That first day, we recorded five songs, and went on to record five more another day. Some were John’s songs, some we wrote together, and some were mine. Mine were the ones written in the wake of my painful break-up with Joffa: ‘Empty Pockets’, ‘Another Love’, ‘Letting Go of Charlie’, ‘The Master’. These are the songs that would make up our first album, Sweetly Sedated. I was raw. So raw. In hindsight, how incredible—that it was young Marty Brown who would witness all of that. He was so quiet, you know—he hardly spoke. But he listened like no one I had ever met. He was so steady. Nothing fazed him.
Thanks to John’s enthusiasm, his ability to ‘just do it’, our band grew very quickly, and without much consultation, which was fine with me. Marty ribbed me that it was my fault because I was always too busy basket-weaving or African dancing to actually come to band meetings. He had a point. I still hated practice. And also I was really shy. Every week there was a new player: Andy Crean on viola, Rachel Henderson on cello, Matty Vehl on keys and Warren Bloomer on bass. All incredible musicians. Each added a new strain of goodness, magic, to our Red Raku sound. One day, John announced that he thought the only thing we were missing was a flute, which was why he’d invited my best friend Defah to join the band. Cool! Before long, surprise surprise, the two of them were in love, living together, and making sweet sweet music of their own.
John told me that Marty had also invited someone new into the band: a harp player, a very beautiful harp player. But it didn’t work out. After seeing us play, she said she was flattered, but where, exactly, would she fit?
Quietly, I was relieved.
What a lovely guy Marty was, I thought. So talented. And look at that face. Like a little cherub. A bit too good to be true really. Obviously, he had a dark side. Only a matter of time before it comes out, said Frank.
In those early gigs, in front of our friends and family, first at cafes and then pubs, I was still too shy, too frightened, to actually look up at the audience very much. Mostly, I just closed my eyes, looked down, and swayed. My family were there. So were John’s. In a curious twist of fate, John’s parents were also massive bloody Catholics. Turned out that the obscure Catholic Scripture Diary Mum had been ordering and putting under the Christmas tree every single year for me and all my siblings for as long as we could remember was invented by … John’s mum. I know!
The White family also came to our gigs, and Fay and Terry told me I was doing great, to keep going. That meant the world to me. Sometimes, my ‘Jewish godfather’, our dear family friends Lionel Lubitz and his son Jessie played before us, as our support band. We played small shows but, soon, they started selling out. I told my friends at uni about our gigs. But by far the bulk of our audience were John and Marty’s crew. They were just so organised with that stuff. They’d make flyers, and send them to people in the mail, and put them up on poles around Fitzroy. And week after week, our audience grew. As the gigs clocked up, I sensed a confidence building in me. I started taking more risks. Shaved my head. Wore shinier bindis and tighter clothes. Tried different notes. Found my feet as a singer, I guess.
This was such an exciting time in my life, but there was a part of me that was still terrified of trying too hard. Things felt like they were moving very fast, and I kept needing to put on the brakes. Within a year, Red Raku were already recording and releasing our second album. Marty had a friend at a record company who had seen us play, and said they would love to have a chat with us. It must have been a mystery to him why I never took them up on it. I still didn’t know if someone like me was going to be able to handle what I knew would be the enormous effort, and potential rejection, of ‘Going For It’ with music. Even though I was now average sized, inside me, the kid who got teased, and who teased herself, was still in there. Frank was still loud, telling me not to get ahead of myself. Telling me I didn’t have the talent.
But together we muddled along. I took over the designing of the flyers, and the album covers, and John and Marty booked the gigs, our photo shoots, our community radio interviews and, two years later, in front of a sold-out crowd at our second CD launch, I think I finally let myself say the words: Maybe there’s something in this whole singing/songwriting thing. Maybe I’m an actual … musician.
And that thought twinkled inside me like a happy little star, and it still does, to this day.
11
On this side
I thought that nobody could love me
The way that I loved them.
That was before him.
‘ON THIS SIDE’
(What Was Left, 2005)
When I was younger, I would never have admitted I had a type. My boyfriends were all so different, I would have said.
Looking back now, however, it is fairly clear to me that even if I did not have a ‘type’, as such, I most certainly did have a dynamic.
In short:
