Stockley had a closely manicured beard but his hair rambled down to the middle of his back. His shirt was open and he had on the leather jacket he was shot in. A hole the size of a spider bite was in its back. All this added to his legendary stature.
When we played he had a little cluster of fret watchers — The Stockley Faithful — gathered immediately in front of him. On his small frame his guitar looked immense, but he handled it with ostentatious ease. He was legendary for his lightning fingers, for being in some of Australia’s biggest groups, and for being shot in the back.
Stockley came to Australia from England when he was ten and I think he got his ambivalent attitude toward class from his hometown of Winchester. He had wedged the attitude of a working-class hero and a dandy into one contradictory personality. This showed up in big ways: he had a dogmatic socialistic philosophy, yet he adored such perquisites of the capitalist running-dogs as he could lay his hands on. And it showed up in little ways: after playing a devastatingly down-home blues lick, he shook his wrist with a motion that brought attention to his gold watch. Stockley had a fetishistic love of beer and its ancillary culture, yet he was a wine aficionado and a diligent epicurean. All of this was paradoxical. But I had to admit that his desire to be of the people, yet enjoy the privileges of the upper classes, was consistent with the idea of success in his chosen career: rock’n’roll.
I don’t know how he came upon it, but he seemed to believe in a kind of paganistic animism. He was bedevilled by what he called ‘electrickery’. An amplifier worked fine until he tried to use it. Then it would pop, crackle and hum brutally. Anything electrical conspired against him, and every time it happened he would look at me and say, ‘See, mate. It’s got it in for me. Thy electrickery.’ Then he would blow on his ring finger to ward off the evil spirits.
But, if the spirit of electrickery bedevilled him, the spirit of beer was his ally. On a Sunday, when his fridge was stocked up against the blue laws, he talked to his little friends. He shook the fridge gently until the bottles jingled against each other.
‘My little jumblies,’ he said. ‘Yes, it won’t be long now, my babies.’
Then he shook the fridge to make them answer him.
‘All right. But just one of you now.’
He took out a bottle and stroked it, smiling at the others like a proud father. Stockley’s house at that time was called Rat Manor. It was the home of one in a long line of Stockley’s assumed comic personas, Maury. Stockley’s inspiration for Maury was an old drunk who lived in an abandoned house opposite the Station with some other derelicts. We knew, via Stockley, only a few things about Maury: he believed that the only nutrition one needed was beer; he routinely urinated in the corner of his living room; and he either loved or hated people. Maury cast his judgment on others in this way: ‘He’s number one in my book, Mr Murray. Number one in my book!’ To express disapproval it was: ‘He’s a ratbag,’ or, the even more expressive: ‘He’s a fuckin’ ratbag, Mr Murray.’ As far as Stockley could tell, Mr Murray was a figment of Maury’s alcoholic dementia.
Stockley took these characteristics and invented his own Maury, a kind of derelict anti-sage. Whether at Rat Manor, the Station or on the road, Maury became a constant companion. We begged Stockley to be Maury, or we planted lines for him to respond to.
So, as we listened to Kerryn grunting to America, I whispered to Stockley, ‘Geez, mate. You didn’t have a meal before that beer, did you? You should take better care of yourself, mate.’
Stockley replied in the high, whiny voice of Maury, ‘No worries, mate. There’s a steak in every glass.’
‘I see … Mmmm … Yes,’ said Kerryn to America.
J.L., our drummer, impatiently picked up a rock magazine. The day before, he was reading the same magazine, when Stockley, in his Maury character, said, ‘Here, what are ya? Ya don’t wanna read a bloody book, mate. You’re gonna turn into a bloody poofter. Yer don’t need books. All you need is beer, footy and mates … and beer for ya mates, o’ course. Did yer want people to think you’re an ineffectual or somethin’. Don’t be a smarty pants, mate.’
J.L. didn’t read. Not that J.L. was anti-books — rather, he was possessed by music. From waking up, until after he was asleep, J.L. played tapes of Al Green and reggae music. He grew up in a West Indian suburb in London. He said he learned to play drums by banging sticks on the sidewalk in time to the strange and wonderful rhythms of the Caribbean.
His natural shyness offstage left you unprepared for his onstage presence. Onstage he shone. He was possessed by the groove and he exuded an open pride that was catching. He played with his nose tilted slightly above the horizontal, and his head rocked back and forward making his hair swish below his ear. The motion of his head and hair reminded me of an Irish setter trotting out its victory lap at a dog show. J.L.’s confidence was so infectious that, whenever I felt my attention drifting off the groove or felt a mild paranoia that it simply wasn’t there (oh, will-o’-the-wisp), I just had to watch him and it solidified once again. Together we made the moment live. When we were playing on a good night I wasn’t thinking about yesterday or tomorrow — I was in the groove, in the moment. Winston Churchill said he felt that way as he rode into battle with the bullets whizzing by his ears. Playing with The Dingoes was not quite as heroic, but, at the Station, with a glass of beer on my amplifier, a girl or two in the audience catching my eye, and a rock-solid bass-and-drums combination thumping out the beat, I was deep inside the moment.
At twenty-three, those bacchanalian good times were reason enough for self-satisfaction. But even then, self-doubt, and doubts about the worth of The Dingoes, had begun to eat away at my contentedness. We had released an album, The Dingoes, and it had charted and peaked at number seventeen. We had given it everything we had, and now it was off the charts. So where did we stand in the overall scheme of things? At the Station we still felt like we were at the top — but what hierarchical structure were we at the top of? Could our success at the Station be trusted? No, I thought. We were merely the beneficiaries of the arrival of large numbers of people of our generation at an age when their innate need of culture made them latch onto anything that resembled it. As a mere cultural enzyme I couldn’t claim too much credit for The Dingoes — yet, seen in this light, we had as much right as Mozart to success, if not longevity.
But the pressure of self-doubt was nothing compared to the growing problems surrounding The Dingoes. Though our pre-eminence remained at the Station, we began to get bogged down in unfriendly bars, 600-mile road trips and empty concert halls. And each time we came back to the Station, a little of our shine had worn off. By degrees we came to see ourselves as victims of a small and saturated market. We had played the same songs to too many of the same audiences. We had to admit we were going nowhere. We had decided to split up after our Western Australian trip. And then came the call.
Kerryn hung up the phone. ‘Well. That’s that, then.’
‘What’s what?’ I said.
‘Nothing. Who wants to go down and get a beer?’
He was toying with a very big and delicious piece of information. Understanding the need for an organised presentation of big news, we followed him downstairs. We went out into the empty beer garden.
This garden was surrounded by white trelliswork. Grapevines had threaded their tendrils into every available space. The beer garden was roofed over with green corrugated plastic, and when the patchy cloudiness occasionally gave way to the sun, everyone turned a deep shade of green.
I volunteered to get the beers. ‘It’s my shout. But you’re not to say a word about the call until I get back.’
‘Okay, mate.’
When I came back, Kerryn was saying: ‘And then I hung up.’
I scowled and put the beers down on the white wrought-iron table.
‘You’re number one in my book, Mr Murray,’ said Stockley,