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i'm my boris and this is straight talk i used to walk to a drug dealer's house thinking
i dropped dead yesterday and someone revived me why am i doing this
rick rossman welcome to straight talk mate
why did you become a guitarist i've always absolutely just loved music and i wanted to
be heard you know i felt like i was invisible and a guitar was a good way of speaking that out yeah
i went to see led zeppelin when i was 15 changed my life i said i'm gonna do that i looked at those
four guys on the stage and i thought you guys don't have a problem in the world you know it's
just a joke to think that and i know that now
heroin is a painkiller there's steps you know it became more and more prominent in my life
it was an absolute nightmare got up on stage that night big crowd playing away it's really good and
i looked down there's blood coming out of my arm oh and i just i just i can't tell you after being
that kid who just loved music so much it crushed me
i just thought i've gotta i've got to do something about this
you go to queensland and you're a south supporter
rick rossman welcome to straight
the state of origin jersey as you know and
uh and of course you're a queenslander but but we're going to get into that in a second
how you could possibly become a queenslander if
you were born in new south wales uh but in any event um what if it's designer is points
how you could possibly become a queensland if you were born in new south wales uh basically
But in any event, this is Madge.
I'm wearing it on the podcast.
Yeah, like I said, I would.
Thanks very much.
And I know it's not about you, so the Origin series is not about Michael Maguire.
It's about the jersey.
And I just want to do this one thing.
That's better than any fucking Queenslander, Queenslander, Queenslander chant
you're ever going to hear.
It's about New South Wales dudes.
Can I just say something?
That was your turn.
Now, I just want to say that I'm being a Queensland supporter.
I just want to wish Madge the best because he's such a top bloke.
He's a good dude.
I haven't seen him for a couple of years, and we've had some lovely discussions
over the years, he and I, and I look forward to seeing him after the Origin.
Well, now you can explain yourself.
So my family all moved to Queensland.
No, don't give us excuses.
Just go back a sec.
Where were you born?
So how long did you live in Sydney for?
I lived there all my life, except for three years.
So what's your cop-out?
Your family moved to Queensland.
That's my cop-out.
That's not actually my cop-out.
It's half my cop-out.
I actually hadn't been taking any notice of rugby league in the early 80s.
And, I mean, I love rugby league.
I'm a South supporter, and I grew up.
I'm Queensland, and you're a South supporter.
And I grew up hating the river.
But why did you go for Queensland?
It's because they won a lot.
And in the early 80s, you know, I was in the Divinals,
and we spent a lot of time out of the country.
And I'd come back, I think it was about 1983,
and my cousin said to me,
oh, we've got to go see this thing called State of Origin.
Now, I'd read quite a bit about Wally Lewis.
And my family all lived in Queensland.
They'd all been living there in the 70s.
And so we'd go out to the cricket ground,
and we'd had a couple of puffs of something, you know.
And we were sitting out there,
and it was one of those games where Wally was quiet for the first half.
And it was like halfway.
Way through the game, he just sort of decided to start playing
and scored this magnificent try.
The crowd had been chanting Wally's a wanker at him.
And he scored this try, and the place went quiet.
And he sort of turned around to the stand,
put his finger up at the stand, and I just fell in love with him.
I just thought, this guy's great, and started following him.
And then I became, a few years later,
I became friends with Choppy Close, Chris Close.
Who, by the way, was the assistant coach for Fatty Voughton
when they won 3-0.
Which is quite amazing.
I mean, not that I'm here to give Fatty a rap,
but it was quite amazing.
That was like the 90s.
About 95 or something like that territory.
And Fatty took me along to some games.
I got to sit in the...
You're not Fatty's long-lost brother or something, are you?
I don't look like Fatty, do I?
He used to say, you're my second favourite bass player.
Oh, that's not nice.
Next to Gene Simmons.
He's a top bloke, a great bloke, Fatty.
I really miss seeing him on TV.
Whenever he's commentating, I love Fatty.
I think he's a genius.
He got me to come along to a game.
I mean, I guess we're going to talk about all this stuff.
Because of my history, because of my surprise,
I'm going to tell you a little bit about Fatty.
Which usually follows an identity period.
So, and he asked me, a lot of those guys in the 90s, 80s, 90s used to come and see us
play a lot, you know, and I became quite friendly with a few of them, all of us did, and there
was one particular player, Julian O'Neill.
He played full-back.
One of those guys.
When he drinks, you get out of the room, you know.
And he was in the Origin, Fatty asked me to come out to the Origin, out to the training
to talk to Julian one day, and went out there and, I don't know, I just sort of hit it off
with Fatty and I'd met him before.
We'd been on, I think, yeah, we'd been on the very early version of the footy show.
And Choppy and I just sort of hit it off.
And for the next eight months, I think, I don't know.
Eight years, I think, I went along with them, whenever the Origin was on.
I'd go up to Brisbane and go along with the team and sit on the bench and-
So it was more the dudes, more the personalities involved that you sort of, not that you fell
in love with Queensland for Queensland's sake, but more the people who were behind the Queensland
I loved, I just loved, I mean, I know it's, I shouldn't talk to you about this because
you were just doing this, you know, but that passion, I've sat on in some of the team talks,
and I'm sure Ricky Stewart was like, was the same when he was coaching.
Gus was the same.
They'd all be the same.
But there's just something up there, I don't know, the Queenslanders, they travel for days
to go to the games.
You know, they all, you know, they come from the mining towns and they're so over the top
about it up there.
Well, it's one of the things they win too, and like, and they win it well, like they've
But they lost for so long.
Yeah, yeah, true.
They lost for so long.
And I was at that game that they lost 56 to 12, I think, when there were all the tri-celebrations.
And I went to the, it wasn't a celebration, it was, you know, the after game function.
It's like a death in the family.
Wally Lewis said it's the worst day of his life, watching that.
And the following year, they stopped.
They started to show the tri-celebrations in the dressing room.
Just to stir them up.
And then from then on, they won like eight years in a row, wasn't it?
Yeah, they haven't stopped.
And it's pretty fucking annoying.
Well, I just hope, I hope Madge can work out what is the magic dust that Queensland sort
of sprinkle over their players to make them play better than they usually play in club
rugby, for example, and rugby league.
And also, why is that?
And also, what is going to be the magic dust for New South Wales?
Because we actually don't have that magic dust.
We just don't have it.
We have great players, great skills.
But like, just there's something about Queensland they just seem to pull through on each occasion.
I'm just dying to know what that is and, you know, hopefully, and Madge is a smart guy
and he's pretty bloody determined.
So I hope he can pull it off and anything I can do to help me, I will help him.
But let's talk about Rick Rossman.
I actually, you're the very first rock superstar, in my view, that's come onto our show, Straight
You are a superstar.
And definitely the bands, in an Australian sense, especially, I mean, obviously globally,
but in an Australian sense, I mean, like, I feel like I'm sort of sitting in front of
You probably don't feel that way because, you know, you're part of it.
But, you know, from an outsider's point of view, like I told my brother, my young brother,
who's 62 or three or something like that, I told him I was coming here to do the podcast
with you today because he and I were in a meeting before I got here, which is why I'm
a couple of minutes late and I couldn't shut him up.
And I said, man, I've got to go do this.
And he went, what the fuck?
He said, are you serious?
My brother's a lawyer and hard-nosed lawyer his whole life, but always wanted to be a
He always wanted to be, we had to learn music as kids.
Piano, because of my mum's family.
So, and my brother was the only, I'm hopeless at it, but my brother was naturally good at
And he always wanted to be a rock star and he still does.
I mean, on his 60th birthday, he was up there singing songs and, you know, like pretending
to be a rock star and stuff like that.
And, but right in front of me is a real, the real deal, the real deal.
And I'd like to know, what I'd like to know is how did you become, or more importantly,
why did you become a guitarist apart from, you know, getting into the various groups?
Why did you initially want to become a guitarist?
Interesting question.
Someone asked me a while ago, you know, why, why do you play music?
And I can say to meet girls.
Do you, do you make money?
I want to make lots of money.
I mean, that's a, that's a joke.
But when you're 14 or 13 and you look at the rock stars, and back then there was no internet
or anything, so I used to get the music papers and I'd look at these photos and I'd think,
these guys must have the most incredible lives.
I went to see Led Zeppelin when I was 15 and it was like a spiritual experience for me.
I'd been learning music and I, since I was five, but classical, I'd learnt violin.
I absolutely hated it and I used to wag the classes at the conservatorium, go and sit
in the Botanical Guards, wait for my dad to come and pretend I'd been to the lesson and
Can we just stop there for a second?
Because that, why, why is that?
Because today it's quite, by kids we go there.
It's quite a coveted place to be accepted into.
Like today to be accepted in there, and I had this experience recently with a young
fella who's my godson.
Like he wanted to, in order to get in there, he had to be able to play two instruments
these days and had to have certain school grades as well.
And in his case he was playing piano and sax, but you had to be at a certain level too.
And everybody tries to get in there today, but yet you're there and you're going, oh,
I absolutely hated it.
It was, felt, all I can say now, I mean it was boring, old fashioned.
It was like this sort of discipline, it was this horrible kind of, this woman, I'm sure
she was very nice, but she was like my grandmother at the time, you know.
She was like very humorless, it was very cold, it's like being in a maths class at school,
I used to go home afterwards and I'd set my violin up in the kitchen next to my mother
and just scratch away, just like I'm going to torture.
Is it because you didn't like the violin though?
Is it because you didn't like playing the violin and you'd rather play some other string
Well, I wasn't sure.
My mother, she just wanted me to play an instrument.
You know, I loved music from when I was little and when I was really little, I used to get
So my parents bought me this radio, it's one of those big old Bakelite things.
And it had a fault in it, it used to fade out and they'd put me in bed and it'd be dark
and I'd be listening to the radio and it'd start to fade out and I'd get scared and then
You could bang it and it would come back to life.
And so, you know, if I hear, I don't know, Under the Boardwalk by the Stones or some
songs remind me of being in bed in pyjamas, you know, The Kinks and stuff like that.
And I think maybe that was a subliminal thing for me.
It seeped into me, you know, and there were certain things that I loved in music and I'd
hear and my parents used to play musicals and opera.
I hate both those things now, opera and musicals.
But there'd be certain parts in certain songs that I'd get a kind of a visceral sort of
And I didn't know what it was at the time.
It was a good feeling, you know.
It was a good feeling, whether it was a melody or a chord progression or some words.
And I started playing violin.
Then I was at Scots.
I started playing cello.
I loved the sound of the cello but didn't really, you know, I just didn't like the,
what's the word, not the discipline because, I mean, you have to be disciplined to be good
But I just didn't like the, what's the word?
It's too organized.
You know, it's too, there's no improvisation, you know.
You go by the script.
You've got the music.
Your role in this piece with the rest of the orchestra at Scots or wherever it was.
It's like the difference between an architect or a draftsman.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But is that because of maybe perhaps of your mindset, the way you think that you're not
you don't, you, you like the ability to, well, it's just hard to control your thinking
because, you know, like if you're playing something like a cello or even a violin, usually
it's, unless you're sort of so good you're doing a solo thing, you're in an orchestra
or something like that.
Like, you know, conservatory music about those days, about building people going to the Sydney
Symphony Orchestra, that's where you ultimately ended up if you're any good.
And if you're really good, you become the soloist in the SSO.
But if, you know, if you're pretty good, you're in the, in the, in the team.
And then you've got a part, you've got a bit of part to play.
You've got no, there's no, as you said, improv.
You can't just say, oh, fuck you.
I'm just going to start doing this.
Well, it's like, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, you, you're, you know a lot about rugby league.
I mean, if you've got a player like Andrew Johns or someone like that in your team, you're
not going to say you have to do this and this and this and you're going to let them play
And I, I just didn't like that.
I didn't like that about the classical music.
You know, I, I just, I wasn't really interested.
And then I started to hear, you know, rock music and I started to become really interested
in, in, in that, you know, in the late 60s.
And I loved the, the freedom, you know, the Jimi Hendrix.
And I remember sitting on the steps of Bondi and someone had a radio on and a whole lot
It would have been 1968, 69.
And everyone went quiet.
I was like, what's that?
What is that noise?
And so, so exciting.
I found it so exciting.
And there was a guitar in our house.
I still don't really know where that guitar came from.
I often wondered where it was.
It was an acoustic guitar and I picked it up and, and I found that I could, I, I didn't
pick it up and I could play it.
But I, I, I loved it straight away.
And, you know, my parents had thrown their hands up and, you know, give up trying to
make him play an instrument.
I picked that guitar up and improved really quickly.
Just self-taught though?
I've always been self-taught, yeah.
Never had a lesson.
And where did you go from there?
I mean, like, I mean, the pub scene was pretty alive in those days, but where did you go
Well, it took me a little, you know, I mean, I was at school and I just, when I, when I
went to see Led Zeppelin.
It was, it was a funny thing, you know, I, I remember watching them and, and, you know,
I think most people when they're growing up, they're uncomfortable.
You know, teenage, when you're a teenager, most teenagers are uncomfortable.
And I, I always felt, you know, I felt, first of all, I felt invisible when I was a kid.
And I also felt, because of stuff that was happening in our family and, and I felt that
someone hadn't given me the, the playbook.
About life, you know, and everyone seemed to have it sort of sorted.
And I saw these guys, these four guys play and there were 30,000 people out at the show
No lighting, no nothing.
It was just purely the music and changed my life.
I just, I mean, I was, I was playing music and I loved music before then, but I just
saw that and I said, I'm going, I'm going to do that.
And when my grades at school went down after that, and I was just, that's all I could think
But how, well, how, well, what did you do then?
So, like, you said, I want to do that.
I want to be like in a Led Zeppelin band.
See, I, I, I looked at those four guys on the stage and I thought, you guys don't have
a problem in the world.
One of them died.
You know, one of them ended up a heroin addict and one of them lost one of his kids.
You know, I mean, you know, it's just a joke to think that.
And I know that now, you know, but, but.
It's, it's a, it's a big bonus in terms of.
Give, empowering you to do things.
Because if you knew, if you weren't naive.
And you knew the reality, you may never have done it.
It might have been a constraint.
I mean, I don't know.
I, I, I've always absolutely just loved music and I found, you know, I've improved quite
Then I, I just found some other like-minded people around where I lived in the eastern
suburbs and we'd kind of get together whenever we could and make this horrible racket.
And, um, my mother was running a, a theater.
And my godmother actually sat me down one day.
I, I don't know, this was a seminal moment in my life where she was an actress.
She was in, do you remember, um, They're a Weird Mob?
You remember that?
Yeah, yeah, I sure do.
She was in that, that film and she, she was, um, she was a great woman.
Her name was Doreen Warburton.
I remember the writing of how they advertised it.
It was very, um, sort of sixties, uh, flower power.
Looking the way that the, the writing of the, of the, on the, on the advertising for the,
for the, for the show.
It was about the Italian.
I remember it well.
And, uh, just funnily enough, our singer in the Hoodoo Gurus has bought the rights to
that and they're writing a musical for it at the moment.
But, um, my, my godmother sat me down one day and my 14 year old, 15 year old brain, I don't
know why I actually paid any attention to it, but she said to me, you know, if you're,
if you're going to, um, be a musician, you know, thinking about a career like that, you
have to be, you have to have your own thing, your own style.
Now, I don't know why I thought that, why that sunk in, but, uh, when I started playing
with other people, I became quite neurotic about that, about having my own thing.
So what, what does that mean though?
It's an own, own style of playing.
What does that mean though?
What, what do you...
Well, I guess your personality comes out through the instrument.
And what is that?
What, what, how did...
But was that your personality?
Was that what you adopted for...
It was frustration.
It was more frustrating.
I'm not an, I wasn't an outwardly angry person.
I was very quiet when I was, you know, back then.
But, um, um, I was frustrated and I just didn't, I wanted to be heard.
You know, I felt like I was invisible and a guitar was a good way of...
...of bringing that out.
And, you know, people nowadays, it's, it's funny, we're doing a gig, oh, a few
years ago we, we do these things called Day on the Green or Red Hot Summer.
And we were playing with Darryl Braithwaite.
His bass player came up to me and, and said, um, oh, you know, I really like the records
you've played on.
How do you get that sound?
And I said, I can't really, I don't know.
I don't, I can't really answer that.
And he kind of got the shits with me and said, oh, keeping it a secret, are you?
I said, mate, I don't know.
There was just a way that I found a guitar could, I know it sounds corny to say it, but
I could kind of express myself through this piece of wood with wires on it, you know,
and I couldn't, I just, and I still do, you know, I love the sound a bass guitar makes
when you hit it hard.
There's a great quote of Angry Anderson's, you know, no one hits a guitar like an Aussie.
Why is that, you reckon?
Well, that was a bit later on.
I mean, there, there's a whole Australian sound that happened in the pubs here.
It was very, very unique.
Can we, can you talk about, because that doesn't, we don't see that anymore, really.
I mean, it's not a thing today, but it was in the 60s and 70s.
It was my period.
And it was awesome.
I mean, like, I remember going into groups like Hush.
And, and, you know, I used to love Ray Brown and the Whispers.
You remember Ray Brown and the Whispers?
It was fantastic.
And, and I, these days that sort of stuff doesn't exist, I don't think.
I mean, not that I go to pubs anymore anyway, but to be honest with you.
But like, but it was a thing.
It's an Australian thing, yeah?
Oh, mate, it was huge.
And it, it, it's the sound of, how can I put this?
It's a four on the floor.
It's like being in a car on a highway, you know.
And we used to spend all our time driving.
And there was this kind of energy in the music.
Is it comfortable?
Does it come from you or from the crowd or?
Well, it comes from a confrontation, really, with the crowd.
So you, in the 70s, mid-70s, most bands played in church halls, you know, in the country.
You know, they do, and this was before my time.
When I joined, the pubs were just starting.
And that was in Melbourne.
I, I first played in my, my first professional bands in Melbourne and play six nights a week in these pubs.
By the time I got back here, the beginning of the 80s, it was, it was huge.
You'd go out to these.
You know, there was no internet.
No mobile phones.
People would work all week and want to go out and just.
You know, so you'd get 2,000 people packed into a pub.
It used to rain inside.
If you, if you were introverted or if you were kind of shy or if you were, you know, insular or in any way or.
They'd just throw shit at you.
This thing happened.
We call it, you know, it's, it's.
You ask someone from Guns N' Roses or Nirvana or these bands overseas and they talk about an Australian sound.
Which is this sort of aggressive, aggression.
Even, you know, artists like Paul Kelly have it.
You know, where they had to sort of confront an audience in a pub.
Is that for real though?
So and then how do you dominate?
Is it about then, then you're confronting but it's also then I'm going to dominate this audience.
I'm going to get on top with my sound.
And they wanted to, you know, they wanted to be satisfied.
If they weren't satisfied, they'd throw stuff at you out there.
How good is that?
And it was glass and it wasn't plastic cups.
How good is that though?
I mean, I sort of like it.
I mean, I shouldn't say that, but I sort of like it.
And I was in a band that had a female singer.
That made it a bit tougher.
But she confronted them.
And she, she was in a, I mean, there were no other female singers who did that then.
You know, you had Renee Geyer and, you know, but not a rock, rock singer.
She was one, one, she was on the outie, you know.
And she, people didn't take her seriously.
And out of all the people I've played with in my life, I mean,
she was the real deal.
She wasn't a novelty actor.
Oh, she was, it was her spirit, you know.
She, and she learnt, when she first started in the band,
she would stand with her back to the audience and she learnt that she could
be a personality.
She learnt that kind of from Barry Humphreys.
Well, Barry Humphreys could say or do anything.
And she learnt she could do the same thing.
I mean, she was a pretty fiery woman off stage too.
But she confronted those audiences.
I mean, we'd go out to those big suburban pubs in the early 80s.
And, you know, the band was an energetic band anyway.
But she, you know, some guy would yell stuff at her in the crowd
and she'd be into the crowd and fighting people.
Had to get into the crowd, pull her out of the crowd.
And people learnt pretty quickly that, crowds learnt that she wasn't.
To be messed with, not be trifling with her.
I mean, does that give you, did that energise you though?
And she, we used to, I mean, she was an incredibly
beautiful looking girl, Chrissie, you know.
And she'd be doing a kind of monster act, we used to call it, you know,
And she'd be up on the PA or she'd be, you know, doing this.
And she'd turn around and look at us and she'd give you a look like,
well, what am I doing?
And you'd look out there and there'd just be, you know, there'd be fights,
all sorts of stuff going on out there in the crowd.
They were wild times.
Could you sort of give me a description, so a line of description.
Yeah, a bit of a description, maybe a narrative.
When you arrive at the pub that you're going to perform at and you're just
setting up, you guys, I guess you set up before everyone arrives
or something like that, but like what's the feeling between everybody,
you and the rest of the band, before you actually get on the stage
Like what are you guys doing?
Do you mean now or?
No, then, back then, just back then.
Before you knew, you knew you were going into a confrontation,
you knew this was going to be full on, you knew the particular venue
It had a reputation amongst you and amongst others.
What would you be doing, I know, I guess you were behind a stage
or at the back of a room somewhere.
Like what was the feeling before you got there?
Oh, we had a feeling.
Were you drinking a thousand vodkas?
What were you doing?
No, no, you couldn't.
People used to say to me, oh, you guys must have been really
out of it playing.
You couldn't do it.
Physically you couldn't do it in a band like that.
It was a workout.
Like the Hoodoo Gurus are a workout too, a physical workout.
The Diviners were a physical workout.
You could not do it.
We'd maybe have a drink before but then we'd play in these big suburban pubs
and you'd go out there and it's quite often, you know,
there were no facilities.
You'd have to share the dunnies and whatever.
Oh, we'd get changed in the cool room or, you know,
and sometimes there'd be motels attached.
They'd give you a motel room and we'd all be in there and Chrissie,
you know, we'd have a drink.
How do you warm yourself up?
Well, everyone would go quiet.
Into their respective zone?
Yeah, you'd warm up.
We do it in the Gurus, you know.
Everyone goes pretty quiet and we don't really let anyone in the last half
an hour or 40 minutes.
And even today my wife, when I have to play, my wife says,
oh, he's got the head on.
That's what she'll say because I get the performance head.
Yeah, I start to think about it.
Then it was there was much more what's going to happen tonight?
Like anticipation.
Yeah, what's going to happen?
Is there going to be a big fight?
Are people going to get up on the stage?
Road crews back then were guys who were the music industry starting
to become a lot more professional then, early 80s,
but essentially a lot of the guys,
who were roadies for you, were guys who'd been in prison or, you know,
they were guys to protect the band from the audience.
And, you know, quite often you'd be, after a show,
you'd be going out to the car to leave and there'd be guys out in the parking lot
because, you know, you've smiled at some girl in the audience
and some girl, you know.
The bloke's ready to dock you.
Yeah, and the crew would be out there trying to, you know,
microphone stands and everyone would be drunk, you know.
So you're very performance focused and or focused.
We'd listen to ACDC.
Just to wind yourself up a bit.
Yeah, a few ACDC songs we'd turn right up in the dressing room
and get ourselves revved up.
And Chrissie, I mean everyone would get in there, I think,
but Chrissie would get very, very sort of focused.
And would she be like the, I don't want to call her the leader,
but like was she the person who kicks shit off, like up on the stage,
like you guys are at the back strumming away, et cetera,
but like would she would get up the front of everybody
and start to wind the audience up?
Like with her own performance.
Like as she said.
I mean people didn't, you know, I mean the band, it was a great band.
People came to see her.
She's an incredible performer, great singer, just so different,
so unique, you know.
It's like she's like Angus Young.
Yeah, I remember her well.
I mean can you, were you, your senses are all going,
like you're up there on the stage and your senses are going mental,
like obviously sound and watching what people are doing
and what you guys are doing, but like what about things like smells
and can you remember?
Yeah, beer and smoke.
You come off stage and your clothes would be soaking wet and you put them
in your bag, you go home, you open your bag to get your clothes
and it's just like an ashtray.
With beer, you know.
There'd just be beer spilling out.
There'd be guilt everywhere and, yeah.
And in terms of sound, can you mostly just hear the music
or you can hear the audience?
What do you hear?
No, you don't hear the, you hear the sound really.
You don't really, between songs, you know, people yell stuff out.
And what were they sort of saying like?
Oh, they'd say stuff to Chrissie and.
Get your tits out or something like that.
Yeah, stuff like that and she'd be into the audience.
Oh, she'd rip in?
Oh, she'd, oh, mate, she'd be gone into the audience
What the fuck did you say?
Yeah, and she'd be, she'd have bad, she had bad eyesight
so quite often she'd jump on the wrong guy.
She'd be going, no, it's him.
And the other guy would be sort of running away.
But people got scared of her.
After a while, you know, because she was, she was.
She wasn't very big.
No, she's not very big.
Oh, yeah, feisty.
The only woman I've ever had a physical altercation with.
So how does, what is the interaction between various members of the band?
Well, so in the Divinals it was like a dysfunctional family.
When I first started playing music, and this is, you know,
it's different these days, but I just, I wanted to be part of a gang.
I didn't want to be part of an orchestra.
I wanted to be part of a gang.
And the Divinals, out of all the bands I suppose I've been in,
it was very much like that.
We used to fight between ourselves, but any outsider was like, nah.
You know, we're very protective of one another.
We spent so much time together on buses and planes and, you know,
then we'd go to America for six months and there was no internet, you know,
and you'd be in Oklahoma and you'd try and make a phone call to Australia
and they'd go, what?
Then you had to get them connected.
So you'd be quite isolated.
So we learnt to, you know, we became quite tight.
And rely on each other.
But then you would fight with each other too.
Incredible fights.
Because you were with each other too much.
And then Chrissie and our guitar player, Mark, became,
were in a relationship together.
That was a whole other thing.
And, oh, I've got many stories of going to Melbourne
and get two hire cars in Melbourne and Chrissie
and Mark had set off with us.
With our tour manager and the three of us getting the other car,
driving down the Tullamarine freeway and there'd be Mark walking
down the middle of the freeway.
He'd have an argument.
And he's, you know, he's, I'm not playing with her anymore.
And, you know, so many fist, you know, punch-ups and.
But it was a mad.
And after you finished playing, everyone would drink and whatever,
do whatever else and it was intense and it was chaotic.
But, look, you'd finish what, like you'd finish your set at like,
I don't know, in those days it was 10, 10.30 or something.
Sometimes later than that.
Because, I mean, then you're completely fucking hyped up.
So it depends where we were.
So if we were playing, say, in Sydney, we'd all go,
there used to be a place, I'm sure you probably knew it,
called the Mansell Room.
Yeah, we'd be there.
You'd go to Benny's, yeah.
Oh, yeah, many, yeah.
I knew if I was in Benny's I was in the wrong fucking place because,
I knew the bloke who owned the joint.
Well, he's one of the owners and he ended up necking himself.
But it was a fucking scary, like it wasn't a scary place.
But, like, you knew you were in trouble, you know,
like especially if it was Sunday night.
You knew you were in trouble because, you know,
in my case I had to go to work the next day.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, start turning to work.
In those days to a law firm at 9am and it was a pretty gritty,
Very easy wake up, you know.
So Benny's a great example.
Well, there was the Mansell Room.
Do you remember the Mansell Room?
So that was a place that you could go and, you know,
meet up with a lot of your peers there.
A lot of other bands would be coming back and hanging out there.
And many a time I lived in Paddington then and I'd walk up, you know,
the sun coming up, walking home from the Mansell Room
with your guitar sometimes.
And they were fun, you know, it was fun times.
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So, I mean, obviously, you ran into a bit of a problem, a personal problem. So, like,
how does that shit happen? Like, how did you, I mean, I know how you can start taking drugs,
because that's the, that was the vibe then was like, you know, most people don't realize,
but in the 80s, there's a lot of coke around. Like, everyone's getting drunk, taking coke. In
the 70s, it was more, more heroin. Yeah. A lot of pot. Yeah. Late 60s and 70s, a lot of pot.
Was it just a natural movement for you? Well, so, heroin is a painkiller. You know,
some people love, like, the up drugs. But it was explained to me once by a guy,
a doctor. He said, you know, heroin comes from morphine. Morphine was developed for
soldiers, basically, who, and morphine is not actually an anesthetic. What it does is remove
fear. Is that right? Yeah. And it, it's, it, it, it works on a certain part of the brain. It's not,
it's not like a, an anesthetic. I mean, it's a painkiller, but it, it works on a certain part
of the brain that removes fear. And so, that's why, you know, some people love those drugs. I
love that drug. I, you know, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it,
it. I first had it in the 70s and didn't, didn't really think about it all that much. I, I had it,
there were some people I, I'd started playing with when I left, first left school. And they
were older than me and they, they had some and I smoked it and thought it was terrific. But I
didn't really think about it because I was, I was, how do I put it? I was fulfilled by what I was
You know, the music and the excitement and playing with people and that's all I wanted to do. And,
and the drug thing, I mean, I always smoked pot and did whatever. I always enjoyed that. But,
it didn't, it came back into my life in the 80s when I moved, I moved back up here from Melbourne.
And it seemed to, in the 70s, I guess, you know, because of Vietnam, a lot of heroin came into
Much more than coke.
Especially here in Sydney.
You know, you know the band Aerosmith?
So, this is a funny little anecdote. I always love this, but, you know, they're all in recovery,
all those guys now. But we did a tour with them in the Divinals in the, in America in the 80s.
And they're all trying to stop taking drugs. And their guitarist, Joe Perry, who's kind of the
second coolest guy in, you know, in music, you know, he's great. And we had a great time with
They're great, great guys. And we did six weeks with them in America. And it's a story in itself.
But I remember talking to him one day and he says, what's the coke like in Australia?
And I said, well, it's not really a thing there, you know. This is in the 80s, you know. It's not
really such a, I mean, in America in the 80s, it was everywhere. You'd go into a bar and people
had it on the bar. And I said, it's not really, you know, we're much closer to Southeast Asia in
So it's much more of a heroin sort of thing there. And he looked at me without a touch of irony and
said, I've got to get down there.
It's great. But yeah, I mean, it was everywhere. It was...
In my world. It was a circle of friends I had. They started, started to come in. And on the
weekends, we'd, you know, do it. I was in a band called Matt Finish before the Divinals.
It was a great band. It was doing really well. And it sort of seeped into that band a bit. And
I didn't see it as a problem then.
It was easy to take to. You didn't have to inject yourself. You smoke it.
You know, you soak your weed in it or something like that.
Yeah. You put on tinfoil and smoke it all. You know, but when I, when I, it's, if I look at it,
I can just see there's steps, you know, it became more and more.
In my life. My friends. And then when I started playing with the Divinals, I think pretty much
because we were away so much, you know, we were, we were in America for a month, six months at a
time. And there was coke and alcohol and, you know, but we were traveling and I didn't really
And I'd come back to Sydney and someone has died or someone's gone to jail or someone's
disappeared and, you know, it's all getting kind of dark. And then I guess in the mid-80s,
I had a partner and she said to me one day, you should stop taking that stuff because
it could become a problem. And I was really offended. I said, what? I can stop whenever
I want. She said, try.
I couldn't. You know, everything went downhill from there and it became this, it was a, it
was an absolute nightmare. And it was like a secret. I could keep it a secret in, in
my world. Music industry, you know, everyone's kind of pretty out there, especially then
with alcohol and coke and speed and drugs like that. And heroin had a certain stigma.
You didn't tell people that you were doing heroin.
Yeah. Coke was cool. Marijuana was sort of cool. It was still a little bit cool.
But heroin smack is a bit of a...
Mention that and people sort of grab their wallets and back away from you, you know.
Well, it was King's Cross and it was sort of like prostitute. Like it was part of that
sort of a bit darker scene.
So I can give you a little example of the progression. So it's a 1982.
I go up to the Mansell room and they would basically roll out of a carpet. They'd come
in, what do you want? Do you want this? And, you know, free drinks, this and meet this
girl. You know. By 1985, I went up there one night with a guy who was a, he was in a band
from New Zealand and we both used some, some dope and we'd gone up there and they had these,
these two guys who worked there who were notorious. One of them ended up going to jail for murder.
They were big Islander bouncers and they, they were famous for bashing people. So I've gone
up there and heroin makes you vomit sometimes. We'd had this heroin and I ran to the bathroom
and I'm in the bathroom in the toilet and the door gets kicked open. It's one of these
Islanders. He grabs me. He says, right, don't like junkies here. We're going to take you
down the back alley.
And I said, I'll just go. And they go, no, no, no. You're going to come for a walk with
us. And my friend knew one of them and he said, oh, look, he's, he's a member of the
divine. So we'll just leave. We'll just leave. He said, well, fuck. I remember thinking how
things have changed. You know, that's, that's the progression, you know.
And then what happened though?
They let me go then, but other things started happening, you know.
Yeah. And I, you know, I kept playing, but it took away the great thing. It took away
my love of playing music.
What's great about that?
No, no. I'm not saying it's great.
I'm saying it, it, it removed, it removed that.
Stole your spirit.
It removed everything. I mean, they, an alcoholic, they call alcohol the great remover. And the
same with this. It just starts to remove stuff out of you.
As in strips your soul away sort of thing.
Absolutely. You become, it took away my personality, you know, my, I was a pretty social person.
Took all that away. It took away my love for music. It took away my family. You know, people
sort of started to back off and I just wanted to be left alone pretty much. Then it became
about managing myself as just to be normal. So people think, you know, it's a party or
something. It's not.
It's, it's about survival. And, you know, I, I, if I had the money, I, I was drinking
in the mornings, but I just, I just couldn't stand just being without anything. If I was
sober, straight, it felt so horrible. So horrible. And I'd go, my family lived in Queensland
and I'd go up there and, and, uh, I'd stay with them for two weeks. And for the first,
first four days, I'd be physically sick coming off. But then physically I'd kick back pretty
quickly and I'd be all right physically, but, um, emotionally or mentally or spiritually,
you know, like this hole inside, it was just awful. And, and life was dull and heavy. And
I said, if this is what being straight is, I can't do it. And, um, you know, I tried
that. Each time I'd go up there, it was,
it was worse. It was, it was harder. And, uh, you know, addiction is, uh, I know a lot
about addiction now. And, and I know that it has nothing to do with rational thinking.
I mean, you can have people who, uh, social drug users, social drinkers, they might drink
for, like my sister will do it, you know, she'll smoke pot or, and then just stop and
won't, she'll say, I don't feel like any. My son is like that. I don't feel like a drink
You know, I wasn't like that when someone is, uh, uh, an addict or has the disease or
whatever you want to call it, the disorder of addiction in them, it has nothing to do
with rational thinking. You can walk up the road and see girls walking on the hardly any
of them there anymore, but you know, and you ask them what they're doing and they go, I'm
just going through a bad time. I'll get it together.
It makes you do things.
That you would not normally do. It makes you, it turns you into a person that you don't
want to be. And, you know, you lie to people and you, you really, um, it's, it's bleak.
It's, it's awful.
Well, what, what, what negative outcomes did you, I mean, apart from the emotional side,
but what negative outcomes did it, did it, did it to you in terms of affecting your life,
your business life as that, as in being a guitarist? I mean, did it affect your relationship
with the Divinals? And then what was that?
Very quiet, withdrawn, and in the end I had to leave.
Did they ask you to leave or you, you made a decision?
No, I, I, I told them, yeah.
You just took, took the...
Just ran away from here actually in a house, 200 yards from here. Um, yeah, I, I, uh, I
just wanted it all to stop. I, you know, and I'd, I knew that, uh, I'd had a few close
calls of dying, dying. I'd started to use it intravenously. I, you know, um, my health
was terrible. Uh, never had any money.
Um, that was, you know, I mean, I, I often think, how did I, how did I actually live?
I can't, I don't remember going to the supermarket or, you know, I, I just, I guess other people
took responsibility for me in a way. You know, I had a, I, I call her a hostage, a girlfriend,
you know, who, who looked after me for a while. But, um, uh, also, I mean, I was going away
too, uh, with the band and I'd go away and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
and I, I don't know, the last year was, was very difficult, very difficult to try and
keep it together. A friend of mine puts it, it's like you've got a balloon of, full of
water and it gets a hole and it's like you put one hand up and another hole and then
it gets another and you're trying to stop it all, you know. And you get, you just get
tired. I got really tired of it.
Physically, mentally, everything.
I just wanted it all to stop. And at the time I thought, oh, maybe I just need to go to
the country for a few months.
You know, get myself together.
That's what I thought, you know. As they say, all good junkies go to Queensland.
Um, uh, yeah, I just.
What was the moment where you thought, I'm going to, I'm going to go to rehab or I'm
going to do, actually do something.
I had a couple of moments. There were a couple that were, uh, there's a story I had, uh,
that, uh, I told Nick actually, Nick Fordham about this and, uh.
And he, he's sort of, uh, trying to organize for me to do this book of stories, you know.
But, uh, uh, where I was, um, you know, I like gallows humor, right. I'm, I have a Jewish
background. I like the, the, you know, you can talk about the most horrific stuff in
a funny way and I like that. And, uh, but I was, um, I used to, uh, go and meet this
woman in Coles in Redfern. She used to, there's no mobile phones.
She'd, you'd ring her and she'd say, I'll be in Coles between two and three. So you'd
go and she'd be walking up and down the aisles with the trolley and she'd buy you dope off
her. And I, I was on the corner of Cleveland Street and South Dowling Street before the,
you know, it was a freeway, waiting for my partner in crime who was a drummer in the
Divinals to pick me up. And these two blokes approached me, these two young guys, and they
said, can you come with us? Took me around the corner and they pulled out badges. And
they said, um, they were young, younger, younger than me, they were mid-twenties. And
they said, we've been watching you and it looks like you're casing a house to break
into. I said, no, no, I'm waiting for a friend of mine to pick me up. He goes, all righty.
Uh, leans over and in my pocket, he pulls out a syringe out of my pocket. And he says,
uh, you got any drugs on you? And I said, no. He said, you're going to get some, are
you? And I said, yeah. And he said, where are you going? I said, Bondi Hotel. And he
said, I'm going to get some. And he said, where are you going? I said, Bondi Hotel.
He said, of course, you don't know the name of the guy who's selling it to you, do you?
And I said, no, I don't. So he turns to his partner and he says, you know this guy? And
you know when someone starts talking about you like you're not there. So they start having
this conversation. Remember Selina's, three weeks ago, you know? And the guy said, oh,
the choir boys. He says, no, no, not the choir boys. Look, he's the guitarist. Oh, the divinals.
Oh, yeah. Oh, remember, you know, they have this conversation. I'm just like, oh, I'm
devastated. And I see my friend drive past in the background. He's driving around the
park. Keep driving, yeah. And this cop turns around to me and he puts the syringe back
in my pocket and he says, you know, you've got a career. You play in this band, a great
band you play in. You've got this great career that most people give anything to be in your
position. And look what you're doing. You make me sick.
Get out of my sight.
Whoa. And then what did that, was that like a wake up call to you though?
Oh, it was a definite crack.
You know, but I mean, an hour later, I didn't really think about it because we went and
got some drugs. But the big one for me was we had gone to Brisbane to play and, you know,
you were asking me about what it was like before and before a gig. And this is 1987. And we
had done this, we had done this big tour called Australian Made with Jimmy Barnes. It was
first of those sort of big day out concerts and in excess Jimmy Barnes to violence.
As a film of it. And the models, mental as anything. And we'd done that and I was just
trying to keep this together. And I'd have a little bit of dope in the morning just to
be normal, you know, so I could get through the day and appear normal, do my job. And
struggle. And we went off to play after that. And we'd gone to Melbourne and I was
gotten really sick in Melbourne. And we went to Brisbane to play and we're playing one
of those big suburban pubs in Brisbane. And it's amazing, you know, and they talk about
street cunning, what you can, if you're really desperate, what you can get together. You
get quite creative.
And I got on the phone and I've got this drug dealer in Sydney and I said, can you drop
this stuff off to this friend of mine? And he took it to our office. And I told them
at the office that I had this really important cassette that I needed. And one of the guys
was coming up to see us up in Brisbane. I waited all day and he arrived and he said,
I've got this cassette for you. Beauty. I've got this cassette. Go out to this gig. It's
a big pub and I was physically sick.
And I'm running around, you know, Chrissie runs into the bathroom, of course, and takes
the bathroom. I was thinking, where am I going to go? So I run around. I remember in this
panic before the gig and I found this bathroom and I had this little shot just to, all of
a sudden I'm like, Popeye, you know, with the spinach? I'm like, what was all that drama
about the last few days? I'm perfectly okay. And got up on stage that night, big crowd,
Playing away. It's really good. And the lights and the sound. I look down and there's a little
bit of blood coming out of my arm. And I just died. I just, I can't tell you. After being
that kid who just loved music so much. I just loved, just, it was my life, you know. I was
obsessed with it. And I just, no one else saw that, you know. And I just, it crushed
I just thought, I've got to, I've got to do something about this.
So it was yourself. You did it.
Well, I saw it, yeah. And I, the next step was two days later, I was in, we were in Malula
Bar and I went to see my mother and I told her. And her and my stepfather. And it was
the first time I'd really told anybody, you know, like that. I mean, other people knew,
but it was my family. And my mother, I remember, said,
oh, we knew there was something wrong with you. We didn't know what it was. So now we
know what it is. So then I went to see a drug counsellor, a hundred yards up here, who was
a methadone clinic then. And I don't know why they didn't put me on methadone. They
sent me to a hospital. I was introduced to AA, NA and recovery. And I had no, there's
a whole different world. I'd never seen anybody stop and be happy about it. I'd seen people
Or die. I had, and some friends of mine who I used with disappeared. I had no idea where
they were. And then I found out where they were. They were sober. And they kind of grabbed
me and dragged me into this sort of other world, which, which, it took me three years
of, to actually surrender to it.
To the recovery. I kind of relapsed a couple of times.
Is that about admitting to yourself that you were an addict first?
Yeah. It's admitting that you're done. It's like, don't get back in the ring. You're
going to get the crap beaten out of you. Just don't get back in the ring.
And, and once you do that, you're set free. It's a sort of a dichotomy in a way, you know.
It's, it's like admit that you've defeat and then you're set free. Or you're depending
on this fellowship or what, you know.
And you have this freedom, incredible freedom. And I, you know, I'd always wanted, I just,
I always just wanted to live in the world with some peace and, and, and, and feel, you
know, okay about myself. Never had that. And I, you know, I thought that if I could get
famous enough or if, I mean, money, I had never made any money then, but I thought if
I could just get enough of something, it would,
you know, fulfill me. And it never did. And when I, you know, I, as a kid, I, I dream
about being in a band touring America and I did that. But the more of that stuff I got,
the more drugs I would use because I found that that did not fulfill me. And, you know,
I'm just one of those people who, my sister's not the same. We grew up in the same house,
but I have this thing in me that's like, you know, I'm not the same person. I'm not the
same person. I'm like a, a hole, you know, and tried to fill it with different things.
And, I mean, I'm not religious at all. But I, you know, I just, life, life on life's
terms was never enough.
Do you still have that hole? And so how did you, let's call it, how did you either get
rid of the hole or how did you fill it? I mean, what?
Well, it's a, so this is, this is where it can get dicey talking about it, but because
I'm not, I have to stress that I'm not religious.
I don't like religion.
You mean the institution of religion as opposed to spirituality?
Yes. It's a, and what I do is a spiritual thing and it's a spiritual Malay. You know,
it's a spiritual lacking. It's a, it's, and I had to basically, I mean, it sounds really
corny to talk about it, but, you know, I had to find out who I was. You know, I'm not,
you know, what I do is not who I am, you know. It's, it's,
and I had to find, you know, just find myself really. And then I found out that, you know,
I'm good at playing a guitar and, and, and, you know, got asked to join the Hoodoo Gurus
and it was fantastic, you know, but I thought, I really thought that part of my life was
over, the music part. I thought I'd, that was it and that was my chance and kind of
everything I have in my life today is because I went that route, the recovery route. And
every day of my life, I'm grateful for it. I woke up this morning and went, okay, great,
Was it about, is it because you felt, is it because you woke up?
I was nervous. I was coming to see you, you know, I think, oh, you know, but, you know,
I, I, I have this sort of,
you know, it's hard to talk about a faith in, in, in, not in, in myself, but the recovery
has made me believe in myself and I'm okay in my own skin. You know, when I used to go
to the Mansell Room in the 80s, I had to either go home with drugs, alcohol or a girl. I couldn't
stand going home by myself.
Was that because you weren't comfortable with yourself?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, 100%.
And now I'm not. And.
How does someone get, how did you find that out? Like, how did you come to terms with
that? Like, did someone guide you down that process or did someone tell you that?
So, the last couple of years or the last year, couple of years of, of using drugs and alcohol
and the chaos of it, you know, I'd have, I'd, I, I quite like going to see a psychiatrist.
I run rings around a psychiatrist, you know.
You get to talk about your faith.
It's one of my favourite subjects, you know. But, you know, I had people, there were a
few people in my life who knew what was going on and, and, you know, people would do this
to you, you know, oh, this is bad, you've got to stop, it's bad, what are you doing?
Get yourself together, pull yourself together, stop, you know. I think, yeah, okay. Yeah,
I'll just stop. Genius, what a great idea, just stop. Couldn't. I used to walk to a drug
dealer's house thinking, oh, I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going
to die. I dropped dead yesterday and someone revived me. Why am I doing this? You know,
I, I know people who've left their kids at a dealer's house as collateral. I mean, why
would someone do that? And why would someone sell their body on the street? You know what?
You know, you see your mother crying, begging you to stop and you go, yeah, I'll stop. And
you mean it. It's sincere, but you can't.
And this is the thing, you know, people don't understand, you know, it's something that's
bigger, bigger than you, you know. It's like a counsellor said to me in one of the hospitals
I went to, she said, what are you going to do when you leave? I said, go to Queensland.
She said, that's nice. She said, if you had diabetes, would moving to Queensland fix it?
I said, of course not. She said, well, you need to look at it like that. You need something
outside yourself because you're on your own. I'm going to win against this. And she was right.
You know, I tested it for a couple of years and I relapsed until I just went right on. Enough.
And threw myself into it full. You know, I made it the most important thing in my life.
In other words, the most important thing in your life is to cure yourself.
Yeah, well, to open myself up to recovery. I don't think I can cure myself, but I have to do it.
I have to take responsibility for myself and do it. I'm not going to, if I sit at,
at home and think, okay, well, I'm going to fix myself now. It never worked. But see,
the most profound, one of the most profound things was, you know, I'd never seen anyone
give up, you know, I love, how can I explain this? I love what drugs did to me. You know,
I love that, that feeling, but I hated all the other stuff that happened.
And so I found out that I couldn't have one without the other.
You know, if I'm going to,
if I'm going to drink, that's going to come, something, all this other disastrous stuff will
happen. So, you know, I thought, oh, you know, I'm going to have to give up this thing that I love.
Then I remember I was in this hospital and these two people came and they did what,
I do a lot of this stuff now myself, but they, they came in, they do what's called an HNI meeting.
They, it stands for hospitals and institutions. You go out to hospitals, jails,
and just basically you just tell your story. You don't say, you've got to do this.
And that's what they did. They told their stories and it was, I sat there looking at them thinking,
these two people, they look pretty cool. They were both like four or five years sober, happy.
I thought, I'd never seen any, I wasn't happy about it, about having to give up that stuff.
I wanted all the dark stuff to stop, but I thought, surely there must be a way I can,
have a drink now and then, or, yeah, you know, and they, I said, what do you do?
You know, they said, oh, we go to these meetings and we, you know, told me about recovery and,
and, and, you know, that was, that was, that was pretty, pretty profound. You know, I thought,
then I thought when I first started to look at the, the, the AA thing, I thought, oh, great. You know,
I'm going to be in a little suit selling Bibles in Bondi Junction. That's what I'm going to be doing.
No fun anymore. This is a penance, you know, for what I've been, but it's quite the opposite.
Do you, do you reach out to other people now?
And have you been doing it?
Yeah. Do I reach out, like, help other people?
Yeah, help other people that you, that you know have got the same issue that you, you had and have.
Went out to Long Bay Jail two days ago.
And you, and you tell them your story?
Yeah. I've been doing it for, well, maybe 30 years now.
Is that part of your therapy for yourself?
So I, I, I had this, uh, moment where I, when I was a year, about a year sober and we had
this big gig in the Hoodoo Gurus at the entertainment centre. It was a great night. Terrific. We
had this album out. It was all happening. It was great. And, you know, I'm thinking,
wow, you know, I've got my life back. And then this friend of mine, two,
two days later said, come with me. I'll get your clearance to come out to the Long Bay Jail and do this talk.
So I went out with him. I was walking out of the jail afterwards. I had this feeling and it was
a fulfilled feeling. And I remember thinking, this is what I always wanted. This is what I wanted
two nights ago. And don't get me wrong, the two nights ago when I was playing, terrific. It was
great. But this was different. This was a different, this view.
Yeah, it was different.
And it's corny to talk about.
No, it's not corny.
But it's like you help another person.
And when you help another person, I mean,
I'm not some sort of Mother Teresa and walk around the earth helping people.
I do it for selfish motives.
I was going to say I do it for selfish reasons because it is fulfilling
and I don't get the fulfillment in any other way.
And I do my mentor show for that reason.
I mean, I'm doing exactly what you're talking about.
But it is for selfishness.
I remember I had Danny Abdallah there sitting one day
and he runs this program about forgiveness after his kids were killed
by that motorist.
And he said the same thing.
He said, I run the program forgiveness for myself.
It's for selfish reasons.
It helps me deal with what I've got to deal with.
And I think maybe sometimes some of us, maybe you're one of those people too,
nearly take 60 years to work this shit out.
Other people work it out really young.
I don't know why the fuck they do but how that happens.
But it took me a long time to work out what really fulfills me.
I always thought about making money or smashing the banks
or that sort of stuff.
I mean, that's a bit like you're playing guitar.
I mean, I'm out there in that confrontation world.
I love the confrontation.
I love the challenge.
But what really rocks my boat is about sitting and talking to you,
listening to you talk, telling me this story or do my mentor show.
And it's interesting.
I'm glad you told me that because it's sort of reinstated my mind.
Sometimes we just do because that's what we do.
I do the same thing every day.
And I forget why I'm doing it sometimes.
And sitting here with you today is usually reminding me of it's okay
to be selfish and look after yourself.
Like, you know, it doesn't matter whether it's addiction you're trying
to deal with or whatever.
It doesn't really matter.
I think everybody has.
Everybody has their own things, you know.
That was my path and, you know, I mean, it's what it's done is when you're
for me, if I'm fulfilled as a person, it affects every area of my life.
Like the marriage I have, for instance, you know, I have a great marriage.
Now, relationships were chaotic.
I think in my past, you know, I like there's a great saying, you know,
about recovery makes the ordinary extraordinary.
It's a great saying.
You know, I needed to think how do people go to the park?
How do people go and have a meal and enjoy that?
And how do people, you know, I wanted all this stuff, you know.
And, I mean, you know,
I get to play in a great rock and roll band too, which is a huge bonus.
When's your next gig?
We stopped a couple of weeks ago.
We've got our next gigs in Brazil.
And we've just announced two days ago.
I can't tell you, for a band like us, we're constantly shaking our heads.
Just because we're always saying, oh, this will be the last year.
We've thought that.
Maybe the last 15 years.
But people still come, you know.
And we've just announced this tour, Australian tour in November,
which is just selling really well.
And, yeah, it's still.
And, you know, we have a very high bottom line.
You know, we play really well.
And if people come to see us, it's a good night.
If Rick Rossman was to compare himself with Rick Rossman
when he first joined the Vinyls and you're playing in pubs
and, you know, you had Chrissy there up at the front
and, as you said, it was sort of confrontation
and all that sort of stuff in the pub.
If you compared that dude to today, the dude who's now in the Hootie Gurus
and is going to play in Brazil, what's the difference between the two?
And I don't mean in a personal sense, you know, like how you play,
how you address the audience.
Obviously it's not a pub environment, but what is the difference between the two?
Is it more chilled, older, mature, in control or are you still into it?
I'm still into it, definitely.
Oh, mate, the only difference is it's physically.
Yeah, I mean, I go swimming and, you know, I have to look after myself a bit,
you know, otherwise.
Have to train for it.
Well, yeah, we do an hour and a half and I know we did a tour a couple of years ago
Where I noticed that, you know, you get to about the 50-minute mark
and you're starting to go, oh, I'm just losing my breath a bit here, you know,
because we don't, we bash ourselves, you know.
We go hard and so I had to, you know, I started going swimming and just for the stamina
because we did this American tour where we were playing five nights a week
and we were in our 60s and so you have to be, you have to look after yourself
It's good and it's a great thing too where a band like us, you get on the road
and you, after a couple of weeks, if you're doing a tour like that,
because we, here we will play maybe once a week or, you know,
a couple of times a week occasionally, you know, and this thing happens
when you do it with the band.
After a couple of weeks you kind of get into this sort of, on this role
and it's a great feeling.
It's a great feeling.
It must be like when someone, you know, some of the league,
you know, some of the league, you know, some of the league, you know,
some of the league players are really fit and they're kind of, you know,
they've gone through their training, their pre-season stuff
and it's a terrific feeling.
And what do you think about the Australian music scene today?
Because obviously the pub scene is not what it was and, you know,
a lot of the pubs have been pulled down.
How do you see it?
I mean, are we as big on the global platform in terms of our impact
as we were back then?
It's a very, very different world now.
You know, people talk about streams and, I don't know,
the live thing is very different and I feel like it's coming back.
Music is cyclical, you know.
It's like fashion, a little bit like fashion.
Well, I hope, you know, that usually, you know, every 15 years or something
someone comes in.
Comes along and kicks the door in a bit.
And, you know, from the 60s, Dylan did it and all sorts of Beatles did it
or Rolling Stones, Nirvana, punk rock.
I hope that happens again soon.
But I look at things like, you know, Splendour and all,
they're getting cancelled because they can't afford the fucking insurance.
And this sort of shit.
And, like, I mean, I saw the Roots and Blues.
I don't think, I mean, unfortunately,
if I can hold it, it starts to rain.
I don't know what the deal is.
But, you know, people are sort of getting a bit nauseated
by going to these events because the conditions are shit
and or you get all wound up for it and then it gets cancelled on you.
It gets cancelled, yeah.
And, I mean, I don't know how to solve this stuff,
but a lot of it's got to do with all the costs associated
and promoters just can't handle it.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, who was the guy who just came a few months ago called Fred?
Fred again, yeah.
But he killed it.
Like, he just got an answer like that morning.
And they just wound him up.
Yeah, all the venues were booked.
It was all planned.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
But the people didn't know.
No, people didn't know.
And because I had the boss of TG here the other day who promoted him.
No, Colin's from.
And he came on our mentor podcast and it was like it was staged
but still like he filled it up.
I mean, I just don't get it.
I mean, it just does my, you know.
I mean, I remember when Dire Straits sold out, what did they do?
20 entertainment centers.
I understand that.
This I don't understand.
It's just it's a phenomenon, you know.
And Colin, who was one of the promoters.
He said now there are a lot of acts who are going to try
and do the same sort of thing in America and they won't
because it's a kind of, it's a phenomenon really what he did.
I mean, it's incredible what he did.
Like, I mean, for me, I don't want to go somewhere where there's today.
I mean, I used to go to the pubs all the time when I was younger.
But today I don't like the idea of, I don't mind listening.
Like, I like to, I actually do like to listen to my favorite,
music and or musicians streaming or on Spotify.
Do you play vinyl at home?
Do you have a record player?
Yeah, I've got a record.
I've totally got a record player.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
See, I wish I'd, I just wanted to bring you something.
I'll bring you some vinyl.
Yeah, I've actually got it at home and I've got one at my farm too.
And I only just decked the farm one out more recently,
set it up more recently because, yeah, I love vinyl, yeah.
I'll get you some.
I also got a CD player.
I've got an old Bang & Olufsen, not an old, a B.O.
Center six disc CD player.
Which I fucking love.
Like, I play it all the time.
And I mean, I did, I was a Triple Emma for many, many years
and they loved Ludigurus.
Like, I mean, that's like.
Well, they're promoting our tour.
Yeah, but, you know, like Mark Geyer and Matty Johns
who show you've been on with Cooper, Gus Wallen,
I'm going to one of Gus's breakfasts tomorrow actually,
as a matter of fact, for one of his charity, the charity he runs.
I'm a good mate to those guys and they were such,
they were your biggest media promoters.
It was unbelievable.
And all those tradies, everyone, because they're the station
they listen to, Triple M.
And therefore I'd rather listen to that than going to a live gig today
mainly because I don't like the fucking hassle of it.
I do go to Splendour and things like that though if I'm away.
I mean, I've got to go to Farm of Byron.
So I will go to those things.
And put up, you know, cop the crowds because it's much more relaxed.
But doing what the younger people do today, what I did when I was younger,
just going out on Saturday night and doing my best to get there
and doing my best to sort of crawl back home.
I don't know whether I could do that these days.
And I just wonder whether people like me who are used to that pub scene,
and we've all got older like you have, and we've just got a little bit more children.
You know, my closest friend in the world is a drummer in Midnight Oil, Rob Hurst,
and they were doing their last tour.
And his wife, who's looking after the seats, you know, friends and family,
she rings up and she says, I've got you a couple of passes, you know,
things for the gig.
And I rang her back.
I said, Leslie, I've got to ask you.
They've got to be seats.
You know, two hours.
Your legs are fucked.
Your legs are fucked up.
Oh, mate, I can't.
You know, and I always used to joke, you know,
I'm in a band to get out of the audience, you know.
I don't want to be in the audience, you know.
And I go and see people.
You know, I went and saw, you know, I go and see recently, oh, Cheap Trick.
They were so good.
Then I went and saw The Damned, you know, the English punk band.
They were terrible.
But I go, you know, I go out and see people.
I'm not going to go and stand in a pub for two hours.
I can't do it anymore.
And I don't really like it, you know.
We're doing the Enmore Theatre this year.
So you should come.
Yeah, we'll come.
That's in November.
Yeah, no, Enmore's great.
But you don't do pubs.
There's no pubs in Enmore.
But we'll do them.
Remember the Bag of Moon bar at Coogee?
No, that's at Coogee Bay Hotel, Salinas.
But there was one up the road called, it's now the Holiday Inn.
Yes, the Oceanic.
But there was a bar at the back called the Bag of the Moon bar
where they had the bands.
And I saw Dragon there.
I saw Dragon there to myself.
And I guess you were sort of, you would have been around,
you were probably before Daryl Braithwaite period.
The Gurus or the Divinals?
The Divinals were before Daryl.
Would that be right?
Because Daryl was more.
No, Daryl, Daryl was in the 80s.
Yeah, he was 80s.
But the Divinals were like more like late 70s.
Because he lived around Bondi somewhere, didn't he?
There was a house in Bondi in Pankerville Street.
Everyone used to say like a big giant, there was only a house there
and the rest of the apartments and everyone used to say
Daryl Braithwaite lived there.
Oh, you know who used to, at the end of Pankerville Street.
Yeah, then Pankerville.
When you go across Old South End Road up to, you know,
Birrigarote, there was a big house there and all of my sex
used to live there.
Oh, well, maybe I'm getting confused.
They were all the hippies.
Yeah, I sort of remember it like everyone used to talk
about it all the time and you used to sort of drive past
and fucking think to yourself, it was a bit of a mystery to me.
And when, you know, I'll just tell you just a great moment
When I was, you know, left school and I'd go out and I'd see Sherbert
and Skyhooks and Ariel and Piranha and all these bands
that were around, obsessive, and Billy Thorpe and, you know,
I'd go and sneak into pubs if they were playing in pubs
but they were usually in other venues.
Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs.
And I saw every, you know, I was obsessive, you know,
I'd go and see everyone and Daddy Cool and I loved Skyhooks,
you see, and I loved their lyrics and their send-ups,
the stuff that they did.
And I remember getting right up the front of the Bondi Lifesaver
underneath Red Simons and yelling at him and anyway,
You know, started in Melbourne and it was completely by accident
and you've probably had moments in your life where you're kind
of confronted with something and you think logically this is not right
to do but, and I'd gone to Melbourne to visit a friend.
I knew one person in Melbourne, she said, bring your guitar.
I went down there.
She said, there's this band, you should go and have a play with them.
I had up here I was, wasn't playing live or anything,
I was trying to form a band with people and it was hard.
These guys are older than me and they, I went for an audition
and they said, do you want to stay?
We played five, six nights a week, all original music and it was like,
I remember standing there going, yes.
I mean, it, just the logistics of it were just crazy.
I didn't know anyone.
I had no money and I get taken off by these guys, right.
And for a week we played at some suburban pubs and we had a gig
It was in the city in Melbourne and they were from this Carlton scene
in Melbourne and they were all older than me and they were quite
well known in Melbourne.
My first gig in the city, I'm in the dressing room
and they're all in there, Ross Wilson, the guys from Skyhooks,
guys from Aerial, you know, they're all in the dressing room.
They were coming up to me and I'm like, this kid and they're all coming
over and going, hey, you know, welcome.
Absolutely amazing.
And probably very inspiring too, like motivate the shit out of you.
What was the name of the group?
Bleeding Hearts it was called.
The great guy in that band was a guy called Martin Armiger who went
into a band called The Sports and Martin wrote, went on to write a lot
of soundtracks for Australian films and TV and ended up,
he passed away a couple of years ago but he was the head of AFTRS,
Australian Film and Television School.
But was a mentor for me and he was like this, back then he was like this sort
of Keith Richards type sort of pretty loose sort of, but a great songwriter
and just one of those very charismatic people you meet in your life.
Do you, last question for you, Rick.
Did you ever think about and or feel that you are one of the still standing,
great Australian guitarists having covered off like two really,
two really well-known bands and lots of others but really well-known bands.
You're still here.
Do you ever feel as though that you have a really important place
in the history over the last 50 years?
Not quite 50 years but say nearly 50 years history of rock bands in Australia.
Do you know that that's the person who you are or do you just think no,
And it's pretty important because, you know, like those two coppers
in Redfern who recognise you, you know, like maybe you're not going
to be necessarily recognised but you're going to be known.
They know who you, who the band you're with.
They know the songs you were playing to.
They know the venues you played at.
Does that ever dawn upon you?
Sometimes I, you know, the two bands I've been in, the Divinals and the Hoodoo Girls,
I've been put in the Australian Music Hall of Fame.
As they should be.
So I've been put in there twice.
Now I don't think about that.
Glenn A. Baker, do you know Glenn A. Baker?
So he comes up to me one day and says, you know, there's only five people
who've been put in.
He wears the hat.
He's a great speaker.
He says there's five people who've been put in twice.
No, I don't think that.
And he says Jimmy Barnes.
And then there's Gary Young who's the drummer in Daddy Cool
and Jojo Zep and myself.
So I said rightio.
So I got Gary Young and we had some photos taken together
because we're the two blue collar, faceless blue collar workers
who've been put in twice.
As in Jojo Zep and the Falcons.
We're going back to the 70s.
And, you know, I don't.
But you are a dude, man.
I'm very grateful.
And, you know, I'm very grateful.
And I still, I'm still really active.
I'll send you something after we finish.
It's something I'm doing with some cricketers and footy players.
It's interesting.
And, you know, I'm writing some songs.
I'm trying to do a book.
I'm writing songs with my friend Rob Hurst.
And we've done five albums together over the years called The Ghost Writers.
And they're all commercial disasters.
But you love doing it?
And, you know, I like enjoy playing more than ever probably.
And I teach at a uni in the city.
And I really get off on that.
I've been doing that for 20 years.
And that's a whole different world, you know, trying to.
You have to keep changing every few years, changing the way you relate to.
You know, like I started 20 years ago and I'm teaching 18-year-olds.
And the thing is now they're 50.
Yeah, but I'm still teaching 18-year-olds and I'm 20 years older.
And you have to adapt.
And how do they relate to me, you know?
Or how do you relate to them?
And it's interesting.
It's good, you know.
It's a challenge.
It's a challenge.
And, I mean, my son, I remember, said to me one day,
you know, you must have walked around in the 80s just going,
oh, this is amazing.
What an amazing time.
And I said, no, it wasn't like that.
I'd get the worksheet from the agent each week, you know.
And we'd go, okay, well, we're playing here and, oh,
that's going to be tough, that gig.
And, you know, the Coleman Cutter out of Blacktown,
like that's going to be a bloodbath.
And, you know, that's what it was like.
You just live kind of from week to week.
I mean, I'm lucky, you know.
My friends, they keep me grounded.
And, you know, I don't.
When I first went into recovery, this great woman,
amazing woman who worked in a detox here,
who saved lots of people's lives, and she saved my life pretty much.
She said to me, she used to call me Richard.
She looked like Dame Edna.
And she sat there and she said, Richard, if you're not careful,
your ego will kill you.
Now, I didn't understand what she meant because I've never been someone
to walk around saying, don't you know who I am?
I've never done that.
But she meant about finding.
Who I am really and just being kind of having some humility.
And being comfortable with that.
And being comfortable, yeah.
And, you know, I don't.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't walk around thinking, wow, you know.
But I'm very grateful that I've had this incredible career
and I've got to play with amazing people and, you know, like you.
You know, you know.
Yeah, but not in your game.
Yeah, but, you know, I mean.
Look, sitting here with you, for me, is like fucking wow.
And you don't get it.
But seriously, it is.
Because I feel like you are sort of royalty in a rock and roll sense for me.
See, we did these interviews a while ago for Rolling Stone
and they wanted to do it individually.
And this guy, he's a rock and roll.
He's a rock and roll journalist and he's kind of there.
He's Mr. Cool, you know, and he's asking me all these questions.
He said, so you've been travelled around a lot and you've, you know,
you must have met some incredible people.
What's the most exciting?
And I said, well, I've sat in a room with Mick Jagger
but I was much more nervous meeting Wally Lewis
and the look of disappointment on this guy's face.
He just went, he's a football player.
And I said, absolutely.
And it's absolutely true.
And I met Wally Lewis and he's a friend of mine now, Wally.
Well, the reverse applies to me today and I want to say two things,
Congratulations on a wonderful career.
And it's not finished.
It's going to continue and your continuation of it.
I want to say thank you for everything you've given to your audiences,
of which I was a small part of your much larger audience.
And finally, I want to say thank you for your honesty today about yourself.
That's really important.
I really appreciate it.
Oh, thank you, mate.
Man, no, seriously.
Thanks a lot, mate.
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