Ian
List / Dagoes / Spikes / UV's
(This article is based on an interviewwith Ian in
the summer and fall of 1997. Thanks to Ian for putting a lot more work into this than he
probably ever expected to do...)
Ian List’s
career has been one of the better kept secrets of Australian rock and roll. Perhaps it's
because he comes from Adelaide rather than Melbourne or Sydney, or perhaps his style of
rock and roll was a little too intelligent for the average mosher. Whatever the reason,
there aren’t that many people out there who recognize how good most of the records he
has played on actually are. From his early days with the Dagoes, through the Assassins,
Spikes and UVs, it seems that Ian was always in a band that made music with a special edge
to it.
The one thing all
these bands have in common is that none of them sound like they are influenced much by
Radio Birdman. Instead, there’s the obvious touch of Velvet’s influence (after
all, what’s UVs other than VUs backwards?), but then there’s a closer sound to
something like the Liverpool sound from the early 80s....Echo & the Bunnymen, Wah!,
Teardrop Explodes, and that sort of thing, except that Ian List’s bands have tended
to rock harder than those groups. But when Ian talks about his influences, it’s a
little surprising…there’s a lot more diversity in the music he’s cut his
teeth on than might be expected.
"The
first album I bought was Bowie's Aladin Sane when it came out in '73", he
says. " I was 12 then. Being an English migrant to Australia I tended to grow up with
British kids and there was always a new friend to be made who was fresh off the boat. I
started a record collection of Slade, T.Rex. Bowie, Gary Glitter, Roxy Music and the like.
I had a choice of Gary Glitter, Slade and the Jackson 5 as to be my first concert, and
unfortunately I chose Gazza. (It was shit if I remember rightly as he had a sore throat
and only sang half the songs). I then got into Lou Reed. I bought Rock'n'Roll Animal
when it came out and I have been a fan ever since. I almost immediately rushed out and
hunted down his back catalogue and discovered the fantastic Velvet Underground. I always
looked forward with baited breath for the new Bowie or Reed album to come out. I was lucky
to be old enough to enjoy the punk thing in '77 and saw Birdman, the Saints, etc. Those
were good days. I am an avid record collector, and I have a large and varied collection.
The American stuff I dug was a lot of the 60's garage and psychedelia, and I really like
Krautrock like Amon Duul and Agitation Free. A large amount of my collection is taken up
with Iggy Pop and Stooges material. Though I never tried to imitate that sound I love the
Detroit style of rock (MC5, Stooges, etc). I have worked in the music industry for 7
years, so I am open to a lot of weird stuff. Progressive '70's too has some wonderful
moments. If my stuff did sound like Echo and the Bunnymen or Wah! it was unintentional
even though I reckon Echo had a few terrific albums."
Ian’s first band
that anyone is likely to have heard of was the Dagoes. He got into them rather late, as
the band had been a regular on the Adelaide scene for several years and was actually
pretty much a spent force by the time he joined. But as with most musicians, he also had
some earlier efforts that were never recorded but which served as an apprenticeship to
better things.
"I got an
electric guitar around the age of 15", says Ian. "I used to practice by jamming
along with lp's on the stereo. My first band was in 1977 after I just left high school and
we were called No Action. We were pretty crappy and did a lot of Buzzcocks, Sex Pistols
and other punk covers. We played 3 gigs, one at my old school at a lunch time thing. This
was to 200 kids and we thought we were shit hot. The next was supporting Lemme Caution (an
art/punk band), at the Maid Of Auckland Hotel. There was no one in the room when we were
on and I think it was during our rendition of "The Banana Split Song" by The
Dickies that the owner of the pub pulled the plug on us. Our last performance was at a
rugby club in Elizabeth supporting some heavy rock band called Mountain from Western
Australia. It was packed and I think we lasted 5 songs before the DJ told us to get off
(through the PA). I played pretty limited bass and guitar with these guys and our line up
also consisted of a 12 year old drummer, a singer named Rip Savage (who went on to Gun
Control, Funhouse and Mushroom Planet) and Tim O'Connor who made it with Frente- he wrote
a couple of world wide hits with them). "
"So after this
debacle we drifted apart and I started to go see Adelaide bands live. I used to go and
watch The Accountants and The Dagoes playing the dives around town. One day there was an
advert in the paper for singer wanted. I went for the job, even though I'd never sung
before. I had more front in those days than a shop window. It happened to be Doug Thomas
who'd put the ad in the paper. The audition was in Doug's front room, and the band
consisted of Doug on guitar, The Turk on drums and Otis on bass. These 3 were from the
Dagoes, who had just split up. We did a few numbers and I got the gig. I think Alf Omega
from The Spell also went for it. Anyway, we rehearsed a few times, and then The Dagoes
went in the studio one night to record the single "We Sell Soul". It was to be a
posthumous release. They liked being back together again I guess, as our little band
folded straight away and they reformed and asked me to play bass. (Otis went bush to
teach.) I was a pretty shit house bass player and really I was just a beginner, but they
didn't care/mind/know any different as they were hopeless too- and we carried on. It was
wild being in "The Adelaide Punk Scene" all of a sudden."
Although they seem
fairly mild now, the Dagoes were somewhat of a phenomenon in their day. In 1978 they took
the fairly novel approach of releasing an independent cassette along with the Accountants
and the U-Bombs. You can still hear them on the Supreme CD, which compiles their
best tracks. Their singer sounds a lot like the Talking Heads’ David Byrne, or maybe
nearer the mark would be the Cars Rik Ocasek. The band used a mix of guitars and
synthesizers in the finest early 80s new wave pop tradition. But you can get a taste for
why the locals might have thought them a bit wilder when you hear the live takes of
"Vatican Stomp" and "Blood On My Face" at the end of Supreme;
the guitars are cranked up and the band attacks hard. But then again, these tracks were
recorded at a reunion gig ten years later, and Ian is playing lead guitar instead of bass.
The Dagoes were
popular enough to sell 600 copies of "We Sell Soul" (a Roky Erikson cover) in
Adelaide alone. That single was one of the foundations of the great Adelaide label Greasy
Pop Records, which was run by Doug Thomas. Doug’s name will be a recurring thread in
this story, as he played with Ian in the Dagoes, Assassins and Spikes. Doug once said in a
Noise For Heroes interview that every song Ian List ever wrote had a sense of melody that
made him want to come back and listen to it again and again, so it’s clear why he
spent so much time working with Ian.
In the big picture,
the Dagoes were a minor milestone in Ian’s fortunes. They propelled him into the
middle currents of Adelaide’s underground scene, but his contributions as bassist
weren’t that great; he plays on about half of the material on Supreme, which
is littered with credits to a zillion different members, often with names as identifiable
as "Dean Martin". Ian is hidden behind the stage name Lou Ouiji.
"The Dagoes were
always on the outer and were loved by many and equally hated too", says Ian. "We
had an American sound and did covers by Johnathan Richman, New York Dolls and the like.
The other bands followed the British line. I think there was a bit of jealousy around too
because the Dagoes pulled large crowds to what usually was a shambolic effort from a band
that could hardly play and keep a song together live. Jeff (the Turk) was a crap drummer
and the rest of us were pretty basic muso's. We did ballads too like "10 Years
On" that were out of line with the other bands who relied on power songs for an hour.
The Dagoes main strength though was Dick (Richard Cant) the singer. Dick was a great
frontman with a huge ego and mouth to match. He is quite intelligent though and he could
keep an audience entertained with his rants and tirades. He is now a lawyer in Sydney and
has come out of the closet (funny that, in the Dag's he thought he was a one man woman
fucking sex machine).
"My first show
with them was at the St. Peter's Town Hall. The line up was us, The Bad Poets, The Brats,
and The Accountants. I only came out of hospital that morning after an appendix scare so I
was in a lot of pain that night. Things happened pretty fast with the Dag's. We toured
Melbourne and released a batch of singles (all now on that one CD). One memorable gig was
supporting The Motels at Apollo Stadium. The Motels were a big act here at the time and
had a couple of number one hits to tour on. The place was packed (about 4000) and we kept
up our tradition by being absolutely fuckin' awful! I was so nervous in the days leading
up to the show that I'd developed an enormous sty on my eye. I went on stage wearing a
pair of cheap sunglasses to hide it and fell over as I couldn’t see a thing. The Turk
played a stinker too, and fell backwards off his drum stool mid song. What an embarrassing
night all round! I've still got the review from the next day's newspaper. It hardly
mentioned the Motels but had a glowing report on how bad we were."... a relief when
the Dagoes finished their set.." Later we became a 3 guitar and bass band. James
Tizard (later of the Spikes) joined. I went on to lead guitar. Bit of a joke really, 'cos
at the time I could only play rhythm. I was spending all my spare time learning. I had
also befriended The Accountants and soon was making plans to join a new band called
"Fun Fun Fun" which was me on bass, ex-Accountants Dave Walker on vocals and
Andy Steele on drums and ex- Recoil John Adams on guitar. The original name was the Art
Vandals, and we played under that name for a few months. The future looked bright."
""Fun Fun
Fun" were just that- a good fun bunch of guys to hang out with and a pretty cool
band. We sounded like a cross between Japan and the New York Dolls! We recorded a few
times in the studio and I still have cassette tapes of these sessions. We did a test
pressing (2 copies only) of a 7" single. The "A" side was
"Blackbyrd" and the flip was called "Bolshasheik". I never got my
hands on a copy myself. We were pretty much hated by most of the other Adelaide bands. We
got into wearing make up for live shows."
"After we split
up John went to Sydney and got covered head to toe in tattoos and formed a rockabilly band
with our roadie. The last time I saw him was on the 6.30 news on TV. A train had come off
its tracks and plowed through a warehouse. John was living in a room out the back and the
wreckage just missed him. He looked all shook up and was standing there in his pyjamas
with this stupid quiff flopping in the breeze (it was in the middle of the night). Dave
now kills chickens and delivers them in a big van (he has one of the best collections of
Australian punk vinyl of anyone I know) Andy is a struggling artist (aren't they all?).
Towards the end (and it brought about the end) we added a sax player - Nick Cross. He went
on to be in the Models as a session player for them. We did some cool supports- The
Birthday Party on a number of occasions, Laughing Clowns. Andy Steele is actually in the
Birthday Party's "Nick the Stripper" video. Another fuzzy memory of the band was
Dave's uncanny knack of attracting trouble where ever he went. He's a big guy too, but
he's one of those blokes who always has people wanting to fight him. Not much fun to hang
around at parties. We had a beauty of a saloon type dust up at a party one night. Dave's
ex girlfriend was now living with Tracey Pew from the Birthday Party (these guys were at
this party too) and so Dave was in one hell of a shitty mood. I was standing outside on
the back lawn (which was developing into a mudbath with the rain coming down and the
amount of drunken people staggering around on it) when Dave pushed some guy’s head
through the window. Of course all of this guy’s mates joined in and all of Dave's
mates hopped in as well. The place was awash with drunken, mud and blood covered idiots
beating the shit out of each other. We got out before the police arrived and made our way
down to the hospital. I got 5 stitches in the knee from where someone had stabbed me with
a chisel. Anyway, we eventually folded, citing boredom and the usual musical differences
as the reason. I thought it was time to step out of the shadows and become a rock star.
Hey, were all young and stupid!"
Meanwhile, on the
Dagoes front, the band had changed singers and released another single
("Daunting"/"Blood On My Face") which didn’t do well, and the
Dagoes split up again. Ian had originally played on the recordings for this, but when the
Dagoes recruited a new bass player in Nigel Sweeting (credited as Gino Earthquake) they
had him redo the bass track. In early 1982, Doug Thomas recruited Ian and The Turk from
the Dagoes, and they recorded a rejected track Doug had written for the Dagoes called
"Kill The Prime Minister" under the band name the Assassins. Money being tight,
the single didn’t actually come out until 1983. It’s an odd mix, with the guitar
way loud compared to the vocals. In Tim Kelton’s book Underground In The City Of
Churches Doug Thomas is quoted as saying: "I didn’t like the way he (Ian)
sang. It was Ian’s first studio attempt at vocals, and he really lacked confidence.
We couldn’t afford to spend any more time, so we just gave him two vocal shots,
picked the best one, and I was never really happy with it until the remix. To me the
lyrics weren’t so important - the lyric that IS important is the very last line and
there’s nothing else going on there - Australia needs this man dead -
that’s all I had to say, that’s what the song’s about. Kill Malcom Fraser -
he’s an arsehole."
"The Assassins
was my first attempt singing and playing lead guitar", says Ian. "It was just
Doug Thomas, myself and The Turk from the Dagoes on drums. Doug was furious with our Prime
Minister (Malcom Fraser) at the time. You could compare him with a right wing kind of
leader (George Bush/Reagan?). Anyway he had this song he wanted to record.. and there ya
go. The b-side is just the a-side in reverse with the main context of the lyrics taken
out. We never played live, and really that was the one and only time we did anything.,
though Doug and the Turk did record the Stooges "1969" a couple of years later
which was released on some compilation and also on a 12" ep. We played "Kill The
Prime Minister" maybe once or twice with the UV's, though I can't be sure."
In late 1982 the
Dagoes were a spent force, and while the band was still dribbling on, Doug, Ian, James
Tizard and Greg Swanborough were rehearsing on the side with what would become the Spikes.
Ian had been playing in Fun Fun Fun, but they were going in a jazzy direction that Ian
didn’t care much for. He had approached James with the idea of forming a Velvets-like
band. The original name was the Falling Spikes. Before Doug Thomas had even joined, they
had recorded a couple of songs, "Babies" (which in Kelton’s book Ian says
was an old Dagoes number, but which he doesn’t recall having played in the Dagoes
now), and "Burning Book", neither of which ever got released. They started
playing live as the Spikes in June of 1983.
"When the Spikes
kicked off I really wanted us to be like a lot of things", says Ian. "Because we
all liked the Velvets we tried to get that feel. Didn’t really happen though. At the
time we were listening to the Dream Syndicate, the Gun Club, and a lot of the garage bands
around. Doug had a huge collection of 60's stuff we were listening to as well."
The first Spikes
record was recorded in September of 1983, when they went in the studio and recorded three
tracks. Two of these became the single "She’s Melting"/"The Theme From
Acid Beach", while the third, a Nomads-like cover of "Ain’t No Friend Of
Mine" was held back until their mini-lp. "She’s Melting" has a monster
stop-start guitar riff and really kicks in hard. But let Ian tell the story of it:
"The single "She's Melting" wasn’t our first recording as the Spikes.
Greg, James and myself went into a small studio and laid down 3 tracks (editorial note:
this is the "Babies" session he’s talking about now). I've got the tape
somewhere, and I can't remember the titles of the tracks without digging it out. Anyway, I
dropped some acid one night ( I've never touched the shit since though) and out of that
came "She's Melting." The girl I was with during that experience was (to me at
the time) doing just that. But the song was stolen,or at least the general bulk or
pattern, from the Soft Boys song "Give It To The Soft Boys". Have a listen. Well
at least I admit it.. There's a lot of song stealin' going on out there! The b-side was
"Theme From Acid Beach", and was just that - an instrumental surf tune. James
played some nice guitar on that one. We did a video for "She's Melting". We shot
it in the cellar of Umbrella Music (Doug's record shop) and down at one of our beaches. We
had some guy make a life size figure of a woman out of margarine, and we used a blow torch
to melt it down at the beach. Greg was a video producer, so we did it for nix (and all our
other videos were done for free too). The beach scenes were interesting. It was next to a
home for the mentally ill and we had to clear away all these people with huge heads and
dribble pouring from their mouths. They were fascinated by the whole thing. Eventually a
few male nurses rounded them up and herded them back inside (for more shock treatment no
doubt). This was around 1983 /84. We had started playing around the traps and we were
getting a pretty good response."
By February of 1984
they were ready for a bigger recording session, and the result was the first Greasy Pop
mini-lp, 6 Sharp Cuts. This record kicks off with the very Scientists-like
"Flashback To Acid Beach"…kind of a surprise, since Ian said at the time
that during the period he lived in England the Scientists were one of the worst bands he
saw there. (When I pointed this out to him, Ian was surprised to find that he had been
quoted as saying this…) After the garage diversion of "Ain’t No Friend Of
Mine", it’s back to another moody, Scientists-like track in
"Bloodmud". On the other side, "Scars and Angels" has a real first
album Gang Of Four feel to it (Ian says he was going for a Green on Red sound), and
"Hollywood" sounds a lot like Warsaw-era Joy Division (on this one he says he
was trying for Dream Syndicate). A real grab bag of influences, for sure. And perhaps the
biggest surprise, for a relatively new band out of Adelaide on a hitherto unheard of
label, the record was picked up for release in America by the label Big Time, which
although from all reports eventually swindled everyone they ever worked with did ensure
that even today you can find a copy of 6 Sharp Cuts if you are willing to browse
the used record bins now and then.
"In 1984 we had
enough material to do a mini album", says Ian. "As the title suggests - 6 songs
were recorded at Soundtrack, which at the time was a flash studio in Adelaide. The owner /
engineer / interfering old git was a guy called Bob Allen. At the time I didn’t know,
but since working in a record shop for a few years I've come across all these 45's and
LP's by Adelaide psych and progressive bands from the 60's and 70's that were produced by
Bob. The front cover was a photo of the Adelaide skyline during a fireworks display. When
the LP came out in America, Big Time redesigned it and came up with a putrid green and
pink patterned mess. They even put the wrong photo of the band on the back cover! I was in
England at the time and instead of me was a photo of Mick Brown (more on this later). We
recorded pretty much in one day, and usually the first run through was recorded and used.
I did the vocals after. The only cover we did was "Ain't No Friend Of Mine" - a
Sparkles tune which has been done by a few bands. Think we found it on a Rubbles 60's
compilation or something. We didn't include "She's Melting" or" Theme From
Acid Beach". That single sold out after a few months. We did about 300 copies. We
pressed 500 copies of 6 Sharp Cuts and that sold out eventually. Big Time in
America was giving us all this bullshit that it had sold 8000 copies over there (we never
saw a cent!) and they were going to fly us over to support The Dream Syndicate on a tour.
Of course this never eventuated. When I was in Chicago on holiday in 1988 I saw loads of
the US pressing in a cut out bin for 99 cents. Quite depressing. If I had the room in my
bags I would have bought them. The same goes for whenever I see an album or single of mine
in a secondhand bin - I'm always tempted to buy it just to give the store owner the
impression that the next one that comes over the counter is worth him buying and not him
saying to a shop full of punters. "This band never sells.. I'll give ya 10
cents..".
"We played
around town for the rest of the year. We only have a population in Adelaide of 1 million,
and after a while you see the same faces week in week out at your gigs. It's hard to build
up a crowd after a certain point. Being English and getting sick to death of my day job
(painter & decorator) I decided to bugger off to England and Europe for a year or so.
The Spikes went into limbo - or so I thought as I took my seat on the plane! London here I
come...what adventures await me next?
"I went to the
UK in '84 mainly as a traveling holiday. I stopped in Japan for a month on the way there
and a month on the way back. I didn’t really try to form a band while I was there. I
was having a great time and every few weeks I'd take off to some spot in Europe. I did
audition for a few bands at the time though. One was The Waterboys. They advertised for a
bass player. I'd never heard of them so I bought a couple of their albums to get familiar
with their sound and I hired a bass. They were nice guys at the audition, but were
"big time" compared to what I'd been used to. They were auditioning about 100
people for the job and they were going to do a world tour or something supporting U2. When
I told them I didn’t know any of their songs we just jammed a few Lou Reed numbers
for half an hour and that was it. Mike Scott (the singer) was a nice guy. He rang me and
said they'd found someone else, which was fair enough. Good fun though."
"I also made an
appointment for an audition as singer for Black Sabbath but I chickened out and never
showed. The NME and other music papers were full of vacancies for pretty cool jobs in
bands, but I wasn’t really serious enough to bother too much and I had a return trip
ticket back to Aussie anyway. I saw The Nomads in a dive in Hammersmith and was blown
away. There was about 20 people there. I thought their whole attitude and sound was great.
I made a mental note to use these qualities in the Spikes when I returned home in January
1985."
"I had a few
letters from Doug and Greg while I was away and they had told me that the band was still
going under the same name but with a slightly different line-up. Doug had released a
single by The Purple Gang, and asked the singer Mick Brown to join and take over my
position. James Tizard bailed when this happened so the bass was given to Jim Selene
(Salamader Jim, and now Free Moving Curtis). They were doing a mixture of my songs and
some of Mick's new ones. On my return I went to see them a couple of times and was not
impressed into re-joining them. I just didn’t like the way Mick sang. They had
recorded "A Bloody Mess" and I got in on the photo shoot for that and got my
picture on the cover even though I had nothing to do with the song or recording. The had
also done a video in my absence for "Bloodmud" which had a few shots from the
"She's Melting" video of me in there and the rest was Mick miming to my words. I
wasn't too happy with that. Also when 6 Sharp Cuts came out in the States the back
photo of the band was the Selene/Brown line-up. Pissed off about that!"
The single "A
Bloody Mess"/"The Meaning Of Life"/"Bang Shang A Lang" is not a
high point for the Spikes. The A side drags on for six whole minutes and is enough to put
anyone to sleep. The version of "The Meaning Of Life" on this single is pretty
limp compared to the subsequent take with Ian singing on Colour In A Black Forest.
And the last track is also unexceptional. Unfortunately for me, this was the first Spikes
record I ever got, and it put me off to them for a long time until Doug Thomas finally
cajoled me into giving Colour In A Black Forest a fair listen. Doug later admitted
it was a mistake to keep the Spikes name with this new lineup, and I’m sure Ian would
second that.
"When Ian left
the band it was cut off at a high point", said Doug in the interview for Underground
In The City Of Churches. "6 Sharp Cuts was so quick and so good that it
surprised us all how well we played in the studio. So Greg and James and myself found
ourselves without a singer - a band that was in fine form. That was very frustrating, so
we jumped at the opportunity of Mick fronting the band."
"When Ian got
back in January, the Selene/Brown lineup had sort of jelled. We’d got our shit
together, we’d gone to Sydney and Melbourne, we’d played heaps of gigs. We
played in front of a big crowd at Memorial Drive. We supported Midnight Oil that time and
that was very inspirational to us. We’d got Mick’s songs that later became
"A Bloody Mess" and "The Meaning Of Life", one of mine. They were
working, Mick was starting to write more, and I’d actually written three or four
songs that were in the set at that time. Ian wasn’t sure whether he wanted to rejoin.
We said, OK, let’s go as a five piece. That was the ideal. All the way along when Ian
left he was saying, OK, when I come back we’ll start it again, and James was also
there saying, sure, when Ian gets back let’s get the band off the ground again. But
how the hell do we deal with Mick and Jim, with whom me and Greg had been playing for a
year? They were there on the understanding from the start that OK, when Ian gets back
we’re the Spikes again. I’d been in there saying, let’s see if we can slot
Ian in as a five piece, ‘cos I really love what we’re doing, but Ian didn’t
really want to do that; he wanted the Spikes back together again. ‘Cos it was
Ian’s band, even though a lot of people may see it as mine. I
don’t…Obviously the mistake was calling Swanborough, Thomas, Selene and Brown
the Spikes, and "A Bloody Mess" should not have been released as the Spikes. So
Ian was in and out and eventually rejoined. We went to Melbourne as a five piece band,
played three gigs, came back to Adelaide, played two more and Ian said, fuck this, and
that was it, we were back to four of us. Ian, Greg and James eventually said OK,
we’re going to re-form the band and we’d like you to be in as well. So it was
obvious what I had to do; I had to rejoin those guys and say to Mick and Jim, hey,
we’re reforming the original; see you later. Which was a cunt of a thing to do. And
sure enough, as soon as we got that band back together, we knew it. It was like we were
meant to play together. The strange combination of four weirdos."
Here’s
Ian’s perspective from today (1997): "The live scene was still pretty healthy in
Adelaide at the time and the Spikes were playing quite regularly. Eventually I was coaxed
on stage and I did a few numbers with them. So, after that I rejoined for a while. Mick
and I shared the singing (which was weird) and we played around town for a while and did a
tour to Melbourne. It was over there that I decided to get out on our return to Adelaide.
Let's just say Mick and Jim's taste for the evil things that go with rock'n'roll were not
to my liking. I told Doug I was quitting and I had a batch of new material I had penned
overseas. I wanted James on bass, and so Doug and James quit too and we formed the Spikes.
(HUH?) An easier way of doing things than kicking Jim and Mick out I suppose. The Spikes
did benefit from Jim and Mick's involvement though. We became nastier and dirtier. So roll
on the full length album Colour in a Black Forest."
In Underground In
The City Of Churches he was a little bit harsher. When Tim Kelton asked what he
thought of the Brown/Selene version of the band that he saw when he came back from the UK,
he replied: "I thought they were horrible. I just couldn’t believe it, I thought
they were just verging on heavy metal." Reflecting on what it was like after he
rejoined, he said: "I was quite willing just to stand back and let Mick do the whole
lot for all I cared, but he wasn’t willing to stand back and let me do the whole
thing, so there was a bit of tension in the air always."
"Another thing
that struck me, the songs are so long, when you’re standing in the crowd, and when I
was playing them they always felt like they dragged ‘cos they were very long and
dirgey. When I was overseas I saw the Nomads, and they were on for 35 minutes and they
were full on; it was incredible. Song after song, which was great, and I loved it, so I
want to try to go a bit more that way."
Kelton does a great
job in pursuing all the actors in this little drama, so we might as well hear Mick
Brown’s point of view: "The first six months we progressed quite a bit. We found
a different direction to the old Spikes. I think the music was getting fairly noisy but we
were starting to explore more variations in rhythm. When Ian came back, Doug said "Do
you want to join in?" and he hummed and hahed and I said "Come back in,
particularly if you’ve got a whole bag of songs to do", ‘cos at the time I
had only a couple, not a lot of songs and Ian said that he had half a dozen or so. So he
came back in and we started working on his new songs, and then he left about March, and
after two weeks we talked him into joining again, then he left again - join, leave, join,
leave - didn’t progress. I think there were problems with Ian with a 5 piece. I
didn’t mind going back to almost being a guitar player and occasional singer and
writing a few songs with the band and letting Ian take over the reins. But I don’t
know if he believed that was the way I felt or something; he thought there was going to be
difficulties there, I really don’t know. Jim and I live for it, it’s important
to us."
In retrospect, the
conclusion of an outsider from reading all this (and much more in Kelton’s book) was
that these were two guys who just had a different picture of what they wanted a band to
sound like, and there wasn’t any way they were going to be able to work it out
together. This sort of thing happens all the time, and no reflection on the participants
either. If you don’t believe passionately about what you’re trying to do, you
should just get the hell out of music. And when you get people in a band who are
passionate about different things, well, it ain’t always pretty.
But on to the Spikes
masterwork. Colour In A Black Forest was their only full length lp. It was recorded
in December of 1985 with the production/engineer team of Doug Thomas and Kim Horne. Says
Doug: "I like the way Kim works. Like most engineers, he likes to fiddle around with
his toys and get all the wondrous, huge sounds. I guess the main idea is to let him play
with his stuff and then get on with it, say OK, Kim, that’s enough, now let’s do
it. He’s very good with recording. But production’s bullshit anyway,
production’s something we should never give credit for ‘cos I think the true
meaning of production is arrangement, construction of songs and additives, overseeing the
whole thing. The Spikes do that themselves."
"We made a
pretty varied album. It goes from thrash and feedback to acoustic pop songs. Yet
there’s that underlying grunge in there, I guess."
You have to remember
that these words were spoken in 1986 at a time when Nirvana were far in the future and
grunge meant little more than dirty sounding music with some fuzzy guitar work. Because Colour
In A Black Forest sounds like nobody’s idea of grunge today. It’s filled
with wonderful songs like the funky "River Of Love", the dramatic
"Leningrad", and the eerie "Spy In My House", to name just a few.
It’s a record of power and depth that’s as much a fresh new pleasure to hear the
50th play as the first.
"The picture on
the front cover of Colour was taken in the Adelaide hills at an old stately home
that had just burnt down in one of South Australia's worst bushfires in years. We recorded
3 tracks - "Spy In My House" / "Touched My Heart" and "The
Meaning Of Life" in July of '85. "Spy.." was used on a compilation LP of
Adelaide bands called An Oasis In A Desert Of Noise. We also did a video for this
song. "Meaning Of Life" was originally done with Mick and Jim and was on the
"Bloody Mess" ep. "Touched My Heart" was a stomper we did at the time
as we had time up our sleeves in the studio. It's the Nomads' song "Touch My
Hand" with different words! We recorded the rest of the album over 3 days in
December. We used Kim Horne as the engineer. He's a Canadian living here and quite frankly
a pain in the arse. We spent hours of wasted time and money arguing over pissy little
things that he wanted us to do with the recording. He thought he was George Martin. Still,
he's a good engineer and we eventually got him to do just that. "River Of Love"
is the first track on the album. A funky little number and was released as a 7"
single. We did a video for this one too. We had Vic Flierl playing keyboards on the album
(from the Garden Path) "Spy In My House" is about my fiancee's (at the time)
mother who was an interfering old bitch. The typical Mother-in-law thing. We re-recorded
"She's Melting" and gave it a more noisy feel. "Katrina" is Doug's
song about his wife (ex now) of the same name. "This Is Australia" is my words
and Greg Sage of the Wipers music. It's taken from "Youth of America" and Greg,
if you read this, APRA is trying to get in touch with you for your share of the royalties
they are holding for you! "Pass Myself" is a cover of a great single I picked up
in England by a band called the Third Eye. All in all I'm happy with the album. But, I
would like to have changed a few things now in hindsight. I'm not too wrapped in some of
my vocals. The Spikes always had this thing about the one take principle. But sometimes I
think we'd have been better off taking more time with some of the songs. Still, I reckon
the album is a good one. You can now get it on CD with 6 Sharp Cuts and just about
everything The Spikes did on there. Bargain! "
Colour In A Black
Forest was licensed for release in England by the small indie, Zinger Records. It
didn’t make much of an impression on the empire, but about a year after the release
of the album, when Ian was struck by the wanderlust again and appeared in London once
more, his contact with Zinger head Paul Baylis proved handy, since he put together a new
band, the UVs, with Baylis playing rhythm guitar under the name Llewellyn. Perhaps the
strangest thing about the album that eventually resulted from this is to see the credits
for the drummer…Dave Bunney, of the Exploding White Mice, another world class
Adelaide band. But what’s he doing in England? Let’s give Ian a chance to
explain.
"Greg
Swanborough and I headed back to England in early 1987", says Ian. "As money is
a prime object of living in London we both had to find work fast. I'm a painter by trade
so I got work easily. Greg was a cameraman and he found it impossible to break into any
work in that field over there, so he got a job at one pound an hour! as a barman in a
shitty little Irish pub in Tottenham. This was a contributing factor to his returning home
within a year. Also he brought his girlfriend with him and she didn’t like it over
there either. We put an ad in the NME for a guitarist and bass player. Our first applicant
was Jack from an Adelaide band The Ists! He didn’t pan out and we didn’t bother
with him. Then we got Dominic (guitar) and Jimmy Jazz (bass). If you've ever watched
Oliver the movie about the Artful Dodger and his cronies-these two would have fitted in
well. Both were from some no hoper punk band that had scammed a support with Siouxsie and
the Banshees in Italy! They'd never played in England.! Both were lovable rogues. Anyway
we rehearsed for ages and were lined up to play the Zap club in Brighton. This fell
through as Greg decided he'd had enough and was going to travel Europe before heading back
to Oz. Then Dominic left and we enlisted two of Jim's mates whose names escape me at the
moment. We rehearsed again for ages. We played a gig in Camden Town supporting The Junior
Manson Slags. Played shit if I remember rightly. England is bloody hard to play and
survive as a band. You literally have to pay to play. Anyway, I was so disillusioned with
the whole setup, I called it quits. I carried on working and holidaying all over the place
and months turned to years...and so on. Paul Baylis was the owner of Zinger Records. He
took on the release of the Spikes Colour LP in England. we became friends (and
still am - he works as A&R man for BMG records in Sydney now). I had all these songs
to record, so Paul and myself booked into a little 8 track studio in Brixton. It was under
a railway arch, so every time a train went overhead we had to stop recording. Paul was in
a band called I Can Crawl. Dave Bunney was in England on holiday and was staying with me,
so this tied in nicely with the recording of "Mexican Earthshake" and
"Machine Gun Love". These were put on the back burner for a while till I had
more money to record. Neat little studio though-Kim Salmon and the Scientists were using
it for rehearsals. Later on we went back there and did the rest of the album and used
Paul's drummer Jan Wilga. We did no rehearsals for any of the album. Dave, Jan and Paul
knew nothing of the songs till the day. I think we recorded and mixed the whole thing in a
total of 3 days. We went back there one more time and had my friend Chris Bashford play
guitar on Candlelight. (Chris was the drummer for punkers Chelsea at one stage). I was
going to Sweden and Paul collared me asking about the artwork for the album. We had to
decide then and there and I had to catch the boat in about 2 hours time. Thus the dodgy
cover. It was a picture out of a book on orange crate art. Sheeesh.. Anyway, it came out
with a fizz. Still, I reckon it's pretty good and has a lot of decent songs on it. Paul
and Zinger was the Greasy Pop records of England. He sold fuck all of all his releases.
But his heart is in the right place. He made zip money doing Zinger over the years.
Eventually he chucked it in and came to work for EMI initially in Australia."
"He did know a
few people though and one was John Storey from Bucketful of Brains. I met John in a pub in
Soho and did an interview with him over vast amounts of beer. The song "Summer of
Love" appeared on the Bucketful flexi with the Lime Spiders (I think Bunney played on
that one). Annoyingly Storey claimed to have lost the master tape when it was time to
retrieve it so my only copy is a crappy flexi."
Considering how
loosely constructed the band was, the Crayon Jungle lp really holds together
amazingly well. It’s less varied than the Spikes records, and has more emphasis on
buzzsaw rhythm guitar playing, but it still has a lot of depth to it. Ian’s
confidence in his singing seems to be on the rise, since he’s mixed louder than ever
before. It has an ace opening cut in "Dropping Bombs" (which we’ll hear
more of later), another great one on the second side in "The Honeymooners" and
in between a batch of more than satisfying tracks. It ends with a compelling, drumless
track called "Fall In Love With You" that features some great reverb drenched
guitar. Like the Spikes records, this one’s a grower that hooks another barb in you
each time you play it. But there wasn’t much to hold Ian in England, and ultimately
he headed back to Oz.
"By the end of
1988", says Ian, "I decided to return to Australia for six months with my
fiancee (who was German) to see if she'd like living over there. We came back and after
another trip back to England settled in Adelaide. I got Doug (Spikes), Chris Willard
(Lizard Train), Dave Bunney and Jeff Stephens (Exploding White Mice) to play with me in
the studio to do the 1989 ep. Doug liked Crayon Jungle but preferred a harder edge,
so we did some of the songs again. After we decided to play as The UV'S. We played for
about 6 months and it was going great. Loads of people at the gigs and I've got a couple
of killer live tapes out of it. Dave Bunney and I had a serious falling out and the
project folded. (we've since made up of course). Plus all the guys had their other bands
which was first priority for them. But it was a great hot summer of hard
rock'n'roll."
The UVs ’89
EP came out on Greasy Pop in 1989 and was shortly followed by a US single on Sympathy
with 3 of the four cuts. It kicks off with a new version of "Dropping Bombs"
that has a slightly harder drum sound, but is otherwise pretty comparable to the UK
version. The other 3 tracks are new ones, and solid efforts, too. "Real World"
is my fave of the others because of its tasty lead guitar bits. "Deepest Blue"
starts out slow and ominous, then picks up to a threatening mid-tempo. The last track,
"Gallilee", features what by now has become a typical Ian List trick, where the
tune in mid course veers into a totally different key and feel, and then turns back. The
production is great, and it leaves you a bit sad that there’s only four tracks. It
wasn’t apparent at the time, but these would be the last tracks List would ever
commit to record.
In early 1991 I went
to Australia for vacation (my second time there) and came through Adelaide to try to see
some of the bands I had been listening to for so long. Unfortunately, I was there mid
week, and Adelaide isn’t big enough to support any nightlife other than on Friday and
Saturday. So I met a lot of people who I’d always wanted to meet, including Doug and
Ian, and had the (sort of) pleasure of sitting in at a rehearsal of a revived version of
the Spikes. I recall that they were practicing above a storefront in a place where the
windows were wide open onto the streets below, and I was amazed that they could get away
with all the racket with no one calling the police, who would have arrived in force with
guns drawn before all the band members even knew rehearsal was scheduled here in America.
This was right at the time when the Gulf War was starting, and the Spikes new bass player
somehow had determined that as an American, I was personally responsible for the US
attack, so she gave me a load of shit about it. Quite uncomfortable, although I did enjoy
listening to the band.
Here’s
Ian’s account: "Come 1991 I decided to use The Spikes name again and get things
going. Chris Willard and Shane Bloffwitch (from Lizard Train) were in and on drums we had
Paul Sharmen. (a complete dickhead ).We played a couple of parties and then that stopped
as the Lizard Train were getting pretty busy at the time with touring, etc. So we got a
girl in on bass named Sherri Goldsworthy. I remember you coming to one of our early
rehearsals and getting into a bit of a heated argument with her over America's involvement
in the Gulf War! You probably remember Paul - he was the idiot who spent all his spare
time doing shitty impressions. Anyway, this line up played around awhile and we eventually
made it into the studios of Channel 2 to record the never released album Poke. The
recording of this was a shambles. It's amazing what you find out in a studio when you're
paying $100 an hour. Paul was a crap drummer who couldn't keep time and Sherri was a
pretty basic bass player! Anyway, the engineer we used kept disappearing for up to an hour
and we found out he was shooting up out the back somewhere. It was a mess. But we
eventually left with master tapes to an LP. Whether I'll ever go back into a studio and
clean it up myself or just use the songs again is something I don't know."
"At this point
Greasy Pop was going down the proverbial gurgler. Doug's marriage was just about finished
and he was having hassles with all the bands on the label. He just threw his hands in the
air and said FUCK IT and left Adelaide and went and lived 3000 miles away in Perth. I miss
Doug - he's a good friend and his life was changed / ruined by his love of music and
belief in what he was doing. Not one fucking band said thanks though or was there to help
him out when he was financially destitute. At one stage I was playing bass for
Contrapunctus - did about 5 gigs with them, but it wasn't really my thing so I left. Then
I formed a band with a few friends who've never been in any bands of note and played for a
year as Kill City. Yep, we did an hour of Stooges/Pop material. That was fun, but after a
while I began to hate it as I've always loathed cover bands anyway. From '93 till now I've
never been back on stage. My friend Paul Larson (ex Celibate Rifles) lives back here now
and we've had a few jams - great drummer!. But in all honesty I don't miss the live scene
at the moment. It's pretty good at the present time in Adelaide. Loads of pretty good
bands playing. And Greasy Pop isn't needed anymore in a way as every man and his dog is
releasing a CD.. A couple of Adelaide bands have had success with major labels - Mark of
Cain / Superjesus / Sin Dog Jellyroll."
"I have got a
small recording set up at home - a digital 8 track studio, and all the other gear to go
with doing that kind of thing. I've recorded an album’s worth of stuff, and I've had
about 14 of my songs used on the soundtrack to a TV series on cable revolving around
sports. So I've not been too idle. And hey! I've got an 11 month old son who keeps me very
busy - and has put a different slant on life. A great buzz that I get is when I hear one
of my songs on the radio, or when I'm working in my shop and a punter buys one of my
albums (not knowing who I am). It's cool too being a musician. The average Joe who has no
idea about anything in the rock world is always asking these insane questions as if you
know all the answers. And you could always say you did the same job as Jimi Hendrix or Jim
Morrison. I've really been lucky in music, but I can't help thinking sometimes that if I
wasn't living here would things have been different? Could I have really made it? But then
again - did I really want to? Bit of a Freudian one for me to finish on folks. Hope it
wasn't too boring and it's brought a little information into your lives! Thanks and
peace."
So there you have
it…the long and eventful rock and roll career of Ian List. Not one of the better
known names of Australian rock on the worldwide scene, but not because he doesn’t
deserve to be.
