Headonism It’s a little-known fact that he and Headband were bumped from the seismic line-up at Sunbury ’72 due to time constraints. The same Sunbury that put Billy Thorpe’s Aztecs in lights. Given that luck, what could you do other than suck more piss? (Or imbibe a spliff of the green.) As Maxwell Smart would say:“Missed it by that much”.
But this isn’t a tragedy about defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory. Peter Head has seen his share of success. Sure, he spent a lot of time bouncing in and out of shit jobs to make ends meet. Such was the lot of a jobbing musician in the six decades spanned. Including brushes with Don Dunstan and Molly Meldrum, “Headonism” tracks the highs, and all too common lows, of a career spent in many interesting places,
Dave Graney's succint foreword nails it. Peter Head has more yarns than a container ship full of Merino sheep and spins them at will. His story is artfully told. Head’s literary collaborator, MJ Cornwall, steers the ship and it’s propelled by punchy snapshots that are framed by uniquely Aussie turns of phrase and large doses of sly humour.
Cornwall’s the writer who brought us the PJ Proby tome, “PJ and Me”, and “To Be Frank”, the fictional memoir of the late Frank Thring. That last one’s unreviewed here but “PJ and Me” was a gem, and it and “Headonism” might have made him my new favourite Aussie writer. It’s no stretch to say there are echoes of the Beats in the rolling cadence of “Headonism”.
Adelaide might be a sleepy place these days, but this book vividly recalls a time when it pumped. Cornwall has plenty of base material to work with, but his stylings play a critical role in bringing the book’s 227 pages to life.
Of course it's available in all good bookstores.
