What surprised me when I delved a little further into this stuff was that there was actually a chapter in this 'book' called 'Pop Life'. I remember how we laboured over what to call the book which became Pop Life (though I don't remember what the other options considered were...!). But in fact I had actually used this phrase already... bizarre.
I have cut out the libellous bits. Just as I would have if the book had actually been published in this form.
In life, some things just don’t fit into
a coherent narrative. I know the only reason you started reading this memoir
was for dirt on the stars. I have bugger all dirt on the stars, but I do have
some neatish anecdotes that might impress the other people at the nursing home
when I’m a hundred. I’ll jot them down here so I won’t forget them.
1. The Singing Budgie
Kylie Minogue’s success as a singer in mid-1987 onwards took us by
surprise at Smash Hits as much as it
did anyone (including herself I bet). She had not really impacted on us until
she started making records; then came the press backlash against her everywhere
except in the pop papers. I interviewed her once – a boring affair – she got
grumpy with me when I suggested she hadn’t made it big in the US (she thought
she had, with ‘Locomotion’.) I do remember her budgie-like enthusiasm, though,
about the spectacular view from her Sydney hotel suite.
2. Michael and Kylie
Everyone said Michael and Kylie were an item. I thought this was the
most risible thing I’d ever heard. I had to interview Michael about the Max Q
album and I had a whole swag of questions to ask him about how such an absurd
rumour had come about. When I showed up at the recording studio, there were
Michael and Kylie, together, kissing in front of me… she said ‘hi’ to me… he
gave her the keys to his car, made some joke about giving her some pocket
money, like he was her dad or something, and she left.
[...]
4. Red Hot Chili Peppers
I interviewed Anthony Kiedis in April, 1990. He was very funny – only
thinking with the outside of his brain. From my transcript I see I asked him if
he had an indian penis. He replied that ‘primarily I’m Lithuanian’. If memory serves
me correctly he also told me that Stevie Nicks had a coke roadie to blow
cocaine up her arse with a straw, a rumour that later got a lot of currency.
From my point of view it wouldn’t have made it to print in anything except Extra, if Lesley mistook it for a sexual
act.
5. Ross Wilson
‘The thing that annoys me the most, I get this thing about “You’re the
big survivor” and “You’re the godfather of Australian rock ‘n’ roll” which
annoys me because all I’m interested in doing is continuing… fuck the industry,
I’m not really interested in the industry.’ At this time –1987 – Mondo Rock
were still amongst us, but had long ceased to produce big hits. It must have
given Ross the complete shits that, where his version of an obscure Stones cover
– ‘I’m Free’ – failed to chart, the Soup Dragons’ inferior version was a big
hit three years later.
6. Glenn Shorrock
I had the pleasure of meeting Glenn Shorrock at the time he rejoined
LRB for two thoroughly turgid albums in 1988. ‘People, especially young people,
put too much emphasis on success and failure, or they see things on a success
or failure level,’ was his message to the 10 year olds who read Smash Hits. He did, however, see youth
rebellion as valid, particularly when he applied it to himself: ‘Anyone over
twenty was old hat [in the 60s]. They didn’t listen to rock ‘n’ roll music, of
course that has changed.’ Ho hum, it sure has, Glenn.
7. Wendy James
I could spin this story out to a thousand words but why bother. I
interviewed Wendy James at the offices of WEA records. She was lying on a
couch, her wrists were all bandaged up, she didn’t get up. I asked her what had
happened and she told me she had got a wrist infection from a microphone stand,
and mimed how she rubbed the mike stand with her wrists. Too weird. Transvision
Vamp were a terrible group but I loved Wendy James’ solo album; every time I
see Matthew Hall I ask him if he’s heard it.
8. James Reyne
I truly have great admiration for James Reyne. He was always getting
bagged for his acting performance in Return
to Eden, so I asked him once if he was going to do more acting. He said he
would like to appear in the first five minutes of a movie as someone who lights
a stick of dynamite and kills some people and himself. This sounds like the
response of someone who knew what the Smash
Hits readers wanted to hear, and it had everything: sex, death, movies,
instant gratification. ‘Hammerhead’ and ‘Fall of Rome’ were great singles, too.
9. Simon Day
Simon Day of Ratcat worked as a graphic designer on Playboy, part time. We used to chew the
fat. I asked him if he had an ambition to work on Playboy full time. He said ‘I think I’ll see if this rock ‘n’ roll
thing works out first’. I liked Ratcat but I thought, jesus christ, mate, you’d
be fucken lucky. In six months Ratcat were number one. We were doing articles
on Ratcat while Day was still working down the corridor. He used to come in and
read over our shoulders what we were writing about him.
10. Marcus
Everyone must remember Marcus. Billboards all around Sydney for a long
time said ‘Marcus is Coming’ and a picture of a handsome Johnny Diesel, Johnny
Depp type boy. Finally Marcus did come and it was amongst the biggest letdowns
of the decade. His independent single was one of those generic Memphis studio’s
country and western songs with Marcus karaokeing over the top. The rumour I
heard was that Marcus was the son of a Canberra grocer family who not
unreasonably thought image was everything in the pop business. This is why
everyone remembers Marcus but no-one remembers his record.
11. Bros and Gayness
Readers were always perturbed, distressed and perhaps excited by the
idea that such-and-such a star might be gay. ‘Tell me it’s not true!’ they
would write to us. One reader wrote in with a new twist on the old sperm
ingestion-stage collapse story a la Marc Almond, Rod Stewart, etc, that ‘the
singing Bros’ had collapsed on stage from an overdose of the ‘drumming Bros’s
sperms’. The reader was flabbergasted, though not from the overdose story
exactly. Her question was: ‘can a brother gay a brother?’ She may still be
wondering, because we didn’t publish the letter.
12. Slash
Marc Andrews had to go out to lunch with Collette. He said to me, ‘I’ve
set up this phone interview with this stupid rock band, Guns en Roses. They won’t call but if they
do, here’s some questions.’ Slash called. Marc had written all these questions
about whether G’n’R hated Poison, and so on. Slash stopped me after about
question ten and said ‘These are questions people were asking us a year ago.’
He kept putting the phone down to answer his door, he was having a party. Two
months later they were the hottest band on earth.
13. Dannii at Wonderland
I thought Dannii Minogue was adorable. Her lack of artifice concealed
what I suppose was really a hideous, Young Talent Time-inspired
professionalism. Once I went to Wonderland with her (to do a story) and kids
everywhere were coming up and saying ‘Hi, Dannii!’ to her. She would stop,
seemingly surprised, and study their faces then, realising that she actually
didn’t know them, said ‘hi’. If only the world was made up entirely of people
so lacking in pretension. I’m serious, she was genuinely checking each kid to
make sure she didn’t actually know them. So perfect!
14. Wa Wa Nee
I thought Wa Wa Nee’s second album So
Good was a complete ripper, and I still play it a lot. They were utterly
the victims of the boring old fart FM revolution of the late 80s. Word had it
that So Good sold less than 1000
copies. If this is true, then the Cannanes sold more records… than that album.
Wa Wa Nee played the first and last Smash
Hits Dance Party at Sydney Town Hall, filmed by the ABC. Almost no-one
came. The ABC said, ‘don’t worry, we’ll make it look like there’s an audience.’
[...]
16. James Freud’s Step into the Heat
Mushroom spent a fortune on this 1989 James Freud album. I asked him
why anyone would want to step into the heat. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, then
proved it: ‘I never really analysed it that much, y’know. My stuff, even though
I write it, and so obviously there’s a reason for everything I do, at the same
time I prefer not to analyse anything I do… and just take it on face value, you
know, here’s the song, here’s the title, if you don’t like it, fuck off, who
cares.’ The album stiffed.
17. Giving away The Tribe
An early lesson in rock journalism. I was on the train one day, having
come from the Smash Hits office where
James had given me an album by a band called The Tribe to review. Some schoolboys
were sitting opposite me, and one of them was engrossed in writing ‘The Tribe’
on his schoolbag in biro. His friend said, ‘Have you got their album?’, and he
said nah. I couldn’t resist: ‘Do you want it?’ My review was extremely
positive; nothing I’d heard of The Tribe’s album made me dislike them or their
music.
18. Madonna’s virginity
You knew Madonna was onto something with
that ‘Like a Virgin’ record because everyone in the industry went on about it.
It got so depressing when the umpteenth photographer or manager or whatever
would say ‘Madonna? She’s no virgin!’ (the kids would write in with this kind
of comment too, but they were kids).
The word ‘virgin’ must have stood out in 100-foot high letters in those days
because no-one seemed to realise that the song was not called ‘I’m a virgin’
but ‘Like a Virgin’. Maybe everyone around me was just confirming they
understood. ‘She’s no virgin!’
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