Читать книгу Daddy Who? - Craig Horne - Страница 6

Ross ‘Hanna’ Hannaford parked his car in the street at the front of my house in Melbourne’s Fitzroy North. From my front window I watched him open his driver’s-side door and unravel from the front seat. It was 2001 and his wardrobe for the evening was all you’d expect: an orange beanie; a green oversized pullover under a navy blue velvet smoking jacket; large blue harem trousers, tucked into a pair of knee-length gold boots; a long red and yellow scarf wrapped around his neck. I walked to the gate to meet him, beaming.

‘G’day Ross, how are you mate?’

‘Hey Craig!’ said Hanna, his familiar deep, throaty drawl cutting through the midwinter gloom.

We walked to the rear of his little white Japanese wagon and began unloading his gear into my Toyota parked a few spots up the road. I pulled his two Vox AC15s out of the back and followed him as he lugged his effects board and Chandler guitar toward my wagon—a bulging shoulder bag bounced on his left hip.

‘Where are we playing tonight, man?’ he asked

‘Hepburn Springs, the Palais Theatre, remember?’

‘Yeah, yeah right, Wayne and Gary are playin’ too, yeah?’

‘Yep they are, it’ll be a great night, the venue’s had good ticket sales and the room we play in is gorgeous.’ The Palais was built in the 1920s and it has one of the last remaining sprung dance floors in the country. ‘Plus,’ I added, ‘they’re feeding and watering us, so all good mate.’

I had called Hanna to once again sit in with my band, The Hornets, who at that time featured his former Daddy Cool band mates: bassist Wayne Duncan and drummer, Gary Young. Guitarist and co-band founder, Jeff Burstin, was also in the mix. Jeff had played with Hanna in Gary’s Rocking Emus immediately after Daddy Cool called it quits in 1974. Jeff was unavailable for the Hepburn Springs gig so Hanna agreed to fill in.

Hanna and I had had a history that stretched back to the mid-seventies, we had even recorded a cassette album together a couple of years prior to this gig, but it was only in the last year or two that we had started playing the odd show together. I was looking forward to the night, especially playing with two thirds of my all-time favourite Australian band.

We drove along the Tullamarine Freeway towards the Western Ring Road exit with Hanna, all the while, reaching into his shoulder bag and extracting mandarin after mandarin; he must have demolished over a dozen in under half an hour.

‘These are great man, they’re the best thing about winter, so sweet and healthy, I love ’em …’

With his citrus cravings sated, he pulled a giant stash of dope out of his bottomless bag and filled the car with a memory from the old 1970s Cannabis Research Foundation. Just as his bazooka-sized joint was rolled and lit a police car zoomed by. If the police had bothered to check their rear-vision mirror they would have seen my weeping eyes peering through smoke dreams, and me trying to keep the car wheels straight and the speedo needle fixed—like a primordial vibration—on one hundred cosmic clicks.

Hanna and I pulled up outside the Hepburn Springs Art Deco-era dancehall where a clutch of punters huddled around a couple braziers burning at the front entrance. Gary and Wayne sidled up to the car …

‘Hanna mate!’ It was Wayne, his familiar index finger waggling in Hanna’s direction. Gary laughed as the three men embraced. I stood back and observed a piece of Australian rock and roll history. These three men had been an integral part of the local Melbourne and wider Australian music scene for nearly four decades. Their collective history was almost corporeal—made visible by the shared experience of beer barns and gold records, world tours and sticky stages illuminated by psychedelic lighting, and days and nights driving to Sydney stuck between speaker boxes, a ruffled stack of screen printed t-shirts and a kick drum case. It was a rich and potent history infused with the sound of a thousand audiences howling and joyful. It made the three men appear conjoined, a crazy collective of middle-aged teenagers. I realised that even though I was the singer and co-founder of a band that bore my name, even though I had co-written the songs and chosen the set list, organised the gig, driven the car, and even though I too had a long history of playing rock and roll in Melbourne’s pubs and clubs and at festivals since the very early seventies, I was not part of this rarefied world. Theirs was an exclusive club and I felt privileged to be allowed honorary membership, even if only for a night.

We set the gear up on stage, ran through a song as a cursory sound check, then disappeared to the green room to wait for our complimentary meal and relax before the show. When a manager delivered the food he asked what we would like to drink; the usual red or white wine was on offer, a beer or two. Hanna looked at the young man, obviously sizing him up and asked, ‘Hey man, got any Stolichnaya vodka?’

‘Yes maybe.’

‘I’ll have a bottle of that, cheers man.’

The young man nodded his head, hesitated for a second then disappeared towards the kitchen.

‘I reckon you’re pushing it with the Stoli mate,’ I suggested.

‘Ah well, you can only ask,’ replied Hanna as he pulled out his stash. He licked the edges of two cigarette papers and glued them to two more, sprinkled tobacco on the assemblage then—with a pair of scissors—chopped up a massive head of dope, mixed it with the tobacco and then rolled another substantial joint. Meantime, the manager arrived with a slab of James Boag Premiums in an esky, bottles of red and white wine, and the Stolichnaya vodka. Hanna wolfed down his meal, lit the joint, grabbed the Stoli and disappeared out the back of the hall with Gary.

‘Should be an interesting evening Wayne-oh,’ I suggested to Wayne who chuckled and poured himself another glass of cheeky white.

Hanna set up on a stool beside the drum riser and Wayne replicated Hanna’s seating arrangement on the other side. I stood centre-stage in the full glare of the coloured lights, my blood pumping and nerves jangling. Hanna swayed slightly as he bent down to adjust something on his effects pedal board and then steadied himself before thwaging a few chords. Gary rolled around his kit and Wayne sat motionless, staring at the two-thirds full hall with its blue and purple starred drapery twinkling in the spilled light from the stage. I decided to start the night with a simple blues shuffle, ‘Early in the Morning’, a Louis Jordan standard from 1947 that my old friend, and Ross Hannaford school mate, Kendal Bird taught me when we played together in Attila and the Panelbeaters back in the early 1980s

Early in the morning and I can’t get it right

I had a little fight with my baby last night

And it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)

Yeah early in the morning (early in the morning)

Early in the morning, and I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues….

Gary locked into the straight ahead shuffle driving the whole thing with his high hat and kick drum and Wayne walked a bassline, he truly was a master of that lost art. I was trying to keep up on acoustic guitar, while Hanna sat back playing lines and feels in the spaces between my vocals. After the second verse Hanna took a twelve bar solo, his sustained notes and left-of-centre improvisations filled the room. He then stomped on his loop pedal and recorded twelve bars of runs and feels that looped under another twelve bars of a spitting, spiralling distorted solo. Almost by magic, a simple shuffle was turning into something extraordinary. Gary urged Hanna on, banging harder on the drums, encouraging more solos, more notes, more loops, more everything. The audience began to look up from their dinner plates and take notice. It grew louder, the band played tougher as the song careered on and on. I sang another verse followed by more solos, then another verse and then another solo even more extreme than the one before, we were now headed for Mars.

‘How do we come back from here?’ I thought. At the fifteen-minute mark I sang the last verse and indicated one more twelve bar solo, then turning to Gary I motioned STOP at which point he belted the crap out of his high hat and bought the whole thing to a crashing conclusion. THWUMP. A fine dust had filled the hall, there were people standing in front of the bandstand mesmerised, some were laughing others clapping, stomping and calling for more. So Gary yelled out ‘Baby What’s Wrong’, an up-tempo country song I had written and had recorded with The Hornets on our first LP, Everybody’s Guilty. BANG—off we went again, Hanna spitting out the familiar country ‘Come Back Again’ twang, and me banging away on the G chord like my life depended on it. The audience, their dinners cooling and forgotten, had found their way to the dance floor and were twirling and dancing and urging the band on. We had entered dangerous territory. Where could we go from here? I called ‘Drunk’ by Jimmy Liggins, then Muddy Waters’s ‘Champagne and Reefer’. On and on we went, the voodoo getting serious.

After nearly an hour of mayhem, I decided the audience and the band needed a break, so I called for Tony Joe White’s ‘Rainy Night in Georgia’. The Hornets had also recorded the song on Everybody’s Guilty, the version following Tony Joe’s 1960s cut fairly closely. But I had forgotten that Hanna had also recorded a reggae version of the same song on the Ross Hannaford Trio’s record some years before. I played the D chord and Gary splashed in and set the whole thing in motion. But then Hanna started to ‘chank’ on the 2 and 4 of the bar shifting the whole thing sideways, Wayne and Gary immediately picked up on the new reggae feel. Hanna played a little single line of notes and Wayne doubled it on the bass making me surplus to requirements. I nodded to Hanna and he leant into a microphone and sang the first line of the song with that beautiful smoke-cured baritone. ‘Hover’n by my suit case, tryin’ to find a warm place, to spend the night …’

Hanna continued to play little runs between the bassline while I took up the chank, chank, chank as best I could, the whole song now sounding ethereal. The dance floor was crowded with people grooving to the reggae beat as ‘Rainy Night in Georgia’ then morphed seamlessly into Desmond Dekker’s ‘Israelites’, which in turn smoothed into Johnny Nash’s ‘Hold Me Tight’. Suddenly I was at the Greyhound Hotel in Richmond and playing second guitar in Hanna’s 1979 reggae band Lucky Dog!

I managed to pull the whole thing back in an R&B direction by launching into Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘44 Blues’. The band was flying at this point, so they easily negotiated the left-hand turn at Kingston and roared off to Chicago. Hanna’s twin amp attack came in handy for this song. When he jumped on the wah wah—with one amp playing clean and the other dirty—the solo took off. It was like two Ross Hannafords were playing—it was simply fucking amazing! Dah di dah dah, dah di dah dah, dah di dah dah … whack! Then it was a U-turn back to Jamaica with Ross launching into a version of ‘Snake’ from Dianna Kiss’s first album. I didn’t know what the fuck we were doing but whatever it was we were encouraged by the audience, loudly and insistently, to keep doing it.

Then suddenly it was the end of the hour and a half set, we played our customary finisher ‘Everything is Broken’ by Bob Dylan, thanked the audience for coming and then introduced the band: ‘Wayne Duncan on bass’ … roar … ‘Gary Young on drums’ … shouts and roars … ‘and MR ROSS HANNAFORD ON GUITAR AND VOCALS’ … stomps roars applause and shouts of ‘More! More!’ I thought the roof would soon lift off the theatre.

But there was no more—it was all we could do, we were all exhausted. Gary and Hanna left the stage leaving Wayne to shake his head, sidle up to the microphone and enquire of the audience, ‘Haven’t you got homes to go to? Go home it’s too late!’

When they again screamed for more, Wayne smiled and said,

‘Ah, no we can’t play any more—we’ve got another gig at Berties later tonight.’ Some faces split into a smiles, others nodded, and gradually the applause and calls for more died down, leaving Wayne and me to exit the stage.

We collapsed in the green room and pulled a couple of ice-cold stubbies out of the esky. I noticed the Stoli was gone and so were Hanna and Gary. I finished my beer, immediately opened another and started to pack up my guitar. The manager came backstage, ‘Terrific night boys, thanks so much. Let’s talk through the week Craig and arrange another date for later in the year.’ He handed me the envelope with the night’s pay.

‘No worries mate, thanks for your hospitality,’ I answered, ever the diplomat. I shook his hand and he disappeared back to the bar to no doubt open the over-stuffed registers and count the night’s healthy takings. It was then that Hanna and Gary finally came back, smiling like lunatics, with Hanna carrying a near-empty bottle of vodka.

‘Let’s get the fuck outta here!’

The gear was packed, the money was divvied and goodbyes were made. We climbed into our respective cars, Gary and Wayne in one, Hanna and myself the other—and off we sped into the coal-black, misty night.

Before we had even reached Daylesford, the cabin of my car resembled the Reefer Café and the vodka bottle was empty. By the time we hit the Western Highway we were talking about dome tents, naked hippies and desegregated toilets—don’t ask me why. After inhaling another joint, Hanna passed out, so I drove the rest of the way in silence.

I had mentally prepared myself to break the news to my wife Karen that Hanna would be staying the night; we had two young children at the time so we would have to move one of them in with us to free up a bed for him. Karen would not be pleased. When I pulled up outside our Holden Street home Hanna immediately woke up.

‘Where are we man?’

‘Um back in Fitzroy North mate; better come inside and stay here for the night, you can go home in the morning, wad’ya reckon?’

‘Ah no man thanks, thanks a lot but no—I’ll drive home,’ was the crazy reply

‘Fuck me! Mate, you can’t!’

‘No, no I’ll be fine,’ he insisted, and with that he got out of my car, pulled his gear out of the back, loaded it in his wagon and disappeared into the night!

It was about four o’clock the next day when the phone rang.

‘Craig, hey Craig it’s Ross.’

‘G’day mate, how are you? You got home alright last night?’

‘Yeah, cool … umm you know the cash from last night, um where is it man?’

I was instantly on guard; money could be a tricky subject with Hanna.

‘Well, I gave it to you last night and you put it in your jacket, the blue one.’

‘Yeah, yeah, right right. Um … where’s my jacket man?’

‘Well you were wearing it when you drove home last night!’

‘Right right! I drove home, yeah.’

‘Yeah!’

There was a pause; I could hear him breathing into the phone.

‘Hey Craig … where’s my car man?’

‘Fuck Ross I have no idea!’

‘Okay man, see ya later.’

As I hung up the phone I had a brain wave. I rang a mate of Hanna’s who lived nearby, I wondered if he had crashed there last night.

‘Hey mate its Craig Horne here, did you see Hanna last night, he’s lost his car. He didn’t crash at yours did he?’

‘Yeah I did hear someone come in last night, let me check!’ He put down the phone and was gone for some time. Then: ‘You won’t fuckin’ believe it, I found his car—it’s parked in the back lane, the doors swung completely open, his gear in the back in full view! The crazy fuck must’ve come in last night, then called a cab and gone home! How lucky can one cunt be?’ I contemplated that question for some time before replying, ‘As Stephen King once said: “God favours drunks, small children, and the cataclysmically stoned”. See ya later mate.’ I chuckled as I hung up the phone.

I first met Wayne Duncan and Gary Young on a Sunday afternoon in the mid-1990s at the Flowerdale Hotel, a beautiful little country pub just north of Melbourne.

For a couple of years I’d been playing Sunday lunchtime solo gigs to rooms full of car club members out for a spin or tables of families celebrating a birthday or anniversary. I had traversed the whole band experience of the seventies and eighties and was finding my way in the unfamiliar territory of ambient solo artist. At times it was challenging, but over time, and with the encouragement of publicans Ian and Jennifer Keddie, I felt I was evolving—towards what I wasn’t sure. The gigs gave me the opportunity to gain confidence and develop a bit of stage craft as well the impetus to learn new material, write songs and then test them out in front of a friendly audience. But after a few years one thing had become obvious: to progress any further as a musician and performer I needed to improve my less than Claptonesque guitar skills. Luckily and just in time, I crossed paths with Jeff Burstin.

As the guitarist and co-writer with both Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, and The Black Sorrows amongst others, Jeff was someone I had admired for many years. I had been lucky enough to see his skill at close hand when my various bands had played support to the Falcons in the 1970s. We had friends in common, but I’d never actually met the man himself. Then one day the planets aligned and my life changed. I was working at the Victorian Office of Housing as a media officer come speech writer. A colleague, Yvonne Simic, happened to be Jeff’s neighbour at the time and I asked her if Jeff gave guitar lessons. ‘I want to learn some guitar tricks and flicks, just to make life a little more interesting for myself.’

A couple of days later I was sitting in Jeff’s Abbotsford kitchen trying to learn how to play to correct fingering for the G chord. We persisted for a couple of weeks and I made some progress, learning a few important new skills, like the shuffle feel to Dylan’s ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’. G, C, G, C G, C … got it! During and after lessons Jeff and I chatted and learnt we had a lot in common: we were the same age, as were our kids, we both were nuts about Bob Dylan and The Band, politically we saw things in a similar way. And so, we became friends. Then, quite unexpectedly, something extraordinary happened, he offered his services: ‘If you ever need a guitar player, I’d be happy to oblige.’

I didn’t need to be asked twice. The very next Sunday I mentioned to Ian at the Flowerdale that Jeff Burstin was available to play with me now and then and asked if he was interested. Luckily he was—and so Jeff and I played a few lunchtime duo gigs at the pub. These went well and generated a few more Melbourne-based gigs that included supporting Ross Hannaford’s Diana Kiss at the Esplanade Hotel on a series of Monday nights, as well as other little pub gigs around town.

One Sunday, Ian asked if we could put a band together for a special ‘Christmas in July Sunday lunch’ at the pub. There was no question about it. Jeff called his old drummer mate Gary Young from the Rocking Emus and Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons, and bassist Wayne Duncan—also ex-Rocking Emus and for a short time a fellow Black Sorrow. With us all together, The Hornets were born. I was singing in a band with Jeff Burstin, Gary Young and Wayne Duncan … are you kidding? I was literally in heaven.

For the next few years The Hornets played bars, festivals and venues all around Victoria and in that time I got to know Gary and Wayne very well.

Gary is a great, musical drummer. He’s full of energy and has a brain crackling with ideas (more of that later). But over the years I learnt that he has two pet hates. The first is the drums—not drumming but the setup, the pulling down and lugging of drums. He will do anything to avoid such tiresome tasks. Jeff has a story about a recent Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons band meeting discussing a series of reformation gigs in Sydney and Melbourne. The band members were asked for their opinion about the tour and how it should run, including equipment and accommodation requirements. When it finally got around to Gary, he paused, looked around the table and said, ‘Look I’ll do it but I don’t wanna touch the drums. I’ll play ’em, but I don’t wanna set ’em up, pull ’em down—nothing. I’ll just walk on, play and fuck off!’ I guess a lifetime of drumming will do that to you, so a special drum roadie was specifically hired for the tour—job done.

Gary’s other pet hate is hanging around at gigs. He is never late, but he turns up at a time that allows him just enough slack to set-up his minimalist kit—kick drum, snare, high hat, one splash cymbal and maybe a floor tom—and be ready to play just as the second hand sweeps the appointed hour for show time. For the next couple of hours Gary is in his element and fully focused on the job at hand. There are no explosive fills or flashy rolls; Gary’s a songwriter and guitar player so he uses his drums as an instrument to bring texture to songs, as opposed to simply playing a rhythm. He was with The Hornets for four years or so, and while he was with us his drumming added nuance and musicality to our set list. He could play a straight ahead ‘Four on the Floor’ style that drove a song along that great rock and roll highway, or he could swing, play a country feel or even jazz improvisations. But his great skill was playing inside the song, wringing out of it every bit of colour and texture, his accents ushering in choruses and chord changes.

But once the final song has come to a climatic end and before the splash cymbal had finished shimmering in the stage lights, Gary’s job was done. As the final thank you to the audience was being delivered over the PA, Gary had his snare in its case, the kick drum on its side and the hi-hat disassembled and in his traps bag. The most common question after a Hornets gig was ‘Where’s Gary?’ And the most common answer was ‘Gary went ages ago.’

‘Hanging post-gig with Gary Young’ is a phrase never used in Australian music circles.

One night we played the Northcote Social Club. It had been a reasonably slow Friday night, the room half-full of people listening politely but not really engaging with the music. Then just as our final set kicked off, a flood of people came through the door. Halfway to home the dance floor was packed and the joint was rocking. Jeff urged the band on by calling for up-tempo versions of ‘Route 66’ and Dylan’s ‘Everything is Broken’. Then, just as we were due to play our final song, Gary stood up from behind his drums and came to the microphone. Gary has a beautiful smoke-and-whiskey-cured voice, a radio voice, a voice that demands attention and he demanded the assembled audience listen to what he had to say. ‘Now listen, you cunts, we’ve been here all night playing our guts out, so where have you all been? Now this is our last song and I don’t want to hear “More, more, more!” at the end of it … Cause ya not gonna fuckin’ get any fuckin’ more! Okay?’

At which point he returned to the drum stool and counted out the start to ‘Baby What’s Wrong With You’ … one two three four BANG! And at the end there were no calls for more, just stunned, nervous silence. Marvellous!

Wayne was a whole other kettle of fish. Over the twenty plus years I played with Wayne in The Hornets I came to understand that he was a gentleman, a gentle man, and a unique bass player. ‘The master of the lost art of the walking bass,’ as Ross Wilson so accurately described.

Over the countless gigs we played together I noticed a couple of things about him. Firstly, women of a certain age loved him. Maybe it was that pixy face of his, or his cheeky smile. Wherever The Hornets played women lined up in front of the band with their copies of Daddy Who?…Daddy Cool, or whatever else, clutched to their eager breasts, their hands gripping permanent marker pens hoping for a kind word from their hero. Wayne always obliged. Secondly middle-aged men also loved Wayne and liked to do things for him, like lump out his amp at the end of a gig, or buy him a beer in the break. Even the Premier of Victoria liked to perform acts of kindness for our Wayne.

One memorable sunny Sunday afternoon, The Hornets had played the St Andrews Hotel and I dropped Wayne at his Avenue home in Surrey Hills, just down the road from the then Victorian Premier, Jeff Kennett. As we drove up the street, I noticed a rather large man wearing an ill-fitting tracksuit pushing a Victor motor-mower up and down Wayne’s front nature strip. As we pulled up outside the house, Wayne fell out of the front seat still clutching a traveller in his right hand, he looked up at the Easter-Island visage of Kennett and said something like ‘G’day Jeff, thanks for doing this mate. Would you like a drink?’ And offered the Premier the half-full/half-empty bottle of warm chardonnay, to which Mr Kennett politely declined and continued mowing. I couldn’t resist writing a small article for The Age about a certain Melbourne rock star that employed the Premier of Victoria as his private gardener.

There was also the time Wayne was enjoying a three-month holiday in South Gippsland at the expense of Her Majesty. Yes, Wayne loved a drink—white wine mostly—but he had been caught just one too many times driving under the influence. A judge took a dim view of his decision to drive to the bottle shop one Friday morning to pick up his weekend beverage supply. Turning right into Union Road, Wayne’s distinctive orange Peugeot was spotted by a local copper; a breath test followed. Unfortunately he was still over the limit from the previous night’s festivities. But what was even more unfortunate and what distressed the judge the most was Wayne was driving without a licence, it having been suspended some months previously as a result of multiple drink driving offences, the odd speeding fine other sundry misdemeanours. When Wayne came before the judge and, despite being represented pro-bono by a QC and despite multiple character references from a range of respectable members of Melbourne’s elite, he was sentenced to a three months convalescence at Wron Wron Prison and a chance to reflect on his actions. But as I’ve explained, people liked to do things for Wayne, so there was a happy ending to this dark tale.

Wearing his green tracksuit Wayne arrived at his allotted accommodation carrying his bedding in his arms and sat forlornly on his bunk. A shadow fell across the room and Wayne looked up to see a 6 foot 3 brick-shithouse filling the entrance to his rather humble accommodation. Wayne noticed tear drops tattooed on the gentleman’s cheek—here stood a murderer and lifer. The man ordered Wayne to stand and, fearing the worst, he obeyed and resigned himself to his fate. But then something remarkable happened: the cellmate took the bedding from Wayne’s arms and said in a gentle voice, ‘I’ll make up your bunk mate … you’re from Daddy Cool, you’re a fuckin’ legend.’ Then, lowering his voice, the brick-shit house added ‘Ya have any trouble in here mate, just see me …’

That sums up Wayne. People loved him, family, friends, fans—we all loved him. We loved his gentleness, his encyclopaedic knowledge of music, his sunglasses worn at night and his Converse runners worn constantly. We loved his loyalty and his kindness and we loved him because he was unique—in every sense of the word.

I’d been asked to lunch at the Woodend home of Adam Johnstone, the Managing Director of Sound Vault Records—The Hornets’ label at the time. He had asked a few members from his stable of bands to share a relaxing Sunday afternoon eating barbequed chicken while discussing ideas for promoting the label, as well as a bit of schmoozing and networking. Adam was in his thirties, honest, incredibly enthusiastic and hardworking—a rarity in the music industry—but he was also a man with amazingly bad timing. He had formed his record company just as the music download phenomena was causing havoc in the traditional recording industry, which at that very moment had entered into a downward and ultimately fatal spiral—especially for small, independent labels like Sound Vault.

As I drove up the Calder Highway towards Woodend I wondered if Ross Wilson would be at the lunch. He had released Go Bongo Go Wild! as well as Country and Wilson on Sound Vault, and as I had never actually met him, I hoped that this would be the day. I had always admired Ross as a valiant singer, astute songwriter and great storyteller. He had not only written the jubilant Australian dance classics ‘Eagle Rock’, ‘Come Back Again’ and ‘Hi Honey Ho’, but also had, sung, written or co-written some of the country’s most enduring rock/pop classics, such as ‘Chemistry’, ‘Come said the Boy’, ‘Cool World’, ‘Bed of Nails’ and ‘A Touch of Paradise’ just to name a few. When I finally walked into Adam’s backyard I cast my eye around the assembled glitterati: Peter Cupples, Cyndi Boste and, yes, Ross Wilson. Even though I was eager to meet him I was also a little daunted. Would I be an embarrassing, gushy fanboy, would I think of anything witty or original to say or would the whole thing be an altogether awkward experience for the both of us? Before I knew it I found myself sitting next to him, so I made a conscious effort not to say uncool stuff like ‘Oh my god Ross, I’ve been a huge fan of yours and it really is a huge honour to meet you,’—even though it was true. But I need not have worried. Maybe it was the relaxed nature of the lunch, or the couple of glasses of fortifying red, but he opened our conversation by enquiring after The Hornets drummer and bass player, Gary and Wayne. I recall him saying something like ‘I hope you’re keeping my rhythm section up to speed.’

I laughed, said I was trying and then asked if he’d heard any of their work on The Hornets Sound Vault records. He said that he had and especially liked the blues stuff. We started talking and I was instantly at ease. I felt I had evolved; I was no longer a fan but a contemporary, swapping stories and exploring our love of the blues, especially our mutual heroes Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. But it was The Hornets’ version of Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘44 Blues’ that Ross wanted to talk about—especially the weird feel of the song and the greatness of Hubert Sumlin’s spiky riff. I remember Ross describing perfectly the Sumlin/Wolf combination, ‘It was explosive, like … petrol and a match’. They set off explosions all through songs like ‘Back Door Man’, ‘Built for Comfort’, ‘Tail Dragger’ and ‘Goin’ Down Slow’. After a while he produced a guitar and started playing the now familiar ‘44’ riff and encouraged me to sing the song …

I wore my forty-four for so long, so long, it made my shoulder sore …

Dah di Dah Dah… Dah Di dah Di Dah, Dah di Dah Dah (repeat)

Here I was on a warm afternoon, sitting in the backyard of our generous host and label owner, swapping stories and singing songs with a very convivial, friendly and down-to-earth Ross Wilson. As the afternoon wore down and a chill came over Adam’s backyard, we all began to say our goodbyes and disappear into the early evening. I shook Ross’s hand and hoped we would catch up again soon.

As I walked to my car, my fandemonium subsiding, I reflected that if someone had told my eighteen-year-old self that one day I would share a lunch, swap stories and sing songs with Ross Wilson, I would have thought them mad. And if that same person had said that I would play in bands, record and become friends with Ross Hannaford, Gary and Wayne … really? Don’t be ridiculous! We had individually and collectively come a long way since 1970. For some of the journey we had travelled together, playing edgy, messy pub and festival gigs, recording music infused with spittle and spite and sometimes, like that summer’s day in Woodend, simply hanging out. It’s been a great journey, a journey that has informed every part of my life. Who said you should never meet your heroes?