Working Class Boy (25 page)

Everybody in the car went silent.

I applied a little more pressure, still nothing.

‘Stop fucking around, Jim,' one of them said but I was concentrating too much on driving to answer.

I slammed my foot to the floor – nothing at all.

‘You're going to have to help, lads,' I yelled, trying to slow the car down by shifting back through the gears. Soon we were going slow enough to pull off the road.

‘Jump out and stop us, boys.'

They all jumped out of the car and we managed to stop it.

We sat there scratching our heads for a while. None of us knew anything about cars so we just sat, saying nothing for a minute or two. I had bought this car that very day; you would think that the vendor would mention something as important as the brakes being shot.

‘Maybe he didn't know the brakes were gone when he sold it to me,' I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

‘Yeah sure, Jim. He saw you coming, pal. I hope you know where to find him.'

‘Right, guys, we need to work this out,' I said. ‘I guess we leave the car here and hitch home.' But the drugs had kicked in. ‘Or we could keep going without brakes and you guys stop the car.'

We took a quick vote and decided to keep going.

‘We'll be fine, boys. Brakes aren't that important. I'll drive slowly and when we need to stop you guys jump out and get in front of it and stop it.'

We made it just in time to see the movie. We had decided that none of us were going to jump the fence because we needed
everyone to stop the car. We did get some very strange looks when we pulled up at the ticket gate, with all the guys falling out of the car, laughing and throwing themselves in front of the moving car. Surprisingly, they said nothing and let us go straight in. My friends, the brakes, got back in the car and we cruised into a spot and settled in to watch the movie.

We loved the movie, though it reminded us of ourselves a bit too much.

‘We're not that bad are we?' I asked as we left but no one answered me.

We spoke like they did in the movie for months after that night. It must have driven our parents mad.

‘Well, well, my old Babooshka. What have thee for brekky my lovely?'

‘Hey you, I'm yer mother. I don't like it when you speak tae me like that.'

‘Oh apoly logy my old mumsy. Serve it up now and don't make me tolchock you.'

‘I don't know what you're sayin' but I don't like the sound of it. So speak English or don't talk at aw.'

‘Just hand over the pretty polly and I'll be gone.'

‘Get oot, now!'

‘Enough of this chumble, I'm offskie my lovely.'

Anyway, it was time to leave and we set out on the big adventure of getting home. I dropped off two of the guys, then the other two got out together and I was left alone in the car. I had, of course, not taken into consideration that I would have no brakes at all when I got home. The acid had affected my judgement a little.

So I drove very slowly and turned into my street and then into the driveway of Mum's house. It was then I realised I couldn't stop. In front of me was Reg's Corolla, and I didn't want to hit it. So I turned the wheel and slammed the car into a tree that was
in the middle of my mum's front yard. It looked like there was a cloud of steam coming from under the bonnet, but it might just have been the drugs. The car had stopped and I was still breathing. I shook my head, turned off the engine and went inside.

It had been a big night and I never even thought about it again until morning, when Reg came in and woke me up to see if I was okay.

‘What the hell happened, son?'

I got up and had a quick look outside and then at myself in the mirror. ‘I'm fine but that car turned out to be a bit of a dud, Dad.'

Then I got back into bed and went back to sleep. That was the end of my first car. It lasted one evening. But it was worth every cent I paid for it. We had a great night and nobody died.

* * *

My sister Linda started going out with a guy who rode a motorbike. I'm not sure if he was a bikie but he rode a Kawasaki 900 and he was a scumbag. He wasn't real smart but what he lacked in intellect he made up for in stupidity. Also, to top things off, he had absolutely no social skills that any of the family could see. He was a dropkick. Linda fell for him, hook, line and sinker. This was the guy she had been waiting for all her life, apparently.

Mum hated him, and even Reg, who gave everybody a chance, pleaded with her to break up with him. The rest of us just put up with him. So after going through a very quick courtship they moved in together. This went well; they only came to blows a few times. So they decided to stay together a little longer. This went smoothly enough for Linda to make an announcement to us after a few months.

‘I'm getting married,' she said with a tear in her slightly black eye.

‘Are you fucking serious?' was the general reaction from her siblings.

But she was certain. ‘Come on, guys. This is it. He's the one for me. I love him.'

Mum had been waiting all her life for one happy marriage in the family. To all of us, it seemed she would have to keep waiting. This was not going to be it.

So the wedding was arranged. Mum and Reg hired a hall in Port Adelaide and the wedding went ahead as planned. By now Linda and this fellow were getting to know each other better – but regardless of this, they decided to go ahead with the ceremony.

We all got dressed up in our Sunday best and got ready to party like there was no tomorrow. The party was big, and in true Scottish tradition there was drinking and dancing and fighting. Not necessarily in that order. Mum cried, Reg hoped for the best, as he always did, and the rest of us took advantage of the free booze and tried to have as great a party as we could. We all wanted the best for Linda and if this really made her happy, so be it.

Linda looked beautiful in white, with white flowers setting off her long dark hair that hung down to her waist. Around her neck was the beautiful cross laden with rubies, given to her by her dead step-great-grandmother, still walking the earth for some reason. This was the cross that would protect Linda for the rest of her life. This was the perfect day. She threw her bouquet to her friends at the end of the night and drove off with her husband to spend the first night of eternity with the man she loved. I guess the cross didn't see this guy coming.

Unfortunately, the man she loved had drunk way too much. A few miles down the road he stopped the car and dragged her out by her beautiful flowing hair with the flowers in it. He wrapped it around a barbed-wire fence and proceeded to beat her within
an inch of her life. He then ripped the cross off her neck. No one is sure whether he took it with him or threw it into a field but it was never seen again. Linda was left alone and bleeding, draped across the barbed wire like an angel at Gallipoli, unconscious. She was found a few hours later and taken to hospital. She's never been the same wild girl since that night.

I
spent most of my time thinking about girls. Well, girls and music. I never thought I could play music for a living. I just wanted to get into a band and escape from the day to day boredom of my life. Every day was the same as the last in Elizabeth. We waited all week for the weekend when we could go wild. But if I was in a real band, every night would be the weekend and there would be girls whenever I wanted them.

These were just dreams. I was going to be trapped in the life I had until I worked it out, died or was locked up.

I was heavily influenced by the music my brother John had played me, so I was way ahead of the other kids my own age. When they were listening to The Archies, I was listening to Jimi Hendrix.

An old school friend of mine called Malcolm lived around the corner from the Elizabeth Fields shops at that time. We were trying our best to learn about life. We were also trying our best to get drunk and to get laid as often as we could without getting killed. We were both listening to as much music as we could take in.

Malcolm wasn't part of the gang that fought and made targets of themselves at the centre; he was too nice for that. His house seemed to be a lot better than mine, and his family seemed more stable. But, like me, he spent way too much time getting very drunk and throwing up so he must have had his own problems.

On many a night we would end up back at his house after drinking too much, playing records until we passed out. He had the stereo of doom, a great reel-to-reel tape machine that he used to copy all my records onto. It was obviously his dad's but he didn't mind us using it. Malcolm and his brother were listening to nice music until they met me. I changed their musical tastes drastically.

I used to turn up at Malcolm's house with an armful of records, take off whatever was on the turntable and say, ‘Listen to this' and put on ‘Death Walks Behind You', ‘War Pigs' or ‘Easy Livin''.

I was like the local DJ. My collection was made up of stuff I'd found or stolen from my brother. Free, Deep Purple, Grand Funk Railroad (a particular favourite of mine at the time), Humble Pie, Black Sabbath. Depending on how many I could sneak away from John's collection and how many I wanted to carry. Some nights, I might have Atomic Rooster, Uriah Heep and Led Zeppelin, depending on what caught my eye at the time I was leaving. My records could easily wake up the neighbourhood and quite often did.

I wanted to play bass like Andy Fraser and scream like Mark Farner. And I wanted my band to be heavy, so heavy it made my parents sick. In fact, made all parents sick. That was my plan. And to try to make that a reality, I would sing at the top of my voice along with Paul Rodgers, Stevie Marriott, Mark Farner and Ozzie while I was playing records in Malcolm's living room. Most nights we would have a bunch of guys with us, a pile of beer and a few girls. If we had no money, which was quite often,
we would drink any beer that Malcolm's folks left in the fridge. Then we would crank up his stereo until it nearly exploded.

‘How come your dad never makes us turn it down?' I would ask while rummaging through the fridge looking for more to drink.

‘He's not here a lot and even if he was he wouldn't mind.'

‘What about drinking his beer?'

‘That's okay with him too.'

I guess his parents were happy we were doing this at their house instead of in a paddock somewhere. Malcolm was my best mate for a long time. I used to escape the shit that was my real life and have fun with him and his brother. They were normal blokes and we shared a lot of laughs. Many a night he found me asleep on his front doormat. I had passed out while I was knocking on the door, trying to get him up to let me in.

Mick and I were driving around one night, looking for something to do or to destroy, when we ended up at a dance at the Elizabeth Community Centre. This was a place we only went as a last resort. The community centre had nothing going for it. It consisted of an entrance hallway (so brightly lit by fluorescent lights that no one looked good), where you could buy soft drinks, which led into the bigger room where the dance was held. This room had no stage, no dance floor and no real lighting. The other essential ingredient that was needed for a dance was atmosphere. The community centre had very little. The more lights that were turned off, the better it looked. It probably looked best when it was shut.

Anyway, the local community group held dances here every Saturday night. Sometimes they had a band but most nights someone played DJ, playing bad music that no one wanted to hear. The only people who went were dorks, unless they were
like us and desperate or looking for trouble. A few girls would hang around at the dance though, which is why we were there.

But this night there was a band playing. And the singer, as fate would have it, was the same singer who had been in my school band, the guy with the Ziggy Stardust obsession. Anyway, he was sick or drunk and couldn't sing that night. He missed a lot of gigs this guy.

We tried to talk Mick into singing. He was the extrovert of the gang and we all thought he was the guy who was cut out to be a rock star.

‘Go on, man, sing with the band. This is your chance.'

‘Fuck that, I'd rather get drunk somewhere. I'm out of here.' The reality was he was too lazy to get up with the band. He took off in his car with a girl, leaving me stranded.

Now I'd had a few drinks and somehow got talked into singing. I was probably nearly as lazy as Mick but I'd drunk more than him. Enough to get me up there with the band. I stood with my back turned to the audience and started to sing along. The guys knew lots of songs by my favourite bands, so I knew some of the words. What I didn't know I just mumbled. No one was paying that much attention so it didn't really matter.

After a while we had a few people watching us. Even cheering us on. But they were mostly our mates.

I sang on and off for a set or two, singing every song in my repertoire. There weren't many songs in my repertoire, by the way. Come to think of it, I didn't know what a repertoire was. But I sang every song I knew; in fact, I think I sang most of them twice. The gig was a huge success. All five people watching liked us.

I had taken a very small step up the social ladder in Elizabeth that night and I knew it and it felt good. A couple of girls who wouldn't speak to me before suddenly thought I was cool and wanted to hang out with me.

‘Are you coming here again next week?'

‘Yeah, maybe. The band want me to sit in with them again if I'm not singing somewhere else.'

As if I had somewhere else to sing. This band thing was pretty good. I might have to do it more often.

Mick turned up later and had the shits because he wasn't the centre of attention and left soon after. But I'd made some new friends and I decided that I wanted to be in their band. Luckily for me they wanted me to join too.

This was really my first band. With the addition of Michael Smith on bass we became Tarkus, the band I played with until I joined Cold Chisel. We weren't that good but it was our training ground. Michael and I would go on to have careers in the music industry; the others really never made it past the garage band stage.

We started doing the odd show at local community halls. I'm sure we were shit but we thought we were destined for greatness – as long as you could be great doing bad covers of other people's songs.

For years my brother John smuggled me into gigs. ‘Hey Jim, come and carry my drums for me and you can get up and sing at the end of the night. You might learn something if you're lucky.'

So that's what I did. I would help him carry his drums and I would get up and sing with them at the end of the night. In the meantime, I would drink all the free drinks I could get from the staff and anyone else at the shows.

By the end of the night I would be pissed and singing on the stage. Girls seemed to like me when I sang and I had more confidence when I drank. This would become a wild roller-coaster ride that I would be riding for a long, long time but I liked it and I wasn't jumping off.

‘Hey Jim, get off your lazy arse and carry my drums back out to the truck. That was the deal remember.'

‘Yeah, right away John.'

I would stagger to the stage and do some work for a minute or else he wouldn't let me go with him the next time. I knew a good thing when I saw one.

John and his band would take me back to their band house and we would drink and take drugs until the sun came up, every night of the week. The house was in the suburb of Paradise, which was quite fitting when I think about what went on there. The band were all good musicians who loved soul music and real rock-and-roll. Unfortunately for them this was not how they made their money. They had to play the hits of the time and the odd Chuck Berry song to audiences who never cared that much until they were pissed and trying to impress each other. By this time, they danced to the band but the only thing they had in mind was who they would be sleeping with that night. Fortunately, by that time, the band had the same thing on their minds. So quite often they would end up at Paradise with a car full of girls and pockets full of drugs. And I would be there with them.

They played great music to me, each of them taking the time to add songs to my listening repertoire. It was as if each of these guys played a part in my music education.

Life was good and I wanted to get into my own band, a real band, not like the one I was in, but a band where you got paid to play and girls followed you around and wanted to be with you. Just like one of John's bands. I didn't think I would make a lot of money, but I didn't care. I just wanted to be out of control, like him.

I was getting better at singing too. John turned me on to an album by Edgar Winter's White Trash called
Roadwork
. I listened to it every night for a year. I was like a sponge. Every note they
sang I copied. I learned how to scream from the singers on this record. Johnny and Edgar Winter, Jerry La Croix, these were the singers I wanted to be like, wild Texan and Louisiana boys who did whatever they wanted and screamed like banshees. They played loud and fast and soulful and I made up my mind that when I found a band, this was how we would play. Well, loud and fast would do. It might take a bit longer to find some soul. Especially when you didn't know where to look or what you were looking for.