When Iggy Pop lead the reformed Stooges onstage at the 2006 Big Day Out it was with great expectations, not a little excitement and a just smidge of apprehension. What if they weren’t as good as I’d hoped? What, if after years of obsessively loving their records, of marveling at their legacy, they were a little ho-hum, a bit meh, a touch crap? Well, history will show they were better than could have been hoped, but it would be false to deny there wasn’t the tiniest breath held as they walked on stage, before they tore the heads from my fears and stomped all over their bleeding corpses. In retrospect, I knew it was never going to be anything less. It’s Iggy fucking Pop. I had faith.
A couple of hours prior Henry Rollins had done a spoken word performance on another stage. Actually it was more like a few obvious political observations, a bit of reasonable stand up comedy and a lot of rock and roll anecdotes music geeks would sell their original Ramones T shirts for. Hank talked quite a bit about the awe he holds Iggy in, and when they’d played on the same bill he’d try and play harder than him but couldn’t ever do it. He also talked about seeing one of his favourite bands play onstage before Nirvana not long after they were the biggest band in the world, and went on to describe how this band “handed Nirvana their heads.” The gig was the very first Big Day Out and the band were The Beasts of Bourbon.
The Beasts of Bourbon played on the stage next door straight after, and there was plenty of irony lost on the crowd that the highlights of the whole day were The Stooges, Henry Rollins and The Beasts. Tex Perkins has played the festival a few times, this being the third with The Beasts, and The Cruel Sea made it a couple of times. “Fuck yeah. It was a beauty I have to say. It was one of the slices in your life where you’ll go, that was good fucking slice. It was bound to be good with Iggy and Henry. It was great. It was memorable particularly for me personally to see those people again, to catch up and watch them do their thing, but a great array of bands, particularly to my taste kind of year and I was very glad to be on that particular BDO.”
Tex is on the phone from the kitchen of his home sounding relaxed and friendly, to the point I think I hear him turning the pages of a newspaper. I don’t bring it up. It’s Tex Perkins. During our conversation he breaks into song, does impersonations, puts on an exaggerated radio voice and chastises me for talking a load of bollocks. Unlike so many of the record company trained and polished, Tex has personality and lets you see it. He gives good interview.
“Playing a festival in those conditions, outdoor, shade, perfect playing conditions I like to say, and doing a forty five minute set you can just kill.” Says Tex of The Beasts mind blowing Big Day Out performance. “An hour set you have to pace yourself somewhere, but with a forty five you can just cane it. It was great fun. We had a ball and we were totally on top of it.”
Also appearing on this years bill were The Bumhead Orchestra, one of Perkins many projects or incarnations or whatever you want to call them that he had during the eighties. There was a lot of fun was being had on the Lilypad stage as Perkins lead the sixteen piece orchestra, resplendent up in formal finery, onto the stage. He conducted them through a series of movie themes and well known tunes in a fractured symphony. It was like The Ramones and The Sydney Philharmonic Orchestra tour buses smashed into each other. Was that how it was back in the day? “This was far more evolved idea. Back in ‘85 when we first did it we were bunged together on a stage during a gig with twelve people or something. Now there’s a real attempt to see through the idea as far as, to see what’s there. I have to say it’s been a personal and social and creative great thing and we must do it again.”
“That was a real joy to put that together. I had to have a completely different orchestra in every city. They offered for me to do it at all Big Day Outs and I said Sydney, and maybe Melbourne, but shit I don’t know if I could put it together anywhere else. Ken insisted we did in Perth because he reckoned by the time we got to Perth it would be full of other musicians on the tour. His dream was that we’d have Iggy playing sax or something like that. Henry Rollins playing the triangle.”
“In Perth we had the Gerling boys and some of the Magic Dirt family. It was a ball putting sixty people together. It was hilarious, but it worked on a musical level more than I thought it might. We probably over extended ourselves trying to play the theme from Rocky. I thought the Baby Elephant Walk killed.”
The number of outfits Perkins was a part of twenty years ago is not certain. There were bands that were started for a single gig, fertile extended jam sessions and piss take covers outfits. Bands like Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums and Thug developed their own notoriety in his home town of Brisbane. What chance of seeing any other reformations?
“Exactly. Maybe it’s a cop out but there’re a lot of them I’m very happy to revisit. We actually had an offer to put The Dum Dums back together again. ZZZ in Brisbane were having a thirty year anniversary or something and the idea was that the Dum Dums would go back and play at their all day concert. Tried to get it together but Ian Wadley was overseas and it didn’t happen, but it got us talking and you never know.”
If any of them do get up, it won’t be with the same fanfare that came with The Stooges reunion. Unlike his heroes, Tex’s old bands have yet to take on legendary status Iggy and The Stooges assumed years after they broke up. Listen to Dirt from Funhouse beside The Beasts Black Milk and you’d be deaf if you couldn’t hear the influence. How did Tex enjoy seeing the guys?
“I was disappointed with the amount of wah Ron Asheton used.”
Sorry? Dissapointed? With The Stooges? You heard it on FasterLouder.com.au ladies and gents, Tex Perkins was disappointed with The Stooges reunion.
“He didn’t do all that total foot work, it was great and everything but his wah playing is like another voice in those records, so distinctive and lyrical. Mainly on the first album, those wah solos were just fantastic. But yeah, pffft, hey, don’t listen to me. This is after seeing them five times I got over the (hyperventilating) stage of it and started to study it. I mean Iggy is… you can’t fault him. He’s perfect.”
“I did see his arse a lot more the last time he was here. He was very into the pants down thing for one song. He would spend quite a bit of time with his pants around his ankles, doing all that stuff, but completely bare arsed and, you know, cock hanging out.
A 14 year old school girl couldn’t have gotten into those jeans he wore this year, and there wasn’t even a hint of bum crack.
“That’s because his arse is sagging into his shoes. It’s like an old ladies hand bag. One of those leather hand bags that’s full of steel cigarette boxes and cigarette holders and lipstick. It was good of him to keep it locked up this time I think.”
In 1994 Tex joined with Charlie Owen and Don Walker and released the much loved album Sad But True as the imaginatively named Tex, Don and Charlie. It was an about face for Perkins who embraced the opportunity to show off another side to his incredible voice in the sparse country tinged bar room blues this new collaboration afforded him. Last year the anticipated follow up All Is Forgiven was released to deserved acclaim. Similar musical territory has been covered on Perkins solo work with The Dark Horses, so it is interesting to find out what Tex see’s as being the difference between them?
“Tex, Don & Charlie has a more story telling lyrical lean to it. The Dark Horses stuff is probably painting with a broader brush which is the main difference for me. The Dark Horses has potentially got a prog rock kind of influence that definitely isn’t present with Tex, Don & Charlie which is more sort of old school.”
Did you really just say prog rock? Are you drawing a line from The Dark Horses to Yes?
“I’ll have to clarify exactly what I do mean about prog rock. I completely deny ever, ever hearing Yes. Ever. I’ve never, ever heard Yes. I know (sings falsetto) “Owner of a lonely heart” but that’s not really represented by Yes is it?”
There’s no 17 minute keyboard solo in it.
”(Fasletto) “Owner of a lonely heart.” More Floyd I’d have to say. Early seventies Floyd. All my influences are seventies, in generally that ten years. But that’s to kind of guy I am.”
What specifically in the ‘70s?
“My personal influences, whatever they are, can be pretty well narrowed down to ‘70 to ‘79. Actually maybe ‘70 to ‘74, it was heavier. The bloody new wavers ruined everything.”
What were the highlights of that period for you?
“For me personally? Pubic hair.”
I don’t think I’ve got any of their records…
“Anybodies work, all the biggies work. Lets just go for the biggies. Hey, lets just go for the biggies. The Rolling Stones, lets start with the Rolling Stones. Come on, hey, their greatest period. Stevie Wonder, all the big albums, all the big albums. That’s when Rod Stewart was cool. Funkadelic was ruling that period. Floyd, killer stuff around ‘70-’74. Iggy Pop, The Stooges. Bob Marley. Lou Reed was kicking.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sing as well in your whole career as well as on Paychecks (track 1). Is the first line “Fridays for funerals, Saturdays for brides” a Tom Waits reference from In the Neighbourhood from Swordfishtrombones?
“He didn’t write that, but to tell you the truth I was not aware of that. Funny how you can rewrite Hey Jude and go “Oh fuck.”“
Did you see on the Grammy’s Linkin Park with Jay Z and McCartney doing Yesterday?
“Was it McCartney sort of (wavering voice) “Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away…” (nu metal screaming) Word, fuck yeah, come on…. Somethings are just wrong.”
McCartney’s new album is not his best record in 30 years.
“But what about the new Stones record. Big silence there. He doesn’t like it. Oooohhhh, he doesn’t like it.”
It’s not that I don’t like it, I think Rough Justice is a good song….
“Fuck it, that’s not the best song on there. Laugh I Nearly Died is pretty fucking great. I reckon if they whittled it down to a ten song album it would have been a killer. I’m getting a lot of pleasure out it. I’m going “yeah, the old boys. Good on you.” Finally.”
When the Stones toured here in ‘94 and The Cruel Sea got to support them, did you get to meet them.
Yes, They’re very short. Very small. Tiny, tiny men. That was the first impression. They were professionals and Mick was very casual and relaxed. I spent very many hours with him. We sunbathed together quite often.”
You didn’t get in trouble like Tim Rogers did when You Am I supported for saying cunt to many times on stage?
“Well, once is too many darling. When we supported them at the MCG and when we finished I said “don’t go anywhere ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles are on next.””
Aren’t you and Tim Rogers doing a show with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra (WASO)?
“They do that every year, it’s something they’ve done for a long time apparently. Ben Folds did it last year, but I was talking to Kim Salmon and he said he saw Rick Wakeman do it with WASO in like the mid seventies. It’s a great tradition that we’ve asked to be involved with.”
How will you choose material? I mean, will it be Chase the Dragon with violins?
“Generally we’ve chosen stuff that has strings on it already, but it’ll all be centred around a couple of acoustic guitars and it’s going to have a nice, never ending (slips into a cockney accent) fairy dust all over it.”
“We have an act called T&T, and it’s Rogers and Perkins, two stools, two guitars and two drunks. We’ve been doing that, and suddenly we’ve got an orchestra. We’ll need a bigger dressing room.”
“Don’t worry, don’t be concerned. You sound like you’re a little bit concerned where might go. Don’t worry about the orchestra. There’s a lot of nasty instruments in there if they’re played the proper way.”
Like the tympani?
“It was magnificent in the original version of What About Me by Moving Pictures. That song would be fucking useless without those bits.”
Is it every rock stars fantasy to raise rock and roll to a higher art form by playing with a full orchestra?
“It’s never been a dream before now, but I had my own orchestra, I had the BumHead Orchestra. I have no orchestra envy to fulfill.”
Catch Tex, Don and Charlie:
Friday February 24th, @ Newtown, Sydney
Saturday, February 25th, @ Newtown, Sydney
Friday 3rd March, The Prince of Wales St Kilda, Melbourne
