'The gentleman of Australian rock ‘n’ roll’ Spencer P Jones remembered

[Nergal]

 

The Australian music scene is bidding farewell to one of its legendary mainstays, Spencer P. Jones.

News of the prolific guitarist and songwriter’s death was delivered last night in a touching statement by his wife, Angie, following his drawn out battle with inoperable liver cancer.

To say Jones had an impact on Australia’s punk, garage, and rock ‘n’ roll scene is a massive understatement. Upon emigrating from New Zealand as a teen in the ‘70s, Jones swiftly established himself as a familiar figure through dozens of bands and gigs – a legacy that goes much deeper than his best-known work with Beasts of Bourbon, Paul Kelly, and cow punk pioneers The Johnnys.

Five decades into his storied career, in 2012, Jones joined forces with Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschen (from The Drones and Tropical Fuck Storm) and James Baker (of Scientists, Hoodoo Gurus, Beasts of Bourbon) to create Spencer P Jones and the Nothing Butts – a project that extended to a full-length album and tour.

“He was garage through and through. That side of garage that did the songwriting,” Liddiard told Gemma Pike on Double J this morning, fondly remembering his long-term friend and collaborator’s abilities and legacy.

“He’s my favourite songwriter in Australia and I’d put him up there with Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. If you put one of his best songs up against one of theirs – I’m not saying that because of the mood I’m in. He just covered all bases really.”

The frontman, like many of his generation, first discovered Jones through Beasts of Bourbon. The Tex Perkins-fronted group who had become a ferocious live unit by the time their monstrous blues rock made an impression on a teenage Liddiard at a festival in 1992.

“I heard them at high school and the first time I saw them was at the Big Day Out. After that, when they played at the Metro in Freo, went and saw that gig as well. That was after they supported Nirvana at the Hordern Pavilion [in Sydney], so they’d gone from a bar room band to quite big, really quick,” he recalled.

“That was the first time; It’s hilarious, my sister chucked a beer at the stage and it almost hit Spencer. He glared at me like I’d done it, ‘f**k, thanks’.”

He did eventually bring up the bottling incident with Spencer after they’d become friends, but the guitarist laughed it off (“I don’t think Spencer can remember much of that era,” Gareth chuckled).

Liddiard would officially meet his teenage hero backstage at one The Drones’ first shows after relocating to Melbourne – the moment captured in a photo the frontman shared online yesterday.

“I’d just walked offstage, put my jacket on, it would’ve been winter, middle of the year in 2000. We’d only been in Melbourne five months or less. He was literally one of the 50 first fans of The Drones. He was one of my favourite musicians so to say it meant a lot was an understatement.”

Through the early 2000s they’d regularly tour together; “whether it was Cow Penalty or The Escape Committee, he’d come with The Drones on jaunts and we’d always end up just jumping up at the end of shows for an encore and doing three or four songs,” said Liddiard.

“Everyone who knows him learnt from him: ‘Don’t be a poser, keep it real, get the songs right’.”

Liddiard’s sentiments are common among those who knew Jones best, admired not just for his natural ability on the axe but for his enduring support and generosity of spirit.

Patrick Emery, a friend of Jones who has spent four years writing a book about the musician’s life and legacy, says it’s this quality that was recurring feature of the 120 interviews he’s conducted as part of his research.

“All the people I’ve spoken to spoke fondly of how he would support and encourage their music and when he heard what he liked, he would offer to help with it,” he told Double J this morning.

"He would never dominate someone else’s music but always add and enhance to it."

Emery described Jones as a “lifer” and “the gentleman of Australian rock ‘n’ roll” for whom music was the “golden thread that runs throughout his life.”

“He grew up listening to The Beatles and the British Invasion on the radio in country New Zealand in the 1960s. He wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll musician, as a teenager he was playing guitar from age 14, or even earlier,” he said.

“He came to Australia because it was a pitstop to get enough money so he could get to the UK where he saw his future as being a rock ‘n’ roll star. It’s always been the prime motivating factor and throughout his life… not just his own music but other people’s music, his contemporaries’ music.”

On top of his extensive solo career and high-profile stints with Beasts of Bourbon,The Johnnys, and as a member of Paul Kelly’s band The Coloured Girls, Jones’ credits include an exhaustive list of contributions and features.

Not always in the spotlight, but a permanent fixture on the sidelines, lending his distinctive guitar sound to post-punk icons like The Gun Club and Rowland S. Howard’s These Immortal Souls, to American poet Lydia Lunch, and even roots and country-blues band The Working Class Ringos.

He crops up as a backing vocalist on Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ Let Love In, and it’s his wistful slide guitar you can hear on the 1995 debut album from Icecream Hands and, most iconic of all, opening Paul Kelly’s deathless ‘How To Make Gravy – a part he improvised in the studio.

Emery thinks it’s difficult to truly measure the significance, breadth, and depth of Jones’ contribution to Australian music.

“I think that the only way to do that is if you actually look back and took Spencer out of the equation and worked out and realised how much wasn’t there,” he said. “You can see the significance of his impact. I think that without Spencer, Australian music over the last 40 years is a far poorer commodity.”