BURIED from last Sunday in election reporting, it took me until Tuesday to realise that another of my favourite rock'n'rollers, Chris Bailey, frontman for Australian band The Saints, had shuffled off his mortal coil a week ago today at the age of 65.
The official notification on The Saints (Official) Facebook page from "family and friends" said: "It is with great pain in our hearts that we have to inform you about the passing of Chris Bailey, singer and songwriter of The Saints, on April 9, 2022.
"Chris lived a life of poetry and music and stranded on a Saturday night."
Maybe it's COVID concentrating our minds on death, or maybe it's just me getting old, but there seems to be a lot of dying about lately.
As I write this I see that Cessnock-born golfing great Jack Newton died on Thursday night, aged 72. "Courage unlimited, no bullshit, a thoroughly decent man", as Bob Hawke - who left us in 2019 - once said.
I'm only guessing, but I don't think Chris Bailey ever had any great aspirations on the sporting field.
But he could command a stage, and wrote some 20 records worth of music that mixed memorable tunes with often dark-as-doom lyrics.
The early Saints, before guitarist Ed Kuepper flew the coop after three albums to form the equally influential Laughing Clowns, were hailed as punk heroes, even though they never saw themselves as punks.
UK magazine Sounds called their September 1976 breakthrough, (I'm) Stranded, "the single of this and every week", and they were off and running on Kuepper's machine-gun riffing and Bailey's literate snarl.
Like his friend Nick Cave, who is in one of the pictures here (and whose first big band The Birthday Party really were punks) Bailey soon settled down musically to tap into a less frenetic vein, typified by his two biggest singles, Ghost Ships, in 1984, and Just Like Fire Would, in 1986, which Bruce Springsteen liked enough to play live and release as a single from his High Hopes album in 2014.
That's a very brief and incomplete description of Bailey's mainstream incursions, for those unfamiliar with him. I'm writing this piece because I'm fascinated with the way music embeds itself; "the soundtrack of our lives", as the saying goes.
I tried for a long time to keep up with new trends in music, but the reality is that nothing can compare to the sounds that gripped me from high school through to my mid-20s.
Music is so obviously deeply embedded in the human psyche.
Our European ancestors took classical music to great heights of technical complexity, and I can admire its grandeur as much as the next untutored punter.
But there is something about the rhythmic insistence of rock'n'roll that hits the head, the heart, the gut and the groin in ways that nothing else does.
I saw a lot Saints shows before I moved here in 1984.
I judged nights out back then by the state of my clothes the next morning.
Sydney beer barns on the pub rock circuit often shut at 10 or 11, and weeknights I had to get up early to start work at seven.
A good night meant the pile on the floor beside the bed was still soaked with sweat when I woke.
Like his contemporary Jimmy Barnes, Bailey was wont to replenish from a bottle of spirits during his shows, which could get understandably chaotic as a consequence.
Long before responsible service of alcohol and smoking bans, the carpet tiles on pub floors would be so sticky with spilt beer it was like walking through treacle.
The air wasn't much cleaner, a constant fugue of cigarette smoke tinged with dope.
The seated pic at the top of this article is from '77 and taken by legendary photographer Rennie Ellis (another one gone, 1940-2003).
It's how I remember Bailey, drenched wet, his signature mane spraying wet showers out over the front rows, where I usually was.
Posted by Cave on his wonderful website theredhandfiles.com, he describes Bailey "collapsed on stage in a small club in Melbourne, watched by a very young and unformed Nick Cave".
"In the photo Chris is already committed to his life as perhaps the greatest and most anarchic rock'n'roll singer Australia would ever produce," Cave writes.
"Conversely, I am in that stonewashed and uncertain state between failing art school and, well, I am not quite sure what.
"You can almost see the thought bubble forming above my head as an alternate plan presents itself."
The Ballantine's whiskey picture, taken by Nashville singer-songwriter Dylan Walshe, is apparently after the final show Bailey ever played, in 2019.
Born in Kenya of Irish parents, Bailey arrived in Brisbane via Belfast aged seven with his family. As Ed Kuepper recalled this week, they met, aged 14, during school detention. On such small things does history twist.
Like Cave, Bailey eventually relocated to Europe, living mostly in The Netherlands and Sweden, recording and touring to a small but loyal fanbase, returning to Australia from time to time.
I treasure a CD cover of my 1982 Saints favourite, Casablanca, Bailey signed for me at The Cambridge on a December Friday night in 2005.
Casablanca was perhaps the peak of Bailey's shambolic grandeur. You can find it, and my favourite line - "Opening doors, just to fall out windows" - on YouTube, that storehouse of life's not always trivial artistry.
You'll find that Bailey has kept recording over the years, on various obscure European labels, with various combos of musicians, some doing stripped down or accoustic versions of old hits - such as 2005's Bone Box, by Chris Bailey and the General Dog, while others, including Stranger, with French folksinger and songwriter H-Burns, in 2011, are new material.
The '60s revolution might have petered out, as hippies became yuppies, and maybe rock'n'roll didn't change the world.
But it's everywhere. Vale Christopher James Mannix Bailey.
Thank you for the music, and the memories.
And to finish, the first verse of Curtains, from Casablanca. It's on both versions . . .
"Well I packed my bags, this morning
And i took the first train out of town
I went down to your house this morning
And I don't believe I see you inside
And now these curtains they're closing in on me
I think they're certain to break up my mind
And then I'm walking down that street
And i'm heading for the wide-open spaces, yeah
Cos sometimes I think that those curtains,
They're closing in"
