Tex Perkins

The ?indestructible? Tex Perkins reluctantly relives his colourful career with PATRICK EMERY – from his early years as a teenage blow-in in Sydney’s rock scene to finally tasting commercial success with The Cruel Sea.

In the early 1980s, a gangly Brisbane youth with a fascination for country music and its mutant swamp and punk cousins arrived in Sydney with his then band. Gregory Perkins – known as ?Tex? to his friends on account of his interest in country music – was the lead singer in Tex Deadly and The Dum Dums, a Brisbane outfit with its own idiosyncratic take on country, rockabilly and swamp punk.

Perkins quickly fell in with protagonists of the Sydney scene of the time including Kim Salmon, Spencer P Jones, Boris Sudjovic, Stu Spasm and John Foy. When the rest of The Dum Dums split, Perkins formed the ?inner-city supergroup? Beasts of Bourbon to fulfill a Dum Dums commitment, sowing the seeds for a legend that would, like the Greek god Saturn, eventually devour its offspring.

Perkins evolved into one of the Australian independent music scenes most noticeable icons, forming and playing in a series of cult bands including Thug, The James Baker Experience, Salamander Jim and Bumhead Orchestra. In the early ?90s, he found himself a pin-up boy for the independent music scene when the Cruel Sea hit paydirt with their Honeymoon is Over album.

After exploring a solo career with Tex Perkins and The Dark Horses, he revived The Beasts of Bourbon, releasing a couple of albums before the band hit the wall in Europe during its 2007 tour. Lately Perkins has cast his glance back toward both his own past, reviving the Cruel Sea for irregular festival appearances (mostly recently Golden Plains). He’s also decided to celebrate – tongue firmly planted in cheek – classic pop tracks of the ?70s and ?80s firstly with You Am I’s Tim Rogers in the T’n?T project, and subsequently with Tex Perkins and The Ladyboyz. Most recently, Perkins has assumed the role of his boyhood idol, Johnny Cash, in the local stage production of the singer’s life, The Man In Black.

In Perkins? words, his credibility is ?indestructible?. Whether that observation is sincere or laced with irony is in the eye of the beholder – and if you take Perkins at face value, he doesn’t really care what people think.

You started out playing during the Bjelke-Peterson years in Brisbane. What was the musical environment like in Brisbane in those days?
It was deprived, it was underdeveloped, it was undernourished, it was pathetic. There didn’t even seem to be much of a groundswell of need for it either. The Brisbane scene seemed to only house about 40 people, and they’d all gather at one bar on a Friday night. As far as venues there might be one operating, a nightclub that had bands on from one until three, or just people holding gigs at halls. The pubs might have bands on for a month or two and then they’d close down.

So what was your first ever gig?
My first gig was with a band called The Corpse of Christ. We played at The University of Queensland. But I only did one gig with them. The Dum Dums? first gig was at a place called The New York Hotel. It was a desperate sort of a thing – not desperate, but just a few people making things happen. There wasn’t much call for it.
When you headed down to Sydney in the early 1980s was it easy to ingratiate yourself into the Sydney live scene of that time?
Yes, I fortunately I fell in with great people. Not only were they great musicians, but at the time they were really generous. You have to remember that I was still 17 when I came to Sydney and people like Kim Salmon and Spencer Jones, and people in those bands, they were all in their mid 20s, so to have them treat me as an equal was flattering. I’ll never not be grateful for those people accepting me like that. It was a great scene, that Sydney of the early 1980s. There were about half-a-dozen good venues around the city that we used to play at.

You headed across to the UK in the mid 1980s?
Are you writing a book about me or something?

I’d love to, but this is just a basic narrative of your life for an article. If I could get a spot on This Is Your Life, I’d arrange for people from your past to miraculously appear. But back to the question: what were your expectations when you headed overseas?
That was a direct expectation from people to form a band with them. We always had an image of London and New York as the two places you eventually had to go to. When you’re really poor in London it’s very hard to embrace all the good things there. When you’ve got enough money to get a tube to rehearsals, buy one pint of beer, maybe some packed soup to feed yourself and then you’re broke, it’s very hard to appreciate London.

After you got back you decamped to Adelaide. What did you do there?
I was there a couple of times for a few months because of my girlfriend of the time. But that was a good place.

That would have been around the time of the Greasy Pop bands.
I guess so, yeah.

Fond memories?
I enjoyed Adelaide.

Did you know Adelaide people like Stu Spasm already?
Stu had already left, but there were a few good people left. It was an odd little community that Adelaide would cough up – there’s nothing like a weirdo from Adelaide. Weirdos from other cities just don’t compete with weirdos from Adelaide. If you want weirdos, go to Adelaide. Adelaide and Darwin.

Can I ask you about some of your more ephemeral outfits: The Poofters, Toilet Duck, Bush Oysters, Vertigo? Were any of those bands supposed to have a lifespan beyond a couple of gigs?
No. Some of them never actually played live. Some of them I wasn’t actually in. Vertigo was someone else’s band that I played drums in. I was in a band called Toilet Duck, and we did do live gigs.

What was Toilet Duck about?
What was it about? Have you ever seen the inside cover of Captain Beefheart’s album Strictly Personal? That’s what Toilet Duck was all about. I say no more. It was about making a colourful noise and mess. It was all about colour and mess.

In a similar vein, what was the original idea behind Thug?
Colour and mess. And humour and violence.

Clinton Walker’s Stranded recalls the days when you’d advertise nude evenings at the Petersham Inn in Sydney. Can you tell me more about those events?
Duncan, who works at the St Kilda Bowls Club, used to run the Petersham Inn. Duncan was a patron of our arts, basically he gave us the run of the Petersham. If it wasn’t for Duncan a lot of that ?Black Eye? scene wouldn’t have had the legs that it did. We had a venue that we could pretty much access and do all sorts of things. And one of the things we came up with was, ?Why don’t we give away free beer to nude people?? Duncan said that was a great idea, so sure enough we had free beer for nudes. It was a symptom of the complete freedom that Duncan afforded us at the time. We used to put on these colourful, messy evenings.

What about Bumhead Orchestra? Was that more colour and noise?
Absolutely. I conduct an improvised orchestra and they adhere to my exact instructions. I’m more a traffic cop than a conductor.

Let’s move onto the Beasts…
What sort of article are you writing?

It’s just a long piece for Mess+Noise.
This is so tedious.

I apologise for the pain I’m putting you through.
Maybe we should make up a few things. I’m a keen balloonist. A hot air balloonist.

Do you have a favourite period of the Beasts of Bourbon?
Yeah, now. This is the best period, looking back.

To what extent do you think The Beasts became a victim of its own reputation?
Many times, many times.

If you were a betting man, what odds would you put on a reunion of the most recent line-up, and the original (recorded) line-up?
I wouldn’t put odds on any of it. It’s not going to have it. I wouldn’t mind doing the original line-up stuff, but I’m not that interested in the most recent line-up. I wouldn’t mind going back and singing a few swamp songs, Patrick.

Moving onto the next period of your life – Chapter 7 – when the Cruel Sea took off in the early 1990s, and you found yourself on the cover of Rolling Stone, did you ever feel any pressure to conform to the industry standard of a pop star?
Yes, but I didn’t know what to do! I wanted to conform, but nobody would tell me what to do. I was out there on my own, making it up as I went along, but I wanted some guidance. I’ll play the game, but nobody would tell me what the game was!

The Cruel Sea always had that outward appearance of being a ?settled? band, certainly compared to the mayhem and madness of the Beasts and Thug. But was the reality different?
Oh, yeah, we were fucking nuts back then. Absolutely very unhealthy, very dysfunctional, very [snores] tired.

Towards the end of the Cruel Sea’s original tenure you seemed to be conscious of bucking popular and commercial expectations of the band.
Three Legged Dog* was about kicking off that *Hey, Hey It’s Saturday* audience that came with being a mainstream act. *Three Legged Dog was a deliberate attempt to lose that so we weren’t trapped into playing the suburbs forever – even though we still love the suburbs as much as the suburbs love us. But I think we’ve always tried to wrestle control of our public image.

You’ve spent most of your musical life as part of a band, save for your solo releases in the mid 1990s. Do you prefer playing a part on stage, rather than being notionally just being ?plain old Tex Perkins??
Plain old Tex Perkins? [Laughs] There is no such thing. Fabulous Tex Perkins. Plain old fabulous Tex Perkins. You’re always playing a role – you’ve always got a mask on of some description. Even you, now, today, Patrick. you’re wearing a wig and a mask.

Shit, yeah.
What sort of fucking article are you writing again?

Just a plain old article.
Ask another question then.

You’ve played a lot with Charlie Owen over recent times. What is it about Charlie that you makes you enjoy playing with him so much?
I admire Charlie for all sorts of reasons. I’m just trying to work out what’s at the top of the pile. We just work well together. It just works. We have a connection and an easy way of working together. I think that’s what most attractive to me about playing with him.

Beginning with T’n?T [with Tim Rogers] and continuing through to the Ladyboyz project, you’ve done some quite irreverent projects. Do you think you lost any credibility with those projects – and do you care?
[Laughs] My credibility is like the hardest rock miles deep within the earth. It’s impenetrable. I bust my head against my cool. I can bang away at it all day and it won’t do anything. I can shit on it and it wipes straight off. I try to ruin my credibility but it just keeps coming back. It’s a monster. It’s a creature with a life of its own. I try to destroy my credibility but it’s indestructible.

Speaking of indestructibility, you’ve been quoted as saying all your bands have been destroyed by drugs. How have you managed to survive?
They haven’t all been destroyed by drugs. Just two of them. Maybe three. Or four. But I’ve been in a lot of bands. Like my credibility and my cool, I myself am virtually indestructible. I’m made of pretty good stuff.

Clearly. My final question: can you see yourself doing anymore theatrical or cinematic type activities?
Maybe, it depends on the material. The only reason I did this Johnny Cash show was that it was Johnny Cash. I can do Johnny Cash in my sleep. In fact, I often do. I’m doing it right now.

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Tex Perkins will headline the Between The Bays Music Festival in Moorooduc on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula tomorrow (March 20). For tickets and more information click here.