Take a look at the photo. There they are. The original Saints, outside their Brisbane share house, Club 76. Now a posh real estate agent's rather scrappy-looking digs, the house still stands.
Queensland does have a heritage register: the Saints' Petrie Terrace share house should surely be on the list, but it's not. Queenslanders, make it happen!
It's mid-winter in Adelaide, and I'm reflecting on the passage of time. As I get off the bus, I pass the new and improved Her Majesty's Theatre on the corner of Pitt Street and Grote, adjacent to the shop I worked in for a year nearly 30 years ago. A few doors up Grote, toward Victoria Square, was the one building I worked in periodically over 22 years, The Antique Market, run by Dean Donovan and his wife, Kathy.
Quite an awkwardly-designed building, after Dean sold all the stock in 2018, it was sold, remodelled and occupied for a few years, then finally emptied and demolished; today a huge hotel or somesuch is heading upwards with a great deal of clamour, gusto and grunt.
On other side of Grote Street, the Adelaide Central Market has (inevitably) changed as well: thankfully Sun Mi is still there, with her marvellous herb pancakes and sauce, and there's still a bookseller (the fourth or fifth I've known in the Market), and a superb retro tuck shop, Smileys. You can get happily lost among the dozens of specialty shops, some of which have always been there, some of which have changed ownership but kept the name, some of which are relatively new ... many of which are dead posh, and a million miles from the original 19h century market stalls, whose owners and families would walk their carts of produce down from the hills.
Then is not now, and memory is a strange thing. Things keep changing but everything somehow stays the same. I wouldn't want to go back in time, though I do miss the grocery stallholders hollering their competitive prices.
Kym Bradshaw, Ivor Hay, Chris Bailey and Ed Kuepper.
We do have a nasty habit of thinking the past - especially our own - is, somehow, 'the good old days'. About 20 years ago the Punk77 website did an interesting interview with Saints bassist Kym Bradshaw and here's what he had to say about the “good old days” of the band in Brisbane:
There was no-one like us. Everyone hated us except for a small dedicated following. Most audiences seemed non-plussed by us except for our followers. We realised we would get nowhere in Australia. Our only hope was to make the record and send it to England.
Which the band did, and the rest, they say, is history.
And the past has hooks in us all: did you know there's a Saints cover band?
Yep. Kid Galahad and the Eternals. In San Diego. Quite a few gigs have sold out, with more being added, so you shouldn't miss seeing the Saints, but if you do, maybe you should get a plane ticket to San Diego.
It's too late to see this version of Kid Galahad and The Eternals so the San Diego variant will have to do.
Anyway, apropos of the box set of The Saints' first LP “(I'm) Stranded”, and the tour, both in November, today I'm meeting Ivor Hay, drummer for The Saints, for coffee in the middle of Adelaide.
As I'm sure you already know ... the tour is billed as “'Ed Kuepper, Ivor Hay, Mark Arm, Mick Harvey and Peter Oxley play The Saints, 1973-1978” (phew) and tickets are available here, while the Saints' four-LP “(I’m) Stranded” box set is available here.
Before Ivor arrives, I wonder what he'll be like ... Did they all want to be rock stars, the musicians who kicked over the traces in the 1970s? I've seen some famous names and faces getting their clothes plucked in the street, hounded by an appalling public and their expectations, ducking and weaving for cover in their day to day ... Without a few mill in the bank to cushion you, if you're famous you're an easy, slow-moving target.
As it happens, my frets are groundless. Ivor comes across as being cheerful and happy with his life. He's not smug, or up himself. We laughed a lot. He could as easily be your avuncular, cheerful uncle with a raft of stories that you actually want to hear. Part of this, I suspect, comes from getting his qualifications and then his work, having a normal life after a whirlwind band. Music still rides high in his sights ... but balance has been achieved. He's ordinary, but not.
For example, as we walked through the Central Market, he reveals that he wrote the first Instruction Manual for the Fairlight CMI.
Which had my jaw on the floor.
So, his decisions must've been good ones. Luck plays its part in all our lives. Yesterday I visited one of my old schoolmates, who's very ill; it's just bad luck. His decisions had been good. I didn't keep up with my schoolmates, by the way, save two; but another recently died after the kind of illness which usually arrives 30 years later. All of his decisions had been good, too.
And, tonight I'm seeing The Animals and Friends' final gig of another tour around Australia (their tenth in ten years?) with the band's original 83-year-old drummer, John Steel. John had a business career as well as his drumming - he could have retired in the 1990s ... a quarter of a century ago.
At his recent gig here, Jerry Seinfeld was asked why he came to Adelaide. First, he explained that getting up on stage was the most enjoyable thing he had in his life. 950 million dollars and ... that's his favourite thing?
Oh, and then Jerry added that the real question is, why are we here in Adelaide? Well ...
Maybe I should move to Burnie. Or Smithton.
Kuepper, Bailey, Hay and Bradshaw audition for an early version of Selling Homes Australia.
Today, we tend to forget that punk didn't exist when The Saints started ... and “proto-punk” is a term made up by people who could never have seen punk at anything like ground zero ... Besides, Ivor initially played piano before shifting to bass ... and finally, when Jeff Wegener moved on, to drums. And years later, when Chris Bailey needed him behind the kit, Ivor was always there when he could be.
Anyway, over a pot of tea, I discover that Ivor has not as yet heard the “(I'm) Stranded” box set. However, Ed Kuepper has test pressings and apparently they're extremely good. On The Sound of Vinyl website, Kuepper comments;
It's been an exhausting yet thrilling process being involved in the creation of this box set. It's been 51 years in the making and has possibly turned out even better than I anticipated. It's by far the most extensive appraisal of the band, both aurally and visually, that has ever been made available and hopefully reveals some things people may not have known about the band.
If you've not taken a peek at the website already, the four discs comprise A) a remastered version of '(I'm) Stranded'; B) a previously-unreleased demo mix of the LP; C) all three tracks from the 1977 'This Perfect Day' 12” and all four tracks from the 1977 '1-2-3-4' double 7” single and, on the flip, five songs live from Paddington Town Hall Sydney 3.4.1977; and D) A full live performance from the Hope & Anchor Front Row Festival, London November 1977 ... the live tracks capturing the band straddling the first two LPs and heading for the third...
Of course, we're all hoping for the same treatment for the second and third LPs... and for the touring line-up to get into the studio ... Anyway ...
This morning, however, for me there's a fair bit of serendipity going on here: next week Paul Slater will be recording an interview with Ivor for his radio show on 3D, 'It's Always Rock'n'Roll'; not only did Paul play me The Saints first single when he first got his hands on it (I was 12), he also played me all three of their LPs as soon as they came out.
(Paul explains that you can listen to the 3D radio broadcast "anytime in the next month via the new improved 3D Radio app.")
It's significant that Ed Kuepper and Chris Bailey were mates at the same school; Ivor met them both - and Jeffrey Wegener - when he was a schoolboy (in Year 11); they invited him along to a party. Ed taught Ivor guitar: Ivor taught Chris. There's a long, strong linkage between Ivor and Ed and Chris.
Both The Saints and Radio Birdman put a torch to the received wisdom of what constituted “popular” rock 'n' roll which, at the time, was veering into tiresome white blues and horrible US-oriented stuff which ... no, I won't dignify the slop by explaining.
The main similarities of The Saints and Radio Birdman, it seems to me, was that they developed their own style, independently, inside their own pressure cooker ... doing what they did independently of the mainstream. In fact, what they did was a big fat rejection of a boring mainstream in favour of what they figured was good .The likes of Molly Meldrum were the enemy. There are overlaps, musically, between both bands, but to me that's basically unimportant. Both bands did what many Australian bands have done, hunkered down in the band cave and come up with something which went against the flow, but became (accidentally) hugely influential.
Cosmic Psychos, The Scientists, and The Triffids spring to mind. As do X, Rose Tattoo, and Lobby Loyd. There are numerous others, of course.
None of these other bands sound remotely like The Saints. Very few bands do. Back in the day, when the band got to England, record execs thought The Saints should jump on the punk/ new wave bandwagon. Can't you just see them in spiky hair and loud trousers like (say) 999, or with slogans on the backs like The Clash?
No? That's because they wanted to do this rock'n'roll thing on their own terms. Which they did ... and, you know, perhaps that was for the better, perhaps for the worse.
But looking back on 1977, too many differences had emerged within the band; Ivor explains that, by the beginning of recording their third LP (not the end of the recording, as I had thought) Chris Bailey “had pulled the plug” on the band, wanting to go on his own journey.
The Saints' split wasn't the kind of difficult split which Radio Birdman endured; there was, as far as I can gather, no signing of decrees of ownership, but an agreed understanding that Chris would keep the name as it was, and that Ed and Ivor would continue with their things.
Since then, Ed has been scrupulous in his use of The Saints' name; he formed an outfit doing Saints covers (The Aints), for example. Neither felt the need to issue lawsuits. Ownership of rights and songs can be a bitchy, tetchy, acrimonious activity. I'm sure that, as The Saints came to be regarded as “legendary” and “iconic” (and for all I know, “sacred”), utilising the legacy without treading on toes would not have been easy. But whatever they did, we never saw Ed and Chris hiring lawyers to biff each other over the head with pricey leather handbags.
Today, Chris Bailey is fondly remembered for his many later classic songs: however, anyone seeing The Saints after 1978 knew that however good the band were, they were an entirely different creature than the one with Ed Kuepper. Both Ed and Chris were foils to each other; to some extent the band resembled a man with fidgety legs balancing on a see-saw.
No, I won't boast of some far-off gig where I saw this first incarnation of The Saints. I was too young, simple as that. I made up for it in the 1980s ... but Bailey's Saints, while often enjoyable, didn't continue to resonate with me. Some bands are like that.
Hell, some people like New Order, and good luck to them, but they don't bang my flange.
The Saints have had a sort of test-run of the live set already but will be rehearsing for-real closer to the tour.
Robert Brokenmouth meets Ivor Hay (right)..
Ivor Hay: I've been practicing a lot more drums to that live disc from “All Times Through Paradise'”over the last six months than ever before ... I've listened to it over and over ... I hadn't been doing a lot of drumming over the last twenty years; I think the last time I would've drummed live was The Saints reunion in 2009 at All Tomorrow's Parties.
A friend of mine saw that, and said it was just like the band had picked up where they left off ...
Ivor Hay: Well, I think so ... it pretty much was ... I think Chris was a little bit ... I mean, his voice was good and everything, but Chris sometimes had this thing about ‘old Saints’ and 'new Saints', and ... I think that sometimes got in the way of just relaxing and enjoying the music. But I think in terms of playing, I thought we were pretty well the same.
Tell me about “Nights in Venice”.
Ivor Hay: Yes, ‘Nights in Venice’ is a very interesting sort of song ... Chris, Ed and I had come through this stage with me playing piano with Chris and Ed, so we were doing songs like Bob Dylan's 'Ballad of a Thin Man', things that needed piano, and we progressed with that, and 'Nights in Venice' started to come out of that time.
It was really us just jamming on the sound of the guitars and the piano and voice, and the song progressed as we progressed into the band, when I took up bass, and we got a drummer, Jeffrey Wegener ... but we'd just been jamming round the bedroom a lot, doing that song...
Everyone always thinks that the three Saints LPs are some progression ... but from what you're saying, everything was always there...
Ivor Hay: Yeah. Because I'm going over the songs again now... you can sort of see that songs that are on later albums were actually songs from much earlier ... I think the title of 'Nights in Venice', that came from when we saw 'The Decameron' (1971, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini) when we were young ... we didn't have a name for it ... 'song in A', or whatever ... and someone suggested, 'oh, we'll call it 'Nights in Venice' ... that seemed fair enough...
Ivor, Wikipedia alleges that The Saints used to practice in front of the local police headquarters? Did you have to buy them off with cash-filled brown bags?
Ivor Hay: Yeah, it's true ... we rented the house at Petrie Terrace, and just across the road was the police headquarters ... we used to sit on the roof there on Sunday afternoons, just drinking beer and listening to records ... the cops would go past... They used to come in every now and again and cause us a bit of strife.
The police in those days.... they'd just come in and sort of say, 'we don't like what's going on', and shut it down. ... we didn't quite get guns against the head, and it didn't happen all the time, but they didn't really worry us too much.
You, Chris and Ed were all schoolmates ...
Ivor Hay: Chris and Ed went to the same school, but we met in 1971, when I was in grade 11 at different school ... Chris and Ed didn't really pursue the academic path ... but I ended up going through Year 12, but anyway, had more interesting things to do. But yeah, we go back to that high school time...
That's what this box set and tour is really about, I think, time ... this may seem dreadful, but we can look again at the Saints ... while everyone can still do it ...
Ivor Hay: Yeah.
Tonight The Animals and Friends are playing what will probably be their last gig in Australia; a few months back, I was talking about the upcoming tour with John, and he remarked: 'It's about the songs ...'
Ivor Hay: We still seem to be pretty good so far, touch wood. The gigs are really to promote the box set which Ed's been working on for the last three or four years, so this is a great opportunity ... there aren't that many times when you get a chance to do all that again ... and we're still able to do that quite well, I think.
There are so many expectations placed on people in your position ... how has that affected you? I mean I could say, you know, you're the drummer, away at the back, and no-one notices you... or recognises you in the street!
Ivor Hay: All those things are true, I guess! And there was no real pressure in that sense. But in terms of the performance, there's definitely a fair bit of pressure. Half the songs are fairly energetic, and so ... what I've been concentrating on is the fitness and capability, the technicality ... which I've never really concentrated on so much before in my whole life ... even when we were young, I used to practice a little bit, but never a lot ... and now I'm practicing every day. Getting the confidence to go around the kit, and the ability to just keep up a rhythm at that speed ...
And sit in and cruise at that speed ... [we're both laughing at this point, which continues ... we both know age is a factor...]
Ivor Hay: ... that's right, yeah. When I listen back to the live gig at the Hope and Anchor, it all seems so effortless. With these rolls... you know... just keep going... The first rehearsals seem to be going really well; we've had them early because I think Pete [Oxley] wanted to make sure I could keep up, so I had about two or three months to rehearse at home, so in a way it's been a bit of an audition ... but I managed to get through that, and they were happy; 'right, you're in the band' ... and it's been going well since then.
Reading between the lines, because you've played with Chris so many times subsequent to the original band breaking up, am I right in thinking that there was no enmity between you?
Ivor Hay: Chris and I, no.
My understanding was that when the band broke up, as the result of a joint decision, it was a gentleman's agreement that Chris kept the name; Ed wanted to do something else, and there were no formal agreements.
Ivor Hay: Yeah.
I mean, when Ed did The Aints, he could've reneged on that agreement, but he didn't. He's kept to the agreement.
Ivor Hay: Well, yeah I think so. We had a bit of a chat about some of that stuff that came out recently from Chris' estate, trying to work out what it meant, and what they were trying to do. It wasn't really clear what the opposition was. Or, if there was opposition, if it was just a PR exercise to raise awareness of the posthumous of Chris' new single. I mean, they'll get the royalties out of the box set, and the APRA performance payments from the gigs. We weren't really sure if they were trying to stop it or make a bit of noise. You know, how we didn't request their permission, or something like that. And Ed's gone through a lot of stuff over the last thirty years without asking Chris' permission ...
With no enmity coming from Chris ... which implies both tacit consent and a pattern of behaviour... a legal precedent...
Ivor Hay: Yeah, that's right ... I think they've had their ... there's a lot of back stories around some of the issues between Ed and Chris and the releasing of material, and the publishing ... and they've kind of got through that in their own way.
Gary Ede photo.
Notwithstanding the fact that Ed and Chris were very different personalities together, and I'm sure that in the rehearsal room, sparks would have flown ... but at the same time there always seems to have been this linked friendship, where between them they solve the issues... tricky ground, I know...
Ivor Hay: I know that they've had their differences, and they're two different people ... and Chris could be enigmatic ... and arrogant ... and mischievous ... and see what comes out of that, so if he comes out on top, then good, but if he gets caught out, then he sort of says, 'oh, well...'. So, he'll push a little bit to see where that lands, and Ed will sort of say, 'you can't do that...'
My situation with Chris is that I always enjoyed working with him, I've always liked him, and to me he was always a really good friend. I mean, he's probably done things which, in terms of royalties and things like that, where I probably should have got more of the performance ... on 'All Fool's Day' ... but that was when he was working with Mushroom, and Mushroom were a bit of a weird mob to deal with, and I think he was feeling a lot of pressure from them ...
Rowland Howard once remarked to me that the music industry is the most feudal in the world...
Ivor Hay: Yeah!
Funny about drummers, they're behind a kit and they're easy not to notice, but without them everything goes to shit...
Ivor Hay: The drums are a bit of the heart and soul of the band ... and it was interesting to talk to Pete and Ed - I've never talked to Ed about my drumming before - I used to think I 'just drummed' ... but Pete - and Ed - said that I have a very distinct and unique style ... I think what it was was that I developed more out of a '60s r'n'b style, rather than rock and roll, in terms of that metronomic thump ...
... the nature of where the songs went ... you were able to accommodate...
Ivor Hay: Yeah, and I've always tried to follow Ed's guitar and Chris' vocals. That was, to me, more relevant to the songs
You were treating Chris' vocals as a rhythm...?
Ivor Hay: Well, I was ... following his accent ... and his phrasing ... and the same with Ed's guitar, because Ed's guitar does very interesting phrasing and accents ... so I just didn't feel that I had to be metronomically on the beat ... what I felt it should be was accompanying those vocals and guitar and the bass and could come in where they wanted to ...
[At this point I mention John Steel of the Animals; he's 83, smoked for years, and here we are in 2024, with the Animals about to complete a six-week tour of about 30 dates: a schedule to put the fear of god into pretty much anyone over 50...]
You've reminded me of John Steel's recent remark; 'I may not be the greatest drummer in the world, but I'm the best drummer for The Animals'.
Ivor Hay: Yes! and that's a very true comment... And to a degree I guess that's why I feel most comfortable, playing for The Saints, or Chris and Ed, and those songs ...
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Okay, folks, get your credit cards out. If you miss one of these gigs, you're a goose and have no business saying you love rock'n'roll.
If you do miss them, however, contact Kevin F. Chanel on Facebook and he'll let you know when the next Kid Galahad and the Eternals gig is.
THE SAINTS '73-’78
NOV
13 - Adelaide Hindley St. Music Hall
+ special guests The Double Agents
15 - Castlemaine Theatre Royal (SOLD OUT)
16 - Melbourne Northcote Theatre (SOLD OUT)
+ special guests The Double Agents
17 - Melbourne Northcote Theatre
+ special guests Alien Nosejob
20 - Fremantle Freo Social
+ special guests Chimers
22 - Sydney, Enmore Theatre (SOLD OUT)
+ special guests Kim Salmon & The Surrealists
23 - Brisbane, Princess Theatre (SOLD OUT)
+ special guests Chimers
24 - Brisbane, Princess Theatre (SOLD OUT)
+ special guests Chimers
25 - Brisbane, Princess Theatre *NEW SHOW*
+ special guests Chimers
27 - Hobert, Odeon Theatre *NEW SHOW*
+ special guests Liquid Nails
29 - Thirroul, Anitas Theatre *NEW SHOW*
30 - Byron Bay, The Green Room *NEW SHOW*
Tickets for all available shows on via feelpresents.com
