by Tex Perkins
I struggle free of the pack, crawl to my feet and continue my rampage. I was INSANE. In that moment I wanted that motherfucker dead.
At one stage I remember a familiar face in front of me screaming:
‘TEX! TEX! STOP! STOP!’
‘GRRRRRR!’
Through the red mist I register that the face is Molly Meldrum’s. Not a face that ever calmed me down.
I push Molly out of the way leaving a huge bloody handprint on his nice white shirt.
‘GRRRRRRRRRRRR!’
There’s broken glass and blood everywhere, mostly mine. This prick has a hard head but it doesn’t stop me raining punch after punch down upon it.
Finally I’m dragged away. It’s time to leave.
I lead Kristyna out of the chaos. We’re quite the sight. She’s wearing what was once a white dress but, with my hand in the middle of her back, there’s now blood streaming down it. Meanwhile my grey suit is splattered with blood and to top it off I’VE SPLIT MY PANTS.
This is the classic Perkins paradox: the best and worst of me together in the same moment. Defending a loved one by vanquishing an evildoer but going so far over the top that I’m left looking and feeling like a lunatic.
In the course of all the carnage two more of those stupid pointy statues went missing. They weren’t stolen. It’s just that I forgot to take them amid all the chaos. One was left stabbed into the wall. Another, pocketed by other people. Three remained in possession of the group. Actually, I’m not sure where they ended up either.
Days later someone sends a photo of one of our ARIAs to Triple J and offers to give it back . . . but only if I turn up at their place naked. They also demand that James Cruickshank be reinstated into the band. James hadn’t been with us at the ARIAs so this ransom demander assumed he wasn’t in the band anymore. James was still in the band, but he’d just got out of hospital after a car accident while driving under the influence of heroin and had gone straight back to using, so we thought it best he stayed home that night.
This was the top of the mountain.
This was success.
FLYING HIGH
The ARIA debacle also left me with another painful legacy I live with – or is that, limp with? – to this day.
It was about two weeks after the ARIA Awards night and the record company wanted me to go to Europe to do a week of interviews. This was at the height of The Cruel Sea’s success so I go Business Class.
Ooooooh yeeeeah. Business Class, oh Business Class how I love thee, I want to die in Business Class, oh my dear darling business class . . . ah hm . . . Sorry.
Anyway, so here I am in Business Class on this long flight and I’m sitting next to this other young fella who turns out to be an actor on the Home and Away. I’d never seen him before but that’s what he said he did so who was I to argue? He says he’s off to England to do the appearance circuit. I ask what that is and he explains that all he’s got to do is turn up at various nightclubs, get up onstage, talk to the DJ for a few minutes, chat to a few people then walk out with a thousand pounds. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN WOULD YOU WELCOME THIS GEEZER FROM HOME AND AWAY!
Anyway, we’re drinking and enjoying ourselves. Enjoying all the goodies of BUSINESS CLASS. Our drink of choice on this flight is champagne and vodka – in the same glass. A Vodka Royale is the name of the concoction. We get pretty pissed pretty quickly. Then I decide to have a look at what’s in my Business Class pack – and among other things there’s cabin socks. They’re these socks you put over your socks, probably to contain the foot odour. So I think, ‘Okey dokey, I’ll put my cabin socks on.’ That’s what you do in Business Class. You wear cabin socks.
The flight goes on. The drinking goes on. Not much sleeping goes on. More drinking goes on. There’s probably only a couple of hours to go before we get to London and the actor and I are hanging back near the kitchen area, drinking and chatting to another passenger.
I feel like a little walk and there in front of me is a carpeted staircase up to FIRST CLASS so I decide that I’ll go for a wander up there and see what First Class is all about. I get up these carpeted stairs, have a look down the aisle and decide that it doesn’t look much better than where I am and it’s boring, so I start to descend the staircase – this carpeted staircase – in my cabin socks.
Then I slip and bounce all the way to the bottom, landing in an awkward position and completely fucking my knee. It’s absolutely excruciating. I’ve actually done the sort of injury that footballers do – torn a meniscus cartilage. And I’m in absolute agony, lying in a twisted heap at the bottom of the First Class stairs. The Home and Away actor jumps to my aid. ‘I’m fucked,’ I say in a loud grimacing whisper. Someone from the cabin crew runs over, grabs the mic and does the classic ‘Is there a doctor onboard?’ announcement.
And yes, there is a doctor onboard and he comes to look at me.
His prognosis: I am fucked.
They need to find somewhere to lay me out and so they take me to the cabin crew’s private napping area and put me on one of their beds and the doctor tells me to take off my pants as he needs to have a look at my knee. Even through the agony I have the foresight to tell him, ‘I’m not wearing any underpants.’ The Home and Away guy says that I can borrow a spare pair of his and runs off to get me a pair of Calvin Klein undies from his man bag.
My knee is swollen to a ridiculous size now and we have just under two hours before we land in London. And then I’m due to catch a connecting flight to Paris.
I’m still in excruciating pain and when we land they put me in a wheelchair and I’m rolled onto my connecting flight. In Paris I’m met by a bewildered record company rep who reports back to the record company that the talent is broken, and we should just cancel this publicity tour and turn me around and send me home.
‘No, I’m here now, I’m doing it, I just need help,’ I say. So they take me to my hotel room but we should’ve gone straight to hospital. I was in incredible pain all night. The next day at the hospital, the frog doctor put rows of needles in my grotesquely swollen knee and drained it of a whole lot of bloody fluid. Each needle spouting blood like an oil well. All this time I’m still wearing the soap actor’s undies.
I hobbled around Europe on crutches for a week. And I’ve been hobbling a little ever since. I’ve never had an operation to get in there and fix it properly so it’s still kinda twisted and damaged and getting worse with age.
But I’m okay.
I try not to fall down stairs these days.
I don’t drink Vodka Royales.
I never, ever take off my shoes on a plane.
But I’ll never, ever blame Business Class.
ONE FOR THE ROAD (IE)
In the mid ’90s The Cruel Sea were in Europe.
It was a typical tour. You do the gig and then you pile into the bus with all the food and booze left over from the backstage rider and off you go. That’s how you exist on tours like this. You get on the bus, drink and carry on for a while then crawl into your bunk and fall asleep while the driver drives through the night to the next gig and when you wake up you’re either in the next town or at least well on your way to getting there.
Travelling by bus was more cost-effective than paying for hotel rooms every night and flying between gigs. It becomes a routine. You fall into the rhythm of it and before you know it you’re used to this grubby little way of life.
Tonight it’s Bill the bus driver – we never knew his last name, he never needed one – and he’s driving all night and we’re all asleep in our bunks going from Madrid to Lisbon.
At around six or seven in the morning Bill stops at a truck stop and goes in for a shit and a truckie’s breakfast. Meanwhile we’re all slowly waking up and one by one we all stagger off the bus to take a piss or get a coffee.
Now, at this particular truck stop things are divided into two sections. There’s the truckers’ section which is where Bill is, and then there’s everybody else’s section which is where we go. You can�
�t see one section from the other.
What happens next is Bill finishes his breakfast and morning ablutions and happily gets back on the bus, looks down the aisle and sees that everything looks to be as it was – it’s still quiet so everyone’s still sleeping soundly, and he turns on the engine and starts driving the rest of the way to Lisbon. Without anybody else on the bus.
We’re all still having our cups of tea or coffee wearing whatever we slept in, some of us with no shoes on, most of us with no wallets or ID.
Bill meanwhile is driving ALL THE WAY to Lisbon thinking we’re just a bit quiet today.
Only when he arrives in Lisbon and presumably calls out to everyone to wake up does he realise that we’re not on the bus. Not the band. Not the crew. Not the manager. No one.
This was around 1994 so there were no mobile phones or anything like that. So instead we just sat around waiting – FOR SIX FUCKING HOURS. Earlier in the tour somebody had mentioned that there were bandits out our way and that it was not uncommon for car-jackings or indeed bus-jackings to take place. So we’re thinking that Bill’s had his throat cut and been thrown in a ditch somewhere. And to be honest, by the time he got back some six hours later we kinda wished he had been.
When he finally returned, Bill the bastard thought it was funny, which I suppose it is, now. But certainly not at the time.
Speedy at breakfast.
A band isn’t just made up of the blokes who walk onstage. There have been many gentlemen and gentlewomen of the road over the years – fine human beings all – that have tuned our guitars, driven our vans, carried our equipment and put up with all our bullshit.
But it all began with Speedy.
Speedy (real name Peter Dick) was from Brisbane and came onto the scene about the same time as I did. When I met him he had just started working for The Johnnys. Speedy just turned up to one of their early shows in Brisbane and asked if he could help out. By the end of the night he had made himself indispensable and when they left Brisbane, he went with them.
Speedy had flaming red hair shaved into a mohawk. He was strong as a bull and keen and loyal as a kelpie. In those early days Speedy worked for lots of different bands but would always find time for The Johnnys and The Beasts Of Bourbon. He loved us. And we loved him.
Speedy enjoyed his reputation for being an almost psychic roadie. It seemed like he would be there not just after the guitar player broke a string but just before the string broke. He was amazing.
He also had a reputation for being able to eat . . . anything. When he and the Beasts arrived in Europe in 1989, we immediately went to McDonald’s so Speedy could eat – I kid you not – seven Big Macs. When we ate together Speedy would always clean everybody else’s plates of any leftovers. The boy needed fuel!
This of course led to a hubris involving his ability to consume many, many beers as well, and this of course led to many, many ‘adventures’.
One night Speedy got very drunk at a bar in some town in deepest darkest Switzerland and couldn’t find his way back to the hotel. After walking around in circles, lost for some time, he decided to ask for help at the local police station. Unable to even remember the name of the hotel Speedy gave the police no choice but to lock him up in a cell for the night. This suited Speedy just fine. In the morning he walked out the front door of the police station to see our hotel directly opposite the cop shop.
‘Morning Speedy,’ we said as we loaded the van and drove on.
Speedy got beat up by the Queensland coppers packing up after a gig on the Gold Coast one night.
‘What’s your name son?’
‘Speedy.’
WHACK!
‘WHAT’S YOUR REAL NAME SON?!’
‘Dick.’
WHACK!
‘One last chance smart arse, what’s your name?’
‘Peter Dick sir.’
WHACK! ZAM! POW!
Years full of hundreds of gigs and thousands of beers followed, but somewhere along the way Speedy’s hijinks became less funny. Drunk as a monk he once drove the truck with the PA and all our equipment in it into a ditch somewhere and then walked away unable to remember where he’d left it. Something had happened in his private life and his excesses now had a darkness to them. Whole bottles of vodka disappeared around Speedy.
One morning in 1996 he was found dead in front of the TV in his flat in Redfern. He had taken home the rider of some band he was working for the night before. Some band that didn’t drink much. I guess he thought a slab of VB, a bottle of vodka and a hit of heroin was a good way to wind down after a hard day’s night.
Speedy, gentleman of the road, worked hard, went hard and died hard.
In truth, the road crew were often the most interesting dudes around. The Cruel Sea had a crew that were cooler than the band; Kelvin, Cloth Ears and the Mook were much more attractive and always had a lot more fun than us. All those guys are still alive but a lot of fellas of that profession didn’t make it. The suicide rate is a frightening five times the national average.
It’s not a coincidence that rock’n’roll and the military both use the term ‘tours’. Long tours can change people, and when they return to civilian life they can find it hard to fit back into the real world. Without the routine and the support and camaraderie of their on-the-road family, they feel lost and adrift.
The Cruel Sea had a tour manager during the ’90s who tried to tip the balance back towards the crew. Howard Freeman, or ‘The Bald Guy’ as he liked to be known, was like a football coach or a drill sergeant. He loved his crews and they loved him. But he hated us. Hated musicians in general. Thought we were all big self-indulgent, self-destructive babies. He was right.
ZONE BALL
Another legacy of the road is road games.
Anyone who spends much time around me knows I’m competitive. Now when people say ‘you’re competitive’, there seems to be an assumption that you’re a poor sport and hate to lose. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. I like games. I like to compete. I like to feel challenged in that way. I don’t mind losing, just as long as it’s been a good contest. In fact I’d prefer to compete well but ultimately lose. After all, I’m a Saint.
I’m a bit of a gamesman and always have been. Games like darts and pool and ping pong can make a long, arduous tour tolerable.
Zone Ball came about because usually an Aussie Rules football would accompany the bands on tour, especially the Dark Horses and The Cruel Sea. (The Beasts Of Bourbon have never been a footy band. Everybody’s always been too hungover to even think about activities involving coordination.)
Often we’d find ourselves indoors, in empty rooms, pubs or arenas, where we couldn’t really have a proper kick. But we’d have a go. Someone would bring out the footy to kill time before or after sound check, but space was an issue.
It’s weird how things evolve. One day we were just aimlessly kicking a ball around when someone started catching it onehanded. The idea came to try one-handed marks. And through activities like this you start putting boundaries and rules in place and before you know it you’re designing this game.
That’s how Zone Ball started. Nothing planned. Just a case of working out a game that we could play with elements of footy but in a small space.
Zone Ball is a cross between football and tennis, and it’s played between two people. In essence you ‘serve’ the football into an area you imagine as being like a tennis court. One person kicks or serves the footy into the zone and the other person has to mark it one-handed. There’s a lot of rules but basically it’s kicking into the other player’s zone but making it difficult for them to mark it. And it has to be a onehanded mark.
Over time we developed and refined more and more rules for Zone Ball. Increasingly people heard about it. Over the 12 or 13 years since I first started it up there have been small flurries of interest where it’s felt like it’s almost going to take that next step into being a legitimate sport, which is a bit of a joke. I mean, the one-handedness of it
was really because at the time we were probably holding a cigarette or a beer or a joint – maybe juggling all three and trying to play with the footy.
In fact, Zone Ball actually threatened to go legit when Western Bulldogs captain Bob Murphy devoted a whole column in The Age to it.
Bob explained other things about the game – how opposing players must bow to each other before the start and at the completion of every match, for example. He also pointed out that if your serve lands outside the court, this is defined as a ‘bad’, and if there’s two ‘bads’ in a row a point is conceded. If a ‘bad’ is marked – one-handed of course – that’s a score of two points. A ‘shocker’ is when a serve fails to leave the server’s zone, and is worth two points. A ‘big, bad shocker’ is when your opponent marks the ball in your zone. Such a feat is rare and therefore worth three points. There are many, many more rules, but the above maybe gives you an idea.
I’ve developed other games. There’s one called Slidey which is perfect for rock’n’roll bands killing time backstage in a dressing room before or after a gig.
Slidey is basically where you slide bottles across a table and try to get the bottle as close as possible to the edge without it going over. It’s best played with beer bottles. But wine bottles or really any object will do. It’s fundamentally like bowls – but played with bottles . . . on a table.
In lots of ways all this is symptomatic of the daily grind and life of travelling rock’n’roll bands, who have no real choice but to develop games with whatever’s at hand to fill in time. With no regular access to a billiard table or a pool table or a ping pong table you kind of make up games out of whatever is around you.
Games, they’re good for brain.