Tex

by Tex Perkins

  The first compilation issued on Black Eye was Waste Sausage. We had considered calling it Ripper 86 as a homage to those Ripper compilations in the 1970s. On the cover of each of the Rippers was a picture of a woman’s bottom in a pair of shorts ripped to the waist exposing a lot of lady rump.

  Using all that vacant real estate, the Rippers wrote the track list right there on the lady’s bum. Black Eye’s Ripper 86 was going to have Stu Spasm’s bottom on the cover but strangely Foy didn’t buy into the concept of a really hairy man’s arse as the cover of the album. We did talk him into putting two naked men playing pool on the back cover.

  A second compilation, Leather Donut, was released in ’88. But by then the bills were starting to roll in for John.

  From the start John was all about creating things rather than making money. But that aesthetic can’t last forever. We’d had our fun and now it was time to pay the piper. Black Eye folded quickly with a few releases left in the pipeline, one being the legendary third compilation Hairy Biscuit.

  That’s always the case with record labels. I’ve never blamed anyone – especially an independent record label – for lack of sales. Essentially I had the philosophy that if it’s good, somehow people will hear it and that side of things will take care of itself. (I was wrong of course.)

  Black Eye boys on Cleveland street, Sydney, 1987.

  Eventually John did a deal with PolyGram which became Universal. For Red Eye, not Black eye. It was all over for Black eye. I think he was happy to do it, but once he had the big boys on board, John slowly became less essential. The ’80s were giving way to the ’90s and the new era was all about the corporates buying in – capitalising on the independents and their ability to sell records to their audiences. They’d offer to do a deal and distribute the label, promising to make things much bigger – and inevitably the people who’d started those labels became unnecessary.

  But without people like John Foy a lot of things just wouldn’t have happened.

  John Foy and me, Queen st, 1983.

  LORNE GREEN SHARES HIS PRECIOUS FLUIDS

  SALAMANDER JIM / 1985

  Salamander Jim was a band Kim Salmon and I threw together for a few months – until he left for England. When he did, I carried on for a while with a new line-up. Stu Spasm, Lachlan McLeod and Martin Bland were unique players but this band never really came together, decided what it wanted to do and nailed it. This record’s not great but at least it’s got a great cover.

  RECORD LABEL: Red Eye

  CORE BAND MEMBERS: Tex Perkins (vocals), Lachlan McLeod (guitar), Stu Spasm (guitar), Martin Bland (drums).

  WASTE SAUSAGE and LEATHER DONUT

  BLACK EYE COMPILATIONS / 1986 and 1987

  Waste Sausage is the first and the best of these two compilations of bands from the freak scenes of mid-’80s Australia. I contributed to tracks by Thug, The Bush Oysters and The Poofters on Waste Sausage and Salamander Jim, Minced Meat and The Furry Men of the North on Leather Donut. Grong Grong’s ‘Japanese Train Driver’ is ferocious; Lubricated Goat’s ‘Jason The Unpopular’ is also a killer track. Other tracks have a ‘I guess you had to be there’ vibe, but ALL of them sound like grubby young people having a lot of fun.

  RECORD LABEL: Black Eye

  CORE BAND MEMBERS: A compilation of bands.

  HARD FOR YOU EP

  THE BUTCHER SHOP / 1988

  Spencer Jones and Kid Congo decided to make a quick record when Kid was out here touring with The Bad Seeds. They asked me, Billy Pommer and Phil Clifford to join in. Spencer suggested we rerecord ‘The World’s Got Everything In It’, a tune he and I had recorded as a duo called Minced Meat, but I thought something less comical was appropriate. I wrote all three of the songs on the EP, including the first version of the double entendre revenge sludge classic ‘Hard For You’, the night before the session; or was it the day of the recording? (It was a midnight till dawn session with Tony Cohen.)

  RECORD LABEL: Black Eye

  CORE BAND MEMBERS: Tex Perkins (vocals), Spencer P. Jones (guitar), Kid Congo Powers (guitar), Billy Pommer (drums), Phillip Clifford (bass).

  SOUR MASH

  THE BEASTS OF BOURBON / 1988

  Finally tiring of making only bodily noises for the last few years I started writing ‘rock’ songs again and needed a rock band to play them. Kim Salmon and Boris Sujdovic were back in Australia, so the Beasts were reborn. A mixed bag, Sour Mash took two days for Phil Punch to record and mix. This is the first of a series of albums I made that would’ve been better with less songs. When a 13-song vinyl was released in a CD format it would often have B-sides attached as an extra incentive for buyers, and the album became a sprawling 15-song odyssey. Looking back now, a 10-song version would’ve had a greater impact. Led Zeppelin and the Stones knew this very well.

  RECORD LABEL: Red Eye

  CORE BAND MEMBERS: Tex Perkins (vocals), Spencer P. Jones (guitar), Kim Salmon (guitar), Boris Sujdovic (bass), James Baker (drums).

  PUMP ACTION

  THE BUTCHER SHOP / 1989

  Once again I returned to Phil Punch for another two-day session. This time I was playing loud electric guitar, and this is the first album where I wrote all the songs. Actually maybe it’s a precursor to The Ape where I also play electric guitar and wrote all the songs – 24 years later. It’s pretty good, and stands up almost 30 years later thanks to the help of Pete Hartley, Lachlan McLeod and Phil Clifford.

  RECORD LABEL: Black Eye

  CORE BAND MEMBERS: Tex Perkins (vocals), Pete Hartley (drums), Lachlan McLeod (guitar synth), Phillip Clifford (bass).

  LEGENDARY STARDUST COWBOYS

  The Legendary Stardust Cowboy (or The Ledge as some people refer to him) was responsible for what was – and probably is still – known as The World’s Worst Record.

  It was a song called ‘Paralyzed’ and it’s out there. An absolute car crash of a song. Screaming, hollering and yodelling over insane drum and bugle soloing. I loved it. Apparently The Ledge was also the guy that inspired David Bowie to use the Stardust bit in his Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars name. But that’s really neither here nor there.

  In 1985 a guy called Keith Glass, who ran one of Australia’s first import record shops, and the Missing Link label toured The Ledge out here. (The Ledge’s real name is actually Norman Carl Odam in case you were wondering.) He came to Australia with just his manager, Jim Yanaway, so Keith had to assemble two backing bands for him. He only played Sydney and Melbourne so I guess it made economic sense to get a band in each city.

  In Melbourne it was the Corpse Grinders, minus their singer Bonehead. They also backed The Ledge on a fairly hysterical performance on Hey Hey It’s Saturday which you can see on YouTube.

  In Sydney the band was me on bass, Lachlan McLeod and Spencer on guitars and James Baker on drums. Now that’s a band – of sorts.

  The show was at the Graphic Arts Club in Regent Street in the city and we did just one rehearsal. By that stage he had an album out that we’d had a good listen to. I won’t say I was disappointed by it, but it was certainly a bit straighter than ‘Paralyzed’, a little bit more organised and conventional, but still hilarious and ridiculous.

  Now, how do I put this? I’m not saying that Norman was mentally challenged. But he did have . . . issues. I heard a great story that one day in Melbourne he went out walking without telling anyone and his manager freaked out. ‘Why did you let him go walking?! He won’t come back! He can’t turn corners!’ Apparently he only walked in ONE direction. Couldn’t, or least didn’t, turn corners. A search party was sent out to find him and bring him back. Luckily someone saw him heading north. Sure enough, five kilometres down the road, there was Norman, heading north. That sort of stuff.

  The Ledge was also one of those guys who only really functions as his character and stage persona when he’s dressed up in his garb. A bit like Superman really. Norman put on his cowboy outfit – chaps, hat, the whole bit – and became the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. I think he
preferred that to being Norman. He drank constantly – Diet Pepsi. He had these HUGE bottles of it with him at all times.

  On the night of the gig he was asleep backstage in a sitting position minutes before we went onstage.

  We played this wonderful, shambolic show where Norman jumped around ranting and singing and blasting his bugle. Did I mention that his main instrument was the bugle? He threw paper plates that he had drawn a picture of himself in a UFO on, like frisbees, into the audience throughout the night.

  I think our version was pretty true to Norman’s style. I’m sure the Corpse Grinders did a good job at the Melbourne show but I suspect they played it straighter. I don’t know that they knew how to play badly – but we certainly did. We were a very long way from conventionally structured and we embraced The Ledge’s vision, if you can all it that, in that undisciplined free-form kind of way.

  Outside of rehearsal and the gig I didn’t spend much time around The Ledge. Jim ruffled him around like a protected species. Which he was – a unique specimen that needed special attention. As soon as the show was finished they were out of there.

  He was out there and out of there.

  Another one of the many weirdos I found myself mixed up with was P.J. Proby, an American pop singer who had been big in England for a moment in the 1960s.

  He had a few hits – ‘Hold Me’ and ‘Maria’ – but not many more and I think at one stage he did some recording with The New Yardbirds who went on to become Led Zeppelin. P.J.’s other claim to fame was that he’d split his pants on stage a couple of times. That caused an uproar so then it became his schtick: he ripped his trousers at every show until he was virtually banned in Britain.

  Proby was also apparently used for demoing tunes that publishers and songwriters hoped Elvis Presley would record. These people would get their songs to Proby and he would sing them aping Elvis’s style – then they’d be sent to Elvis who would ape Proby aping him when he recorded the song.

  Anyway, from all that, you might be getting the idea that P.J. Proby was an unlikely contender for an Australian tour in the late ’80s. But it happened and I found myself caught up in it.

  Clyde Bramley had left the Hoodoo Gurus and, in a stroke of genius, decided to be a concert promoter. For some reason he thought that it was a great idea to bring P.J. Proby to Australia for a tour. What was he thinking? I wasn’t directly involved but I knew people who knew people who were, so I kept hearing things – the decision to do it, the rehearsals etc – right up to the fateful and now legendary gig at the Paddington RSL.

  It was a bizarre night. P.J. entered stage left wearing a kind of Daniel Boone outfit and sporting a grey-haired pageboy haircut and goatee. Everyone found out after it was too late that P.J. would get himself to a level of drunkenness that was a kind of madness. He’d try to start a song and it would be impossible for him. There’s be all sorts of mumbling and then some bizarre, off-the-wall demented rant. It was all VERY dramatic.

  Proby was always into the whole theatrical drama of the thing. I think at one point there were tears. And it IS really dramatic because he’s REALLY FUCKED UP. I was in the audience and it was a case of everyone looking at each other and going ‘What the fuck is happening?’ I remember him taking what seemed like 20 minutes just to get this one song started.

  ‘I’b jusht medda girl named Maria . . . MA . . . RI . . . AAAAA, ooooh.’ And then he’d be briefly catatonic, frozen in a moment, mouth open, gaping wide.

  And of course there’s poor Clyde on bass in the background watching it all disintegrate in front of him.

  There were a couple of hundred people there, in a room that could hold about a thousand or so. I saw people like Harry Dean Stanton in there around the same time and it was jammed tight, but not for P.J.. I mean, it had to be explained to me who P.J. Proby was – that he was a minor teen idol pop singer from the ’60s who had a wardrobe malfunction routine. I’m guessing that if I’d never heard of him then I wasn’t the only one.

  Clyde and his promoting partner had P.J. staying at a shitty hotel on Campbell Parade in Bondi. So Spencer had met R.J. and the next thing I know Spencer calls me and says ‘come on, I’m going down to P.J. Proby’s hotel and we’re going to write songs come on, come with me.’

  ‘Ummm . . . okay.’

  So we head down to Bondi to write songs with this guy. Spencer is really into it so I tag along. Why not?

  The next thing we’re in this little hotel room with a huge pile of tiny stubbies – stublets I call them, they’re a small version of a stubby – piled up in the room. There’s this MASSIVE, mountain-like pile of them in the corner of this hotel room. Tooheys New stublets. Of course we added to them. But it seemed almost like he was collecting them. Howard Hughes-style (no, I don’t think they were filled with urine). They weren’t stacked or anything. I could imagine him saying to housekeeping, ‘Okay come in and do the room, fix the bed, change the towels – BUT DON’T TOUCH THOSE GODDAMN BOTTLES. LEAVE THE PILE OF BOTTLES RIGHT THERE.’ Or perhaps he had just drank that much, just that day.

  ‘Call me Jim,’ he said as we drank together having exuberant conversations. He said he was friends with Dennis Hopper, and I have to say, that’s who he reminded me of, mainly Hopper in Apocalypse Now, with a touch of Frank Booth from Blue Velvet lurking in the shadows.

  Now, I’ve met some name-droppers in my time but P.J. takes the cupcake. Anybody, no, everybody you mentioned, and also people you had not mentioned, he knew. The Beatles? ‘Yeah, John was an asshole.’ ‘Mick Jagger has a nine-inch penis’, and ‘This dirty $#!@%! turns up to one of my parties, so I kicked his arse down the stairs – I didn’t know it was Jimi Hendrix’. After that I realised, ‘Oh right, you’re a complete dick.’

  Randomly grabbing parts of mundane conversations was his favoured songwriting technique. At one point Spencer was talking to me about a Sunday afternoon residency I’d been doing at the Lansdowne Hotel on Broadway. I told him that I’d stopped and I wasn’t sorry because it was ruining my Sundays. P.J. roars into life, ‘GODDAMN IT THAT’S A HIT SONG – RUINING MY SUNDAYS.’

  And then he’d go into a rant and try to rhyme some words with it. As far as I’m aware there’s no royalty cheques out there with my and Spencer’s names on them for ‘Ruining My Sundays’.

  Amazingly, this guy is still alive. But I can imagine Jimi Hendrix waiting on the other side waiting to kick his arse down the stairs.

  SQUATTING IN SYDNEY

  For me and a lot of the people I knew, there were three big things that made the late ’80s a great time to be living in Sydney – being in a band, being on the dole, and being a squatter.

  I wasn’t always a squatter but it was a very important part of the underground cultural landscape of that time. There were a lot of empty houses and buildings back then and we felt a moral obligation to inhabit these places, not only to keep us housed but also to maintain them. Sometimes the actual owners of the building were happy to have squatters in there protecting the buildings from rats, pigeons and vandals.

  But some people had the exact opposite moral position than we did. ‘How dare you just move in to these places no one gives a shit about!’

  The fact was there were empty buildings and houses everywhere. Glebe had a whole street of houses people were squatting in. I knew people that were living in the Rank-Xerox building in Redfern. But nothing compared to The Gunnery. That was a complete scene all to itself.

  The Gunnery was in Woolloomooloo, straight in front of the Finger Wharf and right near Harry’s Café De Wheels. It’s now part of the Art Gallery of New South Wales – a second site the gallery owns, rents out to people like Sydney Biennale, and occasionally puts on some exhibitions in. It was called The Gunnery because it was an old naval building used for storing ammunition.

  At the Gunnery Squat in Woolloomooloo, 1990.

  Squats attracted very varied characters. True squatting is about the homeless getting a bit more organised in terms of finding and hanging on to acc
ommodation. But all squats were different. There were political squats full of lefties and anarchists. There were punk squats. And of course there were squats occupied by folks with nowhere else to go.

  The Gunnery was an art squat. At first the deros of Kings Cross would crash there (literally) but slowly a central core of squatters started seeing the potential of the building for art and so began defining areas as being for this and that. It evolved to the point where you couldn’t just flop there and live rent-free; to live in The Gunnery you had to be creative and contribute art.

  By the time I moved in around 1988, The Gunnery had about 30 full-time residents – dancers, musicians, painters, and filmmakers. Picking up where the famous Yellow House of the ’60s and ’70s had left off, it had become this amazingly culturally diverse and creative space of cinema and theatre-like spaces.

  My favourite was The Dome – a huge semi-circular room designed and used by the navy, we speculated, for target practice, in which a gunner would sit in this dome and simulate being in a war situation via projections. Whatever its original role The Gunnery repurposed it for performances.

  The Gunnery represented the last breath of the squatter culture. Eventually the authorities formally seized back what they now recognised as prime waterfront real estate. One morning the police broke down the doors and dragged everybody out with cries of ‘LET’S GET THESE SCUMBAGS THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!’ Most people went quietly. They knew it was over. Despite what the police say, I still believe squatting was the right thing to do.

  Which leads me to this little story . . .