Features
The Lighthouse Keepers: ‘Luckily We Came Out Alive’
By Aaron Curran
Sydney’s golden age of indie rock will be reborn this month as part of the “On The Street Series”. First cab off the rank is the Lighthouse Keepers, whose guitarist Greg Appel talks to AARON CURRAN about the band’s timeless first single ‘Gargoyle’, abject poverty and their new anthology ‘Ode To Nothing’.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] A mainstay of Sydney’s live scene in the first half of the 1980s, The Lighthouse Keepers tendered a loose, thrumming blend of country, folk and pop that walked a fruitful line between buoyant melody and brooding melancholy. With a punk DIY sensibility and a seemingly-modest approach to career ambition, the band were known for lead singer Juliet Ward’s haunting vocals, chief songwriter Greg Appel’s memorable compositions, and lackadaisical live shows marked by lots of instrument swapping and alcohol, which features prominently in the band’s mythos.
After four years together, a handful of exceptional records, regular journeys across Australia and ultimately a tour of Europe, The Lighthouse Keepers called it quits in 1986 with members going on to other indie favourites such as The Widdershins, The Cannanes and The Honeys. Unlike many of their peers their records have seldom been re-released, subsequently drifting into semi-obscurity, which belies the popularity of the band at their peak.
With rare returns to the stage in various combinations over the decades, the band will regroup for a show this Friday as part of the “On The Street” series (which will also feature The Hummingbirds, The Moffs, feedtime and Ups&Downs), and to launch a CD anthology of some of their finest work, Ode to Nothing – The Best of the Lighthouse Keepers.
Can you tell me about the earliest beginnings of the band?
The Lighthouse Keepers started in Sydney, but some of us knew each other in Canberra first. A couple of us played in an early punk band called Guthugga Pipeline there. But I moved up to live with Juliet [Ward] in Sydney and I guess it started with me and her playing in the bedroom. I'd written this song back in Canberra. So I asked the guitarist from the punk band I was with there to join us and record it, to play drums though [multi-instrumentalist Stephen “Hairy” O’Neil]. We started with just that one recording and kept going.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
That's 'Gargoyle' you're talking about, yes? That single is one of Australia’s great DIY releases. Can you share more about writing and recording it?
Well thank you, that’s nice to hear. I must have thought 'Gargoyle' was good but recording it was a bit of an afterthought actually. Me and Juliet used to do a weird range of covers for fun and we thought that we'd record some of these covers, Patsy Cline, that sort of thing. The first track we cut was ‘I Fall to Pieces’. Now Juliet had met some strange people up in Sydney, older male characters who owned a small studio in Haymarket, so that’s where we recorded it, it didn’t cost much at all. Everyone liked how ‘Gargoyle’ ended up, so Hairy asked his dad for a loan to press a single. We did it all ourselves, went out to the factory in Artarmon [Sydney] got a load of warped records back the first time so they had to do it all over again.
Is it right that you hand-decorated all the covers yourselves?
Yeah that’s right, we must have had a lot of time on our hands hey? [Laughs] There was over a thousand, we definitely did one whole lot of a thousand and then another lot too I think. I've still got about 10 of them ... They look good! [Laughs] So the first release was done on our own label, named after our old punk band Guthugga Pipeline. We sent them off to the shops ourselves, we were always at the post office. It was a major hassle really but they sold and we were more than a little surprised when the shops kept asking for more.
What do you remember about writing ‘Gargoyle’? It has a fairly creepy sound that’s a little unnerving until you get to that glorious chorus.
Now that I listen back to it I can clearly hear that it represents the dawning of sexual experience, though I didn't think anything like that at the time. But it's about an adolescent, scared and happy to have sex. It's a happy song though it's a dark world that you're entering, but you're happy to be there. Something like that. [Laughs]
How did you connect with the Hot Records label?
The small success of ‘Gargoyle’ motivated us to be more of a band. While we’d gotten good at playing all the covers we liked, at talent quests, playing live now was about building from the sound of the single. Building a band from people we knew including Michael “Blue” Dalton on harmonica and more, and Steven Williams on drums. Hot Records came to us at some point and asked to put the single back out again as it seemed to be still in demand, and maybe make an album. Though we did a mini-album on our own that Hot didn’t have much to do with [Exploding Lighthouse Keepers]. Hot must have re-pressed ‘Gargoyle’ after that mini-album came out. Martin Jennings [Hot label boss] appeared and started to sign up local artists, he did choose some good ones. A slightly dubious character, but that’s the music industry for you.
From my teenage perspective living in Perth at the time, enjoying bands like The Triffids when they’d come home and play shows on their Christmas holidays, it felt like bands on the Hot label were all part of one big cool musical family, though I’m sure that was an idealised take on it.
We got to know The Triffids quite well, both in Sydney and playing with them when we toured Perth. We were friends with them, not so much with the other Hot bands. We did have a good relationship with Perth though, our first, perhaps only, super fan came from there. This person wrote to us all the time, loved our singles, begged us to visit. That’s probably why we went over there.
It’s pretty funny reading the liner notes to the Ode to Nothing CD compilation, hearing about the abject poverty of indie touring back then and the incongruity of some of the places you played.
Yeah we didn’t know whether that reminiscing was a bit too self indulgent. But we tried to tell an honest story, hopefully you get an idea of how ludicrous it was that we were playing original independent music all across Australia, in small country towns where even now independent music might not be looked on too fondly. We were asking for trouble. So luckily we had the Patsy Cline covers in our set still! They came in handy. I can’t believe we toured like that really; why we imagined that people in, say, Norseman would want to see a bunch of original musicians from Sydney forcing their music on them after a hard day in the mines or whatever.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Well it sounds like you got off lightly, compared to how some of your ‘80s peers might have been treated in similar circumstances.
I don’t know what we thought we were doing. Luckily we came out alive. Whereas The Particles, who we were friends with and toured with, they definitely didn’t go down well in country towns. Drum machines, electronics, more abstract music … that didn’t go down well with the miners. In that situation, The Lighthouse Keepers always got top billing.
As the band’s career continued, the arrangements for your recordings got a little denser, more elaborate, with lots of brass, different stringed instruments like mandolins and so on. Given you were writing most of the songs, was that direction coming from you or the band?
At first when you start recording it’s just great to hear your playing back. To even record on a multi-track, it was just, “Oh wow, fantastic.” But adding more comes gradually, in steps. I don’t think The Lighthouse Keepers didn't suffer from as many ‘80s excesses as some bands though; we didn’t have the money to go too over the top. Probably The Widdershins, the band we had later, suffered more from ’80s production technology, which took over with drums and effects that were overly dominant. But The Lighthouse Keepers were limited by money, so that kept it pretty simple. Those songs sounded like they were recorded 20 years before they actually were, it was basic ’60s recording techniques. No budget, tiny studios.
Now I believe you’ve become involved in film and television production in recent years Greg? Is any of it music-related?
That’s right, yeah, often the stuff I do is music-related in some way, for instance recently I made a documentary at Sydney Opera House about the Ship Song Project with Daniel Johns, Paul Kelly etc. But the most well-known music thing I’ve done is co-producing the “Long Way to the Top” documentary series.
You composed almost all the songs for The Lighthouse Keepers, do you still write a lot?
I can’t say I do too much. I have written a bit of music with my brother Steve, including a musical [Van Park, performed at the 2010 Sydney Fringe Festival]. Steve has a band, King Curly, and they do some of my songs. Sometimes I write incidental or background music for the documentaries I make. I’ve been enjoying playing again, though I don’t do a lot of composing anymore. I’m more likely to write in other ways.
I’m sure the set’s starting to take shape now for your show this week. Which songs do you most enjoy playing live together?
The band just lasted long enough to have one solid set, so that’s what we’ll be doing. I like different songs on different days. When we supported The Laughing Clowns a while back, I was surprised again how good some of the stuff we played still sounded, whereas other songs seemed a bit throwaway. But then that was the nature of the band really; we were often considered to be a bit ramshackle, a bit loose. ‘Ocean Liner’ stands up well, ‘Gargoyle’ is nice, though there’s something about the actual recording of that song that’s best, despite how rickety the production was. ‘Seven Years’ is fun, though that’s almost into Widdershins period in my mind.
“The Lighthouse Keepers didn't suffer from as many ‘80s excesses as some bands though; we didn’t have the money to go too over the top.”
What’s great about this compilation CD coming out is that more people will get to hear that The Lighthouse Keepers held their own amongst esteemed company, like your peers The Go-Between and The Triffids, who have become better known over time.
At the time both of those bands would be the headliners, whereas we’d be the support. Both also worked a lot harder than we did. While we went to England too, played some good shows, it all seemed a bit like hard work and we were too lazy. The reason to put the Ode to Nothing CD out was that people seemed interested…we had enquiries from the internet, the records were still in demand. But it was good to go back and re-master the songs, they now seem a lot brighter and clearer.
So do you plan on playing many more live shows this year?
Not really, we were thinking one in Sydney, one in Melbourne, perhaps one in Canberra. Can’t imagine we’ll make it to Perth. You can’t do it too much. Its fun and we can recreate the sound but we’d like to keep the feel of the original band which was sort of ramshackle, everyone swapping instruments, not exactly a high level of musicianship. [Laughs] But while it sounds good, I can’t imagine we’ll play too much. Everyone’s old! [Laughs]
Reading articles from the band’s first years, there seems to be constant emphasis by the journalists on how casual the band were, with performances that were slightly shaky, falling apart.
That’s right, I keep telling the band that we can’t rehearse too much, it just wouldn’t be right! It should all go OK. It was a pleasant experience playing with The Laughing Clowns, so we thought why not do our own shows? But doing it too much would detract from the pleasure of it, we don’t want to overdo things … otherwise it wouldn’t be special.
We’re trying to organize a few surprises [for Sydney] so it’ll be a fun night anyway, I think the people who come along will have more fun than probably I will, ‘cause it does feel a bit weird to be back onstage again. But it’s really nice that people have been interested, it’s very flattering to hear people reminisce about those songs after all this time.
+