Darling It Hurts

Sunset Warmun East Kimberley

Easter 1978, I remember Good Friday was wet. Bruce, Bill and I were hanging out to see a hot new band called The High Rise Bombers we’d read about in The Age. 

Good Friday was a pretty nothing day back then.  Channel 7 was doing it’s Royal Children’s Hospital Appeal and that was about it.  Nothing was open, but there had been a small change in the law, and a few places were allowed to open at midnight.  Café Paradiso in Carlton was one, that’s where the Bombers were playing.

We had our own band, The Male Models, myself on bass, Bruce Dickenson (not Iron Maiden Bruce) on rhythm guitar and Bill Hay on extraordinary stage presence and vocals.  Bill was an artist, a young painter, and he loved his rock n’ roll.

Bruce and Bill had written some great songs, “Black and White Transmission” (“you say you come in colours, but you don’t, you don’t, you don’t……..black and white transmission”), “Shopping”, and the classic “Vasoline and Rubber Gloves.”

We’d rehearse at Bill’s place in Blessington Street one night a week,  amidst the pile of used pizza boxes, VB bottles and cigarette butts, but were still to perform live. Seeing The High Rise Bombers that night made us chafe at the bit. What a band!!!!!

A bloke in a leather jacket seemed to be the front man, Paul Kelly from Adelaide and a blond bloke on guitar, Martin Armiger, was real cool.  They were doing their own songs, had a brass section which included Sally Ford, and were fantastic. They lasted less than a year, but are now one of those bands that eveybody you talk to says they saw, even if they didn’t.

Following the demise of the Bombers Martin Armiger joined up with Stephen Cummings in Sports, Chris Dyson worked with Paul Kelly for a while in The Dots and Paul himself of course went on to become really famous as Paul Kelly the great Australian songwriter and performer. 

He’s just published his 576-page ‘mongrel’ memoir, “How to Make Gravy”, which you can buy from his website store along with an 8 CD Box Set, all for $125 bucks. He has written some truly great songs, like “Darling It Hurts” and “Maralinga (Rainy Land)”, all about Yami Lester, one of my heroes. 

I used to smile whenever I drove through Darlinghurst and saw the sign, “Darling It Hurts”, in the apartment window, thinking it was a homage to the song.  But I now discover the sign was there long before Paul wrote the song, and the homage is the other way round, a tribute to Toby Zoates.

Paul Kelly’s memoir is an easy read, full of interesting and funny anecdotal tales, like when Michael Gudinski rang him in late 2008 and asked; ‘How do you think Leonard Cohen would go?’ Or even where the title, “How to Make Gravy”, comes from.   

The High Rise Bombers don’t rate much of a mention, less than a full page in fact: “The High Rise Bombers lasted only nine months – too many chiefs – but, strangely, seemed to get more famous once we’d broken up. My main memory of being in the band is people in the crowd yelling ‘Play Faster!’”

Perhaps that’s just it, he doesn’t remember. 

But there are two historic photographs of the band reproduced in the book. That seems to make the band special. And on the very next page are two photographs of the “final resting places of Queenie McKenzie and Rover Thomas, in a bush cemetery in the East Kimberley.” Special too!

Jackey Coyle and I get a mention, on pages 368-9, all about the sunny afternoon Paul and his manager Bill Cullen called in to the Warmun Art Centre in the Kimberley on their way to Derby in August 2007.  We were managing the Centre at that stage.

The album Stolen Apples had just come out, featuring the song “The Ballad of Queenie and Rover”, all about the two deceased Indigenous artists. Paul was interested in seeing their country.

As Paul tells it, Jackey and I showed them round, the Art Centre, the Roadhouse, the cemetry.  I’ll let you read his story, but that was and is the only time I’ve ever actually met him. Jackey had her photo taken with him and some of the artists and ended up being in Rolling Stone. Life’s journey, huh!!  

Oh, by the way, Bill, Bruce and I never yelled out ‘Play Faster!’

Paul Kelly with Patrick Mung Mung and Betty Carrington at Warmun