HUMOUR IN UNIFORM

The Harvey, No. 1, 1990 The Doug Anthony Allstars' iconoclastic approach centres on provoking a response, but when it backfires it makes them look like stupid bloody arseholes, as you'll witness in the following. If Tim Ferguson really believes that rock'n'roll is noise pollution, then he's a big girl's blouse. Deborah hurls questions (some of which were Simon's), Tim argues and stamps his foot, in the plush lobby of the Perth International, Winter 1990. H: Did you have a normal childhood? T: Not at all, not in any sense. My father was a war correspondent which involved going to places where things were pretty hot. Eventually he gave it away, he was sick of it, and we came back to Australia to live in Canberra for a while. We spent a lot of time in Singapore when Vietnam happened, went to Beirut for a while, which was very interesting. We couldn't go outside. Everything happened in this complex, we went to school there, we ate there, we drank there, we played there. We never went out. H: Were you ever a victim of racism? T: No. White people are never, in any circumstance, victims of racism. Most races in the world have the common decency not to worry about that sort of thing. It's only white people who think they are different. H: Were you educated in a Catholic School? T: No. I went to 9 schools, none of which were Catholic. I refuse point blank to be sent into an education system that would use eccentric homophobes. H: Do you believe in God? T: Not as such. I hazard a guess that there is a vast chaotically creative force at work, which is the universe, which has no memory, no love, no judgement. I don't believe that people are going to burn in hell for fiddling with their dicks. H: If you were a god, would you be a benevolent god or a cunt of a god? T: I'd be a cunt of a god. I'd be really violent. H: Why? T: People don't know how easy they've got it. Most people are lazy. Most people think 9 to 5 is hard work. 9 to 5 is a holiday. H: You work a lot? T: Yes, we do. We sleep like Winston Churchill most of the time, and he only needed 5 hours sleep. We could make it easier for ourselves, and get other people to do it all for us, but as soon as they do, they fuck it up. So consequently, we have to work a lot harder to do everything, from artwork, layout, publicity… because we want to get it right. We have the rights to everything we do, and have complete control over what we do. Total autonomy. No one else in the world can say that. H: Do you think society's decaying? T: Society's always decaying. We survived the 80's miraculously, and now we're paying the consequences by continuing to exist. As it is the communists are the real problem of the world. I've got no time for people who sell socialist magazines. You say "What about Tiennemen Square?" And they say "That's not Socialism." And you say "Damn fucken right, it's not. Get out of my face, you stupid, fucken, middle-class, uneducated git!" What do these people think? Do they think that Australia is a place where we can have a revolution? Where are we going to revolt? What would we do? Run around burning pine trees and potted plants? No way! Australia's not the place. As soon as you let Communism take over, you might as well put the students up against the wall and shoot them. Mikhail Gorbachov said that to George Bush. Pretty good considering the guy's a devout commi. H: What do you believe in politically? T: We try to keep our politics as ambiguous as possible. We usually try to say things most people wouldn't dream of saying to hopefully try and instill a grain of truth. We usually say things that we don't believe in, so if you want to know what we believe in, just take everything we say and agree with the opposite! H: Is there anything you wouldn't make a joke about? T: Yes. H: What? T: I'm not telling you! H: Tell us! T: Well, the bottom line with making jokes about sensitive issues is "Is this funny?" or "Is this humour?" Even if it says something quite tasteless, if it's funny… Like, I've seen some great material on AIDS, if it's done in a positive manner. There is nothing we would say was sacred. It's a matter of finding humour in it. H: You're considered comedians but 'Book' is really dark and depressing… T: Yeah. We're not comedians at all, really. In the UK, people find it really hard to take us seriously, as comedians, because that's not what they see us as being. That's because the first thing we did there was a series of science fiction things called "Blam", which was not comedy. It's very nasty, horrible, dark, brooding, hard-hitting stuff. So consequently over there, we're known for our dark side. In Australia, we have the opposite problem. When we bring out an album that isn't a comedy album, people say "God, you think that's funny?" H: What's the most embarrassing thing that has happened to you? T: Um… Michelle Botkins dakked me in front of the whole school. They all saw how little my dick was. My hairless peenie standing proud and semi-erect, flaunting itself before 300 giggling arseholes. H: (laugh) What's your favourite alternate name for penis? T: Peenie. That's very special to me… and also shlong. H: Yeah, in 'Last Tango in Paris'… T: Yeah!! The butter scene. That was a great scene. H: It was a bit watered down… he didn't even have his pants off. T: Yeah, but it was something for the time when it was made. H: Did you have any posters on your wall when you were younger? H: 3,000 years? T: Well, I'd rather listen to Schiller and Wagner than New Kids on the Block. H: That's not rock'n'roll! What about really good songwriters, artists who channel their ideas into pop music… T: It's all New kids On The Block to me. H: What about the Velvet Underground or Hendrix or the Beatles or Big Star or… T: They're all New Kids On The Block. The reason I say that is because rock'n'roll is an art form that ceases to change, and as soon as it does that, it's no longer an art form. It's a cynical marketing gesture made by dickheads who don't know what's good or bad if it came up and bit them in the face. H: Bullshit. There are lots of artists that find rock'n'roll an accessible medium… T: I've got no time for them. They wouldn't know what harmony or orchestration was if it kicked their heads in. These people haven't been educated in music, and they believe they can be serious musicians? H: Who are 'these people'? T: I'm talking about them all, from Nick Cave to Joy Division to REM, you name it. These people know 3 chords for god's sake. H: You don't think they've got anything to offer?? Anything to say? T: They may have something to say, but I'm not listening to them. I'd rather listen to something with a more sophisticated image than 'I love you and I wanna have sex with you and why did you leave me and life's crap and why did my parents mess me up'. H: You mean love and sex and parents aren't important? T: No, um… H: So what is important? T: In an art form you can get into more sophisticated areas than just worrying about sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. H: Don't you think it all boils down to love and sex? T: I guess it does in the end. But I still think people should get into different topics. If you listen to our album there's not one love song. H: I'm sure there is. Love and sex is in just about everything. T: Listen, on our album, there's not one love song. You just don't need to cover those topics. We cover everything from Mahatma Ghandi to the National Front to the IRA to Hare Krishna to L.Ron Hubbard, anybody you'd care to name. From Communism to Fascism to all schools of philosophy, from the wanker nihilist to the wanker existentialist. You can make music and you can make art without having to worry all those stupid bloody things everyone else writes about. Who wants to hear another "You're once, twice, three times a Lady"? H: Heaps of people in pop music and rock'n'roll have written songs that seem to epitomise love.. T: Yeah, sure, love's fine. All very good, and all very sweet but love's been turned into an American product, and it's been thrown around in rock'n'roll for ages. I don't think love can be properly expressed in a rock'n'roll song. It's boring, it's trite, it's crap. Nothing has happened since the sex Pistols, and that was 15 fucken years ago. Beastie Boys came along in the 80's with a drum machine and everyone went "Wow" and now we can't turn the fucken things off! What's going to happen next? New Kids On The Block!! H: You're just talking shit about the superficial.. T: I'm talking about the whole thing! The whole field, everything… H: You're championing technique, not emotion. T: How much emotion is there on a house record? Tit willow, tit willow, hogwash! And Nick Cave's new album. How much bloody emotion is in that? He's not a very emotional man. He's a smart man who writes songs he can sell and make money and I congratulate him. (Private school rich-kid camaraderie!) H: He's like Kathy Acker put to music… T: And rock'n'roll isn't about eclecticism? I mean, every song written today, with house music… H: I'm not talking about bloody house music! T: If Elvis… H: Listen, I'm not talking about house… T: Shut up!!! If Elvis hadn't written 'Hound Dog' (he didn't) then house music wouldn't exist. If Elvis hadn't written 'My Baby Left Me' (he didn't write that either) then the Sex Pistols wouldn't have been. There is no musical content to what they do. 3 chords and a lot of energy. That's what Mick Jagger said you needed to have to be in rock'n'roll, and he's damn right. It's sweat and energy and 3 chords. H: So why does music fit into what D.A.A.S are doing? T: We use it because… H: Accessible, right? H: Yeah, an accessible tool. H: That's what I've been saying all along… T: So what? They're in rock'n'roll, I'm in comedy. There's a difference. H: You said you weren't a comedian. Are you in comedy? T: Well, not really, no. But we use comedy too. Being funny is harder than rock'n'roll. I mean, we played in a few bands, a lot of thrash stuff, Dead Kennedy-ish… then I became disillusioned with it. It was a waste of time. Then nobody would let us play in the venues anymore because we would start fights and so on, so we took to the streets busking, and started doing humorous things. To busk successfully you have to make a lot of noise. When we do songs in our acts, they always get applauded. Rock'n'roll is a piece of piss. We usually take about 4 hours to rehearse 2 songs, where to write 10 minutes of comedy, it takes more than 40 hours. Big difference. But still, I think being a comedian in Australia is looked at as being akin to a child molester. Comedians get very little respect as performers. It's viewed as being the bottom of the barrel but really it's the most difficult art form there is. H: What country have you enjoyed playing in the most? T: Probably Scotland. They're really hard in comedy venues. If they don't like you, they will physically remove you from the venue but if they like you, their loyalty is unswerving. They're not sycophantic though and have a certain amount of scepticism. H: Do you think, when you play in places in Europe, because they have more of an emphasis on the arts, that you become more highbrow? T: Not really. We don't change the act for anybody. In fact I think that Australians are more artistically aware than the Europeans. Australia is producing by far the best comedy in the world at the moment, Bob Downe, Found Objects, Flacco, all those guys. The American comedy scene is becoming generic and plastic and a complete waste of time. There are some talented people in the UK but it is more alternative comedy, based on Thatcher bashing, and it's becoming dull. Australia's strength in comedy is its diversity. H: Do you see yourselves as sex symbols? T: No, we don't. That's the last things on our minds. Just because we're 3 boys in a row doesn't mean that people should want to root us for god's sake! I become extremely intolerant with people who carry on as if we are sex symbols. I can't think of anything more boring. It just means that lonely people can throw their sexual repression and frustration and loneliness on others and hope and dream that one day they will marry Paul McDermott!!! I personally can't think of anything more vile or disgusting. You haven't kissed him!! H: What about Richard? Does he cop flak off the show? T: No, he's the most ruthless son of a bitch I've ever met. He's the most cunning businessman I've ever encountered and he plays the stock exchange like it was marbles. He's very rich, and he's left a few things to Paul and I… H: If you could murder somebody and get away with it… T: I'd kill Richard! I'd drain the blood out of him slowly, or ram a shotgun up his arse and blow his gizzards out! Then get 5 boxes of making tape, completely tape his body up, smother it in honey and release a whole pack of bats and rats and ants to squirming through his now open chest, virtually sucking the last morsel of his wretched, dilapidated concave body. Seriously, he's not a very gentle man, he's a very hard man, very hard. H: What about Paul? T: He's very shy, very receding… H: And you? T: Um, just very normal, boring and depressed. H: So you tend to play the opposite character-wise? T: Yeah. Richard becomes a wimp, Paul becomes boisterous and I become joyful! H: Do you get a lot of hate mail? T: Yeah, we get 3 page letters saying I'm gonna fucken kill ya! "but my belief is that by the time they've written 3 pages, they've got it all out of their system. We did get one after we did a Salman Rushdie song, just a paragraph saying basically the same thing, "You're all dead, you have no life, you have no future, what you have done can never be forgiven..." No signature. I found that a lot more worrying. But nothing came of it, because the Muslims who want Salman Rushdie dead couldn't find a brick in a paper bag. The man's not that hard to find. We know where he is. H: Do you have an ideal reaction to D.A.A.S? T: Not really. Well, we don't like people to like us. People have to develop a healthy scepticism about objects in the media. Just because we are famous, it doesn't mean our lives are glamorous. Our lives are just as turgid and dull and depressing as anyone else's. H: I'm sure it's a lot more fulfilling, or exciting… T: Well, it's a lot of hard work. Most people don't work 18 hours a day, unless they own a fish'n'chips shop. H: And also you're working for yourself, it's easier to handle, it's more gratifying than most people who are stuck in bank jobs or on a construction site, working for other people… T: Because they're stupid! H: Not everyone can be involved in a profession that they aspire to, or be in a creative faculty… T: No, but we're just three middle-class prats from Canberra. I don't think we do anything of more value than other average people out there. And you know something? Some public servants love what they do! H: Do you think some people are more important than others? T: Very much so! I think Mikhail Gorbachov is much more important than I am. But I don't want to put a value on human life. I suppose everyone's life is valuable to themselves, but to other people they are completely invaluable. Unless they're your family, nobody really gives a shit if you die or not. We all die alone. H: How would you least like to die? T: Um… having every drop of my blood slowly drained from my body. Just sucked out through a needle. It's supposed to be the most excruciatingly painful experience you could possibly imagine. H: How do you know that? T: I read it in a Sherlock Holmes book. H: Do you believe in reincarnation? T: It's a load of poppycock. The idea that we'll come back as ants or dogs who come back as people has to be the most extraordinary piece of Oriental drivel that anyone could ever dream up! It's all just wishful thinking. I'm very sorry, but when you're dead, you're dead. 3,000 years of scientific research backs me up. H: You've never feared death or contemplated suicide? T: Never. You can't run around being scared of dying. And as far as suicide goes, if you're in a crisis spot, leave, get the fuck out, go and live in Zambia! Kill yourself and it's all over. You lose all chances of making decisions again… Suicide's for wimps. H: John Lydon said "Anger is an Energy", what would you say? T: Violence is a cleansing force. H: Are you violent? T: Yes, I suppose so. H: You go berserk? T: Well, I smashed the shit out of two boys in Cairns who were stupid enough to come up and try and hit me. I'm a trained killer. People shouldn't try and fuck with trained killers. H: You're a trained killer? T: Thanks to His Majesty's government. The 2 boys in Cairns, like most Queensland men, they had their knuckles scraping along the pavement. These people are bored with nothing to do. They have lives with no meaning or focus. So the only thing these men can do is beat the crap out of each other. I wouldn't recommend violence for anybody else, but it has worked for me. H: You beat people up? T: No, don't get the idea that I go around smashing people, but if provoked I'm quite prepared to fight to kill somebody. If someone throws a punch at me, they're making a big mistake. Women, too. If a woman is acting stupid or violent, and she hit me first, I'd whop her. I wouldn't let her get off just because she has tits. I think it would be an insult to women if I was opposed to hitting them. H: How much do people who come out of Duntroon change? T: Oh, terribly! The military does terrible things to someone's personality. Basically, the military is a chance for a whole bunch of guys to get together, and every once in a while, get one of the first years and rape them. That's the whole purpose of the military, sodomy. Rum, sodomy and the lash. That's what war is all about. I think the military is despicable. I think the idea of having armies for defence purposes is common sense, but military men are despicable beings. Despicable. H: Why did you join? T: I never really got into it. I did it because I needed a bit of self-discipline but I saw some horrific things there. I saw a boy being killed. Awful stuff. Just because they were bored. Like them drunks in Cairns. They don't realise that if you continue to kick someone's head, they will die. This is getting very depressing, isn't it… H: Do you get an equal number of threats in person? T: Oh yeah. We get picketed in the UK by the Christians, by skinhead fascists, by socialists, communists, even the bloody scientologists came and had a bit of a scream at us. Obviously, when you're in our position, you're going to up[set somebody. You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. H: What about censorship? The album's been banned in the UK and the book was censored for UK release. T: Yeah, but we flogged them both through court and won. The albums gone to No. 1 in the independent chart in the UK, which is more than I can say for it in Australia. Australian youth is a lot more conservative than Europe's. But yeah, we take them to court and we win every time, because really, censorship is indefensible. H: What about your critics… T: They're the scum of the earth. Especially the ones who like us! The last thing I want is to be praised by someone without the common sense to realise that their profession is one based on deceit. H: If you made a movie, who would play you? T: Um… me. Or Rupert Everett. H: He's gorgeous! And expensive. Could he play you? T: Sure. He's an actor. H: He's a toffee-nosed git. Are you a toffee-nosed git? T: No. I hope you didn't have that question written down. H: No, of course not. Um, if you had a TV talk show, who would be your first 3 guests? T: Um… Gough Whitlam, Jello Biafra… and John the Baptist… so he wouldn't be able to say anything. H: Who is your hero? T: Barry Crocker, definitely. The man is God. He's the mountain, we're Mohammed. He's the be all and end all. The King. He's the man. H: Do people expect you to be funny all the time? T: Yes. H: Is it a strain? T: No, I just let them be disappointed.