Tourettes: The Calm Before TheStorm

Tue 29th Jun, 2004 in Features

Tourettes’ lead singer, Michele Madden and drummer Mikey Quigley dropped in to talk to FasterLouder on a Sunday afternoon over tea, bickies. They chatted about the future as they prepare for their new album and to base themselves in Vancouver, Canada where they’ll concentrate on recording and touring throughout North America. They are taking their third album and the move seriously and you get the feeling that once they head overseas, they’ll never look back, or rather, if they return, it’ll be headlining our major stages. [Editor’s note: And deservedly so!]

Sydney four-piece rock/metal band Tourettes formed in 2000. If you’ve never seen this band before, “hype”, “image” and “gloss” are three words that sum up everything that Tourettes aren’t. If you could take your favourite heavy band, for example, strip them right down to the blood, bone and gristle, stick an amp into their arteries, instigate a migraine and turn the sound up all the way to 11 you’d have a starting point for Tourettes.

Both on and off stage Michele is striking. There’s something about her that reminds you of Henry Rollins - something intense, concentrated and strong. A place where power meets something almost gentle. Her personality is towering to say the least, men shake when they see her play and girls get excited. With a growing fan base of over 300 Tourettes SikFuk fans and interest from the industry – even Peaches clued in on this band at the 2004 Big Day Out – a gig they landed after BDO head honcho Ken West personally picked the band to take a main stage spot..

Right now, Tourettes are 100% focussed on the plane trip to Canada where they’ll record the new album and base themselves whilst undertaking a heavy touring schedule.

Michele: I am shit-scared and embracing it. Loving it. Yeah I’m fucking petrified and I’m loving being petrified. Fuck it! Everyone has that fear of success because with success comes change. Well, that’s only if you have got peers. And I don’t have mates, so why do I give a shit?

Mikey: I’m actually dying to get out of here for an extended period. I haven’t left Sydney for more than three weeks for a while. I’m really feeling the need to get out of here.

Michele: I don’t want to do anything else. I want to do this. As much as you want to you can’t keep playing to the same 30 people - bless those same 30 people! - you can’t do it, man. For the time it takes for us to get to Sydney to Melbourne with a Canberra and Geelong stop, if you are lucky, you could have covered nine states and 17 colleges in that time overseas. Overseas, by the time you get to the end of the line you can play the same run again because they have forgotten about you. It’s all there.

It’s different overseas, it’s about numbers. I mean I failed maths phenomenally. You become like a religious zealot in the name of the rumba. It’s about conversion. It’s about converting the masses. You can put an ad in the back of the National Enquirer. You can sell someone a green haired gonk and you say “Send me one dollar and I’ll send you a green haired gonk.” Because there are going to be a million people who give a shit.

You know, I’m not thinking about it, I am just doing it. Self-preservation rules. My cave is here. Stay in cave. Bad monster out there. I am trying to be as gung-ho and cool about it as possible. This is a natural progression. I am married to three men in my life. These [Tourettes] are the men in my life, I don’t have any extracurricular relationships. I’ve just gotta pack up the house and get gone.

Mikey: It’s just under three months until we go. In a way the trip has already begun… getting rid of all our stuff. All our ties. It feels like a really long journey ahead and we don’t know where it’s going to end.

Michele: I’m the same way. I’m starting to let up and let go. Fuck man, I am so ripe I’m falling off the vine. My arse is draggin’ on the ground - I’m about to rot. We gotta show those septics!

Who are your fans?

Michele: A lot of people on heavy medication. A lot of people who are as loud as me who don’t have a forum. We were thinking about this last night. Sony didn’t buy them for us [the fans]. It’s like there was no Sony posters, or twenty grand film clip. They [our fans] are lifers – they’re like the KISS Army.

I worship our fans. Primo example. Six guys drove to an all ages gig from Orange, NSW. Registered SikFuks [Tourettes fanclub/street team]. They bought me a cowboy hat, Iron Maiden patches… I tell you, I get the best presents! Books, everything. They saw us on the off-chance while we were opening at the Big Day Out and became instant converts. They had some blown-up photos from the Big Day Out, which we signed in silver and gold pens plus T-shirts, limited edition CDs, the CDs we have out now, setlists, posters, a poster they had ripped off a pole… That’s what I love. Maybe we didn’t make a big instant impact on record companies, but what I love is these people. They’re lifers. I’m a lifer fan. I’m an uber fan. Boy, I sat next to Lou Reed - a table-and-a-half away from him – in New York, frozen with fear for three hours, writing in my journal for three hours in case he was having a bad day and told me to fuck off. I was petrified that my one Lou Reed experience might have been that…

Is anyone doing what you are doing?

Michele: No. Deadset. I’ve thought about it. I’m a voracious reader. Voracious. The best description we’ve had is Patti Smith crossed with Napalm Death. My contemporaries? Women in rock? I don’t think of myself as a woman in rock. I look at myself as another noise in rock. That’s what I’m trying to drill into people. No, I’m not up there in a corset. I’m not going to put my gender up there before my noise, so that you know who I am. There’s no compromise. I can’t think of any one who is doing what we are doing. I try so hard but I can’t.

So what do you guys do?

Michele: We scare the shit out of people. We scare the shit out of ‘em.

Mikey: Every time we play there’s at least someone who says they’ve never experienced something like it. If this happens in every town in Canada or America - just one kid in each town - then it will be established.

I reckon it will happen more as we make it more our life. I really want to dive into being a professional musician.

Michele: The guys in the band - Mikey [drums], Ross [bass] and Ashley [guitars] - they have 60 years of conservatorium training behind my broken arse. People say “It’s so rock when you get up on the bar at the Annandale Hotel.”  I’m the biggest fan of my own band. They’re a force of nature. I’m not getting up on the bar to be rock - I’m just up there checkin’ out my band! I just wanna see what they look like. They’re all jaded, so that’s why they need me.

How did Tourettes form?

Michele: I met Ashley at a place in Rose Bay called the Ranch. A huge seven-and-a-half-bedroom, three-bathroom monolithic fall-down-around-you, Addams Family number. We used to fly the pirates’ flag ‘cos we had a flagpole. Enormous. Everyone hated us - it was great! We had that place for five years. We threw the dinger parties… We had a big one one night when this girl had got her [Australian] residency. We threw this big party. I was always the person in the corner with the acoustic guitar. There was always guitars and bongos and whatnot.  Playing Alice In Chains and shit. Ashley had come with a friend of a friend. And I thought “Who is that guy singing in there? That’s one set of lungs!” And there was me in an Iron Maiden T-shirt yodelling away and Ashley came over said, “Let’s start a band.” And I said, “No it’s just for fun,” and that I’d been really badly burnt.

I got ripped off for twenty grand In Melbourne by a drummer I’d worked with. He buggered off to Europe with his girlfriend. Anyway, Ashley came back over to my place three nights later. He said, “I’ll listen to what ever you want me to listen to and build a band around you.” And he sat on the end of my bed in the red room downstairs and pleaded this argument to me for six hours. The guy’s a mad fucking genius. Incredible musician. And I thought about it and thought about it, and he sang me this awful song. And then I put it off for a month. I was in a different band with him for a while fooling around. We sped up a drum track and then that was it.

Mikey: I played with Ross when I was studying at the Conservatorium. Then I didn’t see him for a few years. I’d gotten married, started a music school and bought a house. Then I ran into Ross. All the drums were programmed and they thought I might be good. I’d never been involved in heavy music before.

Michele: None of them knew heavy metal.

Mikey: The heaviest thing I’d ever done was Living Color. And I loved that. I’d done a lot of jazz and played a lot of other stuff. I’m into a lot of really good bands, as opposed to styles. But I’ve begun a study of heavy bands since I met Michele. Yeah, it’s been like a study.

Michele: When I met Mikey he was so quiet. Set up his kit, and he’d transcribed every song and was drumming reading the music and he was so professional. All these long-haired hoons were coming in and I was like “That’s him - the little guy!” He didn’t have any ideas about how heavy music should be.

Mikey: I thought it was music that a lot of young people could get into. I’d been a teacher for a lot of years. School band direction and drumming. I was always coming from this idea of having to be a supposedly good influence. When I was young, I was a ratbag. I’d prefer to be a bad influence or an alternative influence. I remember being at our first manager’s place having a meeting and he asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted to be a crazy fucker.

Michele: I wanted to be Peter Pan out of The Lost Boys. Fuck being Wendy and sewing on your shadow on when it rips off, I’m flying out the window. I never had a good family base. I wanted brothers. I always say to people,  go and look up a thesaurus and look up the word “band” and see what it applies to. A band of gypsies. A band of outlaws. A band of pirates. Three words. Keith fucking Richards. I wanted that. I wanted to fly out the window and never grow up. I wanted brothers. 

The boys say that I am the only woman in their lives. It’s not traditional. I don’t have any other relationships. I beat off in the shower. What else do you need? I think that a lot of other bands don’t have that. I don’t get up to play a part. I think it’s a fucking huge commitment. I take myself on stage – my boys take themselves onstage. I don’t have to put on a shirt or put on some makeup or pretend I’m Marilyn Manson. I wrote this shit - I’m totally passionate about it.

It’s funny for the first time in my life. I am not thinking about other music. I turned down tickets for KISS the other night because I am so determined to save money and write and prepare for this next album.

Tourettes are playing a few shows in the near future:

Friday 2 July at @ Newtown with Anxiety Whispers, Harlequin with guests Celia & Marty J from Circus Bizarre and Sweden

Saturday 3 July at The Oxford Tavern, Wollongong with Pod People

Saturday 31 July at Fisho’s, Manly

Tourettes’ highly recommended, latest release is Detestimony which you can buy at all good record stores and check out the band’s fantastic website for further information on where to catch their shows nationally. You can also find out about becoming part of the SikFuks, read the White Trash online diary and see photos from all the shows, including the Main Stage at this year’s Big Day Out and so much more.

Catch them before they disappear from our shores!

[Photo: The Autopsy to Michael Corridore]