IN THE RAW

Guy Madison Interview

Interview Seattle 2003

CUZ: How did you first come to join Lubricated Goat?

GUY: I come from Perth Western Australia and in the mid 80’s I think in 1985, when I was living in Perth I was playing in a local punk band around town. Some of my friends were Peter Hartley and some other chaps, and Peter knew a guy called Brett Ford who I had meet a couple of times who came from Melbourne, who had been living in Perth after a return from Britain. He was an old friend of Stuart Gray’s (Spasm) from Melbourne and ah, he was hanging out with Peter who used to play in bands too. We just all sort of knew each other and Peter used to hang around with me and my friend Ringo. Stuart came back from I believe Britain and he stopped in Perth to see Brett and they recorded what was one half of the first record ‘Plays the Devil’s Music’. The other half as you know was recorded in Adelaide with Martin (Bland) they recorded that one weekend. I didn’t attend any of the recordings that Peter played the bass on, and Peter used my Bass guitar, he was actually a guitar player. Stuart was in town for a few weeks there and I meet him then. We played one night with my band The Greenhouse Effect played with him and he did a thing called Chicken Holder where he imitates Tom Jones and Frank Sinatra in a outlandish outfit while someone else plays a electronic device that was inserted into a frozen, slipped over a mike stand. They’d hit it and it would go “blooo blooo bloooooip blooo!” & Stuart sings along songs like Thunderball and stuff like that. And they did that, that night that we played with them it was a night club, gee I can’t even remember what it was called, but ah. We played and that’s how I meet Stuart and strangely enough that night, when I got home I found that someone had threaded the neck of the chicken through the strings of my bass guitar in my case. And that was the last that I saw of Stuart until I moved to Sydney about six months later. I was crossing the road one day on Cleveland Street where Burke Street hits Cleveland Street. And I was crossing the road there and Stuart yelled out to me and I crossed the road and he asked me if I was doing anything and if I’d like to play the bass in Lubricated Goat.

CUZ: So you didn’t relocate to Sydney to join Lubricated Goat you had already moved there?

GUY: I just moved there anyway, yeah. Stuart lived in Sydney as far as I know me and my friend Ringo & my band Greenhouse Effect needed to get out of Perth because there was nothing going on, it was a cultural wasteland. So we decided to go, we stopped in Adelaide for a little bit and meet some people there. We’ve been to Melbourne briefly before and that as well; we decided that we’d move to Sydney try and have the band in Sydney, so we went there. Essentially no I didn’t go there to join Lubricated Goat but I joined once I was there. I did have a demo tape which we played in our panel van as we went across Australia, I remember particularly thinking that ‘Nervequack’ was a good song. It was the demo tape before it was released obviously.

CUZ: What type of venues was Lubricated Goat playing in Sydney?

GUY: In Sydney, the first live show we played at the Piccadilly Hotel which was in Kings Cross and that was like a cobbled together show where it was Stuart and I & actually James Baker (Hoodoo Gurus) played the drums at that show. Then after that we Brett moved to town and Peter came over as well and they were in the band. And when we started playing we started playing places like The Trade Union Club, The Piccadilly Hotel where was a Black Eye Night at one stage. The Palace Hotel in Darlinghurst which was a placed we played a fair bit. Strawberry Hills Tavern, um, what was that place downtown? Um there were lot’s of places that we played, there were lots of venues in Sydney at that time. Sydney Cove Tavern downtown, it would depend. The early shows were at small places like Palace Hotel, Strawberry Hills and the Evening Star, places like that. Sometimes when we supported bigger bands like Sonic Youth or Henry Rollins or something like that we’d play at Cardona Café or The Sydney Cove Tavern or Selena's.

CUZ: What were your initial feelings within the group of the music that you were making? Were there any feelings that the music you were making was different to what was going on with Australian music?

GUY: Ha HAR! I think it would be fair to say we thought we were the best band around Ha! Everyone had mighty egos you know in that band we thought we were great. I think we thought we like the heaviest, weirdest band around at the time.

CUZ: What approach did Lubricated Goat have on Shradenfruader?

GUY: I think Shardenfrauder was our attempt to, um was recorded in strange state there after we knew that we had an American record deal and we needed to make a new record and we didn’t have enough material that’s why it’s only a six song EP. But we did take some time over it and what were we thinking? I’d actually taken Stuart to see Metallica not long before we recorded that, and I think Stuart was impressed by the slick power of that band. I think we might have tried to do something slick and metal as probably the Goat ever got HAHA. Who knows?

CUZ: Could you explain the mentality of the Australian Music Biz how it treated Lubricated Goat when it obtained an overseas deal when several bigger/mainstream acts didn’t achieve that goal?

GUY: Apart from John Foy and Black Eye we were pretty much ignored by music industry as far as major labels were concerned, there was never any interest from them. There really wasn’t much going on in Australia at the time even though we had relationships with bands and the people that worked at Waterfront Records we defiantly didn’t fit into the Waterfront mould.  Really there weren’t a lot of options for us, maybe Au-go-go in Melbourne but um. John Foy realty ran Red Eye records which was more the commercial arm of it and had relationships with people like Tex (Greg Perkins) and some other people in the scene through that part of the record label decided he wanted to you know put out some of the more stranger more electric music that was seen on Black Eye. He was the only person who was interested in what we were doing to tell the truth. I think that what happened was had relatively good distribution and really the interesting thing was that when he distributed his records in America it turned out that there were people over here that actually really like the records and thought that bands like The Lubricated Goat and Salamander Jim stuff like that were doing was you know really innovative.

CUZ: So why didn’t the Shardenfruader line up remain intact when on the first o/s tour?

GUY: Well. The line for that record was Gene on Drums, Charles Tolnay on Guitar and Stuart and myself. What happened was we started to get some profile even in Australia playing some pretty big shows supporting some international acts and big local acts and stuff. Gene who was also the drummer for the Space Juniors at the time he played in both bands and Charlie was in King Snake Roost who had in their own right a record deal with the same company we did Amphetamine Reptile. And I guess Charlie just decided that he needed top focus more that he was into deeper which was KSR and Gene never really decided to go with us for what ever reason and I’ve never really seen Gene since that day or since those days. So Stuart and I were left without drummer and a guitar player because neither of them wanted to commit to going and so we had to think quick. So Stuart had thought we’ll get Martin (Bland) because he had recorded the first record and Stuart was from Adelaide and Martin was from Adelaide and we’d met Martin and Ren (also from Bloodloss) when we’d been to Adelaide to play shows and Martin and Ren were fast friends. Obviously it was a great suggestion that both of them would join the band and that’s how that came about. I’m not sure why Charley and Gene didn’t want to do it. We were a tight outfit at the time though so it’s a pity that they didn’t.

CUZ: Originally the agency TERMINAL was supposed to book your tour yet there were some disorganization that took place. Could you tell us your views on what took place?

GUY: originally we came to America on the first tour there was a company called Terminal who I believe a chap called Bossco who actually worked at Sub Pop Record (off camera) is that right Martin? For some reason Tom Hazelmyer who ran AMP REP hired these people because they were doing a lot of stuff for Sub Pop at the time and Tom had links with them and he hired them to do some of the promotion and booking for it. And I think they hadn’t done a very good job and so a lot of the stuff wasn’t finalized before we arrived. I think what happened in the long run, Tom himself got his close friend Peter Davis to finalize a lot of the shows and sort stuff up for us. So that was how our relationship with Peter Davis and Tom Haze was forged through the incompetence of Terminal booking agency.

CUZ: What was the relationship with Amp Rep like for Lubricated Goat?

GUY: Antagonistic. Well when we first got there we kind of went a bit crazy and spent a lot of money he he.. Lost our heads a little bit, we weren’t showed much guidance by this chap. Well to tell the truth I don’t care, I thought Bossco was a fine chap and we had a good time with him. By the time we got to Minneapolis we didn’t have a lot of money and um Tom seemed to think that chap had mismanaged our stay thus far and was kind of angry with him. I think Tom expected that we’d be like, you know. It’s entirely different in America, in Australia your likely to go from Sydney to Melbourne and play a few shows in a weekend and go to Adelaide and play a couple shows and come back it’s not that serious. In America you’re expected to work hard and drive all over the country do all these shows in college towns and stuff and I think Tom was expecting people that were professionally driven and like responsible and actually we just wanted to have a good time and hahahaha.

CUZ: It’s so hard not to laugh at that, Tom was a marine he thought he was signing an Army troupe.

GUY: I was in the armed services, I don’t know. We didn’t know what the whole music biz was all about in America when we came here the first time.

CUZ: Are you still there? You sort of dropped out.

GUY: I don’t think we knew what the American music biz was all about on such a low level as being an independent band on an unknown label. Apparently there was more business then we knew about involved in that stuff…..

CUZ: So how did the SUB POP single come about?

GUY: Well, along with Amp Rep were people who were kind of interested in what was going on in the Australian Music scene which started before long before Lubricated Goat. Bands like Salamander Jim and even bands like The Lime Spiders and stuff like that, they thought there was something like seminal about something that hampered to the 1960’s like the original sort of psychedelic underground they had had a lot of interest in Australian music and people like Tom Haze and people at SUB POP liked that sort of thing. It seemed like quite a close relationship between Amp Rep and Sub Pop at the time. Sub Pop was the first place we went when we came to America, we flew into Seattle and someone picked us up at the airport and took us to the offices of SUB POP in the Terminal building in Seattle. I think they were interested in the sort of music that we were doing they offered and had the Single of The month Club at the time and we were coming back to Seattle at the end of the end of the tour and they said will you make a single for us. Of course we agreed to it and that’s pretty much where that came from. I think they actually asked us if we’d like to sign to their record label over a rather improvised burrito lunch. As I remember Jonathon Ponman posing the question perhaps we might want to leave our label in Minneapolis and sign to the label in Seattle because it might be good for us or something like that. I seem to remember that happening.

CUZ: After leaving Lubricated Goat when did Monroe’s Fur start?

GUY: Monroe’s Fur was formed before I left Lubricated Goat that was a band formed independent of leaving Lubricated Goat. That was a band I formed, I didn’t form it. A bunch of my friends and myself got together and we had a band it and it was going before I left Lubricated Goat. But after Peter Hartley was kicked out of Lubricated Goat, Peter was of course the drummer in Monroe’s Fur. But we didn’t start Monroe’s Fur until after he had been kicked out of Lubricated Goat.

CUZ: So the Monroe’s Fur records they were self released?

GUY: The singular record released in Australia was self released with the help of Waterfront records. Essentially we released it on our own label but they pretty much did all the work for us and the distribution work like telling us where to get it pressed and stuff like that.

CUZ: So what was the decision to relocate (Monroe’s Fur) to Seattle?

GUY: Um, it wasn’t realty a conscience decision to relocate to Seattle. There was a conscience decision to leave Australia, we actually intended to go on and relocate ourselves in Brittan but um we just never made it. We weren’t very well organized ha har! And we left Australia with the hope Peter our drummer would come with us with us at some point and he never did. And so we ended up here so Martin (Bland) started playing the drums and Martin lived here in Seattle so there weren’t a lot of conscience decisions of where we were going to be. We did end up here and a lot of it because Martin lived here and we knew some people we knew like Mark Arm and stuff who helped us get some shows and stuff like that and that’s how we ended up here.

CUZ: ...so how did you come to join Mudhoney?

GUY: um , Martin and Ren had a band called Bloodloss that was formed in Adelaide in the 1980’s and when they lived in Seattle and I lived in Seattle the band had many incarnations and there was a incarnation of the band where I played the bass in it, Mark Arm played guitar and we played together then and when Monroe’s Fur was based here Mark had sat in on some strange instruments like the synth and so we done stuff together and we were good friends and the other guys in the band as well. Well, Matt (Lukin) had quite a number of years ago and Mudhoney decided they wanted to keep on going and they asked me to play the bass for them and I said that I would coz, I’d always been a fan of the band, before I’d ever meet them. So I more than happy to get involved and that’s how it happened.

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