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successful bands Swanee, Sharon O’Neill, Rose Tattoo, Chain and
Perth bands Bakery and Fatty Lumpkin. It was the 1970’s and Meyer
was riding the ‘third wave’ of Australian rock.
Prime Minister Gough Whitlam believed “artists had an essential
role to play in society” and should not be “lost overseas”. To
foster the expression of a national identity the Whitlam
Government revamped the Australian Arts Council to offer financial
support for the promotion and creation of Australian arts.
Increased exposure through the media with the success of
Countdown, the first all-rock radio station Double Jay,
rock press and grants for studio
time furnished rock music as an influential underground scene
known as Australian Pub Rock.
John Meyer was given “the right to uphold freedom of artistic
expression” and his lengthy escalating guitar solos in Fatty
Lumpkin was a direct hit. Fatty Lumpkin were a local institution
in
Perth in the early 1970’s and over four years the changing line-up
list is a veritable Who’s Who of the West Australian 70’s pub rock
scene. Al Cash and Bob Fortescue, (Blackfeather mid 1970’s), Mick
Glendinning, Roy Daniels, Dave Little, Warren Ward, Phil Pruiti,
Jon Rider, Tom Watts, Bakery vocalist John Worrall, Bakery
keyboard legend Rex Bullen, and the great Lindsay Wells from
Healing Force. The band took its name from JRR Tolkien’s fantasy
novel The Hobbit (Fatty was Tom Bombadil’s pony).
Fatty Lumpkin released four singles over their four year career.
‘Don’t Knock My Boogie’ climbed the national charts with extensive
radio airplay and endless tours. The second single ‘Millionaire’
upheld the fanatical boogie style, harmonising hard rock with
flute adding a contrasting B-side, with a seven minute
flute-dominated ballad and a meditative touch from Meyer’s guitar
style. The final line-up included John Worrall (flute), Dave
Little (drums), Jon Ryder (bass) and Meyer on guitar. A clash of
creative differences sent Worrall back to
England. Remaining a three piece and embracing Ryder’s unique
voice Everest were formed. Touring around
Australia
to full houses Everest fortified the pub rock scene but remained
ominously known as “Australia’s highest paid unsigned band”.
Meyer decided to “move on” and played in a few different bands but
he didn’t have the musical freedom Everest had given him so they
reformed, changing their name to Saracen. After a few line-up
changes Pete Thompson settled in on drums and Jon Ryder with
vocals and bass. Ironically great media exposure brought the band
undone because Meyer’s guitar flair and skill was the focus of the
press, and all this limelight “went down like a bag of wet cement”
with the other band members. “I had no plan to be a big rock star,
I just loved playing guitar and still do.”
Meyer again decided to “move on”, to go away and be a “little
fish” so he got himself a passport and planned a trip overseas. He
didn’t get past
Sydney.
John Swan offered him a gig in Swanee, so Meyer laid back and
enjoyed making a living as a musician. No longer did he have to
worry about how many gigs were booked next week, he was just the
guitar player in the back up band, stepping out of the limelight
and being picked up for gigs and dropped off again! As luck would
have it Meyer met up with Jon Stevens who was signed to the same
publishing company and was introduced to Sharon O’Neill who was
dominating the national charts with her single, ‘Maxine’. Half of
Swanee were her backing band so when Swanee were off the road
Meyer toured with O’Neill.
In the 1980’s, ten years after Whitlam channelled the arts to be
an integral part of Australian culture, Australian rock had
reached international success with ACDC, while a score of pop
stars like Olivia Newton John, Peter Allen, Men At Work and Air
Supply had infiltrated the American market. John Meyer joined Rose
Tattoo, cementing national notoriety as a hard rock guitarist.
Signed to the record label Alberts at Festival, the same label as
ACDC and The Angels, Meyer co-wrote seven songs on the album
‘Southern Stars’ and the ‘Tatts’ legend continued to top the
national charts with sell out tours. “I gave Angry thirty ideas
and he came out with thirty songs.” Lead singer Angry Anderson
caught the attention of Australian film makers and was offered a
part in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome as the character Ironbar,
co-starring with the mighty Tina Turner as Aunty Entity. Rose
Tattoo took time out to write another album while Angry worked on
the film and Meyer’s career took another twist.
“This
always happens to me, I get up one day and I want to do something
else. I’d been in
Sydney
about four years and it had been great being in a fully
professional band with management, an accountant, a label, lawyer,
sponsorships, amps, speakers, Jack Daniels. My main aim was to be
employed as a guitarist and in Rose Tattoo there wasn’t a huge
scope for guitar playing. OK I just spent a few years playing
nationally known bands but not a huge outlet for creative guitar
playing. Whereas in Saracen, Everest and Lumpkin I could be self
indulgent playing solos until I’d had enough. Doing what I love
and making a living out of it. How cool is that?” While in Sydney
Meyer had discovered the joys of home recording and every spare
moment was devoted to composing. Not rock songs nor blues songs
but instrumentals. In 1987 Meyer left Rose Tattoo to make an
instrumental album. Mushroom Records were very keen but after six
months they couldn’t devise a marketing strategy. Three weeks
later Joe Satriani released ‘Surfing With The Alien’, the perfect
niche for Meyer’s instrumental work but the opportunity was lost.
Feeling the disappointment, Meyer returned to Perth to house sit
for a friend. He had a publishing deal so he wrote songs “so that
wouldn’t fall on its arse too”. Matt Taylor asked Meyer to fill in
while Phil Manning got his health back on track. Meyer accepted
because the money for the day was too good to refuse for an out of
work guitarist but it turned out to be an invitation that would
open a whole new musical direction for John Meyer. “The first
rehearsal with Matt I realised what was happening. I was in a room
with a couple of legends, Matt and Little Goose and Roy Daniels.
It was really good for me because all of a sudden it hit me in the
head, I realised I’d been neglecting the blues path. I started to
listen to some of the old recordings like Robert Johnson,
Mississippi John Hurt, people
like that.”
During the four year stint co-writing songs with Matt Taylor’s
Chain and bending his guitar technique on the albums ‘Blue Metal’
and ‘Australian R&B’, Meyer manage to release a self titled
instrumental album which was picked up by a television station who
used the track ‘454’ in the soundtrack for Bathurst 1000 and a
Grand Prix telecast. “I was rapt, I wanted to make more
instrumental albums.” Leaving Chain in 1991 Meyer built his
recording “bunker”, started teaching, writing and producing
jingles, voice overs, documentary soundtracks and started work on
his second instrumental album, ‘The Shaman’. It’s John Meyer’s
instrumental compositions that reveal the fact that many hard rock
guitarists, in fact many musicians that play hard rock are
extremely talented but it was the rock, the attitude, the image of
rock music that would generate a lucrative living for them.
The birth of rock music in the 1970’s gave license to many
musicians to experiment, to be self indulgent, and to discover the
‘new toys’ on the market that could expand their musical freedom.
Helped by easy to overdrive Marshall amplifiers and tuning down a
full tone from E to D added to the requiem of the heavy rock
sound. Then Hendrix put the Wah pedal on the map with ‘Voodoo
Chile’, and the phase shifter and the fuzz box was a main stay for
rock guitarists in the 70’s with its distorted sound heard on
Hendrix ‘Stone Free’. The compressor/limiter gave guitarists a
long, sustaining sound that seemed to play forever and finally,
the volume knob on the guitar itself producing a violin like tone
by playing the note then hitting the knob from 0 to max at the
same time. Ritchie Blackmore played with this on Deep Purple’s
‘Fireball’ album, rock guitarists using electronic gadgets to
shape the sound of rock.
Today Meyer’s gadgets come in the shape of recording equipment,
computers, drum machines and samplers. Having established a
business in the “bunker” Meyer has developed, tutored, and
encouraged a group of talented musicians to write and record
original work in his studio. “When I left Chain the studio really
established a part of my living. I have about nine or ten students
and they range in age from nine to fifty nine but while they’re in
the studio they are plugged into the system and I use a lot of
backing tracks for them to practise their rhythm or their picking
or their lead playing, slide playing, whatever they want to do. I
always ask if they write songs and a couple have turned into
really good little song writers. I’ve been toying with having my
own record label for about six years. I’ve been recording with a
couple of young people who have got albums finished and we need to
market them and at the end of the day these albums are competing
in a pop market. We’ve recorded some video clips with them so it
might be an interesting year.
Although his recording studio is a major portion of his income
John Meyer is back on the live gig circuit around Perth with rock
blues band Blues Express, featuring Peter Oates (bass/vocals) and
Ric Eastman (drums). Strapping on his Stratocaster he launched his
first blues album at the Bridgetown Festival last year and has a
Saturday night residency at Blue to the Bone in Northbridge. It
seems John Meyer has settled into a groove, leaving behind a
legacy for the current generation of rock musicians to strap on
their guitars, crank up the amps and count in four as they
detonate their own version of rock music.
Australia is full of rock bands. There’s Powderfinger, The Living
End, Jebediah, Grinspoon, Spiderbait, Frenzal Rhomb to name a few.
Rock music has always been associated with rebel youth and anti
establishment. As the original generation of rock fans and
musicians approach their ‘twilight years’, the music is deeply
interlocked into the psyche of our popular culture, and when
mainstream rock no longer offends, new forms of music emerge to
shock the elders and shake conformity. Music reflects the
perception of the times the performer lives in and hard rock from
the 70’s was the cutting edge, the trend setter of political,
cultural, personal and musical mood. Although John Meyer is
remembered as a hard rock guitarist it is only the ignorant that
dwell in the past. Today Meyer can still kick any young butt from
here to hip hop with his enthusiasm to play music and his passion
to master the guitar’s seemingly endless scope of sound. Who needs
words when you play instrumentals and solos with the gusto of John
Meyer, Oz Rock Icon. |
