‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked.
I told him how I’d been pestered by drug dealers for the last couple of days. Waikiki on a Saturday night is much like Kings Cross at peak hour, and there we were, standing at a pedestrian crossing, when Chuggie shouted: ‘I want some fuckin’ drugs!’ at the top of his voice. I freaked. I couldn’t believe he could be this irresponsible.
A young black kid on a skateboard swerved up to us. He told us he had the best ‘heads’ in Hawaii; we could score for $175. He kept his gaze set on me, while looking suspiciously at Chuggie—perhaps he thought he was a cop. I explained that I was a rock musician from Australia and Chuggie was my manager. The kid seemed satisfied, though still a little nervous.
We agreed to the deal and the kid returned a few minutes later with a rolled-up Rolling Stone tucked under his arm. We strolled into a quiet arcade and Chuggie pulled a wad of cash from his pocket. He was thumbing through the notes and counting out the first 20 dollars.
Chuggie paid out the full $175 and we made off back to the car park. On the drive back to the hotel, Chuggie rolled a huge ‘Bob Marley’ joint—a four-paper number—and began smoking it in the car. From the corner of my eye I noticed that it was having no effect on him whatsoever. When we pulled up to the front door of the hotel, I bade Chuggie goodnight and tried to escape from the car. He held me by the arm and gave me a menacing look. He’d just bought an ounce of compressed oregano leaf; I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I had to get back home to Australia. This trip was turning into a nightmare. I had fulfilled my obligation to Rod, which was essentially to promote the song he and I had written called ‘The Transpac Slide’. I did a couple of radio interviews and we tried to set up an American release for the record but without success.
As I packed my bags, I discovered that my passport was missing. Shit. Because it was a weekend there was no chance of me replacing it, so I kicked up such a drama that Rod’s secretary made special arrangements for me with the Department of Foreign Affairs office back in Canberra, and I boarded a flight to Australia without a passport. Rod certainly was well connected.
All the way back to Australia, I noticed a crumpled figure hiding underneath a stack of clothing, stretched out across a row of seats in economy. When we finally reached Sydney, the dishevelled character turned out to be John Woodruff. ‘Woody’ was the manager of Icehouse, Diesel and the Angels (and later on, Savage Garden).
‘You’ve got buckley’s of getting back in the country without a passport,’ Woody said to me.
I told him that all the customs officers at Sydney airport were big fans of mine who’d given me the VIP treatment the last few times I’d re-entered Australia. These customs officers would stand around and make very loud jokes about me importing drugs and all kinds of contraband in the correct manner.
‘Richard, did ya hide it in the lining properly, like we told ya last time?’ they’d ask me.
‘Yes,’ I’d reply sheepishly, then they’d whisk me through the side door, much to the envy and exasperation of my fellow passengers.
This occasion was no different. The immigration officers sought me out from the giant queue of passengers. I had just enough time to wave to Woodruff before I was escorted out the same side door.
I’d broken up with Jannike, and knew it was time to pull back from the edge, at least for a little while. Hedonism and self-indulgence can be fun, but it can also turn boring and repetitive. Perhaps embracing life’s Yin and Yang is the most essential way for a creative person to live. If I stayed straight and boring all the time my work lacked soul. On the other hand, if I lived in a world of inebriated chaos, my work wouldn’t make any sense.
I’d had my latest period of chaos, now it was time to sit down and apply myself in a clear and sober light. Accordingly, I started writing songs for what was to become the Glory Road album. They were equal parts inspiration and perspiration. And making the record would take me to some amazing places.
After the end of my time with Mushroom Records, I’d been unable to land a new record deal. I’d also been preoccupied playing around with Rod and Kathy, INXS and the extended Barnes family, including Jep Mahoney. Jep, Jon Farriss and I became the three musketeers for a while. We hung out together constantly.
Anyway, one night Jon and Jimmy took it upon themselves to suggest to Rod Muir that he finance an album for me—in exchange, they’d guarantee the record was given the best possible support. Rod, typically, embraced the idea with gusto and set in motion what were perhaps the most fascinating and adventurous recording sessions for any Australian album.
By now, I’d written several songs, and recorded one (‘Angelou’) with the patronage of ‘Chippa’ Nicholas, in an unsuccessful stab at an independent production.
INXS were in hiatus and Jon wanted to work with me on this new project; he badly needed a bit of respite, to step away from the madness of INXS for a while. Without much ado, and now with Rod’s backing, we engaged Mark Opitz to produce the album, booked time at Sydney’s EMI studios and got to work. Chippa was engineering, Jon played drums, Garry Gary Beers was on bass and Alan Mansfield played keyboards.
We soon realised however, that Mark’s mind was simply not on the job. So it became apparent that this was simply not going to work. Finally, after a couple of days, Mark decided to leave my album and move on to another project, and this ended up being the best decision all round for him and for us.
We were liberated overnight, and started having a ball in the studio. We had some amazing jam sessions; Jon and Garry Gary were able to really stretch out and put in some fantastic performances. Select friends would come in and hang out and we would play on into the wee small hours. We all found it so easy to be creative, writing songs together and then recording them while they were fresh.
Jon and Garry Gary started jamming on a reggae feel and I pulled it into some shape—it became ‘The Underground’. I’m pretty sure we wrote and recorded that in one night.
We recorded most of the initial stuff for Glory Road very professionally and didn’t really get up to much mischief. In the first couple of weeks Jeppy was the only visitor—and she was like ‘family’ anyway. It was a very tight unit. Then we shifted camp to Rhinoceros Studios in Darlinghurst and the whole nature of the project took a turn for the surreal.
As the months of 1987 rolled by, my family unit of Rod and Kathy, Jim and Jane, Jeppy and INXS grew substantially, as we played host to much of the Sydney music industry. In the studio with us were Marc Hunter, Alan Mansfield and other members of Dragon, plus Sharon O’Neill, along with industry people like Mark Pope and Richard McDonald. The clientele of Benny’s crashed their way in most nights. The same team of INXS and Chippa had by now started work on the Kick album and there wasn’t much delineation between the two projects.
Jonnie and I were now sharing a flat that he and the other INXS guys owned in Kirribilli and we started to live like vampires; the days seemed to seamlessly meld into nights in the studio that never ended. We just came home to sleep.
One night Jon was having a very intense session with Alan Mansfield, trying to coax an almost impossible keyboard part out of him, while Sharon O’Neill and I sat in the anechoic chamber writing bizarre lyrics and sculling a bottle of Scotch, working on a song, ‘Under the Kn
ife’, which, if it was ever recorded, would have featured one of the most bizarre and chilling lyrics of all time. It captured the mood perfectly.
Soon after, Michael Hutchence and an entourage of his strange friends burst into the studio, all tripping on acid. Michael was wearing a crushed velvet purple cape; he was flying around the room like a 1968 hippie throwback. Michael wouldn’t stop—the lunacy went on for hours.
When Michael and his ‘acid’ friends left us, they went back to Hutch’s suite at the Park Hyatt, Sydney’s best hotel. The party rolled on, all the way to the hotel’s roof. Somehow they got up there with a ‘ghetto blaster’ and continued the party.
Fortunately, the Park Hyatt staff was used to INXS’s hijinks. On another night, I was partying with Jon when Kirk summoned me down to Michael’s suite. It must have been 5 a.m. Kirk had the key so we let ourselves in. What I saw was quite a sight. There was Hutch, spreadeagled in the ensuite, with two women straddling him and giggling hysterically. They were all in their underwear.
‘Hey, Rikki,’ someone called out. ‘Come and play ride ’em horsies with us, man!’
If that wasn’t enough, this was the same night I returned to Jonnie’s room and there was a crazed Gary Busey, the American actor, hammering on the door, threatening to kill us if we didn’t shut up. Madness.
Halfway through the recording of Glory Road, Jon organised a session with Michael Hutchence, Tim Farriss and Garry Gary Beers; together we’d all co-write a song for the album. While I was on the phone in the control room, I could hear INXS jamming on one of their biggest hits. They kept playing it over and over so finally I went in and asked what they were doing.
‘We’re writing your song, Richie!’
I said they should stop bullshitting around.
‘When are you going to get serious about this?’ I asked. It turns out they were serious; they were writing the music ‘bed’ for the co-write, using their own song as the starting point.
I didn’t know what to say.
Tim gave me a hug.
The sun went down and we started partying and I threw all caution to the wind. I settled in with Hutch to write the lyric. This was a big deal for me, a real privilege, because I’ve always regarded Michael as one of the great rock lyricists of our time. This was the day in October 1986 that former PM Malcolm Fraser woke up in a seedy Memphis hotel without his pants and passport, with no idea what had happened to him. Perfect fodder for a rock lyric.
We whacked it down as a band with Michael and me adjusting the lyrics as we went along, and ended up with the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’. Jimmy Barnes turned up later that night and he and Hutch did a spectacular backing vocal part; their ad-libs on the outro of the track were perfect.
When there was no time available at Rhinoceros, we moved to Paradise Studios, the other great studio in town. It was here that Jimmy recorded the backing vocals for the song ‘Trust Somebody’. The control room at Paradise was so small it was claustrophobic; Jimmy stood centimetres away from Chippa and me while attempting to sing unbelievably high vocal parts.
Chippa sheepishly offered to ‘varispeed’—that is, slow the tape down, so as to lower the pitch of the recording and make it more plausible for Jimmy to sing. He’d have none of it. Jimmy would go into this frightening martial arts routine, involving lots of screaming and primal grunts, then he’d yell: ‘NOW ROLL IT!’
Much to our disbelief, after many hours, Jimmy recorded vocals so high and beyond his normal range that even Ian Moss, his bandmate, believed it was a woman singing.
Jimmy convinced Rod Muir that I needed a Gibson 335 guitar to record my parts on ‘Trust Somebody’. It was about 5 p.m. and the studio was a few kilometres from Venue Music, the main music store in the city. Rod and I jumped in his limo and went screaming down to Venue. I asked whether I could borrow a 335 for a day or two so I could record my parts and as contra give Venue a credit on the album. They immediately agreed.
However, Rod asked about the price of the guitar. It was $5000. Despite my protestations, Rod bought the guitar for me on the spot. What a gesture.
I asked Ian Moss to come and play some guitar on the album. This was Jonnie’s first gig as producer, and he was now playing the role of headmaster, as I’d done with INXS during Underneath the Colours. He booked Ian for a midday start, but Mossy turned up a few hours late, so things got a little uncomfortable. I recommended that Jon go home and I’d produce Mossy’s guitar parts myself.
So we put the track ‘Glory Road’ up on the tape machine and Mossy settled into the studio. However, Mossy just couldn’t seem to get a vibe, and stood out in the studio for ages not playing a single note. Eventually, I went out and spoke with him.
‘What’s up, Mossy?’
‘I just can’t get a vibe happening,’ he replied, a bit downcast.
I suggested he go upstairs to the recreation room and play pinball for a while. I’d lay down a ‘guide guitar’ part, which might get him inspired.
I took my brand new 335 out into the studio, and fairly easily recorded a guide solo for Ian to play with. When he came back down to the studio, he still faltered when the tape started rolling. I went out to the studio to see if there was anything else I could do, but he insisted that he liked what I’d played. Big raps from a genuine guitar legend.
‘Let’s just use that,’ Mossy insisted.
However, I persevered and after a while we got a bit of guitar playing out of him. But Ian was right all along. When the album was mixed a few months later, by none other than Chris Lord-Alge, who’d worked with Prince, the Rolling Stones and Madonna, he elected to go with my solo. However, Ian’s playing featured everywhere else on the song.
INXS’s producer, Englishman Chris Thomas, needed to move the Kick album to Paris, because he was due to commence recording in Europe with Paul McCartney. Funnily enough, when INXS were in Rhinoceros, hard at work, a call came in from ‘some Pommie bloke called Paul’. He was told to piss off, the band was busy. Guess which Paul that was?
Anyway, Jon Farriss thought it only logical, as the producer of Glory Road—and given that most of INXS were playing on my album—that I should relocate to Paris, too. Much to my amazement, Rod agreed. Typically, he took it even further.
So I packed my bags and guitars and flew out to Paris, where I stayed in St James Albany, an eighteenth-century hotel on Rue de Rivoli, opposite the Tuilerie Gardens. This was my home for almost two months, one of the most fantastic times of my life.
We got straight to work at Studios de la Grande Armée, which was in the heart of Paris. The festivities began pretty much from the first night. I started final vocals and threw myself into it, because I was very conscious of what this was costing. (Don’t ask.) At first, it was just Jon, Chippa and Philipe la Font, the French assistant engineer, who we christened Fifi la Font. For the first couple of nights we were hard-working professionals.
Then Hutch arrived from Hong Kong. I was out in the studio recording vocals, concentrating on ‘Angelou’, because Hutch had agreed to sing backing vocals on that track. (Marc Hunter had recorded one backing vocal back in Sydney, leaving the other part free for Michael.)
From my position in the studio, I could sense that the boys in the control room were up to something.
When I finally came in about an hour later, I noticed that everyone was on some kind of drug. It turned out that Hutch had brought in a large stash of Halcion tablets from Hong Kong, and had persuaded all the other guys to drop a couple of tabs.
The result was that everyone, except me, lapsed into this warm and fuzzy mood, which had the reverse effect on me—I was pretty bloody irritable. I was really aware of how much money this was costing Rod, and got shitty.
Michael started treating me like a baby, tickling my tummy and saying: ‘C’mon, Ricky. It’s just like having a joint!’
I had the shits for the rest of the night, but fortunately, finally, Hutch went into the studio and recorded some stellar vocals.
Then Michael turned his attention to Fifi, demanding that he find some coke. Fifi’s English was terrible; he couldn’t understand a word Michael was saying. Finally Michael just bellowed in exasperated pseudo French: ‘Cooooo-caaaaine!’
‘Oh, oui,’ said Fifi. ‘You should have said. The Stones used this studio last month, and I think Keith and Ronnie probably dropped many, many grams of residue down into the console.’
Now, a Neve console is made up of twenty-four removable modules, which can be easily unscrewed by hand. While the rest of us were trying to work, Fifi and Michael began unscrewing some of the modules. After they’d removed about half a dozen, we, the workers, loudly protested that they were disrupting the session—there was a gaping hole in the recording console.
Fifi made a phone call to a dealer who promptly delivered a number of grams. I had a new manager, a guy named Gary Grant, and when he arrived at the studio the whole evening became a big, blurry get-together. I surrendered and we all went back to St James Albany to party.
The Best Years of Our Lives Page 20