Tex
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‘Cold Gin’, Kiss
‘Childhood’s End’, Pink Floyd
‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’, Jack Nitzsche
‘Crazy Mama’, JJ Cale
‘Fair Play’, Van Morrison
‘Scorpio’s View’, Lalo Schifrin
‘Friday’s Child’, Nancy Sinatra
‘Bring Me My Shotgun’, Lightnin’ Hopkins
‘Ramblin’ Man’, Hank Williams
‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down’, Neil Young
‘Waiting Around To Die’, Townes Van Zandt
‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’, Nina Simone
‘High Sheriff Of Calhoun Parrish’, Tony Joe White
‘Werewolves Of London’, Warren Zevon
‘A Gift’, Lou Reed
‘Mr Tambourine Man’, William Shatner
‘Float On’, The Floaters
‘AAXXX’, Peaches
‘The Boys’, The Necks
‘One And One’, Miles Davis
‘I’ve Been Trying’, DJ Shadow
‘I Feel Love’, Donna Summer
‘Long Train Runnin’, The Doobie Brothers
‘I’ll Bet You’, Funkadelic
‘Hot Pants Road’, The JB’s
‘I Ain’t Superstitious’, Howlin’ Wolf
‘I’ve Seen That Movie Too’, Elton John
‘Planet Of The Apes (Main Theme)’, Jerry Goldsmith
‘It’s No Game’, David Bowie
‘Ho Renomo’, Cluster & Eno
‘Puff The Magic Dragon’, The Seekers
‘Cristo Rendentor’, Donald Byrd
‘Fixin’ To Die Blues’, Bukka White
‘Thirteen’, Johnny Cash
‘I’m A Fool To Want You’, Bob Dylan
‘Goodbye’, Steve Earle
Dad, off to war aged 19.
Me and Mum in Darwin, 1965. Note the racially insensitive t-shirt.
Tex Perkins. First grade, 1970. What the fuck happened?
Me aged 14 with my first guitar.
The Dum Dums playing in Brisbane, early 1982 (pre-’Tex Deadly’ Dum Dums). That’s Ian Wadley on guitar. That’s me holding onto the mic stand for dear life.
Stripsearched, photographed, fingerprinted and fifty bucks bail. All this for saying the word ‘fuck’ in a conversation with friends.
Putting another log on the fire at Jules Normington’s place in Woollahra, 1983.
There it is! The van we drove to Sydney for the first Dum Dums tour in 1982.
Scenes of chaos: Thug live.
Butcher Shop boys: Lachlan McLeod, Peter Hartley (on the telly), Phil Clifford and me, circa 1988.
that’s me with the Beasts at the Gunnery squat I lived in from 1988 to 1990: me, Kim, Boris, James and Spencer.
Tony and Brian are in the line-up above (at the back), just before we recorded The Low Road in 1990. At this stage we were pretty horrible but not yet fully, delightfully horrible.
The Cruel Sea, 1989. Notice my mullet, but also notice the reverse mullets on Dan, Jim and James: short at the bottom and thick at the top.
The Cruel Sea, 1991. Mullets gone, Dan still wearing the same shirt.
Kristyna took this photo the night we met in Berlin. Inexplicably she wasn’t completely repulsed.
The Beasts, 1993.
Tex, Don & Charlie, 1994.
Serenading my hand on stage with the Beasts.
Big Day Out, 1994.
Following the fight at the ARIAs – if you can tear your eyes away from the split in my pants, note the blood on the cuff of my trousers.
The Cruel Sea, backstage in Europe, 1994.
Me and Kristyna, sometime in the years before parenthood, when we had time to lollygag in photobooths.
Big Day Out, January 1993. My daughter Tuesday, me, Mark Arm (Mudhoney), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Iggy Pop and Nick Cave (Bad Seeds). Great times. A lot of people draw comparisons between me and Cavo, but this photo clearly shows the difference between us, he in his $400 Italian silk number and me in my buttonless miller shirt tied together with a rag. He’s all forehead and I’m no forehead. I’m ape-like and he’s more Herman Munster. Note also the unlit cigarette in my mouth. It’s around the wrong way. I didn’t even smoke . . . cigarettes.
Spencer Jones: something to lean on.
Beasts by name . . . At Big Day Out in 2006. This was one of our first return gigs after Brian broke his back. From left to right is Spencer, Brian, Tony, me and Charlie.
Me and Iggy, mirroring each other with our highly choreographed dance routine, 1993.
Me and Tim Rogers, lost in a moment together.
Me conducting The Bumhead Orchestra like a highly emotional traffic controller, at Big Day Out 2006.
The Ladyboyz (arguably the nation’s fifth best covers band) and Adalita performing ‘You and Me’ in 2008.
Thank you and goodnight.
TEX PERKINS
Tex Perkins has fronted some of Australia’s most intense and spirited rock’n’roll bands – The Cruel Sea, The Beasts Of Bourbon, Tex, Don & Charlie, The Dark Horses, Thug, The Ladyboyz – and many other projects, including performing the music of Johnny Cash in the acclaimed Man In Black theatre show. His take-no-prisoners approach to performance comes with the sensibility of an artist committed to the subtle (and often unsubtle) nuances of his craft. Throw in an astonishing voice full of power and depth, mix it with a dry and sardonic sense of humour and what emerges is the reason there is only one Tex Perkins.
STUART COUPE
Stuart Coupe (born 1956) has worked as a journalist, author, editor, manager, record label director, radio presenter, publicist and tour promoter. Career highlights include being the only Australian to interview Bob Dylan twice, working with The Clash, managing Paul Kelly and the Hoodoo Gurus and being awarded a Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement award for his contributions to crime fiction. He has written, co-written or edited ten books, the most recent being Gudinski: The Godfather Of Australian Rock’n’Roll, a biography of Australian music icon Michael Gudinski.
Stuart currently presents weekly radio shows on Sydney stations FBi and 2SER and works as a publicist for independent Australian artists. He likes talking about Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and the Sydney Swans, not necessarily in that order.
Some of the people in this book have had their names changed to protect their identities.
First published 2017 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Tex Perkins 2017
The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
EPUB format: 9781760555054
Photos on pages 2, 155, 273, 281, 293, 298 and 309 courtesy of Kristyna.
Photos on pages 91, 97, 98, 131, 139, 144, 159, 169, 180, 181, 195, 222, 227, 233, 300 and 303 courtesy of Tony Mott.
Photos on pages 69, 78 and 88 by Tom Takacs.
Artwork on pages 107, 108, 120, 121 and 123 courtesy of Black Eye records; design on page 120 by Ewan Cameron, design on all other pages by Tex Perkins.
Photos on pages 94, 101, 103, 106 and 117 courtesy of Russell Kilbey.
Photo on page 171 by Sophie Howarth.
The author and the publisher have made every effort to contact copyright holders for material used in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked should contact the publisher.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware
that this book may contain images or names of people now deceased.
Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia
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