Damien at one of the final Rifles gigs at Narrabeen RSL.
The loss of Damien Lovelock to cancer in 2019 left a yawning gap in more than just Australian rock and roll. The frontman for the cherished Celibate Rifles had by then become an cookbook author, a sporting commentator, a father, a yoga teacher and a raconteur.
The records show that the Rifles formed in Sydney in 1979 and amassed nine studio and three live albums along the way, making inroads into Europe and the USA. The band did not achieve mainstream successs, but did forge a path for high-energy yet thoughtful rock and roll. They inspired countless others to follow and do things, as the Rifles had, on their own terms.
Damo’s dry wit, laconic vocal and powerful stage presence were uneniable. Away from the music, his ability to talk the (blind) ear off anyone who wanted to engage him in conversation made him similarly unforgettable.
In October 2010, rusted-on Rifles fan Earl O’Neill sat down with Damien at a Narrabeen café. The interview that appears here was part of a planned book about the band (you can read a previous extract about the Rifles’ formative days here.) The book idea has long been shelved but the conversation stands up as a snapshot of the Rifles and the motivations of Damo himself. Peta Couvret transcribed the conversation.
Your dad Bill Lovelock wrote a song for Nina Simone, and from what other guys have said you brought a professional attitude to the band.
Yeah, I ‘spose that's one way of looking at it, yeah. Sure.
Was that because you were older than the rest of them?
Yeah. And I looked at, I played you know, kind of A grade rugby union, rugby league and then football. Or soccer, as it was called then. And I was an elite athlete, a state sprinter. So, I went to a Catholic boarding school, a private school, and that sort of team spirit thing and having the right attitude to what you do was drummed into you from day one.
And I viewed any group enterprise sort of the same way, you know, life's too short for bickering and bullshit. If there's something you want to do, let's get to doing it. You can have fun on the way. but I used to watch most bands and it seemed that it was more a part of a look or something.
Was part of a vibe, like "I'm gonna be in a band'" and there was this kind of formula for indie bands in the early '80s which was ‘Get together, do one or two great gigs, preferably to almost nobody, so that the word can spread, make a single, then break up’. You know? Thereby kind of ensuring that a mythologizing process would happen around your name.
And it was, because it was a little scene and it was a new scene and it was a very energetic, dynamic scene, it was .. everybody made records for their mates. It was like everyone knew everyone. So it was like every week, a single would come out not a hundred singles like nowadays. You know, when someone put out a record it was a big fucken deal.
And everyone bought a copy, listened to it, and then was either impressed or not impressed, you know? I liked all that, but the other stuff, I knew some guys who were you know, lived in Darlinghurst, they were a member of eight bands at the same time, who all rehearsed once a fortnight and never played. Um and I thought well, I'm not there for that you know? and that is about being a little older I guess, and realising that nothing lasts forever. You know? You've got a finite amount of time.
And as soon as I met the Rifles I thought OK, there's something here. There's an energy and a... there's something that sets them apart from a lot of the other bands. And that, nothing lasts forever. If you don't look after it it'll just dissipate and go. So yeah, I got into that.
And also I brought, I think, a different ear. I didn't grow up on the Pistols and (indistinct) you know? I grew up on Joe Stafford, ahhh all the jazz singers my mother listened to. Fifties rock n roll 'cos I had an older cousin who was right into it, you know? And she was my nearest relative, physically, the one that lived closest to me. So I used to hang out with her and she was like my big sister. She was an only child; I was an only child.
So even 4 or 5 years old I was listening to whatever she was listening to. Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, that stuff all the time. And then particularly the early sixties, blue rock, that sort of stuff she was into. Those were here teenage years. Bobby Lee, Bobby Ridell that stuff. And um, so when I came to the Rifles, my idea of a cover version and theirs were pretty different. I mean theirs might go ... extend all the way back to 1975, whereas like I think the first song I taught them was ‘Runaway’ by Del Shannon. It was like, are we going to play this? And we played it and everyone liked it. Tony Joe White, things like that.
So, I think I brought along with an attitude, a width to the music that wasn't there. Equally, I learned from them, you know, they had this encyclopedic knowledge of this really narrow band you know, Detroit sound or whatever people called it back then. And ah, so, I learned things off them that I wouldn't have learned. Like the MC5, I knew who they were but I never really listened to them or took them seriously, to tell you the truth.
What impressed you about them?
What impressed me about them was they were really good. Dale Steedman, Kent's older brother, described them once as ‘the best high school band in history’. That's what the Rifles were. They were super tight. They could really play. They were young guys, younger than me. When I met them I knew straight way,
I'd been auditioning. The early ‘80s, like 1981 was a really awful time. Cos it was new wave. So, most auditions ran the same way. You go along in the outer west, Seven Hills or somewhere I didn't know where it was, it'd take me three fucken hours to get there, this was over Christmas so it was 120 degrees. finally get there, there's a bunch of guys in a little garage. They'd say 'OK, do you know "Locomotive Breath”, "Jethro Tull?' Yep. 'Do you know ah... ‘="Roadhouse Blues?" Yep. 'Do you know "Route 66?'"Yep. They'd say. "OK, great - now, here's one of our songs and it'd be some song about you know, ‘I'm like a gay space man’ and it'd be ‘ni ni ni ni ni ni ni ni'." You know?
Cos that's what people thought was "new music".. .and I'm like, how is anybody supposed to sing this? And, like why are we playing balls out rock n roll for the audition, and then you give me something I wouldn't whistle for money. you know? Let alone actually fucken sing. These were very good musicians, most of them were quite good players, but everyone.. and it was all about commercial success still. And I wasn't into any of that. That was a long way away from me.
So when I met the Rifles we played - they bullshitted in their ad, which people did in those days. But, see I was into Radio Birdman in 75, 76 and I saw them play to nobody, you know? But I moved to the country in 78, kinda get out of the city, and I stayed out for two years. and when I came back, Birdman had moved to England, Birdman had broken up, and this whole amazing mythologizing and this incredible cult, cargo cult, that surrounded Birdman, that had all happened
I'm unaware of that. So I come in and I remember going to the audition going "Do you know any Birdman?"and it was like RRRAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGHHH and I'm like, wow, guys are so excited. I didn't even know they'd broken up, you know what I mean? Cos I was really out of touch, I'd been in the country.
And um, then they played that stuff, and like I said they were tight but there was an energy about it that was just fantastic, you know? Even young guys um, they gave a shit. Like I said it wasn't just a look, they really cared about what it sounded like. They didn't give a fuck what it looked like.
And to me, that's kind of what I thought punk was supposed to give us as a legacy that um image and all that didn't matter. But in fact, that was the reverse. The punk look was the ONLY thing that mattered. Whether you could play or not was irrelevant, but you had to look right.
And if you didn't look right, the rules and the punishment was far more severe than straight world, where it was just 'get fucked fuck off' whereas here it was like banishment. You know? Never to be, never darken my horizon again because you're wearing the WRONG leather jacket. It's a little like the rockabilly people, to me, you know? They are so insanely authentic that like you've got to look this way and you can't wear.. you can't use modern hair gel it's gotta be Brylcreem or you know what I mean? People get nuts about rules.
It happens in a lot of sub cults.
Exactly! Yeah, the rules become so strictly enforced. And I kind of thought punk, punk to me, which was probably more New York punk than English punk, was liberating. The idea was: ‘Break all the rules.’ And it was alright to make shithouse sounding music, but make it because that's what you're passionate about doing. Not because you didn't have time to learn your instrument because you were too busy getting everything else right ha ha ha.
Surfing? You look like someone who spends a lot of time at the beach?
Yeah my mother was a sun worshipper. That was common in the 1950s. She'd sunbake. Every summer we'd go to the beach, Saturday and Sunday, all day, and she'd sit in the sun with her friend, who was Norwegian and we'd sunbake. So I'd play really bored (with my board??) all day and that was the vibe.
I remember my cousin and all her girlfriends and we'd be coming back in January after the Christmas thing and you'd sort of peel each other. And if you showed up at school first week of February and your ears weren't peeling and your nose wasn't peeling and blood wasn't coming out of little cracks in your skull then you were weak, you were a wimp. You know, what are you doing?
And then yeah, surfing a few years after that ’64, ‘65, Midget Farrelly, and then surfing as a sport was Farrelly. But then surfing as a culture, the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, who was that - the Sunrays, all that stuff. That was .. I was right up for that. 'cos I already spent all my time there anyway.
Whereabouts did you grow up?
I grew up in Rose Bay in a block of flats, so I used to go to Rose Bay Beach with my mother ‘cos my mother didn't have a car. - we couldn't afford one - and Bondi Beach. Like, again, my older cousin, her parents had two cars so they used to go to Bondi all the time and hang out. And my mother Joan (nee Wilton) grew up in Bronte. So she was a terrific surf swimmer, which was unusual for a woman in those days. So yeah, I was either at the Harbour, or at a Harbour beach, fishing and going out on a little putt -utt boat all day and doing all that, or at Bondi. Basically from the beginning of spring to half way through winter. Hahahahahaha.
I listened to a lot of the catalogue over the last few days, "Tubular Greens", on the EP, and I noticed a lot of little surfing references.
Well I went out with Pam Burridge. We lived together for four years. And that probably brought me back to it (surfing) a lot more. I was more a beach person than a surf person. I liked the sun, the sand, and the water. And I didn't really care if there were waves or not. If there were waves I'd body surf, I could have just as much fun at a Mediterranean beach or a harbour beach, you know just being in the water.
And when I was with Pam, even though I lived at Manly and bodysurfed all the time, like I said I wasn't connected to surfing or interested in it. I'd made a conscious decision to reject surfing culture. And when I met Pam that kind of led me back into it. Cos she was a competing professional. And I rediscovered a lot of interest once I'd started. I'm like ‘Yeah yeah, you know, this is fun’ and.... and I've kept that.
There's something very intrinsically Sydney about the Celibate Rifles.
You shoudl talk to Richard Kingsmill (former radio Triple Jay announcer and music director). I think the first interview he ever did when he was a work experience kid at JJ with me, they palmed me off saying "You talk to this kid". But he used to say the Rifles have THE most distinctive sound: "When you put on a new Rifles record in 10 seconds you know who it is. They don't sound like anybody else". And I suppose I often use the sun and stuff as a metaphor a lot, to refer to things ‘cos that's what I grew up with. Blue sky, and those were the things that surrounded me.
And you join a band that's basically, Northern Beaches kids. So it completes the circle.
Yeah. Look at that! (Watching American Football on TV).
Oh dear
No good. Come on.
Oh well, only 25 to go in the second half. It’s only the second quarter.
We finish well. Unfortunately we don't tend to start well. And we're at home! This is our home game I think!
Yeah, Detroit were up against the pats at half time and then just got steam rollered after that.
Detroit were beating us with three seconds to go and then we beat them! We've won three of the last four games we've won with the last play of the game which is not a good habit to get into.
That Sydney thing. There's something, it's partly in the lyrics, it's also it's just a sort of sound. Maybe it comes through, because the harbour and the coast are sort of...
I've heard people try to explain this before. I've never heard anybody do it well. I agree there is an intrinsic thing in element, or a combination of elements. Both for an Australian guitar sound, and a Sydney guitar sound as a sub-genre, but I don't know how to do it. I've had a go myself, I've watched, read quite a few goes and thought Nah! It's really hard to define.
Not that I'm trying to define that now, I'm thinking that it's that sort of intrinsic part of Sydney itself with the coastline and the Harbour. And the fact that you grew up on the harbour, joined this band that grew up on the coast.... But then again you know, Midnight Oil had a northern beaches culture but there's nothing intrinsically Sydney-ish about them.
INXS, they were Northern Beaches boys. The Sunrays, which became... See the rule, that I thought of as surf sound was not bands who wrote songs like 'Let's go surfing', it was the ‘70s, early ‘70s, like Tully, particularly. Tamum Shad they were the two. They did soundtracks to surf movies but there was something about their playing and their style and the space and light in their music. That's probably what I think of as surf.
But also, Sydney's unapologetic. Sydney's full on. Everything in Sydney is sort of in your face, it always has been. It's that kind of city. And subtlety in the early days especially with us, (A.) subtlety was a waste of time when you're using an inadequate PA half of which is blown up anyway, and (B.) you've got no fold back so in a band like the Rifles... I was singing with the Rifles before about eight years before I heard myself on stage because the amps were so loud and cos they were into that valve thing where the only way to get the sound you want is you have to run it loud. Can't do it quiet.
So all of that does not contribute to a use of light and shade much. The only way to do it is sort of the Nirvana way of quiet and loud. Can't do it any other way ‘cos you can't hear and the equipment's not good enough to replicate it.
"A typical bunch of blokes".
That's a good point about Sydney being full on. One of the things that really intrigued me about the band, it's been around for 30 years, the dynamics of the relationships within the band. So you Kent and Dave have always been there, but Paul (Larse) and Mikey (Couvret) have come back, there's something about, Dave (Morris) called it bloody-mindedness that you just keep going.
There's an element of that. Because you're not supposed to. Cos it isn't part of the formula. Um. Jim Moginie (of Midnight Oil) played one of our songs on FBI a few weeks ago and I go to work on a Monday night to do my football thing I turn the radio on Oh! "Pretty Pictures}.. I haven't heard a Rifles song on the radio for ages. So it was a nice surprise. Especially "Pretty Pictures", that's more than 20 years old.
And when it finished he back announced it and he said, I think I can pretty much quote it, he said: "History has not been kind to the Celibate Rifles. They should have broken up 15years ago and moved onto their place in music history with, as the sort of legendary and mythologised band that they would become. But they didn't. They stuck around!"
And so history, especially in this country, ioesn't deal with that well. You're supposed to go away so that people can celebrate you. And then come back every three or four years and do another final tour and clean up. And I would have probably thought about doing that but I watched people do that over and over again and I thought this had become, pardon me, a very cynical ploy. And I don't want to do that either. So I guess we stuck together.
I was prepared to can it in about 2000, and um.. when we did "Mid Stream of Consciouness". It was just so hard. We couldn't take a break. We'd fallen out with Hot Records. Everything was so hard. All the signs were against us. And I thought "OK, you know, I'm not it's not like I'm super insecure and can't live without this. I have a life outside the Rifles, quite a good one". And I thought, "Alright, the signs are all there so it's time to go".
And it was actually Dave and this guy that was managing us at the time, Stuart, who was just a fan. And Stuart said, "Finish this record". We did it in tiny little bits. It took about 18 months. By the time it was finished nobody was even sure that we had a record because it had been done in such a fragmented manner that nobody had a picture in their mind.
I'll never forget it. And I was in there doing the last thing before the mixing. I was doing a vocal and I said, "Can you just run me a cassette dub of one mix of every song?" and nobody had listened to it at that point.
And I drove home, I just put the tape on and drove home and funnily enough it took exactly the drive from Kings Cross to Newport. As I arrived at Newport the last song finished and I had tears in my eyes, you know? I couldn't believe it. I mean, it was an album. It was definitely an album. It hung together, obviously some tracks better than others, and the strong tracks I just thought were so strong you know? I was just so surprised that we'd nailed it. What we had was 10 tracks, six of which might be usable or even four. That's it. And ah, and I remember thinking, "I'm glad Dave said that he didn't feel like it was time", It just didn't feel right, let's keep going....
And I listened to them both (Dave and Stuart). That's the reason. And that's the reason the Rifles keep going full stop. Because every time there's been a moment where we could have pulled the pin and people were ready there's often one person who's like ‘Nah! Doesn't feel right, I don't feel ready we should do this’. And you think, "Oh well, alright. OK. If you're up for it I'm always up for it". Cos it's always been a kind of boys own adventure.
The Rifles were never a career band or a career move. It was a bit of a "Let's start a band and see what happens. Let's go overseas and see what happens. Let's make a record and see what happens"
There was never any plan or vision or goal. We weren't trying to achieve anything beyond whatever the fuck was in front of us. Especially touring overseas, we toured like backpackers. Not like a band that was actually trying to do something or get somewhere. You know? Hahaha.
Self financed.
Yeah. Man and van. No work permit. I sure remember going through customs in America with the whole backline "Yeah I'm just here on a holiday mate". Ha ha. Here's a drumkit. Hahaha. But we did it.
Rifles at the Sydney Cove Tavern. John Cootes photo.
You took a drum kit?
At one point yeah. I think we took a drum kit from England to America. But there was a big freak-out because one of the guys who was a major Rifles fan was David Fricke. And David had started to write for Rolling Stone and they'd published our tour dates in the most-read magazine in America when we're s’posed to not be there working; we had no work permit. And there was this whole like ‘Fuuuck’.
Thank god it was before the whole Septemnber 11 thing or we might have ended up in Guantanamo Bay for a couple of years. But anyway...yeah. Very rudimentary approach.
So, you said there's no career plan but was there ever a point? Because especially there was 1986-92 and you were overseas for a few months every year...
And we had this weird thing where Radio Triple M ruled the world. Prior to Nirvana. And if you got added to the MMM playlist you would sell 80,000 records they had that big an audience share. We were identified so strongly with JJ and then JJJ, and for some reason even though JJJ were at the low end ,ratings wise - this is before they went national and became the most powerful instrument in the country overnight - but it seemed to me MMM were obsessed with eliminating all the competition, even though they owned the whole world.
That's often the case that when people get super big like the Packers or whatever, they don't like anything. They want it all or nothing. And because we were identified with JJJ when we went through that sudden period where we went overseas and the people over there said, "The Rifles rock the Rifles are great". We were getting all this positive feedback and positive reactions, especially out of New York and Boston where we really scored a direct hit. And Italy.
And we came home and our crowd of 200 was now 1100 and there was a period of about three years here where we were a big deal. A really big deal live, and we were within coo-ee of crossing over. And we made ‘Blind Ear’. And Michael Crawley from the Truetone label picked us up so it was all happening, all the elements fell into place.
And I must confess it wasn't so much (the) money, because I knew that even people who had big success in this country didn't make money. If you wanted to make money, you had to have success overseas. Where you've got a market of 300-400 million to sell to, not 20. But it was kind of part of the Boys’ Own Adventure. Like (being) an explorer. How far can this go?
And I for one was not interested in making "Sideroxylon" again. We'd made scratchy, cheap sounding albums and I thought I'd like to give this the Rifles stuff the MMM treatment, you know, cos it's a real fine line. Can you do it and not sell out? You can - but very few people do. It's very hard to do.
Lou Reed did it. Bowie did it. It's not often. There's a list of people. I used to say: "When you jump off the train make sure you land on the platform". The list of people who fell down the gap is huge. So I got them to try and do this (production-wise) and when we did "Blind Ear", Triple M should have played it. And didn't. And I kind of, personally, became fixated with the idea that I wanted to make a record that they couldn't say"No" to, that they'd have to play.
I didn't really care if people bought it or not, liked it or not, or ‘cos I thought that if I could just make this record, I'd be really rich. I didn't give a fuck about that, I already thought I was rich ‘cos I was off the dole, you know. That to me was undreamed of wealth, that I actually made a living out of making music which not many people did. Especially playing what the Rifles played.
But I just thought I'd like the mainstream rock audience to listen to us and decide for themselves whether they like it or not. That's all. I just wanted that to happen. And I always did.
After we kind of were accepted in the inner city scene in the early ‘80s, once we'd done the Trade Union Club, Strawberry Hills and the Mosman Hotel - there was that little circuit - and the Vulcan, you know, you wipe the floor at every venue with the audience then it was like, for a lot of bands, that was enough. I wanted to go to Blacktown and see if I could convince them that the music we liked was actually better than the stuff they were listening to.
I was listening to "Blind Ear" yesterday and thinking how could this not actually make that cross over?
Well that's right. I remember David Fricke saying to me, "You guys could be as big as Midnight Oil or even U2 in America, you know?’ Now that's being said when U2 were still a fairly young band. He's talking about "Roman Beach Party" and "Blind Ear" and he's saying: "There's absolutely no reason that can't be as big as either of these bands in the States". From memor,y he was saying he thought the Oils might overtake U2 in terms of popularity (‘cos that was really the high point for them over there), and he's saying, "I don't see why you can't either".
And when people who know what they're talking about say things like that, I take it on. I'm like, "Wow!" Cos you know, (for) the first five years we were playing, other than the record company Hot Records and the few hundred fans that we had, nobody had anything nice to say about the Celibate Rifles. We were perceived by a lot of the cool guys as a bunch of thickheads from the Northern Beaches, suburbia, who just didn't get it and didn't follow the rules, and it didn't occur to them that maybe we did get it. We just didn't follow the rules, we were just interested in the music and nothing else.
I was 16 and going to school in Bankstown and it would have been on JJJ and no one I was at school with liked it, I'd tape songs off the radio so I played "God Squad" and had some mates around one day and someone goes "Oh this is just noise! Turn it off". About ‘83, and I'm 16, 17 and I'd say: "Look, it's my house and I'm listening to it".
No the Rifles were always that band. In our early days we'd start playing and we might be, we might be at the Southern Cross that would become the Strawberry Hills, no stage, you're flat on the floor, there might be 60 people in the room, most of whom had never heard us. Two songs in there would be a stroll, almost a tidal surge, towards the door and there would now be 15 people left in the room. But of those15 people, five of them are probably still coming to see us.
People who liked us absolutely loved us. We could do no wrong; we were the best band in the world. Everybody else hated it. Punks didn't like it ‘cos we didn't do the punk thing. We didn't dress punk, we didn't act punk, and if you spat on us you got punched in the face. You got asked once, and then you got punched in the face.
Damien, Jim and Dave. Brett Allen photo.
The cooler Inner City thing, which I'm not bagging, I mean good on them. I grew up in the Inner City and couldn't wait to get out. These were all the suburban kids who couldn't wait to move in .Hahahahaha! And that's fine, you know, I didn't begrudge them. But I could tell from a lot of peoples’ attitude that they viewed the Rifles as suburban kids, middle class, who don't get it: "They're not living the artist life." And I'd think: "Well, neither are you, fuckhead!" Hahaha. And who asked you anyway? And that's not the criteria. We're just here to be judged on the music.
I can remember the guys at the Southern Cross, the owner, saying The Rifles get the weirdest fucking crowd of any band that plays here. And this is when they used to have bands seven nights a week. And these guys, seven years earlier, they were selling beers to guys on the disability pension and you know, union blokes who'd done their back on the wharf ,and that whole Inner City pub scene was dead. And they'd watch thse guys who came every night 'cos suddenly they're making serious money. They loved the Rifles 'cos it was a drinking crowd, you know? Cos the music was so fast and relentless.
And unlike the punks, we didn't play four songs an hour, we played 31 Hahahahaha. And people were just like, just throwing drinks down. And I remember the guy from the Strawberry Hills, and he's a real dinky di type, saying: "Ahhh maate, Damo, how are ya son? Oh you blokes get the weirdest crowd" 'cos we'd have university lecturers, really straight looking people, kids like yourself from the Western Suburbs who'd heard something on JJJ and had the fake I.D and in they'd come
No one asked for ID then
Hahahaha, not often. You had to be very unlucky. You tried to buy a case of Vodka over the bar they might ask you if you were still nine or something. Hahahaha! And then they'd probably still sell it to you anyway, and say don't come back.
But, yeah, the Rifles always got a funny, diverse sort of crowd. Right from the get go. But a crowd nevertheless. We played with The End quite a bit, Brett Myers’ band that turned into Died Pretty, and they were quintessential Darlinghurst. They liked us, we liked them. If people just listened to the music, they got it.
And they, like some people would see real merit in what we were doing. Cos it was just such a tight band. So tight, so fast, and so powerful. So energetic. But ah, yeah. Interesting. Always.
And yet, with all of that, to go back to what David Fricke had said, something that was..
(Looking at the TV). I think they're still seven down
I bought a digi box so I could watch a bit of NFL discovered that my TV's too old to talk to it
Acquire a new television from Harvey Norman, January sale you'll buy one for two hundred bucks.
A friend of mine's got one, she said she'd give it to me. David Fricke had said about the Celibate Rifles' potential in the US and in Australia, was there something that sort of, stopped it? Blocked it? Do you think?
Yeah, it's all about timing. Cos we had this weird thing where we'd kind of being running our own race, you know? We'd been out on the golf course doing laps on our own, just because we liked doing laps on the golf course. And then suddenly, one day as you came around, they'd built a clubhouse and there was a whole lot of people who clapped as you went past. You know what I mean?
You sort of, you intersected with public taste. And high-energy guitar rock, and pub rock, became very popular in the mid to late ‘80s. And the Rifles were, if not the best proponents of it, one of the best in this country and in the world, in my opinion. Cos when we went to America, I was really like, "Oh shit, you know, the American bands..." Cos I knew what Americans were like, ‘cos my stepfather was a New Yorker, and I've got a lot of American relatives and they're so thorough, you know? Everything's done so well.
And I thought, "Oh maybe we're really super tight over here (in Australia) but over there we'll be like, just gaylords, or whatever". But we got over there and the bands were just shithouse compared to over here. Cos they never played. There were no venues, and no one ever played live.
Whereas here, everyone was...even if you started a crap band tomorrow, next week you had six gigs. They mightn't be any good but when you played in front of a pub audience you had two songs to get ‘em. They either liked ya or they'd start throwing bottles at ya, you know?
And, half the venues in the Inner City, there's no stage, so there's no delineation of space. There's no "we are the performer, you are the audience.’ So they feel totally entitled to punch you in the head if they don't like you. Hahahahaha! Because there's a real linear relationship happening. It's very hands on.
So as things coincided, we did "Blind Ear" and that album came out and we were on a roll. Things were starting to wind down in Australia in the late ‘80s. A lot of venues were beginning to close. The Trade Union Club had gone, you know. Things were happening...
Like a suburban circuit in Sydney that had been there in ’86…
Yeah. Random Breath Testing had wiped a lot of it out. The fire laws wiped a lot of it out. The invention of the home video system, where you could rent a movie whenever you felt like it and watched it at home. Those things had an enormous impact.
And yeah, typically the Rifles, while everything was heading in one direction, our career went in the opposite. As everyone else was dying in the arse live, we were just going from strength to strength. And after "Blind Ear", I was so pissed off that Triple M hadn't played us. And again, as I said, not because it didn't succeed, but I just wanted to give it a go.
And everybody said, "They've got to play this. You've made an amazing record here and it's got to go." And they didn't. And I know, that's another story, but I know you know, quite a lot of effort was made, shall we say, to get that record played and it still didn't get played. And that's when I became a bit fixated with it.
So I'd heard "Distemper"; I'd always loved the New Christs. Sound wise, probably more than the Birdman, in terms of the records they made. But I thought "Distemper" was an amazing record. Jim Leone was in the Rifles at the time, playing bass, and he was a huge fan of it. And Jim had a bloody good ear.
So I said, "Alright, I don't want Kent to produce the next album". I sort of felt, as a producer, Kent had run his race with the Rifles. We'd done everything. He'd made all these records, to me they all sounded like Kent records. Fine. I thought, we were beyond that now.
And I knew Kent wasn't interested in making anything different, he just wanted to make the same record again and again and again. That's fine, cos he loved and believed in what he was doing. I thought the Rifles were past that. I saw no point in doing it. We were always trying to expand and grow while you exist. It's not for the money, it's just that's the challenge.
That's the hard thing to do, keep expanding and growing. Keep learning and changing. But still, stay true to your roots.
So, in the meantime, True Tone fell over. And that fucked us. Because we we needed to do was as soon as we'd finished the world tour, right back in the studio, right, and record the next album. And it would have gone (off), I have no doubt, It would have gone (off). But that didn't happen. We lost two years, nearly three years.
Because when True Tone fell over, first, he couldn't say when he was going to make a record. Then it was oh, well maybe this and maybe that and maybe something else, this could be happening. And then, things got really nasty between EMI and True Tone. And there were lawsuits flying and death threats and all, and this is all serious stuff when the music industry still was full of money, so it mattered. We are directly involved in this, we are tied to this thing.
A lot of people wouldn’t mind sitting it out because they're not going anywhere at the moment. We, here is our moment, here is our moment, it's here right now, we're right to go. And we're sitting on our hands. And Kent was spending a lot of time overseas, that didn't help.
And finally, Graeme Reagan, our manager, just went to True Tone and they made a deal and we got out. And then he had to shop us around, and people were panicking, you know? Things were weird, internationally, the usiness was changing. There'd been a recession, and a depression. And that first big credit boom was like about 1998, that first big one. So this is when we're doing all this negotiating.
I think it was ‘92 that we finally recorded and released "Heaven On A Stick". We lost two-and-a half years that we didn't have, you know? We probably had six months to play with, not two-and-a-half years.
And, in the meantime, Nirvana, who we knew of and, you know, we were big in Seattle. The Rifles sold more records in Seattle than anywhere else in America. And who was it? That fucken... Kent I think, had played with the Screaming Trees in America, toured with them, and Kent had produced the first Mudhoney single and they were the first Seattle band. So all that was going on, while we are writing our album,
Damien and Kent.
So "Nevermind" hits, and suddenly this is the new thing. The new punk. Grunge. And like Television, and The Only Ones, some of the great bands in the early ‘70s...when it was decided punk was the new thing...'cos they didn't sound punk, they were just left at the station. You know, that's yesterday's stuff.
So JJJ goes national, Nirvana arrives, so I'm aiming to make a record Triple M can't refuse to play. By the time I do that no one cares, ‘cos Triple M is history. Their market collapsed overnight. Nirvana brings this whole grunge generation thing, Generation X or whatever they were called. And the funniest thing -as funny as you're about to jump off the Harbour Bridge with a rope around your neck, a last chuckle before you go - a lot of the reviewers who had slaughtered the Rifles in this country, record after record, for being another grungy sounding delivery from these pricks who won't break up and fuck off. And now (they're) worshipping at the Altar of Grunge, consigning us to yesterday and irrelevance because we made a record that didn't sound grungy enough. Hahahaha.
So, that's what prevented the Rifles from hitting the market they could have hit. Those things. And it was my decision, mostly. We made the wrong record at the wrong time because the world changed in a way nobody knew it was going to. But I have a suspicion that even if we'd made the right record, part of the grungy thing was that it (was) all new: " We don't want any bands that my older brother was listening to."
It was generational change.
Yeah, yeah. We'd already outlived our relevance, in a way. I mean, the Rifles was never a band that anybody thought was going to achieve any kind of wide base popularity - which we did. We weren't a band that was going to last more than a decade. They weren't a band that was going to make more than one record, let alone you know, six albums. So, we were already in an odd sort of a spot.
So yeah, that's what I think happened to us. That's my answer, it's a long answer but it's an issue that I've thought of a lot and looked at and thought, "Yeah we were that close". We really were. In terms of mainstream popularity, if Triple M had have added "Johnny" or "O Salvation" or "Wonderful Life", the rest of our lives would have been pretty different.
I was listening to that album and those three tracks are the stand outs.
Yeah, they're the ones; you play them anywhere and everybody loves them. And they had singalong choruses, which was never intended. We just did a lot of footy choruses because we didn't do harmonies that well. So it was, if we did a footy chorus we did that better than we did a three part harmony.
And that's the sort of thing that you could see being huge.
Yeah well, I remember looking at the Tatts. And, I liked Tatts a bit. I liked some of their stuff. I liked some of their lyrics; a lot of their attitude I didn't like. And a lot of their music, I thought. was bombastic and irrelevant. Especially the first album.
There was also some killer rock n roll, and people liked that. You know, mainstream, Western Suburbs Australia loved it. And I thought, "Well, we're not actually (to me) not that different to that. Stylistically a little bit, but, it's not a world away". It's not like, you know, we're Alan Vega and Suicide and you're Rose Tattoo, you know?
Bands like the Lime Spiders who achieved a measure of success like album sales and supports and that, with the Celibate Rifles, cos of the lyrics, there's a sort of cerebral aspect and I was wondering where that...
Thinking Man's Grunge, they used to call us. The people who liked us. Cos of that. Cos of the lyrics.
There's a hell of a world between, you know "Bad Boy for Love" and "Electravision Mantra".
Yeah, well that's not a point I'm going to make. But yeah, I'm not going to disagree with you if you make it.
You wouldn't have been the kind of guy that's going to walk onto the stage at some Blacktown Sports Ground or something and go "Are you ready to rock, Blacktown?" and they go "Oooh". You know, you'll walk out on stage and make some very dry, smart alec comment which someone like me would think har har great! And like of course another thousand people would want to get up there and punch you in the head for it.
Talking karma with the Dali Lama.
And punch me out for laughing.
Yeah. You calling my beer a cunt? Hahahahahaha. That's true. So true. What's the question?
I was just putting the idea out there.
What I found was if you just listened to the music, we played, we did a few supports. Again, see, even with bands like (indistinct), the Rifles couldn't get supports. Because every time we supported someone - the Gurus and Hunters and Collectors were the only Australian bands that used us with any regularity because, from what I could see, we devastated their audience one way or another. If they liked us, then the main band sounded insipid after an hour of Rifles. If they didn't like it, they were so pissed off they, you know, they didn't want to see the main act.
Because the Rifles was not easy listening, as Dave Morris said, it's difficult listening. You either love it or hate it. And in America, we couldn't get any supports.
We did one with the Ramones and got thrown off the tour because we got an encore, supporting the Ramones. And that was supposed to be the worst gig in the world, opening for the Ramones. Cos the Ramones fans are so fanatical. And the Divinyls got it and they quit the tour, because people were throwing bottles at them, booing them, you know? Guys were making fake gun signs at them, you know? Get off the stage. And we got an encore.
So the next day we no longer had any gigs. Hahaha. The band liked us but the management, you're not there to make the main band look weak.
I was saying before, "Blind Ear" is a very fully realised album. It should have got yeah, as I said I was listening to it, but there was a period when I didn't go and see the Rifles much.
Yeah you and everybody else. Hahahahaha!
The reason I started with this was when you played at the Sando the other month I'd intended to go and I just sort of forgot to cos I'm not in the habit of going out very much, so I thought I'd start writing something. And here we are. But..., yeah there's things that people are going to look at. Like the comments you'd make between sets, and Kent would wear pink tights or something.
Yeah.
Dave and Mikey love wearing shorts and singlets like they've just come out of the backyard.
Yeah, mocking, refusing to acknowledge the rules. And when you go into, you know, as I said. In Mainstream Rock, there's a certain attitude. The perimeters of which are acceptable. And the dress, you know. And you've got to dress a certain way. And you're allowed some latitude. They're more forgiving than you think.
But, if you come out and just refuse to even, in your dress, even acknowledge the existence of that set of rules, most people are upset by that. Cos they don't understand. They are confused by it. They think you're a moron and don't get it, or you're mocking them. They think one of those two things. And they don't take well to either idea and um, yeah, like I could come out on stage and say something at the Trade Union Club, and everyone would laugh. And then I could do it at Blacktown, and you could hear a pin drop. Hahahahaha. That's just how it was.
But see I found that stuff interesting. I found that a challenge. It wasn't to modify what I was doing until they'd accept it, it was to try and lead them to water and then get them to drink voluntarily. Cos it happened to me, and it happened to all the people I know. People weren't born to listen to the Stooges. They were encouraged to undergo a journey of discovery musically and listen to things because they were intrigued. And I thought well, why not, you know? There's the challenge.
No Dance, the side project with Brett Myers and Louis Tillett.
Blokes that I knew, sort of friends of friends who'd say things like the Celibate Rifles are the greatest pub rock band in Australia, so yeah, I guess there's that potential.
Oh yeah, I mean, I knew we could play. And once we got out of the Inner City and started to play out west, with you know, I think we played with the Sunnyboys when they were, they'd crossed over and gone mega suburban in the early '80s. We'd played with I think Rosie Tatts once or twice. We played with, I think, The Radiators maybe, once? And these were the huge pub bands, these were the bands that could get 3000 people to come to a pub. And, um, and most of the people just walked away (from us).
But some people fucken loved it. And then you'd see them a few weeks later at the Sydney Cove Tavern, or the Vulcan Hotel and like they'd never come to a gig in the city before. Cos there was also this Us and Them thing, you know? And once you start to travel around, I would see that all the time and think, you know, I like crossing over things. I like trying to get rid of barriers and insulators and alienators and just put everyone in the one room and go well, it's alright to be different and get along and still enjoy the gig, you know?
I don't want to have rules and that's one thing a guy said to me once. He said: "When you see the Rifles on stage, they look like five guys who met in a lift on the way up to a gig".
There's no image, there's no defining anything. But that means anybody can be in the audience. You can't fail the criteria cos there isn't any. The one thing you wouldn't see in our audience was the rock guys. You know, the real Bon Jovi rockers. Cos dressed up like that at a Rifles gig you'd feel like a fool. I mean, just look at the band and you'd feel like a fool.
I remember when the Hoodoo Gurus were starting to get big and they started to attract the suburban bloke. I was at gigs and the self-consciously cool Inner City people wanted to hassle the blokes just for being blokes.
Yeah, and the one thing I do remember then was behaviour towards women was pretty different when you went to the ‘burbs, you know? Suddenly your girlfriend was getting grabbed on the crotch, and in the Inner City that didn't happen, or, very rarely. And if it did, whoever did it was about to get the living shit kicked out of them. And I do remember that, ‘cos especially when I was going out with Pam Burridge, that was a real issue, you know? Once you started, even the Sydney Cove Tavern, cos it was more of a people who had nine to five jobs and you know
And it was also close to a train station. Like, it wasn't in Surry Hills.
That's right. You could get off at Circular Quay train and there it was.
Young Docteurs, Celibate Rifles, New Christs it was February ‘84 I was seventeen and you were wearing a Shangri Las T-shirt.
I've still got that T-shirt at home. Yeah, yeah I like the Shangri Las. I had a Shangri Las, a Ronnetes, a Nico and a Little Richard T-shirt. And they were my only rock shirts. But see that was the thing. You'd wear a Shangri Las T-shirt at um, the stage door at Rydalmere and they wouldn't let you in. Or people would say. "Who are they, you know? Who are they?’"Cos there isn't that history there.
But in the Inner City people were aware of that. Because there was still quite a separation then between the elements of cool and underground music via Patti Smith and all that, and ah the stuff they were looking at right now.
Going to gigs in the city, that's when I met people that had 20,000 records.
Yeah, that was the thing. Music was, people were so into music. Not like now, it's really different. The whole thing now is so different. And I'm not saying it was better then, than now. It's different. There's almost no comparison, it's so different.
But yeah people, you'd go to their house and like, owning records was a real statement about you as an individual. I used to talk about the fact that in the ‘70s, the late ‘60s and the early ‘70s, everybody had their own look. That was part of the hippie thing. Like, if you went to a party and someone else was dressed like you, that was like, "Oh fuck, what a dud. What a loser." Nowadays, if you do it different to anyone you're just slaughtered, you know?
And we are defined by what we consume. All that stuff. And everyone wears the logos, you know? To belong to the right consumer club, the right totem of style. But, what I really liked about those days, people were nutters about their records. Everyone had the Birdman and The Saints, and then they'd go off and like, some guy would be like, "Well actually, I was into the Allman Brothers and before that I was into yada yada yada". Or like, "I really like the girl groups, I was into the girl groups of the early ‘60s. Phil Spector and the Wall of Sound". Or, "I'm into rockabilly" and they'd have all these records that you'd never heard of, all fantastic.
And the import shops, the specialty record store. I mean, that was like a dating site is now. You went there and you met really interesting people who were into the same thing you were into with the same passion and off you went. And, the rifles you know, we were selling records in truck-fulls out of those shops and mainstream Australia still had never even heard of us. As I say, it took us four years to become an unknown band, as far as mainstream Australia were concerned.
I bought "Sideroxylon" in Bankstown.
Wow! Well, there you go.
It was mostly a hi fi shop and they sold classical music. There was one guy worked there and they'd ordered in like, two copies of it or something.
Well that's what used to happen. Cos, I'd go into Hot, ‘cos I was at uni in 1981, ‘82, ‘83 in the city, so I'd go up to Darlinghurst almost every afternoon or morning, at some point. And they'd say, "Oh yeah we got an order today". It was that sort of, something is happening and you don't know what it is.
And some of those guys that worked in those shops, (although) the boss wouldn't let them do it, they'd ring around and track down (an obscure rrecord). One of the guys from Hot Records would order one of about five things and just put it there and see what happened. And some kid like you would just come in and buy it. It was a really exciting time. But again, it's hard for people to envisage now. There was mainstream and alternative. And these were two different worlds with no crossover and a giant, yawning gulf between them.
Nowadays, it's all the same thing. It's all a market. Again, I'm not saying things were better or worse. They were just different in a way that's hard for people to imagine.
I guess the point is, why do you people do it?
Because um, why do I keep on doing it? Well, that's a complicated answer. Um... in the beginning, because I was... I thought we were better than people gave us credit for being. And because I just really wanted to do it, you know? And, there was a time we were so close to success, and it was great having success. It was great having a thousand people come to your gig. Or 700 instead of 200.
And to be recognised in the street and people just be so excited about the Celibate Rifles, I loved that. And for a band that had worked without recognition for such a long time it was doubly exciting.
And for a lot of other bands, I'm only guessing bands like the Gurus and stuff, which had a much bigger mainstream success, a lot of those bands had a soft spot for the Rifles. Cos we'd played with them; they may not be a huge fan musically but they would acknowledge we were a really good band, we were very good at what we did.
And a lot of people used to say: "They're the band that should have made it bigger than they did"’ Everyone else made it as big as they were s’posed to but not the Rifles. The Rifles were criminally undervalued - a lot of people used to say that. And I liked that. It was nice to be thought of in those terms by your peers.
Then, there was a period where yeah, just sort of bloody mindedness. It was like well, "Fuck it. I'm not going away just cos JJJ won't play my records any more. And now they're in a position to break us wide open they won't touch us with a ten foot pole". Because we came out of adversity, I think, and when it came again, we just kept going.
And, as I said, whenever there would be one or two people in the band that would say, "Fuck it, let's hang it up", there'd be someone who'd say. "Oh... nah". And, if they had a compelling reason, which could be I don't feel like it's the right time, but said with real passion and conviction, people would listen.
It's always been a group thing, you know? And it's always been about trying to start and finish this journey together. Even though people have come and gone from the band, the core of the band has always been the same. And those people who've left have said, - I've found, not to my face but I've heard, shortly after they've left – ‘Ah, that's the stupidest thing I ever did’.
And you know, and the Rifles. It's difficult, you know. I think Kent went through a period where he was perhaps the most difficult human being on earth to try and be in a band with. And I remember thinking then, you know, "I'm not going to be fucken forced out of this band cos of you. You go! I'm not going’" You know what I mean? And I think that's how we were.
So I think 10 years became 20 years. And then, yeah, as I said, someone's always said, "Do one more record". And then, when we did "Mid Stream" we were dead in the water. We were gone. We only finished the record to finish the record. And who knew, you know, JJJ picked up "I Shoulda". And they played it. They played it a lot. And suddenly boom! All these kids that never heard of us...
And see that's the thing. Cos we never had money, you can't keep turning your audience over by publicising yourself the way say U2 could do. They have a new record, but the publicity, they can spend so much money attracting people to what they do. And it's not just hype, I mean they're good at what they do. Some people come along. They are satisfied, or it exceeds their expectations so they come back.
We were able to turn our audiences over from say ‘81 to about’ 92, then we couldn't. And see we had to rely on airplay on JJJ to do that. People like you, people that hear us on the radio and go, ‘Fuck that's good’.
And (there were) a million things contributing to the live scene falling apart. But also, JJJ goes national. ‘We don't want to play the old bands. We're a youth station now’. So we limped through the ‘90s in a really bad state, you know? And trying to make records, and making good records that just weren't, nothing was happening. And I think at Hot Records, they wished we'd go away, but we didn't. And you know, one thing after another.
And people had kids, and wives, and lives and suddenly you're in your mid-30s. A lot of things came in. And then when we made "Mid Stream" - boom! That thing we'd always been able to do with every record, which was get a new 15-20 percent of our audience to come along. So, as people got tired of us and moved on, or got married or whatever, we replaced them.
But then you have a decade where you don't get any airplay, you lose everybody. Including your hardcore. Like people used to run into me, they'd go, "You still going?" I'd say, "Yeah, we just finished a national tour". These were people that used to come and see us a lot. So, we'd really gone off the radar, you know?
And music had changed. There was no Mainstream and Indie. It was all one big post-Nirvana, you know? The world is Pre and Post Nirvana. Drum Media was a mainstream mag now, you know? So a lot of the things that people from a certain world relied on, we didn't appear in much any more. And ah, the proof of that was when we released "Mid Stream" and JJJ played "I Shoulda". Arnold Follows (programmer) added it, and then they added "G's Gone". Two tracks off the one album. Boom! And our audiences went right back up, and we could get more gigs easily, you know? Things went well.
Equally, when we released "Beyond Respect’" it didn't get airplay Pow! It died. Just died to death. Cos nobody knew the record was out. Then they didn't know the tour was on, cos the tour was gonna be publicised off the back of the record. So if the record doesn't achieve some visibility, the only other way to do it is spend $50,000 on ads. And we didn't have $50,000 - we didn't have any thousand bucks. And um, it really affects you, you know? It can take your audience away that quick, just one record.
And ah. I guess that's where we find ourselves now. I'm just thinking, "Well, we've kept going". And, underneath all of that, I still, like, at the Sando, and we did a gig at Wollongong recently. As long as I don't have to drive too far and it's not too much of a hassle, and I can show up and the room is full of people who want to hear us, and it sounds good, and we play well, I love it.
I still love it as much and, to see, like people are now coming back who've had kids and the kids are 18 and they haven't been to a Rifles gig for like 15 years, they come back and they're like, "Fuck! You guys are as good, if not better than ever." That's great, you know? I haven't done much in my life that's endured 30 years, other than be here, nothing. So, those are the reasons for me, I guess.
Could just be a matter of personal taste, but I think you've got the best rhythm section (Mikey Couvret and Paul Larsen) the band's ever had.
Not for much longer, but yes.
I kind of suspected.
Mikey's going. But yeah look, each one's different. I mean, Jim and Pauly were really good, you know? They're the guys who recorded the big albums. "Roman Beach Party’...well not "Roman Beach Party", but "Blind Ear". Nik Rieth was a great drummer, and Nick and Jim was a great rhythm section, but different. More swingy, less heavy. Mikey is a super powerful and great rock player. And he brings out the rock side of Paul more, I think.
But we've always had, you know - the Rifles music is not easy to play. You've got to be good. When we did auditions for drummers and bass players and, some guys, I'd see their faces cos I don't go and see a million bands ‘cos I live up here (on Sydney’s Northern Beaches). But I'd see their faces and go, "Oh geez, you're here". And they couldn't do it. You know, they could do one song, but four songs in a row like "Electravision", they couldn't do it. Couldn't keep time, or just too tiring, you know? That surprised me.
At some point you're just going to miss a note or something. But that particular drive. As a bass guitarist or as a drummer to stay on top of that beat.
Yeah, to sit in that groove for six minutes and to play that hard and that fast and hold it together. See, there was a lot of punk bands that play really fast when we started. But they couldn't play in time, so there was no power. It was just speed. And because the Rifles rehearsed all the time, cos we loved playing and we never got any gigs.
And we had a garden shed. So, unlike the Darlinghurst kids we didn't have to rent a rehearsal space or anything like that. We just went to the shed and played. When we got on stage we were so tight, and fast you know? We could play as fast as them but we could play in time.
I remember when I was a teenager, seeing the Celibate Rifles and other bands you'd play with, it's not something I was conscious of: "Oh, they rehearse". But, like the New Christs, Rob Younger, and the Hitmen... they'd had years of playing together, a very tight band. But no other band sort of came close. No ‘cos people didn't rehearse much. They were loose. But loose was ok. Loose was the Velvet Underground.
Loose was what everyone did.
Yeah. Cos it was easy to do.
There was a time where you couldn't stand to be in a band with Kent. And that's something that intrigues me. If I was a psychologist I'd know more about it, but there's the dynamics of being in a band with people for so long.
Well, part of the thing was some of the Rifles, like Jim and Nick, I think, hung out a fair bit. Paul lived with Dave, I think. Ah Kent lived with Dave at one point. But I never saw the other guys socially at all. I just did gigs with them. And I think that's one of the reasons we lasted so long, ‘cos we never lived in each others’ pockets.
And, also, the Rifles was a were a bunch of high school friends that I was added to. ,But when we toured, we'd spend all your time together, and we had a way of existing, you know? I didn't drink, or do drugs. So when the other guys were still drinking they'd party after the gig, and I became the tour manager and the driver and all of that.
So, there was a way to keep just things moving. If I'd been drinking, too, we would have probably broken up because it would have got too hard, you know? And if you hired a tour manager it meant you were losing money every week cos you couldn't pay the price. I mean, you know, good tour managers charged a lot of money. So I did a $1500 a week job for the same money as I got for singing in the band, you know? That was all free.
But there was a way of doing it, you know? We always used to find a way to keep going. I never had any brothers and sisters. But I've said to people, I've felt like the Rifles are kind of my brothers you know, more than my friends. You love them but you don't necessarily like them all the time. And also, that relationship meant a lot to me.
Worth preserving.
Well to me it was, yeah. And you find a way to do it. Most of the bands that I liked, when they split up, they'd split up over a personality. Not because they weren't good or because somebody didn't like their music; they split up cos of somebody's girlfriend, or somebody who said something to somebody and they're living together. So, we kind of managed to avoid all that.
And is that brotherly thing that you're talking about part of why the band's still going?
Yeah, sure. Sure. We've had people, you know, since I met the Rifles um... three of us have had kids. Um, one Rifle has died. Ah, another Rifle's partner has died, you know? A lot of things have happened in 30 years. And also, when Kent used to go to California all the time, to Oregon, he'd come home for Christmas. So we'd always play at Christmas because it was like, "Kent's in town we'd better do some gigs".
Because we spent a lot of our best years sitting on our hands. "Four of us here, can't play, Kent's not here". And that was infuriating. Cos you realised like, you've worked all your life towards this moment and it's here, and you're not making the most of it.
But, you know, at the same time, I can remember people being really angry and pissed off and I'd say, "Well, kick him out of the band". And they wouldn't do it. They'd say, "Oh can't do that, it's Kent's band’" And I'd go:"Well then, shut up and cop it sweet. I'm happy either way, you know? If you want him to go I'll vote for it, at that time, because I felt like it's not Kent's band any more". He might have started it but we've all taken it way past that, you know?
And I never like to feel like I've cost anybody a chance at something, you know? I like to feel like I facilitate rather than inhibit. But yeah, there was all that, but I s’pose when you'd play at Christmas, and not much other times, that has that reinforced family idea. Like, you'd spend Christmas Eve and Boxing Day with the Rifles. Not your blood relatives.
And for the audience too.
That's right. And we did that for over a decade. And I think, you know, I think all those little things. There's no one reason but they all contribute to building a certain kind of relationship.
There's a memory, which comes back, it was some years ago. I think it might have been the "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" show at Newtown RSL. It was one of those Christmas Boxing Day gigs...
Yeah, we came up with the idea for Boxing Day, the album. And we went right through chronologically. I remember doing "Kiss Kiss" at Newtown RSL. And I reckon it was one of the best gigs that was ever held. It was an incredible gig, and Bill was amazing. But so were we. We played, we did a note perfect rendition of what many people think is our best album. It's the $160 one. Hahahahaha. From New York
$160 to record it?
Yeah. Just turn on they had a 12-track, I think it was. Or a14- track. Just turn it on. That's it. Flip the tape. There's your tape. $160 plus the guitar strings. Anyway, you were going to say something about that show.
It was around about then, and this really connects with I think what you said about the brotherly thing getting together at Christmas time. I saw the Rifles and I remember right about then walking out of the show and I remember feeling really happy. And just thinking, I'm so fucking glad they're still around.
Yeah a lot of people used to say to me that Rifles rock shows filled you with this really great energy, they made you very happy, they were very uplifting. Which is very unusual for hard guitar rock. People tend to become aggressive more than uplifted. And people used to say to me don't quit. You know, I remember David Fricke saying to me, I hadn't seen him for years, "You gotta keep going". I'm like, "Fuck why?" Hahahaha. OK. If it means that much to other people I'll use your idea until I can formulate one of my own. Very nice of him to say that.
I'm not the only one that feels that way and something Mikey had said that in the '80s you'd play like, Carmens in Miranda and there'd be like 500 blokes there, no women. 500 blokes with their shirts off. And he said and when he rejoined, like 10 years ago or so, that he noticed there was just so many more women in the audience. Which I guess also adds to that...
Also, the music changed. See, the first three albums it was just mostly fast, aggressive rock. But I'd already got some on the first album, "This Week" and "Back On The Corner". See, I wasn't a Stooges man. I was a Stones man. And Stones albums, you had the rock songs but they always had the ballads. They were groovy, they had nice feel. Like "Sway", and "Moonlight Mile’" Shit like that, you know?
And I remember this guy saying to me, "When ‘Sideroxylyn’ came out, I didn't really think you guys are that Detroit. It sounds like a Stones album". And I thought, "Wow!" And to me that makes sense, that's what I grew up on.
Yeah the music changed after, well, it was changing all the time. Developing. But after we did "Turgid Miasma of Existence", the third album, and then we did "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang", which was an incredibly accurate representation of who we were, that speed rock thing, I thought, "I'm a bit over this. I'd like to try something else". That's the challenge. Can we slow it down, put more groove in it?
And Paul Larsen joined, and he's a much better swing drummer than speed drummer, and we wrote "Ocean Shore". Things started to slow down. We started trying to put more feel songs in. It was always a battle, you know? In those days Kent was still pretty much fast rock: "That's what I want to do”. Cos that's what he loved physically doing, but over time, that developed.
And I think, with the women, we got more popular. But also I think women, the female portion of the crowd they'd come to a gig with "Johnny", "Electravision", "Cold Wind", that stuff. But when it's just the faster stuff it's too aggressive. It's too fast. And they, I think also, were a bit fearful of the audience. Cos there's just so many blokes, and they're pissed and wound up and going off, you know? That's yeah, that would be my explanation of that.
You've always been there but there was that city thing, then you know, everything starts to flatten out and whatever the hell that's going on now.
Well I remember, for me, when JJJ went national and young bands like Spiderbait, You Am I, Regurgitator, had their first albums - they're selling 100,000 records. And knowing what it took to sell 5,000 copies of "Sideroxylon". How many great gigs, just to sell that? Cos. you had no outlet at all. It was just word-of-mouth, nothing else. That was hard to take.
Cos at that time we'd just been called…"You've stepped into touch…you're disqualified". And we'd made the wrong record at the wrong time, and it just felt like everything had suddenly gone wrong for us, and it'd gone 50 times more right for other people.
And it wasn't that I resented their success, I didn't. But I kind of was pissed that we seemed to have been denied that for no good reason, just timing. That was hard. So, mostly, yeah, I just watch the music change around me like life, you know? Everything is abundance or you know, everything has a Summer, an Autumn, a Winter and a Spring. And um, that can be in a day, a week, a month or a decade.
But, I know one thing I say to a lot of people, and I mean it with all my heart, I'm so glad, I'm so grateful that the Rifles existed when they did. Cos basically, our first 10 years - you couldn't do now. It would be impossible. Because none of the things that the forces that created it and that were against it, none of that exists any more. The cost of touring Europe and America the way we did it, you couldn't do it nowadays. There's absolutely no way. Um, putting out your own records the way we did? The way, just the whole way things were. You couldn't do it. And to be able to play as often as we did...
Yeah, that's all I can think of. Just things, to come along in that marvelous boom time of the early ‘80s, with Died Pretty and The Wet Taxis and Louis Tillett. Just all these people. And to be able to put your own tours together and put your own gigs together, and everybody wanted to go and see bands. Just to be around that at one time in your life, incredibly fortunate, you know? That's the bit I'm probably gladdest of.
And to have been old enough to appreciate it at the time. Which I think I had the edge on maybe some of the other guys, it was well, they'd never seen it any different.
But I'd grown up when there were no bands and no gigs and nothing you cared about and wanted to see ever, and even if you did you couldn't ‘cos it didn't, there was nowhere for it to play. And yeah, to have lived through all that and you know, I remember being able to go in and we'd play the Vulcan or the Southern Cross and then we'd do the Trade Union Club on the Saturday night and then we'd do the Mosman the next Wednesday and, you know, to be able to do that. And people came to every single gig, and loved it. And all that energy was all so new, you know? That was, best time of my life, you know? It really was.
Was it already starting to die down by '84?
Oh no no no, that's when it peaked, really. It built through to about ‘86 and then it turned quite quickly and began to you know the um, Random Breath Test. It took about three or four king hits before it started to stagger but, the fire laws, the limit on crowds you know, how many people you can put in a room. The venues: ‘Oh you know, you're going to have to put in another doorway. Oh well, we're out of business’. Then the poker machines. There were a few big hits. When the Trade closed I thought the writing on the wall. Cos they were so keen, it was such a key venue.
Every cult needs a temple.
Yeah
The Trade was the temple for that music.
That's the thing, you know? If you thought you were anything, first you had to get a gig at the Trade. And then you had to be good. And I thought people died a horrible death there if they weren't. A lot of overseas bands that were hip supposedly, the Gun Club I remember played there. They were good for four songs and then, you know yeah, the Gun Club fans loved them but half of the room started walking out. Because they were good, but they weren't great. They weren't better than the Scientists, you know? Or the Gurus or the Rifles. They weren't as good, actually.
