We were visited by a couple of gorgeous Gold Coast groupies, desperately trying to escape the clutches of Sydney’s most lecherous musician. Lucky old me, at least until lover boy turned up at the front gate of the luxury resort where I was staying. He didn’t buy my lies and insisted on coming up to the apartment for a visit.
What transpired was an absurd comedy of errors. I knew of an obscure exit at the back of the building, which should have enabled us to flee undetected. Unfortunately, the other guy got horribly lost—when the doors of the goods lift opened into the dingy bottom basement, I came face to face with the playboy of the western world. Sprung!
Back in Sydney, the music industry gravitated to Benny’s Bar in Potts Point like moths to a rock’n’roll flame. Every night this elite club was packed. Without naming names, let me simply say that everyone who was any kind of public figure (be they in radio, TV, sports, music, whatever) was a member of the club. There was always a tough guy on the door who knew how to separate the high-profile movers and shakers from the wannabes.
Without exaggeration, I’d estimate that a large portion of the day-to-day running of the music industry in the early 1980s was conducted in the booths and toilets of Benny’s. And every major visiting rock star—from Elton John to David Bowie and Fleetwood Mac—just had to check the place out. There they’d be, holding court with their promoter and record company reps.
Probably the central figure at Benny’s was Dominique, an expat Frenchman who ran the venue. The place was quite small, but the decor was perfect for a speakeasy. If you didn’t feature in the photo display of owner Grant Hilton, which appeared on the wall of the club, you didn’t figure in the scheme of things at all.
I was in Benny’s when I was introduced to English band Duran Duran, who were recording an album in Sydney. I knew a strange friend of the band, who seemed to be a semi-permanent resident at the Sebel Townhouse, another industry place where there seemed to be no rules. We’d typically start the evening at either EMI or a restaurant, move on to Benny’s round midnight, then end up in this guy’s suite at the Sebel.
I was moving with another tribe altogether; it all seemed so unlike me. I still wonder how I managed to be hanging around with so many international celebrities. To be honest, this is embarrassing rather than a case of idle boasting; I really don’t understand what the hell I was doing spending endless nights with people with whom I had little in common.
Dominique claims that one night he caught me inside the female toilet, cheering on while Michael Hutchence offered drugs to any woman who’d show us her breasts. Dom had to call a halt to our little game because Michael had a dozen girls queued up. Dom thought it was all getting a little out of hand.
I had an amusing night in the Sebel Townhouse bar with Glenn Shorrock and Elton John. We were making wagers on who’d had the closest brush with the law. Glenn romped home—he’d had some remarkable escapes.
Elton had been buying us top-shelf cognac as if there was no tomorrow, and we started to slur our words. Shorrock wisely decided to call it a night, leaving Elton and me to fly the flag. Before I realised it, the clock on the wall said 5 a.m., and I was also about to call it a night, when I noticed a beautiful blonde woman in a clinch with someone in a darkened corner of the tiny bar.
I pointed her out to Elton.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s just Cheryl Ladd snogging my drummer.’
What Elton didn’t know was that I’d blab on endlessly about Cheryl Ladd to my girlfriend of the time just to give her the shits; Cheryl was the hottest of all Charlie’s Angels. (Of course I’m joking!)
At this point the alcohol swept over me, and I lunged towards her and fell to my hands and knees.
‘Cheryl Ladd! Cheryl Ladd!’ I shouted. ‘We’re not worthy!’
She let out a snort and haughtily stepped over me and stormed out of the bar. I turned back to Elton but he too had slipped away. Talk about life’s most embarrassing moments; this is the only time I’ve ever behaved like a complete arsehole with a celebrity. I swear.
My professional life in Sydney gravitated around the Mushroom office, manned by Liz Dainey. I soon came to realise that Mushroom was a very Melbourne-oriented record company. Liz was rather a solitary soul in the Mushroom world; I was virtually her only Sydney act doing much. Gudinski would phone me quite frequently, but only to alert me to the fact that he was coming to Sydney to catch up. Liz was sharing an apartment with the actress Kate Fitzpatrick; there was a small but exclusive club of her friends, people like Rob Hirst from Midnight Oil and James Reyne, who’d frequent their little soirees.
Thanks to the advent of affordable home studio gear and things like drum machines, my songwriting flourished. I was able to realise my musical ideas without being undermined by extraneous factors. But I used the machines to write ‘rootsy’ music, rather than techno-funk, the current musical flavour. I wrote songs like ‘Katy’s Leaving Babylon’ and ‘Atom Bomb’ using the technology, rather than it using me.
I began experimenting with these machines. I was lured into buying a sequencer and as soon as I got it home and hooked it up, I wrote a bass line, pressed play on the drum machine and out popped this tremendous feel, which conjured up images of Berlin.
Eastern Europe was changing; there was so much drama in the air. I still had a few close friends there; we spoke regularly. I found myself writing an album about Europe from the standpoint of a European. Songs like ‘Solidarity’, ‘Amsterdam’ and ‘New World’ came out in a torrent of creative activity.
I started recording in the $2500-a-day Rhinoceros Studios with Mark Opitz, who was impressed by the grungy guitar sound I’d captured on ‘Solidarity’. He couldn’t believe I could get that sound through the tiny 10-watt amp I used at home in Vaucluse. That bedroom guitar track stayed.
All this music and technology, however, was an escape for me. I was feeling insecure and unsettled, but rather than confront my demons, I left the real world behind and lived in an imaginary state within my own mind.
I chose to use Buzz Bidstrup on drums, who’d become my constant companion, and Graham Thompson on bass, plus an assortment of the best keyboard players. I’d play most of the guitars myself. Buzz had a much stronger personality than Mark and the album began faltering very early on. Buzz asserted his ideas and staked out his territory, whereas Mark became withdrawn. This was my introduction to David ‘Chippa’ Nicholas, who engineered the album, which I named Solidarity. Not only did he save the album, but Chippa became one of my best friends and supported me through tough times.
I’d written songs about the imminent end to the Cold War, and ironically, there was a sort of ‘cold war’ at Rhinoceros for a couple of months in mid-1984. Opitz was rarely at the studio; I was freaking out that all my work would end up in the trashcan.
Inevitably, the mood turned dark and everybody started drinking as a panacea. It never works. We decided to shut down for a couple of weeks.
With only days before we were due back, Buzz, Chippa and I panicked. No one had heard from Opitz. We had the studio booked for a further month, but there was no producer, no plan. I jumped on the phone to assemble the best band I could. Along with Thommo and Buzz, I hired Mark Moffatt on guitar and Alan Mansfield from Dragon on keyboards.
I had just co-w
ritten a song called ‘Kathleen’ with Guy Delandro; I decided we’d start with that. We all arrived punctually at 10 a.m. and by 4 p.m. we had just about finished the track. Alan had a predilection for Scotch and had been having a few nips during the afternoon. He was sitting between Mark Moffatt and me on the sofa in the control room, ridiculing Opitz loudly and mercilessly.
A lone figure came slinking into the control room, sat hunched over the console, looking at the floor, not saying a word. Mansfield continued his diatribe and Moffat and I poked him in the ribs, pointing at the guy hunched over the console.
‘Shut up!’ we mouthed at him.
Al had drunk one too many Scotches and couldn’t understand what we were on about. Opitz stood up and stormed out of the room. I chased him around to a vacant studio, where he admonished me for all kinds of things. I felt he was overreacting until he finally pointed out to me what had really pissed him off.
‘All these musicians you have,’ he said, pointing to my team, ‘are accomplished record producers in their own right.’
I burst out laughing. He was right. I just hadn’t thought of that!
That didn’t improve the recording process. Chippa and I worked alone for the most part, but this was probably a good thing. Chippa’s fantastic people skills brought out the best in my guitar playing. To finish the project, Chippa and I worked for 40 hours without any rest. I played guitar until my fingers literally bled. David and I were just about hallucinating, and thinking that the young cleaning lady was looking awfully good at 5 a.m.
I finished all the lead guitar on the track ‘Amsterdam’ by dousing my fingers in whisky, the pain was so bad. Other tracks were in a state of disarray. ‘Cry Mercy Sister’ had two different bass players playing two different things; the final mix shows the chaos that was going on. If you listen, there is actually a gap where one player’s track takes over from the other.
The great Venetta Fields was rushed in to sing on incomplete tracks. Venetta was told she’d have to sing her backing vocal to a drum machine and a bass guitar on ‘Feelin’ Alright Tonight’.
‘Try and imagine the keys and guitar,’ she was informed.
Venetta crinkled up her brow with annoyance.
‘Say what? I can’t imagine nuthin’, motherfucker! What the hell have you been doin’ in here all this time?’
Good question.
Gudinski and Chugg were clamouring for a hit single. One afternoon they both burst into the studio to inform Opitz and me that I should record a ‘contemporary’ sounding single to help launch the album. Opitz said he wasn’t too enthusiastic about this idea.
‘Get another producer,’ he told them.
Gudinski hired Mark Moffatt, as well as transplanted South African Rikki Fataar, who’d drummed with the Beach Boys and Tim Finn, and most recently Bonnie Raitt, and an American engineer called Tim Kramer. I had a rough idea for a song called ‘The Heart of It’, a very basic pop tune that could be adapted into a dance track. We recorded the song in one day. I have no hesitation in saying the song wasn’t all that great, but Moffatt and Fataar really ‘pulled one out of the box’; the ‘feel’ Rikki gave to the track was pure magic.
I heard this incredible drumming in my headphones while I was singing and looked back at Rikki, who seemed to be asleep while hammering out this steaming chunk of funk!
I began hanging out with Tim Kramer quite frequently but had to pull back because he was caught up in a world of drugs from which he never did escape. Tim was a real human dynamo who’d stock up on drugs and work for days without sleep. Timmy lived in a dark Netherworld that I found a little too scary. He dreamed of meeting the girl of his dreams in Australia, but it never happened. Some time after he returned to America, he died. Roger Mason wrote ‘Token Angels’ as a tribute and captured Tim Kramer’s tragic life perfectly.
I decided I needed a co-manager, and told Chuggie that I wanted to hire Warren Cross, who’d been my lawyer and INXS’s for a time. This led to some comical situations on tour because Warren was still inexperienced in the music business.
We met back in 1980, when he was still at law school, a crazy fan who’d stand right down the front of the stage every night going troppo. He became a very valuable ally.
On the road, Warren was like a kid in a candy store. Touring was still a romantic sort of thing; not quite glamorous but very Jack Kerouac. An adventure. But our tour manager, whom I won’t name, was a small-time drug dealer and the tour took on a very decadent character. (Years later the same guy was either pushed from, or fell out of, a high-rise window on the Gold Coast.)
The feature of my live band was Venetta Fields with Shirley Mathews on backing vocals. They were two incredible women. Shirley wore rollerskates everywhere—she was quite a sight to behold in little Australian country towns, skating down the main street on the hunt for health food.
One day, in the back of a Greyhound bus Chuggie had hired to get us from Melbourne to a festival on the NSW Central Coast, I sat and listened intently to Venetta for something like 12 hours. She talked us through her incredible story: being an ‘Ikette’ for Ike and Tina Turner, working for years with Aretha Franklin, singing with Pink Floyd on the Dark Side of the Moon tour. Singing back-up vocals for Little Richard when Jimi Hendrix was his lead guitarist. Venetta also sang on virtually every Steely Dan and Boz Scaggs album.
‘What was it like working for Van Morrison?’ I asked her.
‘I’ve never heard of him,’ she replied.
I told her that I had a video of Venetta and Shirley singing back-ups for Van Morrison on American TV.
‘No, I’ve never heard of him,’ she insisted.
I described his physical appearance, but still failed to jog Venetta’s memory. I told her the song titles and suddenly she remembered.
‘Aw—hiiiiiiimmmm!’ she all but screamed. ‘Yeah, now I know—lights on, but nobody’s home! My God! Was that Van Morrison? He is the weirdest person I ever met in my whole life!’
Sometimes Venetta dozed off during this marathon session. We’d give her a nudge and she’d just pick up right where she’d left off.
We were playing a big outdoor show in Canberra with Midnight Oil; each act had their own tent. I took Venetta over to meet the Oils, but as I led her into their tent, she turned heel and ran off squawking. I ran after her, admonishing her for being impolite, but she said that Peter Garrett had scared the shit out of her.
‘He’s so big—and so white! And shit, man—he ain’t got no hair!’
Suddenly the Chinese expression ‘white ghost’ made perfect sense to me.
In the 1980s I consolidated many of the friendships I had formed with the weird and wonderful people in Australian radio. For years I’d been great mates with Peter Grace (who went on to produce Martin and Molloy), and had also befriended people like Charlie Fox, Billy Pinnell and Stan Rofe, as well as becoming a part of the Double Jay (or JJJ) family. My most enduring friends in radio over the years have been Doug Mulray, Stuart Cranney and Paul Holmes.
Paul Holmes and I were fixtures at Benny’s. Paul had the most chequered but awe-inspiring career in Australian radio. He was probably the original maverick bastard son of radio, the most loveable, rambunctious loose cannon ever foisted
on the Australian public.
One night (probably more than one night, now I think about it), Holmesy was so drunk he’d fallen over in the gutter outside Benny’s. It was about 5 a.m. and he was shouting any expletive that came into his head. Screaming at the world. Finally a police paddy wagon came rolling by. Paul began shouting abuse at the cops, calling them ‘fuckin’ pigs’ and challenging them to arrest him. I walked over and nervously said the first thing that came into my head.
‘It’s okay, officers—it’s just Paul Holmes.’
We were lucky that Holmesy was one of Sydney’s most popular announcers.
‘Oh, fine then,’ they replied and rolled off down Challis Avenue.
Jimmy Barnes was scheduled to come down to my gig at the Ferntree Gully Hotel and sing ‘I Am an Island’ with me. Jimmy didn’t show up and the gig ended. Venetta and I drank the entire supply of white wine from the backstage rider; I got really shitfaced. A chauffeur walked into the dressing room and told me that Jimmy had asked him to deliver me to his gig at the Venue in St Kilda.
Despite my protestations the driver insisted, and dropped me off at Jimmy’s gig. I sat in a tiny space at the side of stage, watching the band, visible to some sections of the audience. Between songs, Jimmy was running across and pouring vodka down my throat. Gradually, I just lost the plot altogether. I was so drunk I couldn’t comprehend what was going on.
The Best Years of Our Lives Page 17