The Dingoes' Lament. John Bois
After that, he got a job with this band called Lynyrd Skynyrd. They’re apparently big in the South.’
He took a long draught of his beer and cleaned the foam off his top lip leisurely with his bottom lip. ‘He took our album with him and he used to play it over the PA before Lynyrd how’s-your-father played. Well, their manager, a guy called Peter Rudge, heard it and thought it wasn’t bad. It seems he also manages …’ he took another sip, cleaned his top lip and went on, ‘… The Rolling Stones.’
‘No!’
‘Yes. And apparently Peter Rudge played it for Mick. Mick thought it was alright, too.’
‘No kidding,’ said Stockley. We were all flabbergasted. No-one else had touched their beer.
‘And so … so?’ I said.
‘Well, Rudge wants to cut a deal with A&M Records in Los Angeles. Billy wants us to set up a lawyer. He says contracts are on their way over.’
‘Doesn’t this Rudge guy even want to see us?’ I asked.
‘No. Our man in New York has sold us to him. Remember, about six months ago, when Billy used to hang at the Station?’
I could remember Billy leaning, beerless, against the back wall of the bar, with a grin a mile wide.
‘My mate, Billy,’ said Brod.
Just as intimates yawn together, we all sipped our beers at the same time. The clouds moved away for a minute and completely exposed the trellis to the sun, the beer garden became infused with green.
I looked at green Kerryn and said, ‘Come on. You were on the phone much longer than that. What else?’
‘That’s not enough?’ he said.
‘When do we leave?’ asked J.L.
‘As soon as the lawyers take care of the contracts, I suppose.’
‘Christ, this is unbelievable,’ said Stockley, and he blew on his ring finger five times. ‘I’m off to ring Jen.’
‘Good idea.’
One by one the green Dingoes left to telephone the good news back to Melbourne. Presently I was alone in the beer garden. The squall had disappeared as quickly as it had come, and now the unobstructed sun’s rays flooded me with still, green warmth. As I drained my glass, I was filled with an almost tangible sense of wellbeing. As soon as I put it on the table it was replaced, by Kerryn, with a full one.
‘I think this is called for, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Capital.’
‘I suppose we shouldn’t break up just yet, mate?’
‘I suppose not, mate.’
2
Melbourne
In the green beer garden, after everyone had phoned our good news back to Melbourne, we agreed to keep the call secret. We realised people would find out, but we didn’t want to make a big announcement until the contracts were signed.
As soon as we returned from Perth, a friend of the band said he knew a lawyer who knew something about the music business. His name was Seymour. No. He didn’t know international music law but our friend was sure he could handle it. He had only been practising for two years, and we should have been sceptical, but we thought that all we needed was someone who could make sure the contracts were fair and legal.
Seymour’s office was above a barber shop in Carlton. His desk was in front of a window that looked over the street; the window rattled every time a tram went by. The light coming through was so bright you could barely make out Seymour’s features, except in silhouette.
On his glass-topped desk sat a huge ashtray filled with pipe paraphernalia. He smoked a pipe constantly. Even lying dormant in the ashtray, his Doctor Petersen pipe gave off an acrid odour.
I surreptitiously tried to read his diploma as Seymour said, ‘It’s really very simple. They will offer us a percentage. We’ll send them back some higher figure. And we’ll compromise somewhere in the middle. It’s no different overseas.’
As he spoke he stuffed his pipe. He was slightly rotund and wore a beard and a brown corduroy suit of studied casualness. He took some matches and lit his pipe. Between incendiary puffs he said, ‘They can afford to give you … a good deal … they want you bad enough to … bring you, lock stock and … barrel to America … they must have … money is not an issue.’
A great pall of smoke, courteously blown over our heads, hung a foot thick below the ceiling. His pipe was now fully lit. He put it in the ashtray, where it smouldered. A thin, pretty, grey plume replenished the smoke up by the ceiling; it began to diffuse throughout his office.
He looked at us to make sure we understood the fundamental wisdom of his statement. ‘When do you expect the contracts to arrive?’
He turned to look each of us in the eye. For a second, no-one answered. Then Kerryn said, ‘Well, Billy said they were sending them over straight away. They’re fairly standard, he said. And he thought Peter Rudge was going to cut us a decent deal.’
Seymour let out a pompous laugh, ‘Haw! Don’t let them tell you that. There are no such animals as standard contracts.’
He fired up his pipe. ‘From now … on … you can’t trust … whatever they say … At least until we sign the contracts.’
He placed his pipe down again, and, with an air of finality, said, ‘Look, perhaps it’s better if you don’t talk to them. Tell them to make all their communications through me. I think then we’ll get the best bargaining position. Okay? Okay!’
Outside the barber shop we held an ad hoc conference.
Stockley said, ‘I dunno, do you think he’s okay?’
‘Who knows,’ I said. ‘But we’ve got to have somebody. And who else do we know? There just aren’t any international music lawyers here. Australia isn’t international.’
‘But do you reckon he was right about not talking to Billy?’
‘No,’ Kerryn jumped in. ‘But we have to be careful. We can trust Billy, but their lawyers are going to be doing all the talking. It’s best if they do it through Seymour. They could be nasty pieces of work.’
‘Agreed by the party of the first party,’ said Stockley.
‘And agreed by the party of the second party,’ I said.
The contracts came three weeks later and Kerryn took them to Seymour, who was going to take a couple of weeks to look them over. I imagined Kerryn sitting in Seymour’s office, marvelling at the clouds of smoke as Seymour muttered an all-knowing ‘Hmmm’. But then I thought Seymour probably wouldn’t even sit at his desk. He would rather usher Kerryn out quickly and do the all-knowing in private.
During this time rumours about our deal began to flourish. Paul McCartney was writing songs with Kerryn; The Rolling Stones were to tour the world with The Dingoes. We decided to do an interview to straighten things out. After the interview, every second promoter billed his place as the site of The Dingoes: Final Farewell Performance. It became a running joke. We tried to stop it, but, although we thought we were about to be lifted up into a fabulous new life, we were broke — we had to work.
You can believe yourself to be great when you are not — but once you believe you are mediocre, it is hard to re-convince yourself of your greatness. Even though The Dingoes had been hailed as ‘ great ’ in the rock press, at the Station and at the New York office of The Rolling Stones, we had a bad case of creative block. As much as we told each other maybe we were great, we could see in our averted looks and hesitant rehearsals that the magic of the creative dynamic was, for the moment at least, no longer with us. Nobody expressed it this way, but I’m sure we all thought the same thing: When we do an album overseas