I can hear music: my life.

I’d never given much thought to being a singer, much less a writer of songs. A composer: such a lofty aspiration. To be sure, Brian Wilson is a composer.  In the writing of his epic catalogue of songs he has I become immortal. Much as the Bach boys, the Beethoven boys, the Bartok Boys who preceded him have. We mortals will be dust, but Brian will endure until the Sun turns nova and scorches the last feudal remnants of our kind off the mother ship. I sometimes derisively refer to the hoary old aggregation that the odious Mike Love trots out, for seemingly endless summer tours, as “The Beach Men.”  For without Brian, the non-surfing, teen angst chronicling, son of the California sun, there are no boys on the beach, just greedy men, lingering without a purpose beyond peddling nostalgia and watered down beer, year in and year out. The hot wax of yesteryear still wolfed down by an insatiable audience now grown.  Men and Women eager to relive a dim boozy memory of better days; a time before responsibility crashed the party. Before the Beach Men’s audience became their Mothers and Fathers.

Paul Kelly: the gifted Australian magpie of song, once wrote a toe tapper called “Going about my Fathers business.” Much like my own father before me I became a parent late in life. Sometimes I have to step back and check myself as I catch my tongue talking to my daughter in the voice of my own father. The same inflection and tones wrapped around familiar phrases, most of it for the good. “Brush those teeth till they’re white as pearls.”  “Figures are fun.” Alright tantrum tosser, that’ll do, it’s time for bed.”   She’s a good kid and lights up my world.  She’s shown some interest in music, she has a violin, a guitar and a keyboard, but nothing has really taken hold as of yet: much as it was for me.

In primary school I somehow managed to get myself singled out and enrolled in the school choir. For a football mad kid, growing up in a town where “footy” and sport in general, are almost religious rites, it was a dire position to find one’s self in. It was in the fifth grade; right at the age my Grace is now, when I was shanghaied from all things sporty for three periods a week.  From God only knows where a music teacher had been shipped into our world.  Mr. Gaudie, who in hindsight was as camp as a row of tents, came into our classroom abruptly barking orders. First he lined up the girls. They were all pretty eager for a turn and he cocked an ear to them singing the national anthem. (The old one.) He’d listen, with a scrunched up nose as if divining water in mud and circle back, cutting girls from the choir herd as he saw fit, and reducing twenty two to sixteen blessed divas.

Then it was the boys turn.  Unlike the girls we were individually drilled so crafty old Mr. Gaudie could not be snowed by a group effort of awfulness.  We stood on a little raised up platform, much as lambs at the abattoir, and were each asked to sing the theme song of our football club as a solo turn.  Wayne Fitton murdered   the Richmond Tigers grand song so thoroughly there is probably still a bench warrant for his arrest somewhere in a dusty drawer at the local CIB.  Wayne Searle succeeded in kicking up such an awful yodel on the North Melbourne Kangaroos song that he was stopped after one lusty stanza, and was, with a winning grin, sent packing from the room. Four lads were picked and all looked a little concerned about their prospects when I was offered up for the sacrifice. “What team boy?” “Ah, the Cats, sir; Geelong.” “Right then, and don’t muck it up.” With that he cued the ever malicious Miss Miram on the piano. It must have been the familiar melody and the pride kicking in. I began with some gusto.  “We are Geelong the greatest team of all. We are Geelong we’re always on the ball. We play the game as it should be played, at home or far AWAY.” That one note buggered my ambition to ditch the school choir. I had shown him a big set of lungs and was booted like a Billy Goggin stab kick onto Mr. Gaudies musical palette.

I remember my shit heel of a brother mocking me mercilessly, but the blossoming, bosomy Bingham sisters seemed pretty encouraging.  Surely that was a good sign.  I can still hear the songs we were assigned in my head. “ Picking up pebbles, Edelweiss and some sort of cool Russian folk song that I do not know the name of anymore. “Full to the brim is my fine Koorabuska” is the first line. I remember thinking what the fuck is a Koorabuska, and why am I required to be singing this? Oh well, it was out of my hands. Rehearsals where held and then dress rehearsals and finally our big day came at the Caulfield town hall. We were bussed in, trotted out, and delivered our mangled trilogy to much parental excitement. All I can say is, I aped the words, reading the blue crib notes on my palm and then was flushed from the obligation back to the familiar playing field of high jump, British Bull Dog and the half back flank.

They say hindsight is truly 20/20; and it is. I did not appreciate I had been given entre to something that would come to mean so much to me and consume such a large part of my life. I once had a conversation with a bass player friend who is the same age as me less a day. He asked me what was the first song that really grabbed my attention. Without batting an eye lid, I said, “Like a rolling stone” by Bob Dylan. I remember being the one tasked with flipping the 45 RPM record over on the turntable so all near seven minutes of it could be consumed in one sitting. The aforementioned bosomy Bingham sisters sitting in rapt attention, as if at a lecture on a University campus.  My older brother paying respectful homage to Linda Bingham’s tits. All the while trying to worm his way closer to them, under the pretense of craning his neck to better hear the message wheezing forth from Bob, stationed far, far, away on the front lines of American Rock n roll. Poor old K Man.  He had no older brother or bosomy neighbors to guide him from the sugar of the Partridge family. His was a lonely pilgrimage to the company of other likeminded souls and “Get your ya ya’s out.”

I have always found it to be a funny and ironic how we find our way to music. For me, as youngster it was by way of AM and then FM radio and other peoples record collections. Expansive catalogs often alphabetized. No $1 dollar “I tunes” flushable auto tune landfill bound garbage.  It was a room where you might run across Frank Zappa or Lou Reed, Big Mama Thornton Wanda Jackson, Slimy Watkins. The pop symphonies of Buddy Holly and the records produced by Phil Spector. Who would eventually end up murdering a beautiful Californian woman after years of unchecked threatening behavior.  Growing up in Australia, as I did, there were also the locals to be considered. Zoot, Daddy Cool ,Masters Apprentices, Radio Birdman, and so many others who now only live on in the dim  recesses of memory, or exist in the ether of the You Tube universe, waiting patiently for you to revisit their three minutes of glory. I still remember the story of Ziggy Zimmerman. The last boy in line at school!!

I’ve always felt a little sorry for American teenagers who are hobbled by the ongoing restraints of a 21 and up licensing law that prohibits them from being on grog drinking premises. When I was a whippersnapper the pubs were the place to find good locally produced music, a few sly drinks and maybe even meet a few girls. Melbourne pubs were a gritty rock n roll battlefield and her soldiers are legion. Some have risen; others have fallen by the wayside, and us who were blessed bystanders dunked ourselves every night, because there was always someone treading the boards worth seeing.  

A typical week might be Sunday at the Pizza joint on Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, listening to two sweet long forgotten angels push a robust blend of covers and originals. Monday would begin the real shenanigans with Paul Elliot’s Gong show at Macy’s. (Where I was once crowned king of the Elvis impersonators at the “Elvis Presley is alive and well and living in Melbourne” show.)  Tuesday, more often than not, would be a quick scoot on the tram to the London Tavern to see Sidewinder, who blended classical violin tones with Blues grit and bought the house down every time.  Wednesday, if you didn’t give the liver a night off, would find you out of place at some WOG night club, as Paul Kelly and the Dots churned out songs to a disinterested gaggle of geese. His brilliance and the radiance of his songs still   lingering beyond the horizon, music still beyond his reach. Thursday, with Friday firmly on one’s mind,   might coax you out to see some band from Sydney or Adelaide, maybe even from far flung Perth. Just a punt really, but it was always a dollar well spent at Storey Hall, or one of the other student union campus gigs. Bastions of education, flogging strong bow cider; where you could get your head filled up with political action slogans by girls with European armpits. The ones who wanted to lynch Malcolm Fraser at sunup. The Saints, Radio Birdman and The Elks. All moving across the landscape with a moving target on their young modern brows.

 Friday and especially Saturday nights: a night so big it has its own lexicon of songs about fighting , drugging, sexing, dancing, car crashing  and fucking shit up. No one ever wrote a song about Saturday night where they tucked themselves into bed with Ayn Rand and a cup of hot Cocoa at sundown did they.  Yup, those were big nights not to be squandered. Maybe you’d head out to see Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons with fifteen hundred other sweaty lugs. The Hunters & Collectors, or some big shots from the UK in over their heads with the local support boyos, perhaps enjoy the Bogan delights you closeted like a homosexual proclivity: Cold Chisel and the Angels.  Tinsley Waterhouse was always a good bet at some pub in Brighton that today would require a global positioning satellite to stray back too. Sweat and beer flowing through the body: shouting, always shouting the words to Western Union man or I’ve been dreaming.

Pub rock they called it, perhaps a tad dismissively. For me it was college. Campuses attended, notes taken, I’s dotted and T’s dashed.  I still try too shimmy a little bit like Joe Cameleri, slouch a bit like Paul Kelly, be proud and take no bullshit like Renee Geyer in a loud room. More often than not it works as I hoe my own meager musical row.  I can firmly blame Jim Massoco who loaned me an Ibanez guitar and showed me how to form a D chord. I pounded that chord like a nail into wood and surfaced months later searching for others.  The majors and the minors, the poor pitiful and neglected diminished chords and the freaky pornographic augmented ones  , with their karma sutra fingerings stuttering  across the fret board, all lurking in the underbrush  surrounding the overlords, G, C and D major.

I was regularly seeing people a few scant years my senior performing locally, and with the hubris only a young man could muster, said: “I can do that.”  But I couldn’t. Finding collaborators, not to mention, locating reliable accomplices would be a challenge. I can’t remember how many times I trekked off with my crap gear looking to play with someone and walked away busted flat in Moonee Ponds. A generation before texting, social media and the other digital conveniences that have stripped music bare of its mystery, it was a far more challenging prospect. Trips into record stores to post a hopeful flyer with little tear off tabs as the cool Archie’s and Jug heads looked down their noses at your intrusion into their hipster sanctum. An ad in the local music fish wrap of the day. The bored operator half-heartedly taking down the text (old school) you had carefully arranged into 28 words or less. Managing to tag Lou Reed as “Lou Read” Perhaps a small act of sabotage to make you look like a wanker to the people you were courting. And all the ads concluded with the small sentence. “No time wasters.” Was I a time waster? Some days I felt like it.

One day I got a call from a bass player who was actually gigging with a mod influenced band I had seen. Bonza said I, as I worked on the three most heartfelt treasures that I was sure would dig a trench  and lay the foundations for a band. Mr. 5.15 turned up. He was an obnoxious ass. In about 15 minutes he polished off the beer I’d bought for our musical mind meld, made a half assed attempt at a song and grandly announced his time had been wasted. But I was far from crushed. I had seen his measure and found it wanting. Mr. 5.15 was all about the boot heels, the tour T shirt and the hair. He was about looks, not songs and for me that was the key to the car.

Eventually I succeeded in socially networking with the local butcher while picking up some sausages and mincemeat.  “Me sister’s a drummer, ya oughta call her.” He gave me Charines’ number. We agreed to meet, she being into Credence Clearwater Revival, while   I cast an admiring eye at Lou Reed and John Cale meant it was an obviously well fitted shoe. “Chaz” rocked up in a V8 Holden Kingswood. She had tattoos before women commonly had them, and within minutes announced she fully intended to have a sex change and become a man. We became fast friends. Her girlfriend Jenny sat loyally at her side, a half pissed Yoko Ono. As we cranked away, our Pied Piper noise lured other rats to the ship. Scott, Greg, Sticky the French polisher, and we became a nameless mob of noise and feedback. We were a band.

There were some ramshackle gigs filled to the brim with young embarrassment. Ways were parted and good byes exchanged.  Motorcycles, larceny and destruction became the addiction.   Music was forgotten. Within a few years I was up to my ass in trouble and I figured it was time to save my sorry future, by hook or by crook. I’d had a big score which put a fat wad of cash into my hands. A passport was acquired and a trip was booked, that day by day, evolved into the next twenty four years of my life. I had a dilemma to face. Take a surfboard or a guitar? A motorcycle was obviously impractical given the airlines gouging weights and measures fees

I packed the guitar and headed towards the future: an old friend riding shotgun. In the heat of South East Asia I first began to imagine songs again. But they were crap. I had no voice; I had to find a life to put into the songs. I promenaded a few around and tried to begin.  Over the next few years I moved around a lot. I am grateful for all the miles I ticked off.  The friends met and the experiences shared.   It’s always nice to be able to tick of iconic things you saw.  Buildings, beaches, wonder of the world.  Places where men who gave the full measure of devotion rest peacefully.  It informs you and you have quiet time to reflect. So the scribble comes: and I’m writing songs.

Songs that for the first time I felt deserved an audience. I’ve never made much money from it but that was never the ambition. It was the writing of a story that mattered to me. A lot of singer songwriter’s talk up how their songs are not literal or about them. I call bullshit on that one. I have come to realize that my songs are the core of the life I’ve lived, and there are a lot I don’t trot out in public. They’re strictly personal mental health notes. Yeah right, Ronald Alexander Joseph Charles Wells talking therapy… It’s okay, you can pick yourself up off the floor now. But it’s true. Without their cloak of protection I’d be an empty husk.

 Just yesterday I was casting an admiring eye over a photograph of a Zundapp motor cycle a friend had posted on Facebook. He reminded me that I am probably the only songwriter in the world to use the word Zundapp in a song. It made me smile and eased me through a very odd day.  He’s a dear friend and collaborator who lives far away, who, the way the deck is stacked, I will probably never have the opportunity to play with again. Like Chaz, Sticky, Greg and so many others he rides with me and every time I sing the songs we worked on they’ve got my back and I’ve got theirs. Every few years when they do the rock and roll Hall Of Fame  induction thingy and you see some asshole like Axl Rose or John Fogerty throwing a hissy fit about his band mates and declining the honor, guys who’ve made millions and live charmed bejeweled lives, I just wanna smack the snot out of them. Perhaps in retrospect it was good not to make a boatload of cash, if it would mean wiping the camaraderie and love of the work off the map.

I guess I am writing this down because things have been really hard for the last several years. A lot of things on a personal level have been lost. Business, relationships houses, money, opportunity, legal troubles. I tell you, it’s a fucking long laundry list, and it’s not just me. Its people I love and care about too, from all walks of my life. Yet, the one constant has been my friends made through playing music. The truest, staunchest most real bunch of folks who have shared my road and helped write my book. Last week my band “The Cactus 5” played a gig at one of our regular spots.  It had been a shit week of trying to collect money from a difficult and challenging construction job where the principals had not been straight up with me. I was feeling strung out and strung along. Driving to the show I remarked to my gal that the band and the music were the last saving grace in the life equation. I hated to be forced to admit it, but I felt like a beaten man. My appetite for living was gone; I had no hunger in my belly and a big hole in my heart.

We got to the gig and I made my usual half assed attempts to set up. My voice had been bugging me for a few days and I thought, I’m gonna suck. A cuppa tea and a bit of too and fro with the band about the set list and it was game on. The lights came up and we powered through the first song, “Don’t look back” and I felt the familiar warmth and camaraderie wash over me and I thought of how many times the brotherhood of the Cactus 5 has had my back as the life lights dimmed. I found a tear in my eye and was grateful that I was a singer of songs, and I felt the heft of all the people I’ve ever played with on my side and felt like nothing could stop us. Later in the evening we were working through a jazz tinged bit of a song “Jack the giant killer”, I don’t play much on this bit so I stepped back and just listened and was proud of what we have created.

At length the gear was packed away, hands were shaken beers were drunk and it was time to get back to the normal, but I felt the spring in my step and the weight light in my heart.  I thought of all the people I’ve played with over the years and how much that they have given me, and how it has been the greatest gift I ever received. I thought of Mr. Gaudie (probably now long gone) and Miss Miram and room 3C where my voyage began at Hughesdale primary school PS: 3166. I wondered how it had all worked out for my other force fed choir brothers. I know the Wayne’s: Fitton and Searle had rough lives and John Tantrum, who picked me up driving a cab around the time I was burying Mother had been put through the wringer that is life.

I have a conservative friend and he’s always a feared how the government’s coming for his hide. I gave him a bit of stick a few days ago. Mate, you bitch and bitch about the teachers union but I never hear you cracking the shits about the prison guards union. The entrenched Einstein’s In charge of running the show where I live have clipped education in music and arts program to the bone while guaranteeing the welfare of guys like Richard Ramirez. (Thankfully, finally dead today.)  7K per student, 80 K per inmate. Not an investment Warren Buffet would bet on. But by the grace of God Little Steven is coming to the schools with his “Rock n roll forever’ foundation Hallelujah!!

My daughter is ten, an interesting in between age; she recorded herself tonight singing Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” on her “device”. She was joyful and I realized the apple had not fallen far from the tree.  I had a broad happy smile, that soured a little as I wondered where so many other kids would find their Mr. Gaudie, whose parents aren’t singers of songs and don’t know that they need him. We were riding back to the box tonight, a room I am renting, as stuff gets sorted. I’m renting it from a friend met through singing songs and “I can hear music” by the Beach Boys came on the radio. I quietly sing along: wouldn’t want to embarrass the ten year old. It washed over me, how happy and thankful I was for all the miles travelled, all the songs sung and for my life. If I ever played music with you and you’re reading this, I love you and thank you for the gift you gave me.