had taught me ‘street’ German—it would come in useful during my sit-down with these industry goons.
The two very rude execs kept me waiting while they made insulting remarks—in German, of course—not just about Dragon, with whom they’d recently been dealing, but the whole Australian rock scene. I sat there feigning ignorance, while they giggled and tittered about how Europe would never take Australian music seriously. After another insulting remark about Dragon, I’d had enough, so I joined the discussion in German. They were startled and desperately tried to qualify their remarks. It was all a waste of my time.
I returned to my pension more despondent than victorious; the incident had rammed home to me what a low calibre of people ran the European music scene. I had similar experiences in Hilversum, the music capital of Holland, Paris and Munich. No one rated Australian music in any way, the fools. They had no idea. It wasn’t as if the Europeans were breaking new ground in rock music; much of it was pretty bloody awful.
My old friends from the German rock scene were victimised by these BMW-driving deadshits and had to leave for England or America to build careers. Back in Hamburg, my friend Hans and his associates urged me to give it one last shot, but I was so angry I was longing to get home.
I returned via New York, with the intention of crashing out for a couple of months with Georg and Sabine. However, Georgie had changed a great deal since the late seventies. He’d worked on his English and could now communicate with his fellow New Yorkers. He and Sabine had moved up the social scale—frankly, I found the parties we attended a little bit intimidating. Sabine was hanging with an intellectual crowd, while Georg was mixing with architects and the arty crowd, who all seemed to be chasing young actresses. Once I would have found this scene cool, but I was weary of all the glamour and pretensions.
One night at one of these parties, there was all kinds of clandestine sexual activity going on. I needed to get the hell out of there and across to Cal
ifornia, where I felt much more at home. Once again, Georgie was upset that I wanted to leave but I told him that I couldn’t just divorce myself from Australia. I had to get home eventually.
John Brommell, my Australian publisher, was in LA so I made the excuse that we had some meetings planned. I only spent a short time with John, but was there long enough to be impressed at how he and Jane—his secretary—had succeeded in charming the pants off the Americans with their ‘Aussieness’. John urged me to return to Australia, to record again.
‘We’ll have another shot here with the next album,’ he assured me.
I headed home, but not before clearing my head in Hawaii for a couple of days. It couldn’t hurt after what I’d just been through.
Before I’d left Australia, there was room to move in the local scene. But now there were really good quality bands playing in venues all over Australia—every night of the week. I’d never heard of Flowers or Mental As Anything or the Eurogliders, or countless other bands, but I soon discovered they were very fuckin’ good! For the first time in my career, my agent had to worry about placing me in a venue in Sydney’s suburbs, to put some distance between me and an equally good act who were scheduled to play elsewhere that night. The agency would have to book their acts at geographically different points.
A new explosion of great Australian music was spilling over onto the world markets. I reckon Sydney probably had more great talent per capita than New York. Rod Muir, who owned the Austereo network, which included the Triple M powerhouse, was running radio; he also had his fingers in TV rock shows. The amazing thing was that there was room for so many acts on radio and TV.
My new contract with Mushroom Records was not one of their more glamorous deals, but it offered enough for me to record a decent album. Chuggie sent me up to the Gold Coast for two weeks of intense songwriting. The only trouble was that every rock band in Australia seemed to be passing through the Gold Coast. The minder Chuggie had employed for me became bored and started handing out our contact details to anyone and everyone. I feared it becoming a fortnight-long rock’n’roll party.
The Best Years of Our Lives Page 16