The Hard-Ons To Wrap Up Their Australian Tour At Froth & Fury
One of Australia’s most loved and influential bands, the Hard-Ons are this year celebrating forty years of punk rocking in public. In doing so they will embark on fortieth anniversary tours of both Australia and Europe coming to end at Froth & Fury Festival in Adelaide, along with the release of new album I Like You A Lot Getting Older, starting with the fast-out-the-gate single Buzz Buzz Buzz this year has been huge for the band. They are also the subject of a new feature length documentary film, The Most Australian Band Ever, which premiered last month at Sydney’s SXSW festival. Ray Ahn talks to Hi Fi Way about touring and working with the legendary Tim Rogers.
Have you been surprised with how prolific the band has been with almost an album a year at the moment?
Yeah, not surprised, but really happy because we turned the corner during Covid when we were stuck in the rehearsal room, and it was just always Blackie, the guitar player, Murray our drummer and I meeting up during Covid and coming into the studio and knocking songs into shape knowing that we couldn’t play shows. Remember when we all had to be careful around each other as well, so we turn up and go, let’s be careful, but let’s try and write some songs. So, we spent a lot of time writing songs and trying to work out how to make the songs better and how to record things better and all that kind of stuff. Around that time we asked Tim to join, because we had this album with no singer, so we wanted him to sing for this album.
Facing no shows, recording it just made us realise how easy it was if you just streamline a lot of the things. We learned a big lesson during Covid, I think, and we thought it’s actually possible to record constantly and put them into the bank, when things are ready then we can release it. As we speak, I can tell you there’s actually another album that we’ve recorded that we haven’t even talked about.
Has Tim sort of unlocked something in the band that particularly from a creative perspective may not have already been there previously?
Um, yes and no. The three of us were basically going hammer and tong writing songs and knocking things into shape before Tim joined the band. We were really determined to make a full use of the time that we had without being able to play shows. So, we figured we can’t play shows, but what can we do that’s really prolific and productive was recording demos all the time. All those albums that we did with Tim, they’re basically first and second takes. We spent that much time in the rehearsal room demoing and doing pre-production and throwing around ideas on how to phrase things and how fast they should be, what the arrangement should be and all that kind of stuff.
When we went into the studio to record, studios cost a lot of money, obviously, they were first and second takes, we did them so quickly. All the basic tracks were done in about a day, day and a half max. We learned how to streamline things and do things during Covid. But when Tim joined you are right, what he unlocked was a keen sense of melody. On the last two albums, we said to Tim, you are in the band, you can come up with some melodies, here you go, and he did. I think the idea of the band is that none of us are very good experts or great musicians but Tim is a very good singer. He is a fantastic singer. We’re pretty good at what we do, but none of us are like virtuosos or anything like that. How do we maximize what we do together? Just bring every ounce of talent from the four people. Tim’s talent is obviously vocals. His singing is absolutely phenomenal, and his sense of melody, and he has a very soulful voice. So, for example, it’s not necessary to double track his voice to make it sound melodic, he can just sing on his own. It’s like someone like Aretha Franklin just going into a studio and you’ve got all these elements of soulfulness with a breathy approach where he needs to, phrasing things before he goes into the actual words.
Coming into choruses a bit later, the second time around, coming in a bit early, all these things that he’s able to do because he’s an expert singer with this incredible sense of melody. He’s really unlocked that melodic potential I think the band had already, but we know if we played to Tim’s strengths, his vocals, then the songs go to another level.
Has the creative process worked a little bit differently this time around?
Yeah, it’s very different now. We let Tim take control of a lot of the melodies and vocal arrangements. Murray and I don’t get involved. We basically stick to what we do, which is rhythm. We’re constantly getting together and talking about what we’re doing. What are we doing here, what are we doing there? When we come to the chorus, what are you going to do? You’re going to have to tell me. We let Blackie the main songwriter, and Tim, who wrote a lot of the melodies on this current album, we let them work out what the melodic approach is going to be. A lot of the time we can’t get together because Tim lives in Melbourne. We have to do it remotely and the demos that we give Tim have to be very accurate. They have to be very similar to what we’re going to do in the studio, because if, say there’s a different kind of a drum roll leading into the chorus, it’ll make him sing differently, you know, because Tim’s not an idiot. He’ll approach things as per rhythm. We have to be very careful in presenting him a really good demo, but once he has a demo, he just goes to town and comes up with these fantastic ideas.
What was that energy like in the studio once the songs start coming together?
We’re so familiar with each other’s ability now. We know exactly what Tim’s approach is going to be like. He told me once that he had one hundred and ten percent faith in what the instruments are doing. He really likes the way we play and we also told him we have a hundred percent faith in his vocal approach. Ninety percent of the time he’s pretty spot on and the ten percent where we think that’s maybe not working right, he’ll just go, yes, I was thinking about that. I’m glad you told me, so we’re on the same page most of the time. In fact, almost all the time we’re on the same page. He’s also very into experimenting with different approaches vocally and stuff like that.
He runs a million different ideas past, before he settles on something that works really well for him, which is really good. It’s a hell of a lot of work. It’s amazing how much effort he puts into this kind of stuff. I mean, for example, we’re going to the studio a week out, and Tim hasn’t finished all the lyrics because he’s been doing other stuff. I go, are you going to be okay? He goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll be fine. I’ve got it worked out. Then he’ll get to Sydney to get to the studio, he’ll book himself a hotel, and then he stays up all night until wee hours of the morning knocking vocal lines into shape. Then I ask him, when did you get to sleep? He says, oh, four! Like, you stayed up until then, knocking this into shape how? He said, well, it had to be done. I’m thinking, well, I wouldn’t do that. But, but then again, I’m the bass player in The Hard-Ons. I don’t do those things. I guess there’s a reason why Tim is very successful at what he does. It’s because he has a very keen understanding of what he needs to do. Not everyone has that.
Does the juggling and the scheduling get tricky to manage and navigate?
It’s very tricky, in a country like Australia, if you want to play lots and lots of music and try and make it your career, I think you have to do a lot of things. That’s what Tim does. I mean, obviously Tim has looked at his talent and appraised it and gone, I can do this, I can do this, I can do that. He’s going to do them because that’s his calling in life. With the other guys in The Hard-Ons, we’re like, um, we’re going to do this and this and this, but at some point, we have to go and get money for rent from our day jobs and that kind of stuff. Tim doesn’t have to do that because this is his day job. Tim’s got a lot of things happening, and so we have to schedule things around what he can and can’t do. Having said that, we’re not going to sit back and twiddle our thumbs while Tim’s doing something because all three of us in The Hard-Ons, outside of Tim do other musical projects and whatnot. We’ve always got something boiling on the stove, as it were.
The fortieth anniversary is an awesome achievement, congratulations, are there any moments or events along the way that really stand out for you when you reflect on it?
One staggering moment for me was we played, The Hard-Ons are not a household name at all. We have a reasonable size following, some people call us like a cult band or something like that, but we’re certainly not going to be, if you look at Tim’s other band You Am I, for example, I mean the, the level of their success is staggering or say Something For Kate or Spider Bait or any of those bands where there are like ARIA Awards and that kind of stuff involved. We’re not that level, we’re a band that’s been around longer than those guys, but we’ve always had this subterranean existence in the music industry.
When we went to America the first time, that was 1988, that was quite eye-opening, because that was 1988. We’d been playing live for five years, and we were meant to go to America the year before, but after four years of playing live, we couldn’t because that was my final year of university. I told the other guys, I can’t travel while I’m doing my final exams and whatnot. So, in 1988, we just bolted out of Australia to play, and we went to Europe and America. When we were in America, we played in New York, the first gig in New York. We remember that met Greg and Chuck from a band that we worshiped called Black Flag.
We worshiped them and they were in the crowd and that was in New York. They’re from LA so what were they doing in New York? They were part of this festival. They were handing out flyers for SST records, and we met, I can’t remember which one of those guys it was, but it was someone from The Beastie Boys. I wasn’t a huge Beastie Boys fan, so I wasn’t that excited. But what was really exciting was Biafra from Dead Kennedys was in the audience, and he grabbed me and he started asking me all these questions about The Hard-Ons and I’m thinking, you are Biafra from the Dead Kennedys? He says, yeah, and I said, wow, I loved you since I was a little kid, you know, since I was in high school.
He goes, yeah, good, anyway, I want to ask you about this record cover, this record cover. And he said to me, you are the guy who does all the artwork, and I went, how do you know that? He goes, I’ve been following your band, and I understand a lot about your band. Now tell me about this record cover. Tell me about this record cover. He was asking me a hundred miles an hour, all these questions. I’m going, hang on. That’s the guy from the Dead Kennedys. Oh, my favourite band when I was a kid. Then I realised, we’re not nobodies, we’re actually somebody. It made me really happy to be honest, it really did.
Are you looking forward to finishing your tour at Froth and Fury Festival?
Yes, if you look at the lineup, we’re the band that’s been around the longest, so the combined age of The Hard-Ons is equal to about seven of those bands on the bill. There’s no age barrier for playing music is there? Or for art? Art is what it is. I mean, you can perform art if you have something burning inside you until you drop dead I suppose! So hopefully, we won’t disgrace ourselves on stage because it’ll be embarrassing in front of all those kids!
Interview By Rob Lyon
Catch The Hard-Ons at Froth & Fury on Saturday 9 November. Tickets HERE…
