Brian Henry Hooper

Fri 21st Aug, 2009 in Features

Brian Henry Hooper has carved a quarter-century career through the bedrock of Australian alternative music, working with such iconic artists as Kim Salmon and the Surrealists, The Beasts of Bourbon and former Bad Seed Roland S. Howard. However, his path has been marked by tragedy, with a career-derailing drug habit that culminated in a fall from a balcony in 2003 that left him with a broken back. That hasn’t stopped him, though, and he’s in town to promote his latest album, The Thing About Women. Although he is at pains to point out that it’s not a tour, per se:

Well, it’s just a Perth trip actually, it’s not a national tour or anything. I played a gig last Sunday in Melbourne, but it was to promote an Ears gig, who were a band around in the early 80s, with a guy called Sam Sejavka singing, who Michael Hutchence played in ‘Dogs in Space’. But this is just a Perth trip to promote this album. This is my first solo album released in Australia, I’ve got three now, and I’ve just recorded a fourth, but this is the first one that’s been released in Australia, so I might as well pop ‘round and visit a few cities and do something about it.

That’s a fairly loaded title. What is the thing about women?

(laughs) Yeah, it should have a question mark after it. I don’t have the answers. I don’t even know the thing about blokes, actually.

After so many years as an instrumentalist, what was the impetus to step up to the front of the stage?

I guess I have to go back to being sixteen years of age, when I didn’t have the guts to be a singer, I didn’t have the confidence. I used to write the songs for the first bands I played in, and get someone else to sing them for me. When I hooked up with Kim Salmon I ended up playing bass for eight or nine years, and it was never an issue after that; I was just a bass player. And sometime after I joined the Surrealists I joined the Beasts of Bourbon and continued on that path. But after I left the Surrealists and the Beasts, I wasn’t getting any calls saying “Would you like to play bass for me?” I had too bad a reputation at that stage for anyone to invite me along to anything interesting, so I just thought, well, I’ll have another crack at that (singing). I recorded an album called Lemon, Lime and Bitter before I had the accident and broke my back. Being paralysed for six months you lay around and think a fair bit, you know? I decided at that point that that was what I was gonna do from then on.

It (the accident) wasn’t the impetus for it, but it strengthened my resolve to carry on with it. Some people might think it’s crazy to start singing for the first time in your life at the age of forty. To put in perspective, I’d never sung anything live except for “Hard!” in ‘Hard For You’. Now I’m just enjoying the whole process of exploring what I started when I was a teenager and, at age 47 now, actually doing something about it.

You spent some time in England in the early 80s there. How have your experiences there influenced your music?

I’m not sure that it has actually. It was only a year I was over there. I used to go see The Gun Club, and The Scientists were over there at the time, so I used to see them. I went to England straight from Perth to see bands like The Damned and 999, that sort of stuff. But I think that was a teenage thing, I don’t think they’ve influenced me majorly. Well, maybe The Gun Club and The Scientists more than anything else I was seeing at the time. But I’m older and wiser now, and in my new album, which hasn’t been released yet – it should be out by the end of the year – I guess I’m going back to an earlier, mid 70’s singer-songwriter, Lou Reed with a touch of David Bowie sort of idea.

That being the case, are there any more recent acts that you’ve enjoyed?

Sometimes I go out to pubs in Melbourne and I get a bit disappointed. I hear stuff I’ve heard lots of times before. I haven’t seen a rock band that’s changed my world or anything lately. I tend to listen to more classic stuff these days. Once you’ve been through your formative years, you’re never gonna get those back. You tend to reference more classic stuff once you get older. There’s always songs that’ll always be there for you, and all the other stuff just comes and goes

Your music tends to deal with some intensely personal subjects. In your song writing, do you find that level of emotional involvement essential to the process?

All I can really say about ‘Oh Brother’ is that it relates to finding my brother dead in his bedroom, and I didn’t know how else to cope with it except put some words and music to it. I walked into my brother’s house and found he’d died from coughing up blood from stomach ulcers. There was just blood everywhere… that (the song) was my… I don’t want to say therapy, but I’ll say it anyway. You can’t get much more personal than that.

It’s the same with ‘Drug Day’. Amphetamines and heroin and alcohol and marijuana, I was into all that good stuff. But I’m past all that stuff now. I still like a whiskey, but I certainly haven’t stuck a needle in my arm in a long, long time.

Finally, what can we expect to see from you in the future?

I’ll be touring Europe in March-April next year, fairly extensively. I’ve got this album called ‘I Get Up Again’ coming out. It’s coming out on a label called Spooky Records, who put out another band called Six Ft Hick. Mick Harvey is playing on it as well as my regular band. He produced it. When you’ve got someone like that helping you out for free you don’t knock it back. It’s a very fine sounding record and I’m very proud of it, and I can’t wait to get out and do something with it. I’ll be playing some songs off that album on this trip.

You can catch Brian Hooper this weekend at the Prince of Wales on Friday, Settlers Tavern on Saturday and at Gilkisons on Sunday.