Goneville

by Nick Bollinger

  Putting up posters is a task most bands place in the hands of paid professionals, but our limited budget meant that, as with most things, we had to do it ourselves. A sticky starch paste of flour and water was mixed in buckets and we took to the streets in pairs, pasting up the posters Peter Kennedy had designed (an astronaut playing a saxophone on the moon) anywhere bands had already left their mark. It was sometime after two a.m. when we finally crawled into our sleeping bags on the floor of the Ponsonby crash pad.

  At dawn I awoke to a heavy knocking, then a crash. Cops? A booming voice: ‘WHO COVERED UP MY POSTERS?’

  I looked up through sleep-fogged eyes to catch a glimpse of silver hair and a florid face.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ someone only slightly more sentient mumbled from the other side of the room.

  ‘I’m Charley Gray. I manage Th’ Dudes, and you lot have covered up my posters. You have even stuck one of your posters on the side of our van. What are you going to do about that?’

  Rick appeared, fully awake after having slept in the bus. ‘I’m sorry, there’s obviously been a mistake,’ he began in his most reassuring tones. ‘But look, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.’ He steered Charley towards the door and I didn’t hear any more. Rick’s diplomatic skills must have been at their best though: he returned to let us know he had secured a booking at Charley’s Island of Real Café in central Auckland’s Airedale Street.

  When, still wary from our encounter with the proprietor, we arrived at Island of Real a few weeks later for our soundcheck it was to find the curtain to the tiny backstage area decorated with a silver cardboard star bearing the name ‘RICK’. On the dressing table inside, an ashtray sported several large ready-rolled joints.

  The Island of Real would become one of our favourite out-of-town gigs. Independent and alcohol-free, its name suggested an oasis of integrity, in contrast to the breweries’ money-driven enterprises. Charley’s wife Anne and the couple’s children were always around and there was a welcoming, homely atmosphere. Although Charley continued to have a brusque manner he seemed to like our music. He had been a jazz drummer and in the breaks would play selections from his own record collection. This was where I first heard the sly and swinging 1940s’ recordings of Louis Jordan, which revealed to me where the music of Chuck Berry and B.B. King had originated.

  One night we cancelled a Thursday night booking at the Island of Real when we realised everyone else in Auckland would be at a Bob Dylan concert. The news that Dylan was to play in New Zealand for the first time was like being told that tickets were available for the Second Coming. Hiding from public view for much of the past decade had made Dylan more myth than man. The thought of his setting foot in Auckland was surreal.

  Reality was bent further out of shape the day before the concert. I was walking out of a bar in Vulcan Lane, where I had arranged to have an afternoon beer with a friend who hadn’t showed up, when I saw Dylan strolling past, an arm’s length away. I set off in the same direction.

  At the intersection of Vulcan Lane and High Street we both stopped. Ten thousand song lyrics rushing through my head, I blurted out the only thing I could think of: ‘I’m looking forward to your concert tomorrow.’ Tilting his head slightly towards me, Dylan nodded. ‘Okay, I’ll see you there.’ He crossed the street and headed up the hill towards the Intercontinental Hotel. I watched him buy a newspaper and disappear into the building. That evening I picked up a copy of the paper. On the front page was a photo of Dylan and the headline: ‘Have you seen this man?’

  In spite of my human-scale encounter, Dylan seemed no less mythological the next night on the Western Springs stage. With a huge band - backup singers, horns, violins and an army of guitarists - he was a ringmaster in dazzling white jacket and top hat. It was a long show, a parade of hits in busy big-band arrangements. He gave a shout-out to the Highway 61 Motorcycle Club, who were presumably somewhere in the vast crowd.

  This tour would be later dismissed by international critics as Dylan’s ‘Vegas show’ and was ill-served by Bob Dylan at Budokan, the album recorded live in Japan two weeks before the circus reached New Zealand. But the concert under the stars at Western Springs was the best thing I had ever heard or seen.

  A few months later in Auckland we completed a post-gig pack-out in record time and headed to the North Shore to see James Brown. Brown’s visit to New Zealand was as unexpected as Dylan’s. Despite a career that had spanned almost a quarter of a century and transformed African American music, Brown had had very little exposure on the New Zealand airwaves. Rick revered him as a singer and bandleader and I had pored over the few recordings I could find, trying to untangle the intricate syncopations. Brown’s records were like artefacts from a distant civilisation. The idea that he was still a working musician and that New Zealand might feature on his itinerary had never really occurred to me. Fortunately an entrepreneur, Phil Warren, was not just a canny promoter but also a fan. He must have realised there were enough other James Brown fans to make it worth bringing him over.

  The venue was Shoreline Cabaret, one of Warren’s nightclubs. The regular ticket included supper but our gig meant we wouldn’t make it in time for the meal, which we couldn’t have afforded anyway. Rick had somehow managed to get us seats just for the concert. I recognised a number of musicians and a few hard-core soul fans, but mostly the crowd seemed to consist of well-dressed couples, there for the supper as much as the show.

  I remember the mesmeric groove of Brown’s guitarists, seemingly ego-less in their ability to repeat the same lick over and over until James gave them the signal to change, and the hyperactive MC chanting ‘James Brown James Brown James Brown James Brown’ like a mantra, before the star’s entrance and long after his departure. And I remember Brown bringing the entire band to a halt with a traffic cop’s hand gesture so he could spend an eternal five minutes putting his bass player through a humiliating set of paces until the sound of the instrument was adjusted to his satisfaction, then smiling at the audience, letting them know it was all a stunt, and saying with a smile, ‘I wouldn’t want to blow y’all out of here.’

  Afterwards we gave a drunk couple a ride back to town. I’m not sure how they came to be on board. Perhaps they had mistaken our bus for the Milford Express. The woman couldn’t remember whom she’d just seen but she’d loved his dancing. Her boyfriend said, ‘Sure, it wasn’t a bad show, but why didn’t he do “Fire”?’ After a puzzled moment I realised he had confused James Brown with Arthur Brown, an English one-hit-wonder from the ‘60s, famous for setting fire to his hat.

  Our band had spent the past year doing its best to purvey the essence of soul but what I witnessed that night seemed as far from a Rough Justice show as James Brown’s hometown, Atlanta, Georgia, was from New Zealand. There were a lifetime’s lessons to go home and think about in that single set. I was glad Rick had resisted making an example of his bass player like that.

  19

  PIG’S HEAD AND PIPI BOLOGNESE

  By the end of our first year on the road Rough Justice had a new piano player. Simon had tolerated the rhythm and blues tunes, even performed them with some skill, but he had never hidden his real desire to get hold of a synthesiser and play in a pop group. ‘I’m a white boy,’ he said, with a shrug. It seemed a fair explanation.

  His replacement, Mike Gubb, was a white boy too, but at the keyboard he became a conduit for Ray Charles. He’d rock from side to side, close his eyes and wince in ecstasy as clusters of blue notes fell from his fingertips. Our soul tunes suddenly sounded a whole lot more convincing. We had also been joined by Boyd, the sax player from my old school band. Money was tight but Rick calculated that adding a full-time saxophonist ought to boost our earning power, even as it increased overheads.

  Rick’s accounting procedures were a mystery to all of us, except possibly Janet. One day, travelling between gigs, he begins to explain them to me. His jean jacket is his office, he says, as he steers the bus with one hand an
d rolls a joint with the other. One pocket is for receipts, one for accounts receivable, one for his pot, another for ... As he pats the breast pocket that is supposed to contain our earnings from the tour so far, a look of horror crosses his face. The pocket is empty. He makes an abrupt U-turn and soon we are back at the motel where we stayed the previous night. Rushing towards our unit we encounter the cleaner, who is just leaving. She hasn’t by any chance come across an envelope in one of the rooms, has she? Maybe, but it’s all gone into the bin over there, she says, pointing across the courtyard to a large steel dumpster. Somebody tumbles in and remarkably, beneath several metres of cigarette butts, bottles and other motel room detritus, the envelope is found, the cash still warm inside. The band will eat tonight.

  Eating is not something we take for granted. There was the time we arrived in Kuaotunu in Coromandel, down to our last two dollars. It was summer, and our entourage included several girlfriends and extended family members along for the ride. The question of how to feed fifteen people on two dollars was solved by Janet and a couple of the hangers-on. At low tide they went down to the estuary and collected tuatua and pipi, which they brought back, boiled, prised from their shells and served with as much spaghetti as a couple of bucks could buy. Someone found milk and flour, and created a white sauce. The Pipi Bolognese, as it was named, might have been improved if it hadn’t included so much sand.

  In Queenstown we lucked into a gig at an upmarket hotel. At most provincial taverns, if a band were fed at all they were required to eat the complimentary meal - a statutory ham steak and slice of pineapple - in a cramped corner of the staff kitchen, out of sight of paying customers. This time we were served in the dining room and offered the pick of the menu. There were salads. There was even dessert. But the meal was strictly for band members: while we munched, our entourage, including Janet, her sister Alison, and Boyd’s partner Bernadine, was left to starve in luxury. Boyd began to sneak paper bags of food out to them until Rick noticed and took him aside. ‘I wouldn’t risk that if I were you, Boyd,’ he warned in a stern whisper. ‘It could be very bad for all of us. You realise we’re being watched, don’t you?’

  I wasn’t sure whether there was really any surveillance, or what the repercussions might have been had we been caught feeding friends and family, but this mix of paranoia and pessimism often overtook Rick in situations where he was forced to deal with institutional authority. Eventually Janet and Alison took to the streets with drawings they had done of the local landscape, selling them for enough money to supplement the scraps.

  In Christchurch that winter, the breast pocket of Rick’s jean jacket was empty once again. Boyd was dispatched, clutching our last five dollars, with instructions to buy something to feed the whole band. He returned with a pig’s head and placed it on the table, where it sat, hairy, snouty and staring. Repulsed by the sight, I resolved to go hungry and retired to my room, although once the pig’s head was cooking in the oven with some rosemary picked from the roadside, I was lured back by the rich warm smell.

  Between tours I would return to the comforting chaos of North Terrace. During one of these stays I started going out with Tina, the best friend of my sister Thomasin and our flatmate Sally. ‘Going out’ is perhaps a misnomer: we seldom went anywhere. The concept of coupledom made Tina uncomfortable, but she spent the occasional night at North Terrace, or I would stay with her in the attic bedroom of her parents’ house. Tina, who had long blonde hair and contact lenses, was beautiful and clever, and happiest when making things - puppets or jewellery - or laughing with Thomasin and Sally over numerous cups of tea around the kitchen table. I sometimes got the feeling they were laughing about me. Tina didn’t seem to mind at all when I had to go away for another six-week tour, though I was heartsick. She called me a milksop.

  One day, when we were travelling to a gig in Hamilton, Rick pulled the bus off the Desert Road and drew up outside Rangipo Prison, where Graeme Nesbitt was nearing the end of an eighteen-month lag. It was his second spell of imprisonment, again for selling pot to cover the shortfall from a Dragon venture. While serving his earlier sentence he had been joined for a few months by Rick. The way Rick described it, it didn’t sound all that different from the times they’d flatted together in Aro Valley. Sharing a cell, they discovered that between them they could recite from memory the entirety of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. They also formed a band with other prisoners, calling it Rick and The Rock Breakers.

  Rick went in to see Graeme while the rest of us waited. Although it was a minimum security prison, I was surprised when Graeme wandered casually into the yard where the bus was parked, said hello and wished us luck. He looked healthy and tanned, and amused to see Rick with a fresh busload of disciples.

  If he were not in prison, Graeme might have been managing Rough Justice, using his charm and cunning to secure us better gigs. In the absence of a manager the task had fallen to Rick, which in those pre-cellphone days meant parking the bus somewhere near a phone booth and emptying our pockets for change so he could call ahead to confirm our next booking. Rick did not enjoy communicating with publicans. He marvelled at bandleaders who simply treated it as part of the job. They might tell a joke, say something about the rugby, maybe even have a drink with the bar manager after the gig. He knew that this often gained them better fees and more frequent bookings but it was not in his nature to schmooze. I would see Rick through the glass of the phone booth, negotiating through gritted teeth.

  He had a small network of contacts who sometimes found us gigs. He referred to them as promoters but they were usually characters he had met in prison: honest, good-hearted people but not natural entrepreneurs. One was Arney, who booked us several nights’ work either side of New Year in a gigantic gymnasium in Mount Maunganui. The place turned out to be approximately a thousand times too large for the number of people who showed up to hear us, but at least we didn’t have to pay for accommodation: Arney had given us the run of his rural homestead.

  During the days of that summer residency we’d sleep, swim at the nearby beach, help Janet with the ongoing task of painting the bus, and argue over the set list. Our final night drew our biggest crowd, a few dozen locals. Next morning we packed the bus and went to farewell Arney but he had already left town, heading for the Kaimai Ranges. His message said he was going to work on the construction of New Zealand’s longest railway tunnel until he had paid off the debts incurred by his venture into music promotion.

  The bus had by now undergone several expensive repairs, and I had begun to wonder if it was false economy to travel this way. It was hard to calculate the bus’s value as a publicity device. When we drove down the main street of any small town - often several times in succession as one of us studied the map and Rick tried to remember the address of the venue - people would stare as though at a giant moving billboard or passing circus. But the bus also made us highly visible to the police. We were stopped frequently. Usually they just wanted to check that our warrant and registration were compliant and we had paid our road user charges, but the more zealous often had a sniff around as well. The first time we were busted we were driving between Titirangi and our Ponsonby crash pad. It was late at night. We had been to visit Ian Watkin, the former Blerta member. He had cooked us a lavish dinner, far better than any road food or pub fare, plied us with wine, and regaled us with his own road tales, such as the time the Brisbane drug squad had descended backstage before a Blerta concert and searched his bag for contraband. They had found only his Cricket Umpires’ Association badge, and this had distracted them long enough for the rest of the band to sneak off and dispose of their stash.

  As the police signalled us to pull over, Rick stubbed out his joint. Boyd had a tiny amount of pot in his pocket. He and Rick were taken to the police station. It was Rick’s tenth bust but Boyd’s first. Rick took responsibility for the pot and used his allotted phone call to ring Boyd’s partner in Wellington and warn her that a search of her property might ensue. She was half asleep and Rick
was talking in code. ‘Ah, hi Bern, we’ve had some trouble with the bus. It’s the usual thing but don’t worry, Boyd’s okay, it’s just small bananas.’ The next morning she was still wondering about the bananas.

  By 1979 Rough Justice had begun to draw bigger crowds in the cities and we were starting to build a following at the Gluepot, the Ponsonby pub favoured by Hello Sailor and Street Talk. But our most appreciative audiences continued to be far from the cities with their hungover hoteliers and urbane critics. In the early ‘70s some of Rick’s contemporaries - dropouts he had known from the Duke and university days - had left Wellington with dreams of living off the land. During Labour’s brief term in office from 1972 to 1975, there had even been state support for such moves, with Prime Minister Norman Kirk overseeing the establishment of the ohu scheme. Under this, remote areas of Crown land were made available for the establishment of communes, a possible antidote to what political historian Margaret Hayward called ‘the ills of modern society, as well as a means of showing people the virtues of a simpler life’. Other people pooled resources and bought land of their own. Community halls in tiny townships on the Coromandel Peninsula or the West Coast of the South Island became a kind of tribal meeting place for some of these groups.

  When we visited such communities, rustic revolutionaries in richly coloured clothes would come out of the hills to hear us. There would be none of the usual blank stares, or moans of ‘Play something we can dance to.’ From the first note, these occasions would be big benign bacchanals, with Rick at his most relaxed. The happiest I ever saw him on stage was one night in a community hall at Barrytown, population 225. He commanded centre stage, a large joint in his mouth, which he removed only to sing. Standing behind him with the lights in my eyes, all I could see was a giant cloud of smoke.