Tex

by Tex Perkins

  The first hip hop I’d ever heard was Blondie’s ‘Rapture’. Deborah Harry’s rapping was cute, but it was approached (by the band and the critics) as a novelty. I mean Blondie had done reggae, disco and punk rock. They were just playing. It wasn’t the instant cultural shift you might expect considering where hip hop has ended up. But ‘Rapture’ did bring rock-loving kids from the suburbs like me to the art form and introduced it to the mainstream as a basic blueprint a lot of modern music has utilised since.

  After ‘Rapture’, the next thing I heard was ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash. . . . Now this sounded serious! The music was funky as fuck and the lyrics were great. It wasn’t only the lyrics, it was the way they were delivered and the heavy wisdom of it all. It reminded me of Stevie Wonders ‘Livin’ For The City’ – it had the sound of the street in it. Literally, as they both had recorded street sounds of traffic and sirens.

  Eighties acts like Tone Loc, LL Cool J, Salt-N-Pepa and Run DMC represented hip hop to the casual listener. Enjoyable, but unimportant – to me anyway. But James Brown and George Clinton samples mixed with discordant tape loops? That was an exciting new sound.

  Towards the end of the decade, things got really interesting. It’s always a good sign when you hear about a group before you actually hear them. The first time I heard people discussing Public Enemy they talked about them like they were ISIS. Here was a black militant rap group urging an uprising from black people EVERYWHERE. Their song titles alone – ‘Don’t Believe The Hype’, ‘Louder Than A Bomb’, ‘Bring The Noise’, and ‘Fight The Power’ – caused anxiety and concern. Like Grand Master Flash, Public Enemy’s music was heavy but extremely funky. Irresistibly danceable. Best of all, it had a revolutionary vibe that was utterly convincing and sweeping the world, which scared a lot of God-fearing white folks – well, mainly parents and cops – even in Australia.

  Today hip hop is so mainstream and so disgustingly bloated and self-congratulatory it’s probably more ‘rock’n’roll’ than rock’n’roll ever was – in a very bad way. In fact, with its love of wealth and power it’s far more in need of a kick in the teeth than rock was in the ’70s. Back then punk rock came and did that job. But I fear nothing can stop hip hop now. These days I can’t stand most rap. The hip hop I listen to, things like DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, is instrumental. And if I start rapping, slap me.

  GONE

  THE BEASTS OF BOURBON / 1997

  I have no idea how long this took, probably about two weeks. This one’s a real mess, but it was meant to be. I sacked Tony halfway through this record for stealing things from the studio. Paul McKercher took over and steered and stirred this unpleasant brew of bile until it resembled something like music. This was Charlie’s first record with the Beasts, and if people didn’t like this album they tended to blame him. Charlie bore the brunt of the ‘they’re no good without Kim’ naysayers. But I’ve noticed over the years a small but passionate group of degenerates around the world love this album. Perhaps they recognise themselves.

  RECORD LABEL: Polydor

  CORE BAND MEMBERS: Tex Perkins (vocals), Spencer P. Jones (guitar), Charlie Owen (guitar), Brian Hooper (bass), Tony Pola (drums).

  CHASING THE DRAGON

  Drugs are everywhere in rock‘n’roll – as they are in life.

  I’ve tried them all, well, not ALL of them, but let’s say I’m experienced in this area. But as a wise man once said, ‘there’s a difference between scratching your arse and ripping it to shreds.’ I like pot. I’ve always liked pot and I probably always will. It’s not only a wonder drug, as day by day we find out more about how wonderful and beneficial it is to a lot of people, but it’s also a wonder plant. We could save the world with this weed, as it can be used to make everything from clothes to biodegradable plastics. But let’s talk about the hard stuff. Using drugs can lead to crazed desperate behaviour, manic delusions and an inflated belief in one’s own abilities.

  But there’s also a downside.

  Some people handle drugs well and actually thrive creatively while using them. Others aren’t so lucky and either rapidly or slowly kill themselves. Often I think it has a lot to do with genetics. Some people are preconditioned to cope with massive punishment from drugs and booze, cruising through bender after bender as if bulletproof.

  In the ’80s I don’t think I knew anyone who didn’t drink more than they should and take as many drugs as they could get their hands on. The ’90s were no different – except some people seemed to have a bit more money to buy more and better drugs. Some people forgot the better part and just bought more – and more – and more.

  From about 1984 to 1999 every band I was in had junkies in it. Okay, junkie might be a harsh word to use – let’s call them heavy habitual users of heroin. Better?

  In the beginning, a guy like Stu Spasm would drop on a very regular basis. We’d slap him around, throw him in the bath and he’d wake up and complain, ‘Why am I all wet?’

  For a certain period of The Beasts Of Bourbon in the early to mid-’90s – just after Kim Salmon left and was replaced by Charlie Owen – there was heroin everywhere.

  As I’ve detailed, The Beasts Of Bourbon were true beasts when it came to drugs. Nobody ever said ‘you’ve got to stop taking this drug, it’s not good for you’. But after a decade of debauchery, a few of us really started to fuck up. We had to cancel a huge European tour because Spencer OD’d a few days before we were meant to leave. On this particular night he was brought back from the brink of death by a fast-acting bandmate who gave him cardiac resuscitation. Unfortunately, the pressured chest-thumping from the CPR burst an ulcer in Spencer’s fetid gut which put him in hospital for a few weeks. It wasn’t the first or last time that Spencer’s hubris about his ability to consume drugs would lead to trouble.

  In The Cruel Sea everybody maintained their own very personal habits, hiding it away from everybody else. No one was admitting to anything and everyone who was using was pretending they weren’t. In the end, one by one, various people were forced to leave the band for six months at a time to try to get clean.

  And then James Cruickshank fell asleep in his car driving on that flyway piece of road from Woollahra to the south end of Bondi. Cruikers had scored, fixed and set off to drive home to Bondi. He nodded off, went across three lanes and had a head-on collision with a truck. He was lucky – very lucky – that he didn’t die right then and there. And also lucky he didn’t kill the guy in the truck, or anyone else on the road for that matter. Shit was getting serious.

  The Cruel Sea was a wreck of its own invention by that stage. But the show must go on. Danny had his own habit and typically would keep it very organised. He’d have his gear rationed out and he’d take just enough every time and keep it very private. Kenny had his own unique problems and was in and out of the band three times.

  The general attitude in The Cruel Sea was lackadaisical – everyone was cool and could cope and do their own thing. But once Cruickshank had his head-on, it was obvious that things had to change. The secrecy was exposed. Some guys in the band would say adamantly, ‘No, no, no, I’m not stoned, I’m just tired.’ But denial can only take you so far.

  With the Beasts it was all yahooing and carrying on, almost like a bunch of boy scouts with that ‘one for all, all for one’ camaraderie. Early incarnations of the Beasts hadn’t been drug bands. They’d been almost totally fuelled on VB with a bit of speed thrown in.

  As we got bigger our riders grew and grew. First it was just more beer, but then we started seeing bottles of vodka and whiskey on the table next to the Smiths Crisps. Then two bottles of vodka and three bottles of whiskey. Very soon the Beasts had the biggest drink rider in the business. Venues were happy to shell out because our audiences were always the biggest drinkers, so they were making a shitload over the bar. The junkie line-up of the Beasts came later. That’s when it became a truly scary, dark and ugly rock’n’roll band. And despite everything, for the most part, we were still playing good.


  But the best story about drugs I can remember didn’t actually involve heroin – well not directly anyway. The Beasts were on tour in Europe in 2007. We had played the night before somewhere in France, but today we had to find Tony his medicine before we left town. That involved taking him to a GP and then the right pharmacist. A few hours later we’re finally on our way to the next show in Zurich. Tony opens up his new packet of Subutex, which is some kind of synthetic morphine I guess.

  ‘What does that stuff do?’ someone casually asks.

  ‘It makes me not need to score. Why don’t you try one?’

  ‘Errrr, I dunno.’

  ‘Maybe just half then.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Someone else says, ‘I’ll have the other half.’

  Feeling left out, I ask if I can have a quarter.

  Feeling the generosity of a fat brand new packet Tony says ‘sure’.

  Half an hour later, I start to feel . . . pretty good, heeeeeey this is gonna be nice.

  Ten minutes after that, I start to feel . . . REALLY BAD.

  ‘Stop the van!’ I quickly get out and throw up on the side of the autobahn.

  I get back in and again we’re under way.

  STOP THE VAN!

  Brian chunders his omelette all over the side rail.

  He gets back in the van and WAIT, Spencer needs to yodel as well.

  Get the picture? This went on for many kilometres, stopping every 20 minutes for someone, actually ALL of us to vomit, again and again.

  When we finally arrived at the next gig we were in the worst state you could imagine. There, waiting for us at the back of the venue, were the promoter and all the venue’s staff. The van finally came to rest and the doors burst open and the three of us leapt out and ran in different directions looking for places to vomit. This went on all night. During the gig Brian, Spencer and I had a garbage bin side of stage, which we would occasionally run off and barf into. ‘I’ve just got to call my mother’, we would say as we darted off. Charlie and Tony thought it was hilarious, and it was. Well, it is, now.

  I think the reason some of us did drugs was so we had funny stories to tell 20 years later. The Cruel Sea were in Amsterdam on tour supporting some guy known as the ‘King of Goth’ or something like that. It was a typical rock’n’roll tour. There were drugs of all descriptions everywhere. I never chased cocaine but if it was around . . . This was one of those occasions. There was coke everywhere in the backstage room. Everywhere.

  So we go on and we do our set. It’s stinking hot and I come off stage and head back into the room. The moment I sit down on the edge of the table there’s silence in the room. Total silence. Everyone looks at me and then someone says, ‘Get up very slowly – and then don’t move.’

  I’ve plonked myself down on seven lines of coke.

  So I slowly prise myself off the table and stand up, and there stuck to the damp arse of my jeans are seven lines of coke. The next thing I know bank notes are being rolled up and one by one everyone in the room is coming over and snorting this coke off my arse.

  But of course as things behind the scenes got messier, sometimes it spilled onto the stage too. Once, the Beasts played Hordern Pavilion. Now, the Hordern can be a bit of an echo chamber, a cavern . . . in fact more like the Grand Canyon as far as sound goes.

  The Beasts are a band who cannot play unless the guitars are excruciatingly loud and on this night we’re onstage and it’s incredibly loud with echo and reverb. In situations like this I’m very dependent on good monitors, otherwise I just can’t hear what I’m doing or where I am in a song. So I’m out there trying to get through the gig and gesturing towards the monitor guys – UP, UP, UUUUUUUUUPPP – to no avail and I’m getting more and more frustrated.

  Tension builds. In the middle of the next song, I’m swamped in white noise but can’t get the monitor guy’s attention. I SNAP and pick up my microphone stand and javelin it across the stage and into the sound desk, scaring the shit out of the monitor guy.

  This all happens in front of a whole lot of other Big Day Out bands watching from the side of the stage. Jerks like The John Spencer Blues Explosion who earlier in the day expressed their displeasure about having to go on before Dave Graney by sending their roadie on for a semi-naked stage invasion (being too New York to do it themselves).

  I’ve heard other people tell their version of this story. One goes that I hit the monitor guy smack in the forehead and knocked him unconscious. People love to add those little extras. Little extras like attempted murder. But the fact is I did throw it and it did hit the desk. I had lost it completely and it was pretty disgraceful.

  The best part though is when the gig finishes I’m still FUMING. I storm off stage and stomp upstairs to the dressing room. I get to the door and it’s locked – I pace up and down for a few seconds not knowing what do. Then I turn around suddenly and attempt to kick the door open. Turns out the door is actually made out of little more than plywood and cardboard insulation and my foot goes straight through. Now I’m up to my knee in the door, suspended momentarily in that position.

  In the next split second I decide to go through the door so I push my head and shoulders through and crash through in a hail of splinters and it’s like one of those Warner Bros cartoons – there’s just the outline of my full body in the door.

  That’s when Spencer comes along, turns the handle like a normal person and calmly opens the door with the Perko-shaped hole in it.

  THE DEVIL’S MUSIC

  Speaking of drugs and music let me say right here that I like the Eagles.

  Thank you and goodnight.

  Just kidding, but really, not many people in the rock scene that I inhabit will come out and say that. The idea that the Eagles are the epitome of boring overproduced middle-of-the-road ’70s white-man rock is a cliché repeated by the same people who say Leonard Cohen is depressing and Bob Dylan can’t sing. Sure, some of it is rather awful, but ‘Witchy Woman’ and ‘One Of These Nights’ are good examples what I would call the devil’s music.

  Yeah, I know that’s supposed to be Robert Johnson and all that old blues stuff. But really, when you think about it, the devil’s music is not gonna be dirty and lo fi. It’s gonna be slick and shiny. It’s gonna be as smooth as a dolphin’s dick! It’s gonna be in four-part harmonies and it’s gonna slip into your soul in Dolby quadraphonic stereo sound.

  All that ’70s West Coast stuff. The Doobie Brothers, America, Fleetwood Mac, Joe Walsh, Linda Ronstadt, has a strange kind of darkness under its slick, clean surface. You know what I mean, maaaan? Flared pants, afros on white guys, cocaine and sunshine.

  There’s a sweetness to a lot of this music that’s on the edge of turning. Like strawberry yoghurt in the sun. It’s the soundtrack to the end of the hippy dream. The Stooges and Alice Cooper may take responsibility for the death of flower power, but the LA folkies were living its demise, and singing about it.

  Of course, all those LA folkies were off their scones. By the mid-’70s there was a long tradition of fucked-up MOR folk pop singers. Jesus Christ, James Taylor made Keith Richards look like a lightweight. There’s a reason his music is soooooo melooooow. Smack.

  Well actually apparently smack AND coke together. That’s called a speed ball. The cocaine takes you up above the clouds and the smack is like a big soft pillow on the way down. All that West Coast stuff is dripping with burned-out drug comedown revelations.

  Rumours by Fleetwood Mac is an incredible record, but when you know the legends of drug and relationship abuse surrounding that album it truly enhances the listening experience and gives the music another level of meaning – a depth beyond the music and lyrics of the songs. Stevie Nicks’ cocaine habit involving an assistant and a straw is now legendary.

  You know what? When ‘Hotel California’ comes on the radio, I SING ALONG.

  I drive my band mates nuts breaking into Little River Band tunes anywhere, anytime, harmonising for the fuck of it. Sure there is a touch of irony
in my enjoyment of this kind of music. A tiny bit of taking the piss, but you can check out any time you like . . . oh and I also like Coldplay.

  FAR BE IT FROM ME

  TEX PERKINS / 1996

  Ten days with Tony Cohen at Megaphon Studios in Sydney. Charlie Owen, Jim White, Warren Ellis and I tried to bring these songs to life. And I think we were partly successful, but I don’t know – there’s something wrong with this record. This is the first time I’d written without irony or cynical humour. I wasn’t used to it, and neither was anybody else. This was an album written in a quiet flat with a sleeping baby. It’s about real love, not romantic love; the dim glow of everyday love illuminates most of these songs.

  It ain’t getting the kisses

  It ain’t getting your wishes

  It’s doing the dishes, that’s real real love.

  RECORD LABEL: Polydor

  CORE BAND MEMBERS: Tex Perkins (vocals), Charlie Owen (guitar), Warren Ellis (strings/keyboards), Jim White (drums).

  OVER EASY

  THE CRUEL SEA / 1998

  Jeez, this is a strange piece of work. Broken up into a few small sessions and then a two-week stint at Rhino Studios in Sydney with Daniel Denholm and Phil McKellar, there are some good things on this but it’s not a great record. At various times both Kenny and James were out of the band so it could’ve been called Two Legged Dog.

  RECORD LABEL: Polydor

  CORE BAND MEMBERS: Tex Perkins (vocals), Danny Rumour (guitar), Jim Elliot (drums), Ken Gormley (bass), James Cruikshank (keyboards/guitar).

  GETTING MY SHIT TOGETHER