Interview by Steve Kernohan
MILESAGO friend and
contributor Steve
Kernohan invited Mike Rudd and Bill
Putt to be his special guests on his For
What It’s Worth radio programme on Monday, October 30th, 2000. The show went out live on Melbourne’s Stereo
974 and in it, Steve spent two hours tracing the musical odyssey from Mike’s
early days with Kiwi outfit Chants R&B,
and Bill’s beginnings with The Lost Souls,
through the heyday of Spectrum/Indelible Murtceps and Ariel,
continuing right up to the present day, where Mike and Bill are still active
with a fresh incarnation of Spectrum.
Throughout the show a
number of interesting and rare recordings were aired, together with some
classic album and singles tracks from most eras of these revered musicians’
careers. Here, courtesy of Steve and
exclusive to MILESAGO, we are most chuffed to be able to present the full
transcript of this fascinating and detailed chat between Steve, Mike and Bill,
plus an appearance from some incorrigible sycophant ring-in… Particular delights, among many, are the
cute bickering between MR & BP about Hammond organ nomenclature, and the
hilarious anecdote about the one-off, one-song band The Camels. This is possibly one of the most in-depth,
and most entertaining interviews MILESAGO has presented so far…We think you’ll enjoy
this one!
|
Spectrum, back and better than ever, shown here performing in the beer garden of the Healesville Hotel, Healsville, Victoria, on the afternoon of 29 October, 2000 (the day before our interview took place). Left to right: Peter ‘Robbo’ Robertson, Mike Rudd, Bill Putt. |
Rock ‘n’ Roll Scars by Ariel opens the show
Steve Kernohan (SK): Hi and welcome to the
program. This is Steve Kernohan with
“For What It’s Worth” on Stereo 974, great to have you along, and I’ve got a
couple of special guests tonight who performed on that particular track there,
“Rock ‘n’ Roll Scars”. And a very
pleasant day was had by quite a few people yesterday, up in Healesville in the
garden of the Healesville Hotel. I went
up there with part of my family and grooved along to Spectrum, and we have Mike
Rudd and Bill Putt in here tonight. Hi
Mike
Mike
Rudd (MR): Evening!
SK: Bill!
Bill
Putt (BP): Hey Steve, how’re ya doing?
SK: Great. Sounds pretty good, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Scars”,
eh?
BP: Yeah, pretty punchy stuff
SK: Sure is. Okay.
I don’t see any Rock ‘n’ Roll Scars… you both look pretty fresh,
considering you’ve got, like, 35 years under your belt?
BP: They’re internal
SK: Maybe you can tell us all about some of that
stuff later on
BP: They’re scary stories, I
gotta tell ya
SK: Okay. Well we’ve got a lotta great music lined up
here tonight. Guys, we’re not gonna fit
35 years of history in 2 hours of radio, even if we talked all the way through
it, but we’re not gonna talk all the way through. We’ve got some selections from just about everything that you
guys did, as Spectrum, Murtceps and Ariel.
Exciting stuff, isn’t it?
MR: I’m excited
BP: I am too, because this’ll be
like a…
MR: You are?!
BP: I am. I’m mildly excited Michael, because I
haven’t heard any of this stuff since we did it, or since we heard it last
which was almost around the same time
SK: Okay. And I’m pleased to say folks that Mike and
Bill and their drummer?
MR
& BP: Robbo!!
SK: Robbo – good drummer! Tell you what, if you wanna go and see
someone who enjoys their work then go and check out Spectrum. Because Robbo really does get into it
BP: He was a fan of ours when we
were up there doing it. He used to come
along with his mates and watch us play, and buy our records and sit at home
with his drum-kit, as I’m sure there’s plenty of kids sitting out there doing
the same thing with whoever they’re into… and play along with every track we
did. So when we came to play with him
for the first time, he had all the accents – that was nice – but the main thing
for us was that he had the feels right.
And I thought, whoo, this is uncanny.
And it turns out he’d been playing it forever!
MR: The good thing for us was, we thought, “gee,
now we don’t have to rehearse!”
SK: Yeah, and as I said, there
were a lotta folks [at the Healesville gig], and some of them older than me, I
must say, and they were really digging the music. Was that part of your tribe, or were they the Healesville…
BP: Well I guess we don’t
know. People keep on coming out of the
woodwork, and they’re our age, and they just love us to pieces
MR: I think the people in
Healesville and that, round the hills area, I think there was a definite, er,
clique of people that were kind of into us that moved out of Melbourne,
probably in the late 70s, and kinda stayed there, because whenever we come
across people in the hills, they go “ we haven’t seen you for like, 25 years!”
– that’s as long as they haven’t been into town!
BP: One Scottish fellow came up
and said [adopts dodgy Scot accent] “oh yeah, I haven’t seen ya laddie since
1972 Sunbury ”
SK: He still had the accent?
BP: Yeah it was really strong
and I thought, wow, okay…
SK: Beautiful, beautiful. And there was a guy there yesterday – we’ll
get onto the music in a minute – but there was a guy there who was a little bit
older than me, and I reckon he knew the words to every song you ever performed,
including the Spectrum, and the Ariel
MR: It’s good to have people in
the audience that know the words [laughs].
Every now and again I kinda get lost!
SK: Okay, look, I thought before
we even get into the Spectrum material, let’s go back just a little bit to at
least one of the bands that each of you played in prior to that line-up. We might just play part of these tracks…
MR/BP: [obviously enthusing over
the album cover] Ooh, yeah, okay!
SK: It’s scary stuff isn’t it
Bill?
BP: It is, yeah
Snippet of I’m Your Witchdoctor by Chants R&B
plays
SK: A song I’m pleased to say is
still in the repertoire, Mike
MR: Yeah, although you wouldn’t
recognise it because, er, Glenn A Baker described that particular song – or
that band – as being the fiercest garage band of all time
SK: Yes, he did
MR: And it does sound that way, and the band was
called The Chants [pronounces the word to rhyme with “aunts”], or actually The Chants
R&B, and that was my New Zealand band as you might figure from the
name. Of course, here it would be
“chants” [pronounces the word to rhyme with “pants”]. But yeah, we were fairly fearsome, and there is some stuff
available on vinyl and on CD now from that band and it’s truly fearsome stuff!
SK: It sure is, and “I’m Your
Witchdoctor” – John Mayall, did he write that?
MR: John Mayall with Eric
Clapton performed that particular song, and it was a single for them; I think
it must have been around about the time of the “Bluesbreakers” album. I don’t believe it did anything, but it now
figures on a few compilation albums
SK: Alright… we could make a
whole program just talking about that period of your life, but we’re gonna get
onto a little bit of Bill before he joined you…
MR: Well we weren’t gonna talk
forever on that
SK: Ha ha, here we go
Snippet of This Life Of Mine by The Lost Souls
plays
SK: Does that activate the grey
cells there Bill?
BP: Yeah, I remember. I wrote that actually on guitar. I had the chords and all that stuff and the
singer wrote the words, and then when we got to record it, we actually won the
1966 Battle Of The Bands – I think it was ’66, maybe it was a bit later – and
the prize was to go to Sydney and make a record. So we did, and a guy called Pat Aulton, who’s quite famous, was
the producer. And we started playing
the song, and he was horrified at the lyrics, so he re-wrote them. On the spot, in five seconds, there you go
SK: And did he take a writer’s
credit?
BP: No, he didn’t
SK: Oh, amazing!
BP: But we never got paid any
money. I don’t know where all our… our
manager at the time I think creamed all the… we were just, you know, 18 years
old and had girls screaming and we were playing guitars for a living and it was
just the most exciting experience a young 18-year-old could have. And money – who cared about that? As long as you could pay the rent and stuff,
y’know. It was years later that we
discovered that there was an enormous amount of money that went sideways that
we never got
SK: Is that right? From The Lost Souls, that band?
Wowee! Okay, that was a song
“This Life Of Mine”. Now, you’re on
rhythm guitar there, is that right?
BP: Well, lead guitar
actually. And there’s a solo which I’m
very glad you faded before it came in!
SK: Ha ha. And Mike, you were on rhythm guitar with
Chants?
MR: Absolutely, yeah. There was a guy called Max Kelly, who I
later found out was Matt Croke, and he was on borrowed time from the Australian
Air Force at the time, he was an apprentice mechanic or something. And he took absence without leave, and the
long arm of the law finally caught up with him, and they extracted him from our
clutches and took him back to Holsworthy and stuffed him down a toilet for two
weeks and then dishonourably discharged him.
And that was the incentive for me to go: “maybe it’s time we got out of
Christchurch”, ‘cos we’d been locked in the same place for a coupla years,
actually achieving some note of notoriety nonetheless, but hardly venturing out
of Christchurch apart from one foray to Wellington to actually record. And we
went over to… we arrived in Melbourne.
And, late 1966, we met up with Matt, as we now knew him, and promptly
just disintegrated after about six months.
SK: Okay, yes, now I guess we
oughta find some way of getting ourselves to Spectrum and the… oh, you’ve
noticed something interesting on the CD we’re gonna play something from
MR: Yeah, just the date
BP: The 11th of the
11th
SK: Oh, the day that Gough
[Whitlam, Australian Prime Minister at the time] got the bullet
BP: 1975, gee!
SK: Very historic date, yep
MR: That’s the date we had to
turn in our BAS returns, that’s a truly significant date!
SK: Yeah? Well look, we won’t play anything from that
just yet, but folks, tonight we have a live recording of Ariel at the Station
Hotel in Prahran, one of my favourite gigs from that time, from 25 years ago
Friday week! So we’re only ten days
away or so from a very historic date.
So when you hear all the news, talking about Gough getting the flick,
just remember it was also the night Ariel played at the Station Hotel
BP: And I remember nothing about
it
SK: Yeah, okay, you’ve done well
on The Lost Souls so far! Okay, take me
there: how did you guys meet up?
MR: Ah well, the band I was with
at the time was The Party Machine, and I was playing bass for them and… but
Ross had a better offer – Ross Wilson that is – and he got offered to be taken
over to England to join a band, a supergroup no less, called Procession. And they’d left Melbourne and discovered to
their horror that they didn’t actually have a writer in the band, so they
thought they needed a writer, and they knew of Ross. Anyway, they took him over there and that meant there was no raison d’etre for the band at all
because Ross wrote 99% of the material.
And I thought, “Oh gee I’ll put a band together myself”. So, around my
own material which I hadn’t written of course.
And I thought of a drummer, and I thought the last really great drummer
I’d seen was in a band called Gallery, and I think I’d seen them at a place
called Opus, which was a Bill Joseph gig…
BP: Um, no, I will interject
here. We both come across this all the
time, we both go through the same experiences but we have totally different
recollections of it
MR: Ormond Hall?
BP: You’re right now, it’s
Ormond Hall in Ormond
SK: Which became the Reefer
Cabaret?
BP: No no no, that’s the Ormond
Hall in East St Kilda, this was Ormond Hall in Ormond, just near the Ormond Station
– just a crappy little hall
MR: Not a very distinguished
hall at all… and Gallery wasn’t a particularly distinguished band. Three singers, three gals?
BP: Three girl singers in real
short dresses, me on guitar, a bass-player and Mark Kennedy on drums
MR: And when I saw Mark on the
drums I thought “what an astonishing drummer this guy is!” And so I thought of getting in touch with
him, which I did, and one day I was up in my little lofty flat in Hawthorn and
[chuckling] both Bill and Mark arrived at the door and I think they’d been
doing some gardening things [?!], but Bill, of course being enormously tall,
and Mark actually being a tiny little fella – he must’ve been around 5’3” or 4”
or something… there was an astonishing kinda disparity between the two. And so we played a coupla weeks with Mark,
and I was thinking, gee… I was playing bass at that stage, and I thought, I
really need a guitarist and so Mark conveyed that to Bill, and Bill arrived
around one day and we promptly swapped instruments! I gave him my 6-string bass [chuckles] as a really useful
instrument, and I started to play rhythm guitar again, and we had a keyboard
player at that stage, but he dropped out and then we got another keyboard player
which was Lee Neale, from a band called 1987…
SK: We won’t play a track from
them, but we’ve got one here tonight
MR: Do you really? [delighted
chuckle]
SK: Yeah!
MR: Oh cool! He had a Farfisa organ which was… there
weren’t many organs available in those days.
There was kinda Voxes, Hammonds – which were totally inappropriate; you
couldn’t actually get them at all – and Farfisas. And he had a Farfisa and it was truly a crappy instrument. But we started writing stuff and we
eventually insinuated our way into doing a few gigs. And I hung around AMBO
which was the new agency at the time, and one of the office boys was Mike
Gudinski and he’d started to get a couple of gigs together, and he gave us a
few gigs out of pity, I’m sure. ‘Cos we
used to hang around looking absolutely pathetic, and he gave us this gig in
DeGraves Street called The Punchbowl, which was an absolute Sharpie
hangout! I don’t know whether you
remember Sharpies everybody, but they were just the nemesis of anybody with
hair, basically. And fortunately, our
first gig there, we were adopted by the largest of the Sharpies, he said “you
guys are really great” – after we’d grovelled on the ground: “don’t hit
us!” And we were safe after that and we
were able to play our stuff, which wasn’t very much. And that was the thing you see – I used to come in with a basic
sorta idea and then the band used to have to expand on this idea wildly because
we had nothing else, we had no repertoire at all. So this gig was reasonably regular and it allowed us to
expand. And the good thing was that
every now and again a real band would come, like a pop band. The Valentines I remember coming in. And they were deeply impressed with our
commitment and our earnestness, and they used to convey our reputation around
to their managers, and their managers used to know people in other places. So we’d get gigs by this means. And our reputation spread narrowly
SK: [laughs] Bon Scott was in
The Valentines then?
MR: That’s right, yeah. He was actually pretty helpful to us
BP: He was a lovely fella
SK: Oh, I saw The Valentines at
a gig down in Werribee where I spent most of my youth, at The Bus Stop. And they were reasonably progressive,
considering “Nick Nack Paddy Whack” and some of the other stuff they did
MR: And the stuff they had to
wear, it was just gruesome
SK: I know, but I’ve told the
listeners this before; they performed the Chicago Transit Authority version of
“I’m A Man” that night, and it was fabulous.
And Bon was playing congas – and I thought “why are you wearing these
outfits?” – ‘cos it was good music!
MR: Yes, it [the outfits] was
rubbish, wasn’t it really?
BP: Well it went from
there… what did Bon go into?
Fraternity, which was a serious musical sorta thing
SK: Yes, absolutely
BP: Er, what Mike was saying about
bringing along a little idea to the band and stuff; there’s a song on this
called Fiddling Foo” – this is Spectrum Part One, the
first ever album in 1970 or something.
The first time we played it, a few times, it was about a 3 minute 25
second song…
SK: Is that right?
BP: About a year later when we
recorded it, I think it’s about 15 minutes long, so that amplifies what Mike
was saying
MR: We really relied – just
coming back to Mark Kennedy – we really relied on him with us because he was
such an outstanding player, and we used to have drum solos. Now, I’m not generally in favour of drum
solos, but incorporated in the material it kinda worked okay. And I think he really supported us. And so it was a truly dramatic moment when
he said he was out… although we were kinda ready for it because we were
obviously drifting apart musically, and so then we got Ray Arnott in the band
and that changed everything
SK: Yes, well why don’t we play
a little edit from Fiddling Fool?
MR: Oh yeah, I haven’t heard
this for years!
BP: The first couple of minutes
is basically what we got, what you hear in the first two minutes is how it
started, and it used to finish then, but you’re only gonna edit it out. But 15 minutes later, a year later… some
nights it’d go longer!
SK: Well the little edit piece
I’m about to play in fact is leading into Mike’s guitar solo
BP: There’s a guitar solo?
SK: Is there a guitar solo!
MR: Oooh, scary as, boy!
SK: Have a listen to this
Snippet from Fiddling Fool by Spectrum plays
SK: Yeah, there is a guitar solo
and a very fine one too. I wanted to
play that because I think you’re a very under-rated guitarist
MR: I think, with reason
actually
SK: Not at all! The playing yesterday was pretty hot stuff
BP: Yeah I know, I agree with
you, he is an under-rated guitar player.
But I didn’t listen to the guitar on that track then – because I haven’t
heard that for 20 years – but what caught my ear was Lee Neale’s organ playing. The chords and things – he was an extraordinary
musician, y’know, and I hope still is.
‘Cos we haven’t seen him in 30 years, 29 years or something. But that’s what captured me then, and where
you edited it out we were just about to go into this extended organ piece on
the B3 – for the fanatics, a B3 Hammond organ with no Leslie
MR: Actually it wasn’t. It was the M without a Leslie
BP: Sorry, thank you Michael, it
was the M3, without…
MR: It was an M-something, I
don’t think it was an M3
BP: Was it an M4 then?
MR: Let’s just say it was a
Hammond!
BP: It wasn’t used by everybody
else, everybody else used B3s in those days, and this was… not one o’ them
MR: Funnily enough, later on we
came to have our equipment hired for a particular show in Festival Hall. And one of the other users of this
particular brand of Hammond – I won’t say brand – number of Hammond…
BP: Model
MR: Yes, model of Hammond… er,
was Manfred Mann. He was particularly
looking for this. So we had this
Hammond without a Leslie, which I think was a bit disturbing for him, but we
also had a PA and it was the only PA available. And this was [also] Deep Purple, who were even then supposed to
be the loudest band on the planet. And
they hired our PA which was like, max, 100 watt PA, with two crappy boxes on
the side with plastic horns. It was
unbelievable. I saw the show and we
were blanching in our seats! Because
they’d also hired a row, a phalanx, of Lennard boxes! And the moment that Deep Purple started, a whole lot of the
fronts just fell out of the Lennard boxes, and I thought “oh no!!” And their singing was absolutely inaudible
from that point onwards. But gee, we
got our money [laughs]
SK: [obviously enjoying these
anecdotes] Yes, well look, I wanted to play Mumbles I Wonder Why,
but we’re not gonna have time
MR: [mumbles] I wonder why?
SK: We should’ve just played one
album tonight and got you in every coupla weeks to er…
BP: We can come back every night
of the week if you like
SK: Oh, that’d be marvellous
MR: Well between the two of us we
can actually remember a few things
SK: Heh heh. Okay, but you did take us to the point where
Ray Arnott joined the band
MR: Yes, I remember that [audibly grinning]
SK: And soon after, recorded a
double album, which for Australia was a remarkable thing. How did you guys get this license to be so
damn progressive on record?
BP: It was all word of mouth and
fantasy really
MR: We were lucky, because we
had a producer on our side, we had a free rein. Because EMI of course are based in Sydney, and I’ll Be Gone
was recorded by Howard Gable, as a producer, as his first kind of Australian
venture. He arrived in Australia with a
track record as far as New Zealand was concerned but nothing as far as
Australia was concerned. And we all
sort of roamed into the same studio at the same time and we ended up with a
Number One hit, so he virtually had a free license to do what he wanted with us
and we were lucky, we got the [studio] time!
Well, when I say we got the time, we were lucky also that most of our stuff
was well road-tested and we were able to do a few little creations to
supplement the tracks on the Milesago album, but most of that was
our repertoire at the time
SK: Well, a wonderful recording
it is. Look, I’ll just advise the
listeners now: the Spectrum Part
One album, where that edit of Fiddling Fool came from, was
released in March ’71, and less than a year later you had the double album Milesago
out in the stores. It may interest
people too, to know that I’ll Be Gone is not on the Part One
album, and I know why, I know Mike that you have some regrets that that is in
fact the case
MR: I think the record company
has more regrets
SK: Yes, but I personally think,
with a lot of hindsight, there’s a high degree of credibility about it not
being on the record
MR: Yeah, we thought so at the
time. Y’know, it was an aesthetic
decision, but there’s not many record companies that would put up with that
kind of…
BP: You wouldn’t have the chance
today. The marketing people would come
in and say “this is what you’re recording, and this is what’s going on the
album, go!”
SK: Yes, exactly right. And then you release five singles, with
disco versions of the track and all sorts of other…
BP: Yeah, dance tracks and
trance tracks and…
SK: Exactly right – you’re up
with the modern stuff aren’t you Bill?
BP: Oh yeah, but only because
I’m… stupid
MR: [chuckling] Yeah, I think
that’s fair
SK: And we also shouldn’t leave
that first album without me asking – because he has been a guest on the program
– Roger Savage, who is not normally on this side of the microphone as we are
tonight. And he wasn’t a man of many
words; he of course had an amazing career in England with the Stones and Dusty
Springfield and then with you guys and the Masters Apprentices – what was he
like to work with?
BP: He was a very quiet,
thorough, professional gentleman.
MR: And I never felt that he
lost his sense of humour. He was always
the warm, up-there friendly guy! He
never lost his cool, he was just a… do you remember once he lost his cool? I can’t.
BP: No, he was just a very very
easy man to work with
SK: Did you choose to have him
to work with you on other things, like live recordings?
MR: Well we were… no, not
really. It’s just the way it happened,
I mean, the Melbourne recording scene was AAV, or Armstrong’s as it used to be
known. And so that’s the way it
worked. He was the best guy around,
that was it
BP: And just recently he put two
tracks off our Volcano album onto a film he was doing the music
for…
MR: Which was very sweet of him,
hmm…
BP: …which was a David
Williamson play called “Brilliant Lies”
MR: Richard Franklin’s movie
SK: Okay, well look, I thought
we might play – we won’t play the whole thing ‘cos we’ve got a call coming in
from Canberra soon, but why don’t we play something from “Milesago” – “The
Sideways Saga”…
MR: [chuckling]
SK: …a long piece. In fact, four pieces…
MR: Yes, it’s a suite really,
yeah
SK: Yeah it is. And, again, you performed some of this, if
not all of it, yesterday!
MR: Yes, we ran it before some
of them but we’ve forgotten the rest of it!
BP: I have, so let’s hear a bit!
SK: Let’s hear a bit of it right
now
Selection from Spectrum’s The Sideways Saga plays
SK: Well sacreligious it may be,
but we are fading down on the track because we need to continue to move along,
but I’m gonna play that whole album one night
BP/MR: Yeah!
BP: That’s another 12 minutes
worth of solo there
SK: Yeah, and wah-wah organ
BP: Yeah, that little snap of Lee
I just heard, I’m gonna have to listen to this album at some stage. I’d forgotten what a great player he was!
SK: Yes, yes. Now Spectrum were a band of course that were
a big band, right? Four players but
lots of equipment.
MR: Well for those days we had
big equipment I guess
SK: Yes, and a lot of gigs in
one night on occasions
BP: Oh, you’d do three – an
afternoon, an early night and a late night – on Saturdays
SK: Alright, and was that part
of the rationale for forming an offshoot?
MR: No, the real reason was that
there was the advent of pub-rock, basically.
We were playing in discos and the occasional concert. And discos, or discotheques as they were
known in those days, were actually unlicensed venues. No grog at all. So when
pubs opened their doors the whole scene virtually changed overnight. And we found that we were left out in the
cold because our kind of music wasn’t appreciated by the pub-going
punters. So we had to think real fast
and we were either gonna demise rather ingloriously, or we were going to have
to think of something different. And I
believe our actual take on it was probably fairly unique for those days and
probably still fairly unique now. We
formed an alternative band which was our pub-rock band, which was The Indelible
Murtceps, which of course, as people are starting to realise – duh – is
Spectrum back to front
SK: I told my wife that
yesterday and she said “do you think I’m an idiot?”
MR: [laughs]
BP: Well you’d be surprised how
many people come up after 30 years and when you happen to mention it they just
go blank and white and green and go “you’re kidding”
MR: Yes, and it actually worked
for us quite well. But one of the other
things we did which was one of the better-kept secrets, was that we did a
commercial for Bruce Smeaton for the Camel cigarettes thing and so was born the
band The Camels! So we had one concert
at Cathedral Hall which was The Camels supporting The Indelible Murtceps
supporting Spectrum
SK: [incredulous] Is that right?
MR:
And The Camels only had one
song [chuckles]
BP: We just played it forever
and it got faster and faster. I can
even remember the lyrics, it was so sick.
In fact an ad guy wrote the lyrics
MR: Yeah it was Bruce Smeaton
BP: Was it? Yeah, he wrote the lyrics and gave them to
us and we went in the studio and bashed it out. So that night that we played at the TF Much Ballroom, supporting
ourselves supporting ourselves, we dressed up in long flowing robes and head-dress,
you know, Arabic gear, and played the song at its normal tempo, and played it
again slightly faster. Played it again
even slightly more, and so on and so on, until it was going flat out, and we
couldn’t keep up with ourselves. And
that was the end of The Camels
SK: No recording of that exists?
MR: No, no, no, there was a
poster though
BP: It was on TV once!
MR: Yeah, it was an ad, yes
SK: Okay. Well I tell you what, the Murtceps theme
song was We Are Indelible and again, that’s still in the repertoire –
great to hear it yesterday. Something
that you wouldn’t have heard in almost 25 years is when it was performed in the
Station Hotel, have a listen to this folks
We Are Indelible performed live by Ariel plays
SK: What a blast!
MR: Yeah, that’s a 3-guitar
attack!
SK: It sure is. But it wasn’t Spectrum or Murtceps, it was
Ariel, one of the incarnations of the fabulous band Ariel. And a 3-guitar attack at the Station Hotel
right here in Melbourne’s Prahran. One
of the better gigs from an audience’s point of view because people like me
could get very close to the band, and just watch the fingers on the fretboard
and so forth
MR: The band couldn’t get away
from the people, that’s for sure
SK: Well I’m wondering, was that
a good gig for you guys?
MR: It was okay
BP: Mostly, yeah
SK: Well, what were the good
gigs?
BP: Well TF Much was a great
gig. Sebastian’s was a great gig in the
early days, and Bertie’s… there were a few town hall gigs like Kew Town
Hall. That was usually a good one for
us. And some of the uni’s. Monash was our uni. I was talking to a guy yesterday up in the
mountains at Healesville, and he was a Monash Uni guy. And I happened to mention how it was all
clique-y in those days. We could never
do wrong at Monash but if we went to La Trobe we’d die. Yet The Dingoes who couldn’t do anything
right at Monash, would go to La Trobe and kill it. So each university had
decided who were their bands and who wasn’t [laughs]
MR: That’s right
SK: Okay, well why don’t we go
right back a little bit, to the first incarnation of Ariel, with Tim Gaze in
the band, and you two guys obviously, and?
BP: Nigel Macara
MR: Nigel Macara who was in that
band we just listened to, and John Mills on keyboards
SK: Alright, if I’ve got it
lined up – and I haven’t – we will go to Jamaican Farewell, which you
and Tim both get songwriter credits for…
MR: That’s right, yes
SK: …on the Strange Fantastic
Dream album, Mike, but I seem to have seen it written just recently with
just your name?
MR: That wouldn’t be right. It was a fusion, that song. We didn’t actually consciously write it
together, we had two bits that we kinda gelled together. And it sort of worked, as a piece. It was probably the most commercial thing
that band did
SK: I remember seeing you
perform it on a couple of occasions, and I can’t remember where ‘cos my
memory’s not all that good either for that period. But an incredibly sharp guitar sound Tim was getting at the time! And you guys have performed that since with
other outfits, and the impression I have is that you’re not wanting to
replicate it, you have wanted to change it for some reason
MR: Well, we have a nylon-string
version now, which I find is much more appropriate – it suits me better now,
and I think it’s suits the lyric better now than the way we did it [then] which
was really frenetic. That’s not to take
anything away from Tim, because he’s gone through an incredible period in his
life in the last 20 years… and we were fortunate enough to play with him again
last year and he was just fantastic!
Looking forward to playing with him again
SK: He’s in Sydney now, isn’t
he?
BP: Yeah, he’s been there most
of the time
MR: He’s a Sydney boy basically
SK: Well there is a website
called MILESAGO which I’m pretty sure Mike’d know about…
MR: Yeah
SK: Bill, have you seen it?
BP: No, I only know about it
‘cos Michael told me
SK: Okay, it’s run by Duncan Kimball and Paul Culnane, and a
fabulous job they’ve done in just 12 short months, and I think of course,
credit to you guys too, for them to want to name it “Milesago”. I don’t think they’ve slipped you any money
though, have they?
MR: [magnanimously] No, why would they?
SK: And as a little sideline to
that, they have a chat room, as they call them, and it’s called “Rock &
Roll Scars”, so again, I think you’re owed a little something
BP: We better get these guys!
[laughs]
MR: Doubly cheeky, but we
appreciate it
SK: And one of the infrequent,
but sometime contributors to “Rock & Roll Scars” is Tim Gaze, they’ve got
him signed up
MR: Oh yeah? He deserves to get everything he gets,
Tim. And I guess I say that with – not
so much affection – but he, as I say, he’s been through a very chequered life
and come out the other side and…
BP: Yeah, come out a winner now!
MR: Yes he has. And he was always a fantastic
guitarist. Whenever I get a glimpse of
the Strange Fantastic Dream album, and what he was doing there, I
just think “wow!” There’s no other
guitarist I can think of who could have done the job he did. But there was also a lot of stuff going on
between him and John Mills. They were
equally flashy on their instruments and it was just terrific
BP: Tim does say that that’s, in
his world, the high point of his career, the “Strange Fantastic Dream” album
SK: Excellent. Let’s go to Jamaican Farewell.
Jamaican
Farewell by Ariel plays, followed,
uncannily, by a strange funeral directors’ commercial, the significance of
which will become evident…
SK: Welcome back to “For What
It’s Worth”. Steve Kernohan, Mike Rudd
and Bill Putt here, playing some great music.
Unfortunately, that came from my copy of the album which has been
thoroughly played, it’s almost transparent, you can almost see through the
thing, but still sounding pretty damn good.
A song about suicide, Bill – I didn’t know that
BP: Well yeah, I didn’t know it
either, until Michael mentioned it one day at rehearsal as we were playing the
song. But it’s a suicide note, and I
thought the funeral parlour ad after it was most fitting
SK: [laughs] Yeah!
BP: Sorta ties it all up
together so we can move on now
SK: Alright, well let’s move on,
and we have, if all goes well here, Paul Culnane on the phone from
Canberra. Hi Paul
Paul
Culnane (PC): G’day Steve, how
are you?
SK: I’m extremely well, very
nice to have you along
PC: Yeah, lovely of you to
invite me
SK: Mike and Bill are here
PC: Hello Mike, hello Bill
MR: Hello Paul
BP: Hello Mike, I mean, er,
Paul, how’re ya doing?
SK: There’s only one Mike here
[laughs]
MR: [To Bill] I thought you were saying hello to me, I
thought “that’s unusual”
SK: Hey Paul, we’ve just played,
prior to “Jamaican Farewell”, a piece of your wonderful recording from the
Station Hotel. We played “We Are Indelible”
PC: Oh, how’d it go?
SK: It went the same as the last
time we played it at home earlier. It’s
fabulous! A fabulous recording
Paul. You and your equipment on the 11th
of November 1975 – the day that Gough [Whitlam, Australian Prime Minister at
the time] got the flick
PC: That’s it!
SK: And you were in Melbourne,
and brash little you went up to the guys in the band and said “can I plug into
your soundboard?” or something like that.
Tell us the story
PC: Well, they were pretty nice
to me actually, as they had been in earlier days with Spectrum. I used to rock up to gigs with my tape deck,
y’know? And on this occasion I thought,
well okay, they’re offering me… er, who was the roadie at that time?
MR: I suspect it was Jim Murray,
but I’m guessing here
PC: Okay, so around that time,
okay. Whoever it was, was pretty cool,
and I had some really crappy mics and proposed to set them up, y’know, tape
them to the wall at the back of the Station Hotel room, to capture a sort of
ambient mix because I thought the bass mightn’t come through enough. [Ariel’s live sound engineer, as well as
giving a lead from the mixing desk, graciously provided 2 of the band’s
professional microphones, in lieu of the “crappy” ones PC brought along, and
supplied boom stands, to facilitate the “ambient” stereo recording]
MR: Well that was a wise
move. And actually it sounds really
snappy! I’m really impressed. I mean, I’m a fan of ambient sound anyway,
but it really does sound good!
PC: Oh good, I’m glad you like
it that way! Yeah, y’know it’s not
perfect, but…
MR: Yeah, we don’t expect
perfection
BP: It’s Rock & Roll mate,
it’s Rock & Roll
MR: It’s a record of a band that
was too rarely recorded. I mean, that
three-guitar attack, and I’d forgotten about all the harmonies, whoa, how good
is that?!
PC: Exactly, yeah, what a
combination, between you and Glyn, with the other guys offering support
MR: That’s right, yeah
PC: Yeah, so this might sound
impertinent, but had you forgotten how “cooking” that line-up was?
BP: Oh, absolutely!
MR: Yeah, look I had very much Paul. I actually discovered a tape that I have at
home of a recording that must have been done, probably at Double-Jay as I think
it might have been, and it was of the “Mutant Suite”; of which I think you have
a version on this recording…
PC: Oh, a couple of cuts…
MR: Yes, well I think this one’s
a bit more comprehensive. It probably
has 5 or 6 tunes, sorta jammed together.
And, yes, I had forgotten how cooking that band was, and I kinda regret
that it was so under-recorded because, gee, it still sounds pretty snappy to
me!
The under-recorded three-guitar Ariel line-up, in a seldom-seen EMI-Harvest promotional photo from 1975.
Left to right: Harvey James, Nigel Macara, Bill Putt, Mike Rudd, Glyn Mason
PC:
Oh yeah, and that was a
lovely evening. A very congenial,
relaxed evening audience-wise
SK: They were probably all stunned from the news from Canberra earlier in
the day
PC: Yeah well that’s true Steve!
SK:
I was in Queensland at the
time Paul, that bastion of democracy up there, and I was in Brisbane working
for the Commonwealth Sub-Treasury. And
the department head came back mid-afternoon and said “I don’t believe it, Gough
Whitlam has been sacked!” And we almost
tore the place apart
PC: It’s one of those “where were you – what do you remember?” things…
MR: Yes, well we didn’t remember, we’d been at the Station Hotel, Paul!
[laughs]
BP:
I saw the date on the CD
thing tonight, just about an hour ago… and went “wow, something happened on
that day!”
SK: I’ve done a mock cover of the photo that Mike electronically sent to
you
PC: Oh yeah!
SK:
Yeah, okay. Paul, you do have other recordings of
Spectrum, and I think you’ve even got a recording of Daddy Cool, is that
right? We’re not gonna give out your
address, so you’re not gonna be pestered by anyone
PC: Well just tell me
when to shut up, Steve!
SK: [chuckles] Give us a bit of a rundown
on some of the stuff you might have
PC:
This is a nice story. At the Aquarius Festival in Canberra in, I
think it was 1971, just when I was leaving school; and I lived two blocks
away. And the first night – I was young,
I didn’t know much about these new burgeoning bands from Melbourne – I’d only
heard about them and read about them in “Go-Set” and stuff like that. And I had a little 3-inch reel-to-reel, took
it down on the Friday night I guess it was, and er… these pips are distracting
me…
SK: You eating an
orange?
PC:
[laughing] No, sucking a lemon! Sorry buddy… um, yeah anyway, recorded Daddy
Cool on the first night and of course they were very new and they blew me away. And the story there is – the kind of result,
if you like – was that I dubbed that onto a tape for Ross Wilson. And about four years later he’d moved house
and he was cleaning things out, and he sent me this letter saying “oh look,
I’ve discovered this tape of the very very early Daddy Cool!” A lovely letter, that I’ve still got and
treasure. And together with that, two
copies of the very rare “Garden Party” EP by Sons Of The Vegetal Mother which
has Mike on it of course, on guitar.
One copy I sold for an inflated price – kept the other one… and the cat
jumped on the record-player
MR:
[chuckling]
BP: That’ll teach ya – for selling the first one!
PC: It’s tragic isn’t it?
BP: It is
MR: It was a cat, that’s typical.
Get a dog, they wouldn’t do that!
PC:
Y’know, I dunno if you guys
are into football, but for that split-second moment, I renamed my cat “Sherrin”
[definitive football manufacturer]
MR: [laughs]
BP: I can understand that
SK: Oh, because you kicked it and it flew many metres?
PC:
Indeed [laughs]. [Note: readers, please be assured that no
animals were actually harmed during the making of this program… at least, not
to our knowledge!]
SK:
Okay, I’ve got the
picture. Hey, the other thing about
that Station Hotel recording here which we’ll get back to in just a moment,
that makes it more interesting again; is that there are several songs on it
from the “Jellabad Mutant” sessions which Mike and Bill can tell us about a
little later
PC: Oh yeah, I look forward to hearing what they’ve got to say about that
project
SK:
Yeah. But I think there are three or four
recordings here, done live at the Station Hotel, and you’ve chosen one that we
might play an edit from. We’re playing
lots of edits tonight Paul, because some of this material is very very long. So we’ll play a few minutes of your selection
PC: You made up some edits in pre-production, did you Steve?
SK: I did, and some of it’s by the seat of my pants
PC: Oh cool, well that’s the way to go!
SK: Yes! Alright, so what is the
one you would like us to play here?
PC:
Is this… well, I think Mike
can correct me if I am wrong: did you write all the stuff for this project
Mike?
MR: Yes I did, yes
PC: Oh, okay, so with
this one, is it called “Medicine Man”, or has it another title?
MR: No, “Medicine
Man”… they were all perfunctory titles, because it was supposed to be a rock
opera. So it was just various phases of
the opera so the songs had no particular name.
And this was the most frequently-used phrase as I recall, so “Medicine
Man” it was
PC: Oh well this thing rocks like….
BP: Well, there’s a line in it, “medicine man”…
MR: There is, yeah, that’s what I meant by “oft-repeated”, yes…
PC: Thanks Bill!
BP: Yeah, I wasn’t listening to you [Mike], I just tune out and listen to
Steve and Paul!
[general laughter]
SK: Alright Paul, well look thanks very much for calling in
PC: Oh yeah, thanks for letting me participate
SK:
Yeah, and fantastic job
you’ve done in (a) recording this thing and (b) doing a little bit of clean-up
job on it as well
BP: Yeah, thanks for that Paul, you’ve done a dazzling job!
MR: It’s good that you’re still around Paul!
BP: Yeah, stay alive man
PC:
Listen: more e-mails on the
way, but your copies of this disc are on the way guys, and we’ll be in touch
BP: Thank you very much. Appreciate
that a lot, thank you!
MR: Thanks!
PC:
Look, I hate to be a ratbag
and commercialise things there Steve, but can I plug the website?
SK: I think you ought to, seeing as you’ve ripped it off these guys here
PC:
Yes, it’s called “Milesago”,
which is the original title of the second Spectrum [album], and the first album
released in Australia that was the first-ever double rock LP – it’s called
“Milesago”! Now, the website, if you’re
into Australian rock music and pop culture from, whooah, 1964 to 1975-ish? Log onto the web and do this: http://milesago.gq.nu -- there’s none of that “www”. And have a lotta fun and leave a message in the guestbook! And thanks for having me Steve, nice talking
with you Mike and nice talking with you Bill.
Take care guys, bye!
MR
& BP: Thanks Paul!
SK: Good onya Paul, talk soon, bye
PC: Don’t hang up
BP: We wanna play in Canberra man, get us up there!
SK: You wanna listen to this, right?
PC: Yes please
SK:
Alright, good onya. And we’ve faded down Paul there, he’s having
a good time in Canberra. He’s a lucky
man, isn’t he, hey? Wouldn’t you like
to live in Canberra?
MR: [hesitant] errr…
SK: No? Yeah….
BP: I love visiting
Canberra. I really love visiting Canberra. It’s a great place to visit I must say! Wonderful, wonderful people! [is that a note of sarcasm I can hear? –
Ed.]
SK:
Okay, so let’s play some of
this track now Mike, but before we do, let’s give us a little piece on why this
project was aborted
MR: Oh, okay
BP: I could tell you in one sentence: nobody understood it!!
MR:
Yes, well [clears throat
authoritatively] when Ariel part one (that’s the Tim Gaze, John Mills, Nigel
Macara, Bill & I) aborted, I went away and sulked for a while. But while sulking I wrote this piece,
because Rock Operas were the go – “Tommy” had happened and everybody was
writing Rock Operas like you wouldn’t believe!
And this was one, and so then I got together with Bill and said, oh,
let’s rehearse this and we worked out all our parts. And then we thought we better get a drummer in, and I’d seen this
drummer with The Dingoes, John Lee, and I thought “let’s get him”. And we can rehearse with him, which we did,
and rehearsed for awhile. And then John
suggested, why don’t we get Harvey James, a friend of his, to play guitar? And so we rehearsed with him as well, and
before you know it we had an entity.
But it was all based virtually around this material, so, if nothing
else, this “Mutant” thing. And I had
great hopes for it and so we demo’d some stuff with EMI in Sydney, and then a
trip to England was mooted… to do some
more recording. But it was actually
based – this mooting – was based on the first band! And in fact EMI, or Harvest (England) as it was, were expecting
the first band to lob! And they were
quite surprised, if not a bit chagrined, to find us lobbing and by that stage
it was common knowledge to us that the project had been shelved. They weren’t interested in having their
studios cluttered up with rock operas.
They had quite enough of that, thank you! And so we were booked to go into the studio and we had nothing to
play! So we had to sorta do a quick
sorta revision of some of the old material, and hence “Rock & Roll Scars”,
with I guess, we had two or three new numbers on it
SK: Yes, and which is a great album, I think
MR:
Well, it’s a pushy, funky
album. I like the “A-to-Z” review of it
which said that we were being terribly earnest. And I thought that that’s what it sounded like!
SK:
Okay, well let’s play this
track that Paul has selected – he’s written on the back here: “Medicine Man” /
“Use Your Imagination”… that’s about
right, for a title?
MR:
Er, well, yes it is… it’s
“Medicine Man” segued into another song.
It could be called “Use Your Imagination” but I actually call it “The
Letter Song”
SK: Alright, “The Letter Song”.
This is live at the Station Hotel, 25 years ago!
“Jellabad
Mutant Suite” by Ariel plays in
full
[Off air, Mike explained to Paul Culnane (with
considerable glee) that the titles of this sequence actually are, alarmingly
enough: “Neo-Existentialist Greens / Medicine Man / The Letter Song / Use Your
Imagination”]
SK: Wow!
MR: Hooraaay!!! Clap clap, bravo!!!
BP: I haven’t heard that in 25 years and that was one hell of a band!
SK: You’ve just picked yourself up off the floor, literally, Bill
MR: He was floored
BP: I was, I had to lie down then
SK:
Look, we played the whole
thing there folks – at least, that’s where Paul put another track mark in there
– and this disc goes on to, er, this disc goes on… it’s almost like a song
title!
MR: This disc goes on forever
SK:
Yeah, it’s a 78 minute CD and
he’s had to in fact leave a track off as well, so it was a typical one &
and half hour Ariel gig! So, that’s a
really cookin’ band you boys had workin’ there
MR: Yeah, it was
SK:
Okay, “Rock & Roll
Scars”, that was the album that you ended up recording in Abbey Road, made
famous by The Hollies, and, er, The Beatles as well. What was it like working at Abbey Road with Geoff Emerick?
MR:
Well, we actually didn’t work
with there with Geoff. We worked with
something-or-other Clark, I’ve forgotten his name [Tony Clark: Ed]. Anyway, he was a terrific engineer. We actually mixed with Geoff Emerick at Air
Studios, that was a bit later. But
regrettably, because we had put ourselves, or were put under so much pressure,
it wasn’t that enjoyable an experience.
We had a limited time to record, and then we pushed ourselves to the
limits and that wasn’t totally an enjoyable experience. In addition to which, the band was kind of
wobbling a bit, when we got there… not just because of the recording thing but
because of the live gigs and the situation we found ourselves in, in London. So, it wasn’t entirely a pleasant
experience. But reflecting on it, when
you tell people you recorded at Abbey Road, and the same studio that The
Beatles recorded in, they go “wow, that’s fabulous!” And, I s’pose it was, but we weren’t enjoying ourselves that much
SK: Okay, and you were doing The Marquee?
MR:
Yeah, the Marquee we did
reasonably regularly, and that was okay for us. That was almost like an Australian gig –particularly as it was
filled with expatriates, y’know? So that
was a lovely gig to do. But we did the
Speakeasy at least once and that was absolutely horrible
SK: Why?
BP: Terrible, tiny, crappy little place, y’know?
MR: Yes, it was a
restaurant, with a sort of glass partition, and I don’t know how Hendrix played
there, because we were under constant pressure to turn down all the time! And it was just horrible, it really
was. I can’t remember a nice thing
about that particular place
SK: Was it meant to be a “cool” place?
BP:
It was meant to be a cool
place, but most of the cool people just arrived there trashed and just got
further trashed, and paid no attention to who was playing, or went into the
glass room to get away from the volume
MR:
We played the Greyhound which
was almost a regular pub gig, and that was nice. But it wasn’t until we went back the second time, with Glyn, that
we actually started to enjoy ourselves a bit, playing live. And we got as far north as Scotland, and did
Glasgow and Edinburgh and universities.
And we played a few “other” gigs and that was kinda nice, the second
time around
SK:
Mmm, okay. Well, a very different album, “Rock &
Roll Scars”, from “A Strange Fantastic Dream” – vastly different, almost like
different bands – it’s almost like there are no members common to both bands,
they are so different. But an album
that I very much enjoy, and it does sound fantastic on the CD [not yet
commercially released on compact disc].
Why don’t we play “Launching Place”, a Spectrum song that you guys
recorded back in, I dunno, ’71?
MR:
Well that was the b-side
of “I’ll Be Gone”, and that was the
reason that we originally got into the studio in the first place, to record
“Launching Place” – parts one and two.
And I haven’t heard part one since we recorded it, because it was an
instrumental, and it is actually there in the EMI vaults, but I haven’t heard
it since then. So I’m looking forward
to hearing that one again. But anyway,
“Launching Place Part Two”, that’s one of the songs we revived for the “Rock
& Roll Scars” album
SK: Okay, here we go
Launching
Place Part Two (Ariel version)
plays
SK:
Very very punchy stuff again,
and I don’t think that’s in the repertoire at the moment is it?
MR: Yes, it is
SK:
It is? I didn’t hear it at Healesville yesterday,
but I had to leave before your last bracket…
Bill: a comment about your bass playing, because I was a would-be bass
player for a little while, right? And
always had a bit of affection for the bass.
In fact, if there’s a good bass player in the band, I generally like the
band! Now, you spend a lot of your time
playing very very low notes; you’re not a man to go soaring up the fretboard,
are you?
BP:
No. Well at the moment in particular, we’re playing three-piece as a
rule, so you’re right, I just keep down the bottom end. I’m not a fancy, up-there, top end
player. That’s sorta like
solo-land. Play what the music needs,
requires, y’know? If we did something
that required me to go berserk up the top end I’d probably do that, but to us,
or to me, the most important thing in a band with the song you hear is the
vocals, unless it’s an instrumental. So
I always like to listen to the vocals first and then put in my parts, so I can
make sure I’m not getting in the way of the most important factor
SK:
Well maybe a comment around a
couple of players… I’ll just throw a
name at you and maybe your first couple of thoughts? Um, Duncan McGuire, the late Duncan McGuire?
BP:
Duncan, he was an
extraordinary player. Him and I had
nothing in common, musically speaking, playing wise. Lovely man, gentle man, great player… yeah, what can you say?
SK: Okay, Paul McCartney?
BP:
Well, you know… what can you say again, y’know? Actually, Paul was a most unusual
player. In fact, what surprised me the
most when The Beatles came out, most of the other bass players I know didn’t
like his playing! Or Bill Wyman. ‘Cos it wasn’t funky or something. But it pleased me to hear when I saw the
documentary on The Beatles that they put the bass on last. That made sense to me as to how he played
that way. How do you put that down with
the drums and piano, or the drums and rhythm guitar – I wonder if he would’ve
played the same thing? But putting it
on last, he had the best of all worlds laying right there before him. But he’s got a very unusual approach
SK:
Yeah, I’ve got a lot of
Beatle outtakes and quite often it appears as though McCartney would almost
vocalise the bass-line [mimics bass “bom-bom-bom”], and it seems as if he would
work out a lot of his notes from the vocals, and then obviously try to find the
note on the bass guitar
BP: Probably did, yeah, you’d have to ask him, but he probably did
SK:
Yeah, okay. Well that was “Rock & Roll Scars”… the
third studio album that Ariel put out was “Goodnight Fiona”, and that line-up
was, guys?
MR: Gee, that was Tony Slavich, I think, at that stage
BP: Yes it was
MR: And Nigel Macara, er…
BP: Glyn
MR: Glyn Mason, yes, and Bill and myself
SK:
One of my favourite songs of
yours, I’ve got lined up here, “I Can Do Anything”; and in fact I played it
close to New Year’s Eve last year and told the listeners that it might become a
bit of a new year resolution – it’s almost the power of positive thinking,
isn’t it – for me, as a listener
MR: Yeah, that was an
unusual song for us to do. Again, that
was another song that I wrote down the coast.
That’s where I wrote the Mutant thing was down there, and that song came
out of that area too, so…
SK: Okay, let’s have a listen…
I Can Do Anything by Ariel plays, followed immediately by Ariel’s Keep On Dancing (With Me)
SK: “Keep On Dancing
With Me” – Ariel. Punchy stuff again,
very punchy outfit. Which line-up was
that?
BP:
That was John Lee on drums
and Harvey James on guitar, and Michael and myself. Very tough, punchy band!
SK: Yeah, Harvey went
onto Sherbet, okay?
BP:
Yeah, but I must add that he…
when we spoke a few times, he mentioned it, right, and he thought “Rock &
Roll Scars” was his best recorded work in his career. And hearing the Sherbet stuff, I have to agree! No offense Daryl and the boys…
MR: It was a showcase
for his playing, so…
SK:
His work on “Rock & Roll
Scars” is interesting. For long periods
I can’t hear him at all, and then it’s almost like one of you has said “come in
and do one of your blinding guitar solos”.
And sure enough, he fires one off, and then he disappears again!
MR:
Well, he’s responsible for a
lot of the rhythm track as well, you see.
He beefed up the rhythm track which I would normally handle by
myself. He was beefing that up as well,
so it made it even punchier
SK:
Okay, well we’re gonna move
on now in the few remaining minutes we have, to the more recent material. But just a bit of an after-word on Ariel:
you ended up agreeing, presumably, to fold the band and put the name in a box somewhere?
MR:
See, you mentioned “Goodnight
Fiona”, and to me that album marks a decline in the band. We were starting to struggle a little bit
then. So it was natural that that band
kinda folded. Just sort of lack of
incentive and energy. And then it kinda
got worse, you know, we went on to do the 80s thing, Mike Rudd & the
Heaters, and it’s funny I can say that anymore really! I mean, Mike Rudd, that’s me!
BP: Calm down, you’re okay, you’ll be alright!
MR: People would come
up and say “you used to be Mike Rudd” [laughs]. And I kind of identify with that. Uh, but yeah, we were struggling in the 80s even more, to cope
with that dichotomy between what we wanted to do and what we perceived the
audience wanted. And it got to the
stage where we were more concerned with what people wanted, than what we wanted
to do. And we weren’t enjoying it
anymore. And so that’s when we just
pulled the plug on the whole thing and took ten years off
SK:
Yes… Glyn Mason; a couple of
the songs he wrote for “Goodnight Fiona”, I thought were quite strange, like
Indians in one of them, and another one about wanting to give the rock &
roll life away. And I thought “what is
this?” But you’ve obviously written
stuff like that too, but for some reason it didn’t strike me the way his
material did
MR: Yes, I’ve never
actually written about Red Indians, but that was part of the thing. We started to lose our focus a bit and it
was suggested that me being the only writer was a bit of a problem for the
band. We had to sort of spread the load
a bit, and that’s the way it happened, and it wasn’t that I resented it at all,
it’s just it was there and it just happened
BP:
We ended up with too many
chiefs in the songwriting department, and it ended up having about four or five
different directions it could’ve gone off in
MR:
Yeah, but Glyn did write a
really great song which… now, I haven’t
spoken to Billy Thorpe much at all, ever.
But I saw him about a year ago at the launch of the “Under The Covers”
book release, and he was there. And he
came up to me and confided in me that “It’s Only Love”, which Glyn wrote, was
his favourite Australian single. And he
plays it to everybody that he possibly can!
And I was quite proud of that single from the point of view that my voice
was virtually undetectable in the background, but it was sorta my first
production effort. And I was really
pleased with it! But it did nothing,
y’know? It just died in the ring!
BP:
I think it got released –
some American guy got hold of it and took it over to America and then took off…
what we ended up with was Glyn’s lead vocal I think, and my bass and the drums
MR: I never heard that
BP:
Everything else just taken
off and re-done. And then I heard Glyn
had a version of it, and it’s just typically American – really middy and toppy,
and overdone to the max, really
SK: Okay, we can’t let
the evening finish without asking you Bill: according to Chris Spencer’s “Who’s
Who Of Australian Rock & Roll”, you spent some time at least, five minutes I
presume, with Air Supply!
BP:
Yeah I did actually. They asked me, I was in America at the time
and bumped into them over there, as you do.
And they said “when we go home to Australia, d’you wanna play bass?” And I went “aaa-oooo-errr-alright”
SK: And how much does it pay?
BP: Yeah. And I’d never actually
played for money before, and I haven’t since
SK: There’s nothing wrong with it I’m sure, it’s a job
BP:
There’s nothing wrong with
that, if you can handle that. But I
play for fun and enjoyment and what it means
MR: Remember that Bill! Remember,
“I played for fun”
BP:
Do you think I’d put up with
this lifestyle if I didn’t? If I was
earning money I’d probably be…
MR: What lifestyle???
BP:
Exactly, thank you. Anyway, so I knew it was only a three-month
thing and it turned out to be a few weeks less than that, so I actually had a
good time. They were lovely guys…
SK: Were they earning squillions then?
BP:
No, they were doin’ it real
bad, and in fact at one point the little guy, Russell, asked when we finished
this tour, if he could sing harmonies in the band that Michael and I ended up
having after that Air Supply thing. He
was that desperate for money. And we
said “no, you’re too short, go away”.
So they went back to America and made billions, y’know?
SK:
Yeah, that was the problem
with Mark Kennedy, taking us back to the start of the program – five foot three
BP: It’s the short guys, y’know
MR: Being a drummer, that’s okay
SK:
Well is he standing up or
sitting down, y’know, you can’t tell really.
Now, one of the other line-ups, I’ve gotta ask this because someone has
told me to; is it Why, or W.H.Y.?
MR: W.H.Y., yes
SK:
This chap was saying that he
thinks it was Queensland, watching a television program, and there was some
connection… did that band release any material?
MR:
No, we actually appeared on
“Hey Hey It’s Saturday”, in the morning, doing a song called…
BP: “Woman Of Steel”
MR:
No, no, we didn’t do
that. We in fact did the evening show
with Darryl. We in fact did “Woman Of
Steel” there, where we tried to synch up video with our drum machine, I don’t
know why we tried this! It was
something we had enough difficulty doing live, let alone live on
television! So we did that, but we also
did a “Hey Hey It’s Saturday” when it was in the morning, and the song was to
do with… his name’s just slipped away from me…
BP: Percy Grainger
MR:
Percy Grainger, that’s
right! [sings goonishly] “Oh Percy
Grainger, there was nobody stranger”… and we did that. It was a riot, it was pretty silly
BP: So someone actually saw this?
SK: Yeah, was “Hey Hey” up in Queensland back then? I dunno…
BP:
On the Saturday morning? I just remembered something… I’ve forgotten
to wave to our manager, I said I’d wave to her. Michael’s not allowed to speak or wave or do anything, it’s just
me tonight. So I’m waving to you Jen!
SK:
Okay, I’ve got a few videos
at home, and one of them actually has Spectrum, performing “But That’s
Alright”! It mighta been “Happening
‘71” or something like that? Is there
much material of you guys…
MR:
Well look, it’s one of the
areas that has been neglected I feel, and the only guy I know who is really
following it up is a guy called Paul Murphy, who’s really researched this
pretty well, and is trying to recover all the video and filmic evidence of
early 70s bands. He has a particular
penchant for Chain, but he also has us in his sights and has recovered quite a
bit of stuff… there are a number of “GTK” appearances, but I’m sure there’s stuff
that’s floating around there from shows like that. There’s one we did, in Adelaide, and I think it was live to air,
or close to it, ‘cos Lee had something rather crude scrawled on the side of his
piano, I can remember it, but I daren’t say it on radio! But the cameraman was blissfully unaware as
he slid down the side of Lee’s Hohner.
And the next band borrowed the Hohner, and the camera came down, and
there was this incredibly rude sign, carved onto the side of Lee’s Hohner! See, the moments like this, these are
treasured moments in Australian television
SK:
Yes, absolutely, there’s not
enough of it either. But there you go,
let’s go to a track now from your most recent CD, guys, this is Spectrum and
“Spill”. The opening song on the album,
the first song you played in the bracket, I believe, yesterday
MR
& BP: [mutual enthusiastic mumbling in assent]
Baby
Please Don’t Go by Spectrum plays
SK:
Spectrum and “Baby Please
Don’t Go”, and a really nice album guys!
Some great material here, some of the old blues classics – “Hoochie
Coochie Man”, “Sitting On Top Of The World”, “Crossroads”, “I Just Wanna Make
Love To You” and “Louie Louie”, which is not a blues track. But what a great selection! Why did you play… ‘cos your previous album
which we haven’t played a track from tonight, “Living On A Volcano”, they’re so
different!
MR:
Yeah, the “Living On A
Volcano” album was our album that brought us back into the fold, so to
speak. ‘Cos we’d spent ten years off,
and although we’d been off as far as public performance was concerned, we’d
been at my place doing a lot of recording and demo-ing and so forth, and we had
like, hundreds of songs, but we sorta cut it down to a manageable length and
then ran it past Mike Brady, and he sponsored that album, which was very nice
of him to do that. And, er, then, we
were still having a problem, like, we’d put a band together, but we’ve always
had a problem slotting our band anywhere.
And we did the Port Fairy Folk Festival, sorta by dent of our being
around for so long – we got that card…
BP: As a duo
MR:
Yes, that’s right. And we thought, “gee, festivals – that’s the
way to go!” And now, the problem with
festivals is that they want you to be something. You have to be in some kind of area. So, let’s try the blues area.
Now, what can we do, we better send a sample of the blues that we’re
gonna do. So we went to Ross Ryan, an
old buddy of ours who was getting his sort of virtual studio together, and we
said “we wanna do a few tracks”, so we did a few and then Ross said “why don’t
you do a few more?” It just kept on
growing and we ended up with this album
SK:
Well if people wanna hear
more of that sorta stuff live, plus the versions of some of the other material
we’ve played tonight, you can catch Spectrum, well, in Melbourne town at this
stage – I’m not sure whether you’ve got plans to go interstate – but the next
public gathering of Spectrum fans is in North Melbourne at the Town Hall Hotel,
Friday November 10th
MR:
Which is gonna be a novelty
for us, ‘cos we actually haven’t played there yet, but I played there one night
as part of an invitation duo. And it’s
a lovely little pub, and the guy seemed to be keen, so we’ll give it a lash and
see how that goes. Now if you wanna get
onto our email, which is the best way to go really, ‘cos we can really keep you
up to date with what’s happening , you should get in touch – have you got your
pens ready? – mikeruddbillputt@hotmail.com .
Now that’s about as regular as you can get, I’ll repeat that [which he
does]. Now, if you can’t do that and
you wanna do the snail mail thing, get in touch with Bill and/or myself at PO
Box 1181, Camberwell, 3124 [mimics commercial announcer’s tones]
SK:
Okay, good. Guys, very generous of you to come out
tonight. You’re both looking like you
have suffered some rock & roll scars over these two hours
MR: We’re fading fast!
BP: Had a big weekend [laughs]
SK: Very kind of you to share your memories with us
BP: It’s a pleasure
MR:
As you say, we could go on
for weeks doing this, and we wouldn’t remember what we did the previous week
SK:
Well, maybe we can do
something again somewhere down the track.
I have the time, I have the inclination, but I guess that’s up to you,
maybe we’ll talk about that…
BP: Next time we’ll bring our guitars and play a couple of toons
SK:
Ah, that’d be good! Hey Mike, you give harmonica lessons – I bet
no-one’s ever asked you “how do you play ‘I’ll Be Gone’?”
MR:
Ah, you bet no-one’s ever
asked me that? You’d be wrong, you’d be
losin’ yer bet there!
SK: Are you teaching beginner, intermediate or advanced?
MR:
Beginners. That’s about as much as I can cope
with. No, seriously, I have such a
definitive style as far as harmonica playing goes. I prefer to take them to the point that they can make their own
choices where to go next
SK:
Okay, well time has just
about caught up with us here, so we’ll wrap this up now. Gonna play another track. We haven’t played “I’ll Be Gone” – for
obvious reasons we’re gonna play it as we go out. We’re gonna play a version that only 100-150 people at the
Station Hotel on November 11th 1975 have heard before, apart from
you two chaps here
MR: They wouldn’t remember, ‘cos we didn’t remember!
SK:
Paul Culnane, thank you very
much. Ian Cumming, without your support
tonight we couldn’t have got through with all this excellent material that
we’ve been playing tonight
MR: Thanks Ian
BP: Thank you very much
SK: Bill, thank you very much for coming along. Mike, thank you very much
MR: My pleasure
SK:
And we’ll catch you in a
coupla weeks here, folks, on “For What It’s Worth”. And we’ve got Keith Glass and Mick Hamilton in two weeks’ time!
MR: Ahhh, that’ll be grreeeaaaat!
Glasso and Hammo!!! Mick and
Keith!!!
SK: [laughing] Thanks very much guys, bye
BP/MR: Thank you, bye
I’ll Be Gone – live version by Ariel – closes the program
Bonus tracks!! (more from before)…
Recently your hosts, Dunks and Paul, have been fairly regularly in touch with Mike Rudd via email and along the line Mike has offered some extra interesting bits of info, not necessarily covered in Steve’s interview, that we’d like to share with you here. We begin with Mike’s response to Dunks’ query about CD reissues of some of the back catalogue…
MR: We are, as you surmise,
trying to release Ariel’s “Dream” and “R&R Scars” albums on our own label
and have got as far as securing alleged masters from EMI. This took a mere two and a half years. And then we got cute. We thought it would be nice to add some
bonus tracks – some of the singles never made it to album format – and things
started going off the rails. In slow
motion of course. Tapes seem to have
evaporated and we were looking at the prospect of trying to find good copies of
the singles to master off – and then David Baxter, who had been alternately
obstructive and helpful, decided to leave EMI.
So it’s next year. Maybe…
In a later conversation, Mike revealed that Ross Wilson was considering compiling the extremely rare Party Machine and Sons Of The Vegetal Mother material (both of which feature MR, of course), for CD release. A tasty prospect, to be sure!
PC: I wanna talk about how you
arrived at your plectrum-less guitar technique and how you get your tones and
stuff, which has always fascinated me.
Can you gimme a para or two?
MR: After I finished with the
Party Machine and tearfully forsook bass-playing, I looked at the prospect of
resuming guitar. I decided that the
possibility was that I might have to cover a little more than just rhythm
(which was my specialty with the Chants) and I was daunted. “Why not just be different and avoid
invidious comparisons with far more accomplished guitarists?” I thought. So I dropped the pick… My first guitar was an L series Strat’ which
I strung with medium gauge strings (akin to fencing wire in tension and feel)
and this largely dictated the tone.
Then, as now, I favoured the neck pick-up and still managed to sound pretty
peaky. I used Strauss solid state amps
PC: Who is your current drummer,
“Robbo”, and what is his “pedigree”?
MR: Peter “Robbo” Robertson was
recommended by Ross Ryan and Broc O’Connor of GI Studios. We had half a rehearsal about three years
ago and quickly realised he was born to work with us – ie, he knew the stuff
and was an extremely congenial fellow
PC: In the liner notes to “Ariel
Aloha”, allusion is made to a video record of the “Island Fantasia” event
[Ariel’s farewell performance]. Does
such footage exist in yours or somebody else’s archives?
MR: Yep. There’s a long story that I won’t go into
here, but some of that footage was shown on the doco night [a history of
Spectrum on film, held in November 2000]
PC: My 12” single of W.H.Y.’s
“Woman Of Steel” mentions: “from the forthcoming album ‘Present Tense’”. Did this album ever get released, and if so,
where-do’ya-geddit?
MR: You don’t – it was released
in Germany and perhaps other bits of Europe against our express wishes. Thankfully it was never released here – it
was a fairly tragic album in many respects.
However I’m hopeful that one day we might recover the multi-track and
remix a couple of the tracks, one of which is a hit (in my mind anyway)…
And in closing, Mike offers this:
MR: I’d be more than happy to
cooperate with the supplying of extra info as, I’m sure, would Bill. We need prodding though. We tend to fall asleep in the middle of….
We are indelibly indebted and extremely grateful to Steve Kernohan for his gracious permission to transcribe his interview for MILESAGO. Congratulations on a super interview Steve, and many thanks for sharing it.
Thanks in abundance go, of course, to Mike Rudd and Bill Putt – not only for being so cool and frank and expansive during this particular conversation, but for their interest, enthusiasm, support for and input to MILESAGO in so many other ways. Particular thanks to Mike for furnishing the great photos from his archive that illustrate this piece.
Transcribed
for MILESAGO by Paul Culnane. Copyright
© 2001 Steve Kernohan/MILESAGO.
All rights reserved. Copying or distribution without
permission prohibited.
·
The official Spectrum website (under construction – opening mid-2001)
·
Go directly to the new, improved Spectrum/Murtceps
page on MILESAGO; and not to be outdone…
·
Here’s a hotlink to our updated Ariel page
·
You can e-mail Mike &/or Bill at: mikeruddbillputt@hotmail.com and their
delightful manager Jenny (especially for future bookings) at firstjak@hotmail.com
·
Steve Kernohan’s website for his fabulous radio programme “For What
It’s Worth” on Melbourne’s Stereo 974-FM: http://fwiw.gq.nu (c’mon, update it ya slacker!)
·
Back to the front page of MILESAGO for
another adventure!
“It’s
a strange fantastic dream, and only you know what I mean”…