Now a solo artist, the celebrated vocalist is set to play gigs in town.
In 1993, The Goths went separate ways. After a long hiatus, Johnny returned with a solo career, publishing a few posthumous works of The Goths before releasing his debut solo album, Weather Being, in 2023.
Graham Parker
When I was eleven, I had my room next to the room of my oldest brother who had a significant record collection. I discovered Graham Parker and The Rumour in there, who I loved. I loved his whole performance. It was unique at the time. He didn’t sound like anybody else the way he sneered through tracks of stunningly literate pub rock. Instead of blindly sticking to the traditions of rock ‘n’ roll, he invigorated his lyrics with a cynicism and anger. There wasn’t much like it before. Singer/songwriter skill, punk spirit.
Joy Division
When I was thirteen, I rushed out to get Closer by Joy Division. I’d read all about it in the NME newspaper that my oldest brother had subscribed to. Closer was an explosion of a record that went every direction at once. It had different atmospheres, twists and turns, and chopped-up, crumpled hiss! It had all these masterpiece tracks, “The Eternal”, “Heart and Soul”, “Twenty Four Hours”, “Isolation”, and above all else “Decades”, the album ender of all album enders, which was such a memorable track for me still.
Steve Kilbey
I bumped into Steve Kilbey in 1983 at the Blurred Crusade gig at The Campus Club at Queensland Institute of Technology (QIT) (now QUT).
Steve Kilbey blurry in Blurred Crusade mode (Photo by Sounds: Donnie interviewing The Church in 1982)
My oldest brother, at the time, was stage sound engineer for The Church on The Blurred Crusade tour. I was backstage as a guest of my brother’s when The Church appeared and went on stage. For me, that was a concert moment. The songs were great, abstract, but the sound was superb. For a live concert, it was like listening to a record. You could hear every word. It’s stayed with me ever since and I always say to the sound guys, “Everything goes under the voice. I want people to hear what I’m singing”.
In the Flat Field
A rock album that never ceases to amaze me every time I hear it is In the Flat Field by Bauhaus. Bauhaus are singer Peter Murphy, guitarist Daniel Ash, drummer Kevin Haskins and bassist David Haskins. I can’t believe the sound landscape they created with just the three instruments guitar, bass and drums. The record is stunning, and the recording. So too the writing and the performance. The most gloomy, vampiric, post-punk.
Europa Europa
A film I was astounded by is Europa Europa. It floored me. I couldn’t fault any little cog, any part of its make-up. Every little piece was perfect. It was a tense suspense story, an ironic romance, and a truly black comedy. It is based on the 1989 autobiography of Solomon Perel, a German-Jewish boy.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
I’ve always been totally in love with Picnic at Hanging Rock, with Anne-Louise Lambert, Karen Robson, Jane Vallis and Christine Schuler. It’s stunning. It’s so haunting, and so beautiful a film and scene. The way it portrays the chasm between white settlers and the mysteries of the ancient land. Just the plot too, it’s outside the realm of things that can be explained.
Anne-Louise Lambert, Karen Robson, Jane Vallis and Christine Schuler in Picnic at Hanging Rock
The Wall
With Pink Floyd’s film of the album, The Wall, in 1979, I still find the sequence featuring Gerald Scarff’s animation fantastic and brilliant. It is superb to look at, and really complementary to the story. It takes the whole production of The Wall to a whole different level at the cinema. You can only watch it at the cinema, just for that animation sequence alone.
Michael Moorcock
I believe Michael Moorcock is one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century. One of my long-time friends turned me on to him about fifty years ago – a book called The Singing Citadel. It’s typical of Moorcock’s style. He’s a fantasy writer who followed in the footsteps of Tolkien and CS Lewis, but his books are more about the human condition.
In The Singing Citadel, a prince and princess are searching through woods when this citadel suddenly appears. The princess is lured inside. But the prince is not so trusting and goes in to try to rescue her. He spends the rest of the book trying to discover what’s happened to him. It’s a very interesting book, and I ended up I writing a song, Citadel, about it. It is a bit obscure.