Dad slowly comes back to the mental level of, roughly, a five-year-old. The thing he hates most is not being able to drive the car. One day, frustrated but determined, he climbs into the family auto when no one is looking and proceeds to drive the thing forward, through the back of the garage. He doesn’t try it again. We hurt for him. My parents’ old friends come to visit, and a lot of them can’t handle seeing my dad the way he is now. Most never call again.
My mother still has to deal with the blatant and heavily fucked-up male chauvinism of the era, whenever assorted loonies call to do business. They want to speak to the “man of the house,” and when she informs them that he has health issues and they should deal with her, they all give her so much high-handed, misogynistic crap that, again, if I had a gun …
But I do have a band, and it’s to that band that I escape when things get too bleak at home. Zoot plays all summer along the beaches of Melbourne, around the same time the mighty Australian blue-ringed octopus is killing hundreds of happy, carefree beachgoers in the tidal pools of our dangerous continent, sometimes not fifty feet from our stage. But it’s as if the band itself has collectively stepped on one of those charming but toxic little cephalopods, because Zoot is not much longer for this world.
The reason you’ve never heard of Zoot (well, most of you anyway) is because we break up just as we are about to make it in the big world, circa 1970. It’s an idiosyncrasy I’ve experienced before (thank you, Wickedy Wak). EMI in America has heard our version of “Eleanor Rigby” and wants to sign us and bring us over to the States. We are beside ourselves with excitement and can’t believe our good fortune.
America has always been the go-to country for worldwide fame, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve seen too many Aussie bands slinking back in defeat from the UK and so far, no one has tried the USA. I’ve lived in England, and I know that they’re all just normal folks over there (with the possible exception of Hayley Mills)—but America! Well jeez, we’re all pretty sure they’re a different breed altogether, maybe not even human. I know what I’m talking about—trust me. Ever since I was a kid I’ve watched their movies and TV shows. Was John Wayne human? Clark Gable? Clint Eastwood? JFK? Annette Funicello, Elvis? The guys who landed on the moon, for Chrissakes? I don’t think so. I’ve always felt that the unknown is more accessible to me than the known. And anyway, America is so big! I’m absolutely sure there’s a parking space with my name on it somewhere in America. And we’re going as a band, so I’ll have friends with me.
Unfortunately, our parasitic Aussie record company, as you might imagine, refuses to release us to follow this dream. This is my first inkling that maybe the record business doesn’t give a flying fuck whether I, personally, make it or not. Okay, we think, we’ll break up, re-form under another name, and then head over to the States. So we do just that. We break up. And that’s it. We never do re-form.
Beeb goes on to Little River Band, Darryl (the lead singer) pursues a TV career, and Rick (the drummer) joins another band and starts taking better-quality drugs. Michelle is pushing hard now for me to go for the solo thing, but I’m not sure what I should do. And then a chance knock at my front door one morning, when Mum has taken Dad for a drive and my brother is out, offers up a small gem.
At the door is a young insurance salesman who wants to sell someone some life insurance. He quickly realizes I’m not his mark, and after inviting himself in, proceeds to regale me with the philosophy revealed in a book he’s just read: Napoleon (they still call people “Napoleon”?) Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. Written during the Great Depression, it is the foundation of all those positive thinking books (The Power of Positive Thinking, Psycho-Cybernetics, The Secret, etc.) that will come after.
It is a revelation to me. You can actually move yourself forward in life by the power of belief and resolve? It’s lost on me at this point that the very first book advocating this stuff was also a best seller … the Bible. But God and I aren’t really on speaking terms at the moment after what he did to my dad.
I slowly back away from my father’s rehab in order to pursue my own life and career. It is a decision that I now understand, but that doesn’t lessen the pain I feel over what was still ahead for our little family. In his own quiet and damaged way, my dad becomes my rock and my champion through the long and sometimes empty years ahead.
But right now I’m devouring Think and Grow Rich like a hippie does pot brownies. I start making lists and slogans and daydreaming/visualizing what I want and where I want to be. What I want is, and has always been, to follow a musician’s path. And where I want to be now, is—America! Ever since I stopped pretending I was English, I’ve had my eyes on the prize that is the States. I still think of England as the place I want to live, but I will find fame and fortune in America … I think. I have my own dream now, and Michelle has herself a solo artiste. It’s 1971, and I am going to the U.S. of almighty A.
Robie Porter was a teen sensation in Australia for a short while in the early ’60s, first as a musician playing rock-and-roll songs on an electric Hawaiian guitar (not an easy task), and then later as a singer. I’d bought his records as a kid and so I know who he is when he shows up at Zoot’s final gig, approaches me, and offers to help me get a record deal in the United States. He says he’s hooked up with Steve Binder in Los Angeles. Steve was the director of the T.A.M.I. (Teenage Awards Music International) show—a concert in Santa Monica, California, that featured the very nervous young Rolling Stones following one of their idols, James Brown—and the previously mentioned Elvis-comeback TV special. Robie is scouting for talent in Oz for the new production company that he and Steve now operate together. He wants to know if I have any songs. If I have any songs?! I send him a demo tape with more than fifty tunes. “Speak to the Sky” is the one he picks out as a hit single.
I still have the original lyrics I wrote to “Speak to the Sky.” The song is inspired by the change in my family’s lives after my father came back from hospital. It’s a song of young, naïve hope and is written on the back of one of Dad’s spidery scribbled notes as he was trying to find his way back home and figure out where his good mind went.
Speak to the sky whenever things go wrong,
And you’ll know you’re not talking to the air …
I write on one side of the thin sheet of paper.
Take a number from one to tend [sic] number …
If you have a number then double it from one to ten then take …
my dad has written on the other side. Both of us reaching out for help.
We record the song, and I’ll be damned if Robie Porter isn’t right. “Speak to the Sky” is my first solo hit. It becomes a Top 5 single on the Australian charts.
If I were to compare my success in Australia so far to an ice cream sundae, I would say I had achieved ice cream, bananas, and nuts; and now the success of “Speak to the Sky” in Australia has placed a big, fat cherry on top. Elton John presents me with an Australian Pop Poll Award for most popular guitar player—not best, mind you, most popular, dammit—of 1971. It is my first encounter with Elton.
Now I really want a shot at the bigger world. Australia remains a pretty small place, musically speaking: there’s still just the one music magazine and the one music TV show to do now and then. Since every Australian musician is still going to England for a shot at the larger world stage, I have chosen America for mine. I mean, jeez, it’s been a good steady climb this far without too much crap, so how hard could America be? I mean, really. C’mon.
Michelle feels vindicated by my solo hit, and although I’m feeling good about it, I’m also doing what I believe I should be doing: focusing on getting to the States. I am now (thanks to the chance meeting with the insurance guy) completely obsessed with getting to America. I know what I want. I write to the Canadian consulate after the U.S. consulate turns me down as a possible immigrant and future sizeable taxpayer (thanks for the vote of confidence, motherfuckers), and I am fully prepared to sneak across the border
like the illegal alien I’ll be if I can’t do it on the up and up. I want it so bad I even see clouds in the sky shaped like the map of America.
It’s a sign, a sign, I tell ya!
I don’t bother forming a new band or touring with this newfound solo success, but I do start writing songs every chance I get. I also start to acquaint myself with the psyche of what appears to be one half of my new management team, the Porter of Binder/Porter. I sign a bunch of documents without even looking at them, one of which relates to the ownership of the publishing rights to all my songs. I ignorantly sign 100 percent of these over to Binder/Porter Management, thank you very much. Who the fuck needs ’em?
Robie and I start going through my vast catalogue of unrecorded songs. We’re looking for ten good ones just in case a U.S. record deal materializes in the near future. I’m thinking, “Come on, they’re signing everyone over there. What’s one more friggin’ little Aussie?”
But things are complicated. For one, I’m in love. Allison is the young wife of Zoot’s record producer and she is a very successful singer herself, with a sweet country voice. She is also my first full-on relationship. That’s a euphemism for hot-sex-and-love-and-wanting-to-spend-my-life-with-her-plus-meeting-her-mum. All while she’s still married. But at twenty-one I’m pretty unaware of the extent of the carnage I’m creating and what I’m doing to the guy on the other side of it all, her husband Howard. In lieu of going on tour myself with my own hit song, I become her guitar player so I can tour with her instead. Michelle gives me a lot of “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” but at that age a young man tends to think with his dick a lot more than with the other, larger, more reasonable brain.
Allison teaches me everything I want to know, including the fact that girls get off too. What? Girls enjoy fucking? That is awesome! She is an insatiable and loving tutor and I am her eager apprentice. Of course I fall in love with her. And of course, we’re just thinking of breaking the news of our relationship to everyone when the call comes that Steve and Robie have landed me a record deal with Capitol Records in the States and I’m going to London to record an album of my songs that they plan to release worldwide. I’m supposed to leave for Los Angeles in a month. Of course.
Am I being tested? How much do I want it?
Well, I want it a lot. A real lot. Enough to leave my sick dad and the girl who is now the love of my life. The last two weeks before I head to the USA, I continue to ignore my own career and play guitar for Allison on her homecoming tour of New Zealand. We fuck our way through that place. Before the show, after the show, on the bus, in restaurants, everywhere and everyplace we can. I think we know that this is it for us. She drives me to the Auckland International Airport on the morning of our final day.
I board the giant white Pan Am 747 in Auckland on the last day I will ever see this young, passionate girl. I kiss her good-bye and although we write to each other for a while of undying love, the letters eventually slow and then stop. She goes to prison many years later after a drug bust. I write a song for her (“Allyson”) on my third album, Living in Oz, but the song is more about the guilt I feel over our illicit affair than about what an amazing and awakening relationship it was for me.
The 747 is aimed straight at Los Angeles. I have waited for this moment for so long and have seen it so many times in my head that I feel prepped. I appear quite calm as I board the huge plane. There’s no turning back. I’m both elated and terrified. And who is this in the seat next to me? It’s my old friend the Darkness. He’s coming along, too. Oh, goody. Well, I’m too damn jacked up to be worried about his presence right now. But he does direct my gaze out the window to the slight figure with long auburn hair blowing in the ever-present New Zealand breeze, waving good-bye from the gate … Allison. He also reminds me that my dad is missing me, too. And points out that our dog Cleo isn’t getting any younger and might not be around much longer, as well as the distinct possibility that I could fall flat on my face in the U.S. and have to crawl back home in the not-too-distant future. I turn to him and tell him to go take a flying fuck. Now is not the time.
We are launched into the sky. That night, in a strange hotel in Hawaii, alone and missing absolutely everyone, I write tearful letters and wonder if I’ve just made the worst mistake of my life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ILLEGAL (HOLLYWOOD SEX-RAT) ALIEN
LONDON/NEW YORK/HOLLYWOOD
1972–1975
Rising early—tired, jet-lagged, and full of misgivings—I walk out into the bright Hawaiian morning sun. I am instantly transformed. It all looks bigger than life. Like an Elvis movie in Cinerama and Technicolor. Rich, secure, and at the center of the world. Ahead of me is a sign that says PEARL HARBOR. And that would be the Pearl Harbor. Not some phrase in a book or a line from a John Wayne film, but the fucking Pearl Harbor. Honestly, no one born in the U.S. can ever truly understand the impact of the greatest PR machine on the face of the planet—the American Movie—and the effect it has had on us foreign kids raised on them. I stand there staring, feeling disoriented and slightly surreal. It’s all so familiar, but now it’s in 3-D—a living, breathing kaleidoscope of smells, noises, and energy.
Hey, I don’t feel so bad. I board the plane (it looks like the same Pan Am jet I took from New Zealand) and snap photos like a rube tourist as it taxis and takes off, butterflies in the pit of my stomach. I look to my right. There is no sign of Mr. Darkness, and I feel on the brink of something new and incredible. The in-flight movie comes on right away (wow, these Yanks have everything) and we are asked to close the shades on our windows. Twenty minutes into the flight, the film switches off and an ominous voice says, “Please keep your seat belts fastened, we are returning to Honolulu.” We make a low pass once over the airfield and I see a red-and-white cluster of fire engines and ambulances lining both sides of one of the runways. Apparently we’ve just been circling the airport for the last twenty minutes. People are starting to panic.
The same disembodied intercom voice speaks again. “We are experiencing a problem with landing gear deployment and are making an emergency landing. Please remain seated.” WTF? “Has this all been for nothing?” I think to myself. I look over and suddenly the Darkness is there and he seems to agree with me that, yes, quite possibly it has, and we are all about to be incinerated beyond recognition in a wave of boiling jet fuel. But we land safely and there are no charred bodies on the six o’clock news and my dream can go on. I do like Hawaii and decide right then and there that I will live here someday, but I’m anxious to see the mainland, and eventually I arrive in Los Angeles on a thick, warm, smoggy late afternoon.
Robie Porter has lived in LA for several years now. He picks me up at Los Angeles International (Oh my God) Airport in his giant Cadillac Coupe de Ville. I am duly impressed. He steers with one finger as we drive down Hollywood Boulevard. I don’t know about power steering yet, and I think to myself “Wow, does America make everybody so strong that you can drive with one finger?!” I’ve never seen power windows before, either, and I play with the one on the passenger side, up and down, up and down, up and down, ’til Robie finally yells at me to knock it off.
We arrive at Steve Binder’s house and, man, it’s in Beverly Hills! Could this day get any better? Steve is a warm, affable guy, full of confidence and funny stories (all about very famous people, of course—Sammy Davis, Jr., some bigwig record executives I’ve never heard of, and of course, Elvis), and I feel like this is my entrée into the big leagues.
Steve tells me that he’s heard my demos and really likes them and my voice. He says he saw a photo of me and thought, “Wow, and he looks like this?” I’m unsure of what he’s getting at. Is that a good or a bad thing? By the way he’s carrying on, he leads me to believe that it’s a positive. I’m beginning to get a glimpse of the value put on appearance here in America. By now I have some quiet confidence that I am indeed not the ugliest kid in the world, by way of certain female attention and words whispered during sweaty, heated m
oments, and although I have had my own depression-related issues with feeling ugly and undesirable, how you look isn’t that big of a deal where I come from. In Oz at this time there is no great premium placed on a guy being handsome. In fact, you’re likely to get the shit kicked out of you if you’re good-looking. The way Steve is talking, being attractive appears to be a crucial prerequisite in the U.S. for everything from superstardom to soap carving.
I like Steve. He has had his own successes in the TV-directing world, and I feel that perhaps I’m in good hands. I am fairly naïve about how things work in America and assume these guys are smart enough to steer my career in the right direction. Although I don’t understand it at the time, their idea of “the right direction” and my idea of “the right direction” are 180 degrees in opposition to each other. Welcome to the world of divergent interests, Rickyboy. And in 1972, despite the record companies’ money, success, excess, great game plans of action, and brilliant if heavily stoned minds, the success of any given act is still pretty much a giant crapshoot.
Late, Late at Night Page 14
