Chapter 42: Changes, Changes, Changes

Benefit Concerts

January 1990

“Hey, Will, have you got a few minutes to talk? We’ve got a proposal we’d like to talk with you about,” Paul Christie said to me, when we had finished our first sound check for the New Year’s Eve concert in Victoria Park.

Paul had established The Party Boys back around 1983 along with Kevin Boritch, and since then it had served as a place for anyone between groups to join and play with. Even some big international names – Joe Walsh, Eric Burden – had played with them.

“We hear you guys are likely to fold after this summer,” Kevin said. “We were wondering if you’d like to join us as our main vocalist, and also do guitar and keyboards. Since Swannie left to do his own thing earlier we’ve had Ross Wilson filling in, but he’s got something starting in a month or two.”

“Well, we’re not really folding,” I said. “Just scaling back the touring and stuff like that; this year we took a break to recharge, but for some of the others, family commitments make it had to be on the road for an extended period of time. Thanks for the offer, I’ll have to think about it, but I’m not sure if I’ll have the time once things start up again at the University, after February. And you know I don’t fly? I have a phobia about planes, I know it’s crazy, but even the thought of having to fly somewhere starts a panic attack.”

“Yeah, fair enough, if you change your mind, let us know, okay?” Paul said. “Anyway, it should be a good gig tonight, we’ve been looking forward to playing with you guys for a while now.”

It was a good gig, we shared the stage with INXS, I had always got on well with the three Farriss brothers, Kirk Pengilly and Garry Beers; Michael Hurchence not so much, he was a bit of a moody character, you never quite knew where you stood with him. But they were fantastic on stage, and the Party Boys lived up to their reputation. During the show we made an appeal for people to give money to the Salvation Army members collecting money to help with the Newcastle earthquake relief effort, apparently they collected close to $100,000, which I thought was pretty good. By the time we had finished, about 1:00 a.m., I was pretty exhausted, it was home and into bed, where we slept until close to noon.

It was time to start thinking about the earthquake benefit concert up in Newcastle, three nights at the Broadmeadow racecourse. Midnight Oil and Mental as Anything would be sharing the gig with us, but there wouldn’t be any combined sets; we would play a slightly shortened version of what we had been playing to promote the album; three fifty minute sets, with a ten minute break between them, and a final thirty minute encore. Each group had three and a half hours allotted to then, allowing for a thirty minute change-over between groups, it was going to be close to twelve hours of music; the audience would certainly be getting their money’s worth. All of the profits were going to the Salvation Army earthquake relief fund, helping people who had lost their homes.

Since accommodation was at a premium, we would be staying in the tour bus and associated sleeping quarters, as we had done on previous tours. We would rely on the catering truck – the commissary vehicle – for our meals and a place to rest between performances. Being limited to that was not any great hardship, we had done tours where those trucks were our main accommodation for several weeks on end; we couldn’t see a need to stretch the limited resources of the city any more than was absolutely necessary. Peter Jonas and his people had all of the arrangements in place, all we had to do was sort out the sets that we wanted to play and turn up with our instruments ready to perform. Publicity was in full swing, and ticket sales were looking very promising.

Jack had returned from the Pittwater to Coffs race, he said the race was well organized, and a lot of fun, particularly once they got up to the marina in Coffs Harbour; the local sailing club had put on a great set of short off-shore races. The racing was competitive, but good-natured, and he said that there were two other Young 88’s in the fleet, and they did well on handicap. He was on a J-35, and there was an informal race between the them and the four other J-35’s in the fleet.

“You should give it a go next race, Will,” he said. “Your boat would handle the conditions, and you’ve got a pretty top crew from what I hear. Let me know, and I’ll do what I can to help you. You’ll probably have to upgrade some of the safety equipment, and a HF transceiver. You’ll want to get and carry an EPIRB - an emergency locator beacon that marine rescue satellites pick up, and relay information to the Maritime Search and Rescue organization in Canberra.”

I put that down on my list of things to start considering around the middle of the year, and went back to looking at our set lists for Newcastle. By Tuesday night, we felt we had a pretty good show to play for the people of Newcastle, it was one way that we could give back to them, and thank them for their support of us over the years. Wednesday morning, early, we loaded our equipment into the truck, and headed up the highway to Newcastle. The stage had already been constructed, we had about two hours to unload our equipment and set thing up before the first sound check.

While we were waiting for the sound engineers to get ready, I chatted to some of the other guys, Martin Rotsey, Peter Garrett, and Rob Hirst from the Oils, Andrew and Tim Farriss from INXS. They asked me about our latest album, wanting to know where our inspiration for ‘Corroboree’ came from; I told them that Stewie, Traci and Rachel wrote it, and they should ask them about it.

“It’s a great album, Will,” Martin said. “It really highlights the versatility you guys have.”

“Are you going to be doing some of those R&B numbers?” Andrew asked. “‘Treat her Right’, “Midnight Hour’, stuff like that; not many white dudes can pull those off like you.”

“I want to hear Allison do ‘Bobby McGee’,” Peter said. “You guys really rock that out.”

“That’s the challenge we face,” I said, “cutting things down to a reasonable number of songs, we only have a limited time on stage. If we played all the tracks from all of our albums, we would probably take up the whole twelve hours just for ourselves!”

“I know what you’re saying,” Tim said. “If we don’t play some of our earlier songs, like on our first two albums, then people complain.”

“Yeah, and if you don’t do the latest ones,” Peter said, “other people complain. You’ll never be able to please everybody.”

Time for us to go through our sound check; the usual procedure, each microphone was tested individually, then each instrument feed, each fold back speaker, then all of us together. The whole process took about an hour, and then they asked us to play something where all of us were going full bore, so they could check levels, and make sure there was no feedback.

“How about ‘Bobby McGee’?” Phil suggested. “You good for that, Alli?”

“Let’s do it,” Allison said. “You asked for it, Peter!”

We played it, Allison was fantastic, as usual, then someone said ‘Call me the Breeze’, and it was into our rendition of that one. The sound engineers were happy with the test, everything checked out and sounded good. We had the rest of the afternoon off until the lighting test, once it was dark, time to relax and listen to the other two groups do their sound checks. Lisa, Fiona and I took my car and drove across to Beaumont Street, to see where the centre of the earthquake damage was. The remains of the Worker’s Club was slowly being removed, I was amazed that what was apparently a substantial building could have collapsed like that. A few other buildings adjacent to it were damaged, some fairly seriously. We decided to get out of the way of the workers, and head over to my grandmother’s place, to see her and my parents. My mother pointed out some of the cracks in the brickwork on my grandmother’s place, there were major delays in getting tradesmen around to conduct repairs, as there was so much work to be done fixing damaged buildings. We left some complimentary tickets for them and my cousins, then headed back to the racecourse for dinner, and the lighting check.

After the lighting check, things were finished for the day, Lisa, Fiona and I went off to bed, and somehow managed to squeeze all three of us into a single bunk. It wasn’t ideal, but it at least allowed all three of us to make love together. However, after we had finished, and I had slept for a short period, I moved to one of the spare bunks and left Lisa and Fiona to sleep together; at least I was able to get a fairly comfortable night’s sleep. The concert started just before noon on Thursday, INXS were on first, playing until mid-afternoon, when the Oils took the stage. The crowd was quite large, maybe twenty-five or thirty thousand, all spread out on the centre of the racecourse. They weren’t packed in – except for those up close to the stage, but sitting in small groups, almost like they were having a picnic. There were people from the Red Cross and Salvation Army going around with buckets taking donations, I hoped people were being generous and giving what they could afford.

Finally, it was our time to take the stage, by now it was starting to get dark, and the stage lights were starting to become visible. That meant we would have the advantage of the rather impressive light show that had been set up for the concert. By now, the crowd was pretty fired up from both INXS and the Oils, we had a pretty tough act to follow on from. Phil looked across at me, asking if I was ready, and I nodded.

“Okay Newcastle, we are the Roberttones,” he said. “Take it away, Will!”

The stage lights faded until there was just the single spotlight on me, sitting at my B3, the crowd started to roar, and I played the opening chords of ‘Time is Tight’. Andrew joined in with the opening bass riff, and the concert was under way. We went through the opening set, the quality of the sound, and the lighting effects were pretty fantastic, and the crowd – at least what I could see of them – seemed to be really getting into it. We took our first break, the other two groups were backstage, and congratulated us on our performance.

“Damn, Allison, you killed those vocals,” Michael Hutchence said to her. “You’ve got to be the best female rock vocalist around at the moment!”

“Just wait for her performance in the next set,” Don said. “Her version of ‘Desperado’, that will bring tears to your eyes.”

“Stop it, guys, you’re making me all embarrassed,” Allison said, putting her hands over her face. “I’m not that good!”

“You are, Alli,” Phil said, “you are that good.”

Despite Allison’s misgivings, she performed at her best in the rest of the sets, in fact we were all on top of our game tonight. It might have been because we were fired up from the two performances before us, or the thought that we were helping out the people in the city, or the sound and lighting effects were fantastic. Whatever the reason, we seemed to be performing at our best, and it was a fantastic evening, the performance had us all wired up, we were still too hyped up to go to bed. We sat around talking about the performance, laughing, joking, and eventually crawled off to bed around 2:00 a.m.

The next day, Friday, we didn’t surface until close to noon, and we just sat around relaxing while INXS and the Oils played their sets. Later in the afternoon, we did an interview with some of the local radio systems and NBN3, the commercial TV station. The usual sort of questions, why we were putting on the show (pretty obvious question, really), what we would be playing, things like that. Most of the ‘journalists’ were pretty ignorant about our music, I guess they just picked whoever was available to come out to report on the ‘big name rock groups helping raise money’. Still, they were just trying to do their jobs, so we were polite, explained what we were doing, how we hoped to help a city that had been welcoming to us over the years.

Time for our performance, Midnight Oil came off the stage, we congratulated them on another great performance, the stage crew moved the equipment, setting ours up, and we took our places on stage, waiting for the signal to start. The last minute, before we started the opening number was always stressful for me. Did I have my cheat sheets in the right order? Was everything plugged in properly? Would my voice fail me? I took a sip of water, checked through the set lists for probably the hundredth time, made sure the drawbars were in the correct positions, and, with a nod from Phil, we started the gig.

We had been starting our gigs with ‘Time is Tight’ for quite a while now, and the introductions of the group members and opening patter flowed naturally. The lighting guys knew who to aim the spots at and when, and it was a pretty smooth and slick opening. In fact, the whole performance went well, one song moved into the next, no one screwed up their timing, no lines were flubbed, and it was an enjoyable performance. We ended up playing the extended encore, Phil gave the instructions just before we started the first encore song. The feeling was that the crowd were so amped up, so into the music, that we would give them more than just the standard three songs. Our final song for the night was ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top’, just before we were about to finish, Phil gave us the sign to play it through a second time, it would be an additional strain on my voice, but I made it through to the finish.

Back resting in the lounge, I mentioned that my voice was starting to feel the strain; Allison told me to have some hot tea with honey and lemon, and to make sure I gargled in the morning with some salt water, to help clear my vocal cords. I wasn’t overly worried, I would make sure I rested my voice tomorrow until we had to go on stage. The hot tea was rather soothing, I thought it was something I should have every evening as a matter of course.

When I woke up the next morning I did the regular gargling with the warm salty water, but my voice still felt a bit raspy. I tried singing a few notes, sitting at my clavinona, and I guessed my throat hadn’t fully recovered from the previous night’s exertions. I decided to rest my voice completely until it was time to get on stage, talking as little as possible. It still didn’t feel much better by mid-afternoon, so I told the others that we would have to shuffle around some of the vocal responsibilities.

“I’ll sing what I can, until my voice packs it in,” I said. “Sorry about that, I don’t think I’ve put that much of a strain on it.”

“You should see about getting it looked at,” Mandy said. “There’s a throat specialist over at Royal Prince Alfred hospital, when we get home tomorrow, I’ll look up his number for you.”

We worked out who would take over singing for me; at least we had Ian and Don, both of whom could sing in my place. It wasn’t as if I was singing lead vocals on every song to start with, which was something in our favour. In the end, my voice lasted long enough for me to do the first set, but I had to let the others do the singing for the remainder of the night, only coming back in for the final song. It was worrying me, it didn’t feel like the usual voice strain that I had experienced on the odd occasion before, it was just that it physically hurt to sing. I would have to see the specialist that Mandy recommended; I relied on my voice, not just for singing, but in my University career. If I somehow couldn’t talk, how would I conduct lectures?

Sunday morning we packed up our equipment, and headed back to Sydney, my voice seemed to be worse; very rough and scratchy, and quite painful to speak at anything above a whisper. Clearly, there was something not right with my throat and vocal cords, I just hoped it was from overuse, and nothing serious like the vocal cord polyps that Neville Wran had a few years earlier. If I needed major throat surgery, there would be a good chance I would somehow lose my singing voice, which would pretty much end my music career.

“There’s no point worrying about what the problem might be,” Lisa said, reassuring me. “Once you’ve seen the specialist, and they’ve run tests to see what the problem is, then, and only then, if it shows some sort of problem, should you start worrying.”

Monday morning I called the doctor that Mandy had recommended, spoke to him and explained the situation. He asked if I would be able to come in to see him tomorrow morning, and we made the appointment for 8:30 in his rooms at RPA Hospital. At the appointed time, I was at his office, knocking on a door with a sign ‘Doctor Herman Jackson Downey, MD’ and I entered when he called ‘come in’. I introduced myself to him, and he told me to sit on a chair next to the examination table. He asked me to go over the symptoms, and I told him how my voice had started to give out, and there was pain when I tried to strain my voice. He asked if this had happened before, and I said that there had been some occasions when from overuse my voice would give out, but I had been taking things pretty easy this summer, with a lot less performances than I would usually give.

He asked me a few questions, like whether I had got the flu last winter, had I felt sick or off-colour recently, was I in close contact with young school-aged children (only indirectly through Rachel and Stewie), and did I suffer from hay fever or similar allergies. I said that I sometimes got what I assumed was a hay fever type of infection in the springtime, getting a runny nose, sneezing, and watery eyes, but it was never severe enough to require any sort of medication. He then looked down my throat, asked me to try to sing a phrase or two while he listened closely to my voice. He said that he believed I had a throat infection, which could be cleared up by a course of antibiotics, but there was an underlying cause, a virus they called ‘RSV’ – respiratory syncytial virus – which is very common, particularly among schoolchildren.

“Normally, its effects in a young, otherwise healthy person like you are pretty mild, a runny nose, sore throat, sometimes a mild fever. Probably what you assumed to be hay fever,” he said. “Now, in some older adults, or people whose immune system is somewhat compromised, it can lead to more severe respiratory tract infections, possible pneumonia, and in some cases, death. What I think has happened in your situation is the virus attached to your vocal chords, and caused an easier path for an infection. To confirm, I’ll take some biopsies, nasal and throat swabs, some sputum, and a blood sample.”

He called a nurse in to draw some blood, I winced as she stuck the needle into the vein in my arm, collecting a vial of blood. She then use a long cotton bud to swab the upper – extreme upper – part of my nose, another to swab my throat, then I had to hack up some mucus. The tests wouldn’t take that long to confirm his suspicions, and he asked what I had been doing to treat the sore throat.

“Mainly resting it,” I said, “and drinking hot tea with honey and lemon juice, plus gargling with salt water every morning.”

“Well, that’s good, but it won’t solve the problem, we will need antibiotics for that,” he said. “But resting your voice is essential, no singing or straining your voice for the next three weeks. The salt gargle is good generally, stopping the build-up of mucus, and the tea with honey, is good too. The honey will help protect the vocal chords, it will act almost like a protective film on them – almost like how saucepans get a Teflon coating. Don’t overdo the saline gargle, you need some mucus there as a lubricant, like grease around wheel bearings, making things smooth.

“But the real cure will be with the course of antibiotics I will prescribe, once I know exactly what the bacteria that’s causing the infection is. Make sure you take and complete the whole course, even if you feel better, keep taking the pills. And rest your voice, that will let the damage heal properly. I’m going to say no singing until the end of the month at the earliest. When are you back lecturing at the university? March?”

“Yes, classes resume the last week of February,” I said. “I can have someone replace me singing this month, we don’t have too many gigs, not like in previous years when there would be a major tour during summer. So, there should be no permanent effect on my voice?”

“No, not at all, provided you rest it until the infection has gone,” he said. “Sadly, you seem to be prone to the virus, and there isn’t a vaccine available for it at this stage. Some people are researching it, and maybe we will be able to vaccinate you in the future. But until then, it’s a very common, and very infectious virus. You probably have picked it up every year, this time around you were just unlucky that it allowed a bacteria to ‘piggy back’ on it. There’s nothing I can really recommend to avoid future infections, it’s just a price we pay living around other people.”

He then went off to supervise the analysis of the samples that were taken, and I read through some of the material on this virus. I was surprised I hadn’t heard about it before, but maybe because it was so similar to the usual seasonal flu, it wasn’t seen as anything special. But it certainly appeared to be a serious concern for older people, or those with compromised immune or respiratory systems. After a while Doctor Downey returned, and confirmed that I had, in fact, contracted RSV earlier this year, as there were the antibodies present in my blood.

“So does that mean I can’t get it again?” I asked. “Isn’t that how the immune system and antibodies work?”

“With most normal viruses, yes, that would be the case. But this one is a rather sneaky virus, it is constantly mutating, not significantly, but enough to make the antibodies that your immune system would develop ineffective against some of the variants. That’s making the development of a vaccine more difficult, some of the early candidate vaccines were found to cause those vaccinated to suffer from a worse respiratory disease than those unvaccinated during subsequent infections. But there’s research that is starting to look positive, but only time will tell with these things. Anyway, we’ve isolated the bacteria causing the vocal cord infection, so I’ll give you a prescription for some antibiotics, and we will see how things go.”

He gave me the prescription, and we set an appointment for two weeks’ time, so he could check on my progress. I thanked him for his time, then headed home, via the pharmacy at Lane Cove to have my prescription filled. It was a huge relief to me that there was nothing serious behind my voice problems, it would be a little inconvenient not singing at the remainder of the gigs this month, but that was a small price to pay to get my full voice back. That evening, we went through our set lists for the gigs we would be playing this month, and worked out how we could get by without me singing. After much discussion among all of us, we eventually had things worked out. Garry reluctantly agreed to him taking the lead vocals on two songs, one was ‘Fast Woman on a Slow Train’, the other was ‘Last Wave of Summer’.

“I don’t know how you do it, Will,” he said to me. “Get up there on stage every time we perform, and sing all of those songs. You never screw them up, I’ve never heard you forget the words, or hit a bum note. I don’t think I will be able to do the same, certainly not as good as you can.”

“That’s BS, mate,” I replied. “You should have confidence in your abilities, the rest of us do, we wouldn’t have suggested you take the lead if we didn’t think you had the ability. Just picture yourself singing it in your head, the words will automatically come to you. I mean, you’ve sung them hundreds of times in rehearsal here in the studio, you’ll kill it on stage.”

Despite Garry’s misgivings, he sang pretty well at our series of gigs at Selina’s at the end of the week. It did feel strange for me, being on stage playing, but not singing, however I had to follow the doctor’s orders and give my voice a complete rest until the infection had been cured. I was, in fact, starting to feel better, I’m sure a combination of the antibiotics clearing things up, and me hardly using my voice had led to the improvement. There was still just over a week of taking the antibiotics to finish the course, and three weeks of not singing, just resting my voice before everything should be back to normal.

Even around the house, I spoke as little as possible – probably much to the relief of the others living there – and I noticed an improvement in my voice, on the occasions when I would speak, there was no raspiness or roughness about my voice. Another week of resting the voice, and I would try some singing; just a gentle reintroduction at first. I certainly didn’t want to jeopardize the recovery by straining my voice too early; it wasn’t just my musical career that would be at risk, but how could I be a lecturer if I wasn’t able to speak clearly?

The next weekend we were playing at the Antler, again, it was hard not to be singing, but when I went back to see Doctor Downey, he was pleased with my progress.

“I would give it another week, and try some singing – not too long, and certainly not at your full power. Just see how it feels, you’ll know if everything is okay,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll need another course of the antibiotics, but we’ll take a swab and see how your throat is doing.”

At least this time I didn’t have to have the rather unpleasant nasal swab, just a quick swipe to get some mucus from my throat. That showed that the infection was just about gone; the antibiotics were doing their job. I thanked him for curing the problem with my throat, and he said I should come back at the end of February, to make sure everything was completely right with my throat. I sat out the next set of gigs, at Millers Manly Vale, but for a few days the week after, I spent time up in the studio trying out my voice. A few soft songs to start with, but gradually building up into some of the more ‘power’ songs. By the beginning of February, I could sing for an hour without feeling any pain in my throat, without my voice failing me. The panic had passed, and I would be able to resume some of the vocals at this weekend’s gigs at Selina’s. I took it easy, maybe singing on half of the songs that I normally would, but my voice lasted, and for the remainder of the gigs in February, I would take on my usual singing load. I think Garry was pleased not to be taking lead on so many songs, despite his great success as a lead singer, he was happiest when he was playing rhythm guitar, or talking the odd lead instrumental break, backing Phil or me.

Election Planning

February - March 1990

We started the second half of the sailing season off with a convincing first place (on scratch) in the fourth heat of the Retriever Trophy, the wind conditions suited ‘Young Lovers’, about sixteen, seventeen knots from the north-east and we went with the number two jib. Some of the others were too aggressive, using their large genoas, and were subsequently overpowered causing them to be constantly battling rounding up or broaching. Next week was a Quartet Bowl heat, and we were all looking forward to that race. We were playing at the Antler next weekend, so we would not be able to really sleep in after the three nights playing there.

When we got home, there was a message for me on the answering machine, Bob Hawke had called earlier in the day, and asked if I would call him back as soon as I could. I had a quick shower, to rinse the salt water and sweat off my body and from my hair, and I called him back.

“Will? Thanks for calling me back,” he said. “I’ll get to the point quickly, I’m planning on going to the Governor-General to call an election for the 24th of March. I’m hoping you can get down for a few days this week, I want to pick your brain and hear your thoughts of strategies, policies, and what we can do to make sure we win. How are you placed for this week?”

“Okay ... I could drive down tomorrow, but I have to be back here by Thursday afternoon, we’ve got some gigs Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights,” I said. “I’m not sure if Lisa can make it, she’s already taken a few weeks off over January, and I don’t know if she’s got much leave left.”

“Tuesday and Wednesday should be fine,” he said. “It’s mainly your input I’m looking for, will you need accommodation?”

“I’ll give my friend Cathy Ball a call, see if I can stay there. Where are we meeting?”

“In the cabinet room at Parliament house, I’ll have the details and a pass dropped around at her place for you.”

“Okay, I’ll see you there, 8:30 Tuesday morning, I guess?”

“Yeah, that will be great, see you, comrade. And thanks again for coming at such short notice, you know I value your advice. I don’t have to remind you to keep the reason for your visit confidential, we don’t want any hints to leak out.”

I told Lisa what the call was about, she said she would make a quick call to her boss, see if she could have the next four days off work, which was fine. We then called Cathy, and she was excited to see us, and said she would arrange to have tomorrow afternoon off work, and would also see if she could get some time off to spend with Lisa. We would drive down tomorrow morning, arriving at her place in time for lunch, and then we packed our bags, taking enough clothes for the four days. I spent the evening thinking about the election strategy, what policies would be worth introducing, and how to counter what the opposition might try to use against us.