Jumpin’ In The Night #7: Rock ’N’ Roll Man

Ian Rilen’s posthumous album ‘Family From Cuba’ is a fitting tribute to the self-styled “Bad Boy For Love”. ANDREW STAFFORD gives us a sneak peek. Archive photo by STEPHANIE FALCONER.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] On a quick trip to Sydney in July of 2006, a friend and I had the pleasure of attending an AFL match with writer Clinton Walker. Clinton is a Swans man these days, although he began life as a Saint. I was born Collingwood, and Clinton still can’t work out why I haven’t switched allegiances to Brisbane. (“Love the one you’re with,” he tells me.) Collingwood supporters aren’t for turning.

The Swans went down to Collingwood that night, but Clinton was unbowed. There were bigger fish to be fried: Ian Rilen and the Love Addicts were playing that night at the Sandringham Hotel at Newtown. It was my first and only live encounter with the monumental presence that was Rilen, and it would be the man’s last show in Sydney before his sad passing four months later.

Not unlike Iggy Pop, Ian Rilen was a small man whose id alone was capable of filling up an empty room. The Sando was packed when we walked in, and the place was heaving with energy, plenty of it sexual. It seemed more than half of the audience were women, visibly swooning at the sight of the slight figure in his late 50s already on stage, decked out in snakeskin boots, cowboy shirt and hat.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] The first surprise for me was that Rilen, once Australia’s ultimate bass player, was playing a Jaguar. The second was that his former partner-in-everything, Cathy Green, was on bass. (Later I asked Green what the ultimate Australian drummer was doing playing bass. Rilen overhead. “Being the ultimate bass player,” he shot back. Role reversal, then.)

The song they were playing was mostly on one chord and had about 10 words for a lyric. Rilen’s voice – debilitated by illness, but still rising above the ruckus – made Tom Waits sound like a boy soprano. “I know you don’t love me no more,” he growled. He repeated the line once, then twice, grinning at Green. “I know you don’t love me no more.” The music juddered to a halt, like a train hitting a semi-trailer at a level crossing. “Even less than before!” Then the train rumbled off again.

It was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.

Rilen’s health deteriorated rapidly after that Sydney visit, but his work was almost done. A few months after his death in 2006, I received a burn of the CD that the Love Addicts managed to complete in the weeks and months before Rilen’s death, recorded as his health allowed. ‘You Don’t Love Me’ is on there, along with some more of the most transcendent rock’n’roll the man ever recorded. Now, after nearly five years of waiting, Family From Cuba, the album, is almost ready for release. (A good version of the title track was recorded by ABC2, where Rilen flirts shamelessly with a blushing Tracee Hutchison.)

Not all the material will be new to fans: Rilen had a habit of re-recording songs. ‘Steal It’ and ‘Two Days Off, Five Days On’ date back to an album Rilen made with Hell To Pay in the early 1990s. ‘Burn’, ‘Missing You’, ‘Bad For Good’ and the splendidly emblematic ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Man’ all appeared in tamer versions on a solo album, Love Is Murder, while ‘You Ya Foolin’ Now’ was recorded on the Love Addicts’ first and only other album, Passion Boots & Bruises.

That’s half the album’s 14 tracks. If you’ve already heard them, it’s a matter of taste whether you’ll like these recordings better. In general though, expect a higher hurt factor. ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Man’, especially, comes on like Hank Williams on crack: “There’s a Camel burning in the kitchen/And my glass is running dry/I’ve been seeing the wrong ladies lately/fuckin’ up my life.” Volkman plays a deadly slide guitar solo over a rolling Green bass line.

‘Bad For Good’ opens the album. It’s a slow seven-minute blues grind that plays on Rilen’s original self-proclaimed title as the ‘Bad Boy For Love’, the Rose Tattoo hit that kept him in something like rock ’n’ roll clover for life. Listen to it and you’ll understand why the Beasts of Bourbon dedicated their last album, Little Animals, to him. This is one man who would not be saved.

‘You Don’t Love Me’ follows, and it still pounds me to the floor like the first time I heard it at the Sando. It’s the most immediate track on the album, and as bone dry as anything recorded by X.

‘Steal It’ is a desperately sad song, about how sometimes the only way out of a destructive relationship is to be seduced by another one. “I need somebody to steal my heart, from the house of flowers/Right from under your eyes/Somebody who can set me free, release me from your powers/And there’d be nothing you could do.”

"Not unlike Iggy Pop, Ian Rilen was a small man whose id alone was capable of filling up an empty room."

The theme of romantic loss continues through ‘Missin’ You’, ‘Without You’ and especially the aching ballad ‘Burn’, a twisted slow dance. But such loss is tempered by self-knowledge. Rilen doesn’t bother wasting too much time feeling sorry for himself, at least not on record: he’s a ramblin’ man, after all. “Put me on a Virgin/A Firefly bus/’Cos this town ain’t big enough for both of us,” he sings on ‘This Town’, one of the best songs in the set. It’s a piece of pure escapism, with a joyful, jaunty uplift to it. At the other extreme is ‘Song For Romeo’, which closes the album. It’s a soft piano ballad, for the youngest son Rilen knew he would not live to see grow up. “You’ll always be here by my side/because heaven is in your eyes,” he croaks. Trite? I dare you not to be moved.

Expect Family From Cuba to come out sometime in the second half of the year, possibly in November, to mark the fifth anniversary of Ian Rilen’s death – truly, a cause for celebration of an amazing life. If this sounds like your bag, don’t bother looking for a greasier, more honest or better album this year. You won’t find it.

+

Andrew Stafford is a Brisbane-based writer and the author of 'Pig City'. He’s currently working on his second book for University of Queensland Press.

JUMPIN’ IN THE NIGHT #6: Retro fetishism and Geelong’s Frowning Clouds.

JUMPIN’ IN THE NIGHT #5: Some sobering thoughts on Spencer P Jones.

JUMPIN’ IN THE NIGHT #4: Notes from underwater.

JUMPIN’ IN THE NIGHT #3: Dancing to the beat of the living dead.

JUMPIN’ IN THE NIGHT #2: How not to be a feisty rock critic.

JUMPIN’ IN THE NIGHT #1: A rock’n’roll epiphany.