The Summer of ’82 Page 5

  We had a lot of kids from immigrant families at Mitcham High, people who lived at the Nunawading Migrant Hostel. In my year there were Argentinians, Brits, Cambodians, Chileans, Czechoslovakians, Chinese, Croats, Dutch, Greeks, Irish, Italians, Laotians, Malaysians, Poles, Scottish, Turks, Serbs and Vietnamese. Assembly was like the opening ceremony of the Olympics. We all got along very well most of the time, but some of these kids had come from war zones and were severely traumatised. So occasionally there was a fight in the quadrangle, like the time a very big Vietnamese guy pulled out a machete and chased a Chinese guy around. At assembly the next day the principal said, ‘It wasn’t a knife – it was a stick covered in alfoil.’ We all just laughed.

  ‘So are you Serbian or Croatian?’ the foreman said.

  We knew this could mean the difference between us getting the job or getting booted out of there.

  ‘I’m Serbian,’ Drago said.

  The foreman smiled. ‘Ah, zdravo, my friend!’ That means hello in Serbian, which was great news for us. The two of them spoke in Serbian for about five minutes, and then we were ushered out of the room.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked Drago.

  ‘Mate, it’s great – he’s given us the easy job!’

  ‘Unreal! What is it?’

  ‘We have to crawl down the shafts and clean out the tunnels that go from the fire to the kilns.’

  ‘How do we do that?’ I asked.

  ‘With jackhammers!’ Drago replied.

  Seriously, that was the easy job?

  ‘And we start tomorrow at seven a.m.’

  ROCK AND ROLL ALL NITE

  There’s nothing like a factory job to make you think about your future. Okay, I hadn’t started yet, but just looking at the tile factory scared me. Was this where I would end up working for the rest of my life? It wasn’t uncommon for dads of this era to work in the same job for years. I didn’t want to work in a factory, but neither did I want to work in an office or a shop. I wanted to be a rock star.

  Sure, at careers nights I would say I wanted to be an archaeologist or a photographer, but deep down I wanted to be in a band and be famous. A lot of kids in my class aspired to play football but I had no interest in kicking a leather ball around a field. I wanted to be onstage and have people screaming for me, preferably girls.

  One of the great things about being seventeen was that it was very easy to find other young men who shared your dream. Rock and roll defined you as a young and rebellious person. It’s not so clear-cut these days, where three generations of the same family might go and see AC/DC, or where mums shout their daughters tickets to a Pink concert and they all sing along to the songs together. There is no way our parents would have known the music we were listening to in 1982. They would have found new wave and punk ridiculous and tuneless.

  I remember Dad walking into the lounge room one day when Glenn and I were playing our latest record. ‘What is this bloody rubbish?’ he said. ‘Sounds like the cat’s been run over.’

  ‘It’s Siouxsie and the Banshees, Dad,’ I said.

  He grimaced. ‘What a bunch of wankers.’

  We felt we had done our jobs as teenagers.

  Music loomed large at school too. We knew that a guy called Richard Pleasance had gone to Mitcham High a few years ahead of us; I had played the oboe in the concert band with his sister. Who was Richard Pleasance? Well, he was in the bands Government Drums and the Serious Young Insects. And he went on to form Boom Crash Opera. Don’t pretend you don’t remember great songs like ‘Onion Skin’, ‘Great Wall’ and ‘Hands Up in the Air’. Richard was inspirational to us future rock stars. Just a few years earlier he was playing in our school concert band, and now he was on Countdown! We all wanted to be like him.

  So we decided to start a band.

  My only problem was that I didn’t play an instrument. In fact, none of us in ‘our band’ really did. Well, as I mentioned, I was learning the oboe. You don’t get more rock and roll than the double-reed woodwind instrument that sounds like a duck. It was actually used as the duck in Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf.

  Unfortunately for me, most rock bands were made up of drums, guitar, bass and a singer. Maybe there’d be keyboards or a saxophone, but never an oboe. Even the violin got a better run than the poor old oboe. Very occasionally a song would feature an oboe – Roxy Music’s ‘Virginia Plain’ was one – and I would think, This is it – the start of the oboe invasion of rock! But sadly that never happened.

  But not being able to play instruments wasn’t going to stop us. We were following the Sex Pistols model, where you learnt as you went along. And like the Pistols, the nucleus of the band came from our local Scout troop! Glenn, being the vain one, wanted to be the lead singer, Noddy had bought a bass guitar, and another Scout called Wookey had a drum kit. Our guitarist was Terrence, a Malaysian guy from school who could actually play. He was our age but he seemed much older and cooler. He wore flash clothes and was the only one of us who had a girlfriend – further evidence that being a musician paid off big-time. Another scout, Evan Ong, wanted to join but couldn’t play an instrument, but he was a great guy so we said he could play ‘percussion’ – you know, bongo drums and the tambourine. His greatest contribution was that he knew a kid called Andre who played a mean saxophone, so he joined too.

  And so what would I play? I thought the keyboard would be easy enough. I borrowed an old one from the school; it had the names of the notes written on the keys. It was perfect – I figured I’d find out the key of the song we were playing and just play that note with one finger. (A bit like that bloke with the hair from Flock of Seagulls.)

  We arranged our first band practice at the local Scout Hall because Dad had the keys. As it happened, we’d all been Scouts – Glenn and I couldn’t really have avoided it, with Dad as a leader. But the Scouting movement was big in the suburbs generally back then; obviously there was little else to do on a Tuesday night in 1979, and putting on a bizarre uniform and doing stuff with ropes seemed quite exotic. If you were good with the ropes you got a special badge.

  I had spent much of my childhood going camping in very cold places. I remember one camp when it rained so much we got flooded. When we got up the next morning, we realised our fellow Scout Bruce Millwood was missing. Dad found him floating in the creek on his lilo, still asleep.

  Our camps seemed more like endurance tests than recreation. The best thing about them was coming home. We went to glamorous places such as Buxton and Coldstream, living off Spam and freeze-dried Vesta meals. We would hike for hours and then have to set up camp in sub-zero temperatures. After doing all of that we then had to build a campfire to cook dinner on. And then there was the constant rain. To this day, in my mind camping and raining seem to go together.

  The highlight was always the campfire, where the leaders and the older Scouts would tell scary stories. My favourite was the tale of ‘the mad dago’, a horrific story about a man whose plane crashed because of naughty Boy Scouts misbehaving on board. But this man and another chap whose legs were cut off survived, so the first bloke gave the second one a piggyback. After a while the two men grew into one hideous being, and to this day he roams the bush looking for Scouts to kill. At this point one of the leaders would come running out of the bush with an older boy on his shoulders, a blanket covering the leader’s head. It did the job every time and some new Scout would be left traumatised.

  Practical jokes were big in Scouts. The tone was set by the leaders. When you went on your first Scout camp, the leader would announce that as a rite of passage you would go on a ‘parachute jump’. They would blindfold you and put you ‘in a plane’ (on the back of a ute) and then give you your parachute (a backpack). The leader would take off at a high speed and then someone would say ‘Jump!’ and you would get pushed off the back of the ute, crashing into the ground. Yeah, hilarious. All the older Scouts would be standing around cacking themselves.

  With this example from the leaders, practical jokes were n
ot only tolerated but actively encouraged. I remember on one gruelling hike we put several large rocks in the backpack of a fellow Scout known as Zonk. He carried those rocks all day and only found them when he pulled his sleeping bag out at night. We thought it was the funniest thing ever. Zonk did not agree; he went crazy, throwing the rocks at us and into the campfire.

  Interestingly enough, Zonk’s dad was our local vicar, but Zonk was no saint. In Scouts Noddy was the guy who would do anything, but then Zonk turned up and made Noddy look like a Brownie. He would stick his hand into the campfire, claiming it didn’t hurt one bit. One summer, when Mum and Dad weren’t home, Noddy set up a BMX jump into our above-ground pool that we thought was pretty dangerous. Then Zonk appeared and climbed onto the roof of our house with his BMX. He rode off the roof and dropped straight into the pool. He should have got a badge for that.

  After we turned fifteen we moved up to Venture Scouts – but here there was one important difference. Girls could join, and this was a good thing. But the girls who joined didn’t seem to be very interested in us, even when we formed a band, which was the proven way to get girls. In almost every film clip we saw on TV – for example, Duran Duran’s ‘Girls on Film’ – bands would have girls hanging around them. (Okay, I realise now that they were paid to be there, but Simon Le Bon did marry a model so there was something to it.)

  We assembled at the Scout Hall and set up what equipment we had. Terrence, the only one of us who was even close to being a musician, tuned our instruments and then suggested we play some covers to get started.

  ‘Terrence,’ I said, ‘we don’t want to be a cover band. We want to play original songs.’

  ‘Okay – have you written any?’ he asked. Fair question.

  ‘Um, no, I haven’t yet. I’m working on some.’

  ‘Are you?’ said Glenn, who knew perfectly well I was lying.

  ‘Why don’t we play a song we all like,’ Noddy suggested. ‘What about “Message in a Bottle”?’

  ‘No, I hate The Police,’ I said. ‘They sold out.’ For us, this was the worst thing a band could do. No one wanted to be a sellout. God forbid a band made any money. And besides, I was pretty sure The Police didn’t have keyboards.

  Noddy tried again. ‘What about a Mental As Anything song?’

  This was better. I knew that Greedy Smith played keyboards, and that they were therefore an important part of the band.

  ‘How about a Cat Stevens song?’ Terrence suggested.

  ‘Jesus, how old are you, forty-five?’ I scoffed. ‘Mental As Anything is a great idea. What about “The Nips Are Getting Bigger”?’ A classic song with very prominent keyboards.

  Terrence knew how to play the song and taught everyone their parts on the spot. Glenn said he knew the words. Everyone knew the first line – ‘Started out just drinking beer …’ – but after that it got a bit sketchy: ‘Me and a barber alone just drinking on my very own …’? Not quite.

  But that didn’t matter and we played the song over and over. If anyone had been listening, they would have thought the CD player was stuck on repeat. All right, CDs weren’t invented yet, so they would have thought the needle was stuck on the record. We would have kept going all night but at about six p.m. the Cub Scout leader turned up and kicked us out. Pretty soon there would be a bunch of nine-year-olds running around playing games like ‘Fruit Salad’ or ‘Hoppo Bumpo’, which involved kids hopping on one leg with their arms folded in front of them and trying to knock down other kids. Good wholesome fun that could involve a trip to Emergency.

  My band mates and I were on a high after our very first practice. Even though we could only play one song, we’d had a taste of rock and roll and we liked it. None of us wanted to head home.

  ‘We should go out,’ Noddy said.

  ‘We can’t go to the pub – the publican knows us.’

  ‘Nah, fuck Mitcham,’ said Noddy. ‘We should get out of here.’

  ‘Let’s go see a band,’ Wookey said.

  We all released sounds of approval. We were a band now, and we needed to see as many other bands playing live as we could. If we were going to be the best, we had to learn from the best.

  ‘The Models are playing tonight,’ I said. ‘I saw it in Juke.’

  Juke was one of the two essential weekly rock magazines; there was also Ram. If you were a music nut like I was, you would buy both and read them from cover to cover. Other kids studied the Footy Record and could tell you how many goals Vinnie Catoggio kicked in 1978. I could tell you the name of the biggest hit Air Supply had in Australia. (It was ‘All Out of Love’, which went to number 3, closely followed by ‘Lost in Love’ at number 5.)

  The other thing I did was watch the music programs on telly. Countdown was the main one. Every Sunday night at six p.m., the youth of Australia would gather around the TV and watch an hour of local and international rock acts. We hung on every word Molly said. I remember when The Knack were on the show performing their song ‘Good Girls Don’t’, which followed their monster hit ‘My Sharona’. ‘Um, yeah, this is The Knack’s, um, yeah, second single,’ Molly said, ‘but I can’t help but, um, yeah, think they are just a, um, yeah, one-hit wonder.’

  Trev, a big fan of The Knack, stood up and yelled at the TV. ‘What would you know, Molly, you idiot!’ And he stormed out of the room.

  But you’d have to say Molly was right.

  Apart from Countdown, there was Rock Arena, hosted by the woman with the big earrings, Suzanne Dowling, and Night Moves, hosted by Lee Simon, a 3XY DJ who had a lot of credibility and a face that said, ‘Sure, I’ve been to a few gigs and had a few drinks.’

  The other rock TV host who came under that category was Donnie Sutherland, who hosted Sounds (or Sounds Unlimited, as it was originally called). This was a Saturday-morning music show on Channel 7 in which the former DJ would sit on a couch and interview rock stars and show their film clips. Donnie had massive bags under his eyes, and it was guaranteed he had come straight from a Radiators gig at Kinselas that had turned into an all-nighter. It seemed cruel to put a rock music program on at nine a.m. on a Saturday morning. Donny often talked about these legendary Sydney band venues like the Strawberry Hills Hotel or the Revesby Workers’ Club; we had no idea what he was talking about but we wanted to go to these places and see these bands.

  ‘So where are The Models playing?’ asked Glenn, always the voice of reason.

  ‘The Seaview Ballroom in St Kilda,’ I answered.

  Now everyone let out disapproving noises. In our minds St Kilda was about as close as Perth. It seemed so far away from Mitcham, and also it had an air of danger. Our parents had told us you could go there and get your drink spiked with marijuana and end up some kind of drug addict.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Noddy said, always up for an adventure.

  ‘AlphaBravoCharlie is my favourite album,’ Wookey said. ‘So I’m going.’

  ‘Great, let’s do it,’ I said. I knew my brother would not come. Nor would Terrence, who had already left to hang out with his girlfriend. We would have done that too if we could have. Evan Ong and Andre also bailed, as they were even younger than us.

  We walked up to the station to get a train to the city. Buying a ticket was always a fifty-fifty decision. It seemed like a waste of money because we were young and could run fast and jump fences. But even in 1982 there were train inspectors who would block doors and rough you up a little. This time we decided to buy tickets as we were so determined to see The Models that we didn’t want anything to delay us.

  We caught the red rattler to Flinders Street. These were ancient trains, and they were red and did rattle a lot. We then caught one of the slightly more modern blue trains to St Kilda.

  St Kilda these days is a sanitised version of itself. Back then it was all prostitutes, drug dealers and every form of lowlife you could think of. We were like three nuns getting dropped off in hell. Except that this hell was fun. Sure, there was a lot of crime and seediness around, but it was exciting and we
felt alive. In Mitcham our idea of excitement was when the Crystal Soft Drinks truck came down the street and delivered its crates of Sunshine Pine, Portello and Creamy Soda. Meanwhile, in St Kilda we saw people getting arrested, punks with purple Mohawks and friendly women who asked if we were ‘interested in a good time’.

  But we were focused and headed straight to the Seaview Ballroom, which was just across the road from the railway station. It was a majestic former hotel that reeked of past glories. It looked like a place the Queen would have opened, although now it was falling into disrepair. All this made it the perfect venue for punk and new wave bands.

  There was no one on the door, so we walked straight in and saw a band playing onstage. But there was no one there, which seemed a bit weird because this band sounded really good. They were a three-piece, and I recognised one of the songs. It was The Go-Betweens, who were The Models’ support band. We moved up and stood in front of the stage, and started nodding our heads to the music. Well, someone should be appreciating this great band. But they stopped playing quite abruptly, and the two guitarists looked at us in a queer way and walked off.

  The drummer, a lovely lady called Lindy, walked over. ‘Are you boys here to see The Models?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And we’re also Go-Betweens fans.’

  ‘Have you boys been to a gig before?’

  ‘Yeah, heaps of times,’ said Noddy. He was lying. We had been to see the Ted Mulry Gang in Year 5 at Festival Hall, but that was a school excursion. And we’d seen a few bands like Madness at theatres, but for those shows you would buy a ticket from the Bass ticket outlet. If you were really keen you’d line up overnight to get the best seats.

  ‘It’s just that the bands don’t come on till nine,’ Lindy said. ‘We’re just doing our sound check.’

  Oh, right. I looked at my watch – it was 7.05 p.m. – and it dawned on me that I had no idea what time bands came on in pubs.