20/01/2023 00:33
I was in a band once. In the den of some bloke’s house in Bulleen. His name was Dave. He was the drummer.
There were four of us and no singer. Dave, Rick, Kieren and me.
The band didn’t have a name but we played Stones covers. Without the words obviously. Songlist was ‘Brown Sugar’, ‘Jumping Jack flash’, ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ ‘Can’t you hear me Knockin’?, ‘Love in Vain,’ and ‘Bitch.’
REPEAT.
It was Dave’s band most likely. By way of competence. He was actually really good. Very organised. Everyone respected him because he didn’t talk much. I did though. In fact, that was why I was there. Talking my way in. With an Ibanez 335 ‘round my neck.
‘Ownership’ in bands can be fraught. In fact, a band can be the personal love-child of every member in the room. All at once. Each with their own unique vision of what that child needs, in the rough and tumble of the rock n’ roll sand pit.
As long as everyone’s excited though. That’s all that matters. Tuned up and in time. Each with his dream of personal glory. It could be mine, yours or the bloke in the corner with the clip board.
The real trouble starts when the band actually stops playing and starts talking about what it all means. But that never happened in Bulleen ‘cos there was an infinite supply of marijuana. Which shut people up profoundly. We smoked it in the playground up the road. So as not to offend Dave’s parents. Who were Roman Catholics. Back then everyone in Bulleen was a Roman Catholic. And white. But it was 1975. A misty time. Before Australia got full blown and complex. I could say ‘innocent’, but that’d be a lie. Australia wasn’t any more innocent then than it is now.
We played until we got bored, waited for Dave to say something pithy and didn’t, then everyone except him wandered up the street to the playground, sat on the swings looking out over the roof tops, a cold south westerly coming in off the bay, got stoned, went blank, then slowly realised where we were.
Bulleen.
Whatever the Stones had, in all its filthy glamour and power, was a bridge too far from where life really was. For us. We wandered back in silence, each of us trapped in our own version of doubt, then someone put on ‘Sticky Fingers’. Things improved for a bit until we had to go home and face the brutal truth of Dad farting in his chair, Mum not speaking to him, chops, peas, deb mashed potato and Disney Land.
To escape your condition is a powerful idea. A dream universally held. It underpins all creative thought. Everyone without exception glimpses the possibility only to abandon it on point of death. To escape is an intoxicating idea. But that’s all it is. And music that tells that story is deeply compelling. Problem is, unless you invent your own version, your brand, your story, you’ll be doomed to live someone else’s dream, forever reaching for it and never quite holding it, all the way through to not trying anymore. Someone else’s dream? Or not trying? Which is worse?
Ah yes. The ‘Stones’ thing. Funny how middle-aged men love to talk about those guys. Even now. As though the very character of their sound defined them. Radical Sex Gods. It’s all smoke though. The Stones were just really good at pretending. Which is what you’ve got to do. You know that don’t ya? Or maybe not. See the Stones weren’t fucked up at all. They worked really hard at being cool, with a scrupulous attention to detail. And patience beyond belief. Which is hardly a rock trope you’d have to say. But the idea of lying around in a lift, waiting for your next blood transfusion. Is that a worthy thing? Or something you’d be desperate to escape from? Like Keith Richard’s very own Bulleen. It sounds like hell to me but who am I to judge?
How to get out of Bulleen. Give it five decades.
That’s theatre darling! Nothing less.
And the show must go on.