Icons: The Scientists Pt 1

From Perth’s fledgling punk scene and a motley cast of players emerged The Scientists, one of the most influential acts in Australian rock history. Their sound nodded to The Stooges, Ramones, Heartbreakers and Flamin’ Groovies and wound up spanning punk, power-pop and eventually proto-grunge. As their original lineup reconvenes to mark 35 years since their formation, PATRICK EMERY delivers a painstaking oral history of the band’s early days. Photos by CANDY GOLDSMITH.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] By most reasonable accounts the music scene in Perth – once called the most remote capital city in the world – in the 1970s was stifling and unimpressive. The typical live band – some might suggest the only type of live music – played covers of radio-friendly favourites. In the days before the internet, exposure to overseas music was slow and sporadic, and reliant on a combination of the international post and the influence of the occasional overseas visitor.

Such conditions, perhaps counter-intuitively, made Perth the ideal breeding ground for punk rock. Over at his Perth Punk website, Ross Buncle explores the history of Perth punk music in almost fanatical detail. The initial focus of Buncle’s historical analysis was simple: to challenge the oft-cited proposition that Perth’s first punk bandit was either The Victims or Cheap Nasties. Buncle points to the ephemeral Perth punk band The Geeks (which featured both Buncle and James Baker) as having equal – and arguably greater – claim to the title of the first Perth punk band.

In some respects – and as conceded by Buncle himself – the identity of the ‘first’ Perth punk band is moot. The undeniable fact is that the punk scene in Perth was negligible and largely devoid of public exposure outside of the feral sharehouses of its youthful protagonists. Commercial radio was still dominated by the Top 40 standards of the day, while a repertoire of well-known covers was an essential prerequisite for any aspiring live band.

Both The Geeks – and that band’s known and obscure descendents – and Cheap Nasties were critical elements in Perth’s first wave of notionally organised resistance to the prevailing musical sludge of the day.

Through the presence of drummer James Baker, The Geeks would begat arguably Perth’s most infamous and legendary punk band, The Victims (and, according to Buncle, some of The Victims’ songs), while Cheap Nasties’ guitarist and singer, Kim Salmon, would be drafted into The Exterminators, a Detroit-rock-influenced punk band that featured a couple of Dubrovnik-born punk rockers by the name of Boris Sujdovic and Rod Radalj. The Exterminators would morph into The Invaders and, after Baker became a free agent, The Scientists. And a Perth legend was born.

James Baker: In the ’60s I was in my early teens living in a country town. In the 1970s the music scene was mainly cover bands, so I’d usually go and see my favourite loud cover band, some of whom were better than others. There wasn’t any original music here!

Kim Salmon: Perth was like a copy of what was going on overseas but with the distortion that comes with distance, isolation and getting everything later than everywhere else in the world.

“You had to really hunt out anything decent. It got harder and harder, and obviously that’s why punk rock happened.”

Boris Sujdovic: The Perth scene was dominated by cover bands that would play five nights a week in large beer barns. In the early ’70s I was listening to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, but in the mid-’70s it got a bit dire – real dire. You had to really hunt out anything decent. It got harder and harder, and obviously that’s why punk rock happened. You had stuff like Fleetwood Mac playing in stadiums, big drums, all that sort of stuff.

Rod Radalj: It was all covers bands, and they weren’t just covers bands, they did really lame versions of great songs. How many times do you need to see a cover band do a crappy version of ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’?

Salmon: I ended up in a working band that worked six nights in a week playing at a strip club. That was about 50% oldies stuff like Engelbert Humperdinck and Frank Ifield, and 50% Top 40 – which was Top 40 from the last 20 years; a lot of Rolling Stones but not much Beatles.

Radalj: I was listening to Exile On Main Street, Faces. There wasn’t a lot around – there was a lot of prog rock, but I was never really into that. I wasn’t into Pink Floyd – that tended to put me to sleep a bit.

Eventually the influence of the overseas music scene began to be felt in Perth. James Baker made the acquaintance of a visiting American teenager who, sensing a kindred spirit, asked Baker to join his fledgling band.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Baker: I started playing drums when I was about 16. From the start I was playing in original bands. When I got my records and it said Lennon and McCartney or Jagger and Richards next to a song, I realised those guys must’ve written those songs! So I figured that’s what you were supposed to do.

I met this American guy called Ray Demotte who was from Detroit. He was a young guy, and his father had been sent out to here to work with an oil company. He was most impressed that I had silver boots on, and he wanted me to play in his band, even before he knew what instrument I was playing. I had long hair and a velvet jacket, and I looked like I was in The Faces or something! He turned me onto The Stooges and the MC5 and the New York Dolls. He had a band that needed a drummer, so I joined that band. We played original music, and some Stooges and Doors covers. We played school dances and school halls – we were about 17 or 18 at the most.

Baker would formed The Slick City Boys in around 1974, playing a mixture of originals and New York Dolls and Stooges covers. When the Ramones’ first album came out, Baker took to it like a punk rock duck to dirty water. Baker would eventually form The Geeks – or The Hitler Youth, depending on to whom you speak – before subsequently teaming up with Dave Faulkner and Dave Cardwell (a.k.a. Rudolph V) in the now legendary Victims.

Baker: The Hitler Youth or The Geeks – it was the same band – was my first punk band. Because they never played live there was never really a name out for it – but they called it The Geeks. But the first name was The Hitler Youth, but it’s irrelevant because they never played live.

Sujdovic: James was in a band about 1974 or 1975 playing New York Dolls and Stooges kind of stuff. They were about the only people in Perth who knew that music. They didn’t play many gigs. He left and went to London and New York and bumped into all those guys when he was over there, and then he came back and started The Victims. That was pretty early on.

“He obviously liked the Ramones because he had a Johnny Ramone haircut.”

Salmon: One day I saw James Baker walking down the street. He obviously liked the Ramones because he had a Johnny Ramone haircut and he had a t-shirt with something written on it – it might’ve been ‘Gabba Gabba Hey!’ or something like that. We were in the car and I yelled something out at him, and he thought we were a bunch of hoons and he shuffled off looking disgruntled. I didn’t see him again for months! I might not remember that story – he was wearing cut-off black jeans and he denies every wearing shorts.

Baker: I remember wearing that outfit, but I can’t remember Kim calling out to me. The first time I remember meeting Kim was at the first Cheap Nasties gig, and I got talking to him about rock ’n’ roll. I used to go and watch all the Cheap Nasties gigs, and they ended up playing with The Victims. The Victims had started about halfway through 1977.

Radalj: Eventually those guys went off and formed The Victims. I think [Dave] Faulkner came to one of the gigs, and he poached James and Rudolph and formed The Victims.

Meanwhile, Kim Salmon, having spent “a year trying to get a band off the ground,, formed The Cheap Nasties.

Kim Salmon: I’d attempted to be in bands, auditioned for bands, that sort of thing. When I was about 18 I finally got to play guitar in public, with friends I knew. One of the first people was Dave Faulkner and people he knew. Some people were into Bob Dylan or Eric Clapton, and others were into prog rock. And I thought, ‘What’s my bag?’ And then punk rock came along. So that happened at just the right time. I got the Cheap Nasties together when I was in the strip club band.

Radalj: One band that was playing at the time was the Cheap Nasties, and Kim was in the Cheap Nasties. Boris and I were mates back then, and we decided to check them out – we were about the only guys there, and maybe a few other punters. They were a great band, the Cheap Nasties. This was before they became The Manikins. They had Neil Fernandez, who’s a great songwriter, and Kim, both on guitar, a guy called Dan Dare on bass and Bets on drums. They were a great outfit.

Both born originally in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik, Boris Sujdovic and Rod Radalj had been friends since childhood; despite neither having much in the way of musical training – nor, it was suggested at the time, aptitude generally – Sujdovic and Radalj were sufficiently impressed by the sounds of punk rock to form a band.

Radalj: I started out playing saxophone. I used to clean up the local drive-in. The guy there that who was in charge of it was a war veteran who’d lost a leg. He was a jazz drummer, and he used to tell me to learn a musical instrument. He said I could earn a few bucks out of it, so that’s how I got into saxophone. I liked Bobby Keys – he’s a great player, especially as far as rock ’n’ roll sax goes. I saw him when he came out with Joe Cocker, Jim Price and Nicky Hopkins.

Sudjovic: Roddy and I were family friends, and we grew up together. Roddy and I were hanging out, and we started gravitating toward jazz and blues. We started listening to The Stooges, and then punk rock came about.

In 1976 James Baker packed his bags and headed overseas to New York and London, experiencing firsthand the excitement and libertarian spirit of punk rock.

Baker: I went overseas in 1976 – the Pistols, The Clash, the Ramones, The Damned, The Dead Boys, Blondie, Richard Hell, all that stuff. I went to New York first, and then London. The New York scene was fantastic – CBGB’s was great. Those bands weren’t that big then. The Ramones were about the only band that had an album out, so there were never full houses. There’d be a couple of hundred people to see The Dictators, Johnny Thunders, the Ramones – it was fun time to be there.

“James was [in America] when it was all happening. He saw bands like The Heartbreakers and The Vibrators.”

Radalj: James was there when it was all happening. He went and saw bands like The Heartbreakers and The Vibrators. When I was first in a band with James – it was called The Hitler Youth, but I think they’d been called The Lesbians, but Ross [Buncle] swears it was called The Orphans – he’d just come back from overseas and seen those bands. He teed up with Ross and Lloyd when he came back, and got the whole ball rolling. It was pretty exciting – you’d sit around and play these great records. There was a lot of similarity but also a lot of differences.

Baker: I never heard of The Lesbians – that’s a new one on me! I have no memory of that, and I wouldn’t have had anything to do with that! I wasn’t in the room when that was discussed!

Sujdovic: James was a cult hero and influenced not only The Scientists but the whole Perth punk scene. His love of the American and English scene, combined with the primitive beats of The Troggs, gave The Scientist its direction.

Salmon: That was important in that it influenced James’ contribution in co writing our material. James’ experience overseas did have an influence on the early Scientists, but really just in the same way that I didn’t see that stuff firsthand and therefore had to imagine it.

“I knew the guys from The Clash – I auditioned for them.”

Baker: I knew the guys from The Clash – I actually auditioned for them. They didn’t have a drummer, so one Friday night they told me to come along and the next morning I was auditioning for The Clash! I really didn’t have my skills then – I played on ‘White Riot’ and ‘London’s Burning’. I could play ‘White Riot’, but I couldn’t play ‘London’s Burning’ too well. They said they liked my energy and style but they wanted to try someone else.

In a relatively small city such as Perth, it was only a matter of time before the paths of like-minded nascent punk rockers would meet.

Salmon: I met Boris and Rod at the first major gig the Cheap Nasties did. We’d done a few little shows around town, but this was the first gig that was advertised All the closet punks came out – we didn’t know that there were any, but they all came out! Rod and Boris were amongst them, as was James Baker – though James wasn’t wearing shorts this time!

Radalj: I think it was basically just Boris and I at that Cheap Nasties gig! But they were a great band.

Baker: Boris and Rod came along to the first Victims gig – I got to know them from there. The first Victims gig was at Victim Manor, which was this derelict house in East Perth. We used to use it as a rehearsal room, and I moved in there for about a week. It was a disgusting place to be, but we had our first gig there and about 100 people came along, including Boris and Rod.

Radalj: I saw an ad in the paper back in the days of The Orphans – who were called The Hitler Youth originally – there was an ad for a singer. I thought I’d give it a go, so I rang up and went down there. That’s when I first met James, ‘cause he was in the band, and Rudolph V, who ended up in The Victims. There was James, Ross Buncle and Rudolph – that was The Hitler Youth. They asked me to sing a song called ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ by The Ramones. I was pretty impressed because it was only four lines! I got the gig as the singer, and the old singer – Lloyd – came back, so I said I’d play saxophone.

“It scared the shit out of people, and I used to get death threats!”

They loved it, and said I sounded just like Steve Mackay off Funhouse. I’d never heard of that record, so we went back to Ross’s house and we listened to Funhouse. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but I did sound a bit like on that record. The way I played was pretty out there – I didn’t sound like Bobby Keys, I sounded like more Mackay. It scared the shit out of people, and I used to get death threats! When I was at home and I practised the neighbours used to complain – they were happy when I moved to guitar!

Salmon: I saw Rod and Boris again at some pub that was a bastion of Perth blues, which we hated at the time because it was a hippie thing to do. We were playing at this place called Steve’s and by the end of the show there was a pile of broken glass around the mic stand – not so much from punks, but from people I gave the shits to – and Boris comes up to me after the gig and asks me why we didn’t do more Stooges songs, which I thought was funny because we did ‘Search and Destroy’, ‘No Fun’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ – so I don’t know how many Stooges [he wanted].

With the airwaves and venues cluttered by the suffocating sounds of Top 40 sludge and well-worn cover versions, punk was a breath of fresh air.

Salmon: There was an article in NME that led me to punk – back in 1975. The article was titled “Are you alive to the jive of ’75?”

Sudjovic: By about 1977, when punk rock hit, or exploded, there were about 20 or 30 guys who were in punk bands and hanging around. If you got a gig there’d be about 100, 150 people. It was a great time. It was an explosion of excitement, us against them. It was a bit like the ’60s hippie explosion in a way, but it was obviously punk rock. It was a great time to be in any city, anywhere, and playing punk rock. Obviously London would’ve been fantastic, but in Perth or Adelaide or Brisbane or Sydney it would’ve been great fun.

Radalj: When I heard punk rock all I heard was rock ’n’ roll. It just reminded me of all that early Presley stuff, whereas at the time there was all that backbeat, sluggish time. To me punk rock was just a rock ’n’ roll revival.

Sujdovic: There was about 30 or 40 of us who’d go to the gigs, and it was a small band of musicians. We all knew each other – there was The Triffids, The Victims, The Invaders, and one or two other fringe bands.

Salmon’s tenure in the Cheap Nasties ended on account of the hoary old chestnut, ‘musical differences’. Salmon was more inclined to Stooges and the more eclectic end of the Velvet Underground spectrum; fellow guitarist and songwriter Neil Fernandez was drawn to a more linear rock ’n’ roll aesthetic.

“Neil thought it was a great thing that we were splitting up. About a week later the group reformed without me!”

Salmon: Neil and I got to be at loggerheads after a while because we were both songwriters and both guitarists and singers. We just couldn’t avoid fighting and so one day I suggested we split up. And Neil thought it was a great thing that we were splitting up. About a week later the group reformed without me!

With his old band now reformed without him, Salmon was at a loose end. Salmon was promptly drafted in to The Exterminators, the band formed by Sujdovic and Radalj. The Exterminators morphed seamlessly – without troubling the live music scene – into The Invaders. Radalj had graduated from saxophone to guitar, and with Salmon and Sujdovic’s help purchased the ‘cheeseboard’ guitar with which Radalj would subsequently become associated. With Radalj the band’s only guitar player, Salmon’s role was restricted to lead vocalist.

Radalj: Me and Boris couldn’t play. We started off as The Exterminators – it was me, Boris, Mark Demetrius [who used to have his own column in Rolling Stone] – we had drums and two bass players. I used to play saxophone, but Boris and I both wanted to play bass, so we had two bass players, a drummer and a saxophone player. After Kim joined he said one of us had to play guitar, so we tossed a coin and I had to play guitar. I was working at the time as an apprentice at the Midlands workshops – I was a lathe operator. My saxophone was really good, but all the plating had worn off. Boris and Kim took the saxophone to the markets and they sold it for about five bucks. They also pitched in a bit of money and they got me a guitar – and that guitar was a 3350 Chuck Berry guitar, and that became the cheeseboard that I still use! That’s the guitar you hear on ‘Frantic Romantic’.

Sujdvoic: The Invaders was kind of my first band. We only played a couple of gigs. Back then I couldn’t play bass – I’d only just learnt. Roddy used to play saxophone, and all of a sudden he had to play guitar because there wasn’t much call for saxophone in punk rock. Kim could play guitar, but you had to get asked because there wasn’t that many people around.

Salmon: There was a band called The Exterminators that Roddy had with Boris in it. They had a guy called Mark Demetrius who was the singer. He ended up writing for Rolling Stone. And the drummer, Johnno [Rushin], was one of our first fans. And after I’d left the Cheap Nasties Rod decided he’d induct me into his band. I was just singing and not playing guitar, because Rod had just started playing guitar and he didn’t want attention drawn to the fact that his skills on guitar were only just acquired – I thought that was fair enough. I was glad to be singing again.

Radalj: When the Cheap Nasties dissolved we got Kim to join us and we started off as The Exterminators and then The Invaders, and our whole mission was to do The Stooges. We had a guy called Johnno who was our original drummer. We were a pretty rough outfit. And when The Victims broke up we asked James to join and that’s when The Scientists were formed. We went off the Detroit sound, and James brought in a pop sensibility to the band. We still tried to play like the MC5, but the songs took on a more pop sensibility.

Baker: The only gig The Invaders could probably ever get was supporting The Victims!

Sujdovic: We were playing originals, songs that Kim had written. We just got together as a punk band, wrote some songs, but we didn’t play much – only a couple of gigs.

“Punk was a stance about being different rather than being the same.”

Radalj: The Invaders was mainly influenced by The Stooges, especially Funhouse. With punk you had bands like Blondie; The Heartbreakers, who had a couple of good pop songs; you had the Flamin’ Groovies, who’d gone from the early ’70s with Roy Loney to that great album with Shake Some Action. So there was a lot of that at play – The Troggs were a big influence, The Kinks. And even with punk you had Television and Blondie – what does Television have in common with Blondie? Nothing, except they both played CBGB’s. So at the end of the day punk was a stance about being different rather than being the same. There were similarities but a lot more differences, so it’s hard to say what the bible on punk actually was.

After he’d returned to Perth Baker had formed The Victims with Dave Faulkner and Dave Cardwell (a.k.a. Rudolph V). The Victims would burn bright, with the band subsequently becoming renowned as one of Australia’s – and the world’s – most legendary punk rock outfits. But that’s a story for another day. When The Victims broke up, and with The Invaders subject to internal tension, Salmon, Radalj and Sujdovic seized the opportunity to recruit Baker to take over drumming duties.

Salmon: Rod and Johnno were always fighting. We always saw ourselves as a bit of Detroit rock thing infused with a bit of New York Dolls, but Johnno was very much into the English school of punk – which we liked as well, but we didn’t want to be constricted by that. Eventually Johnno left at the same time as The Victims broke up – which was about the same time the Sex Pistols broke up. So straight away we got James to try out with us – there was no question as to whether he was going to be in the band, it was more whether he wanted to be in the band. And he said he’d join if I played guitar. And we plugged in and it sounded very good with two guitars.

Bolstered by Baker’s inclusion, The Invaders ceased to be, and the band was rechristened – apparently by Baker – The Scientists.

Baker: I joined The Scientists the next day after The Victims broke up. Their drummer left, I’m not sure why, so I phoned Kim up and said I’d join but only if he played guitar – he wasn’t playing guitar at that time, but he was the best rock ’n’ roll guitar player in Perth at the time not playing guitar. So it made no sense to me that he wasn’t playing guitar. So he said OK, and we started writing songs straightaway.

Sujdovic: Basically it was Kim, Roddy and me and a drummer Johnno. When Johnno left – or we kicked him out, I can’t remember – that coincided with James leaving The Victims, so he basically joined the next door. So that was The Scientists. The Invaders only played two or three gigs – it was kind of a half band [Laughs].

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The Scientists’ 35th anniversary tour finishes this week; dates below. Tickets via Oxtix. Read the second half of the interview piece tomorrow, starting with The Scientists’ first gig under that name.

Thurs, March 27 – Hi-Fi, Brisbane, QLD [w/Hits + Bad//Dreems]
Fri, March 28 – The Factory Theatre, Sydney, NSW [w/Bad//Dreems + Ruined Fortune]
Sat, March 29 – Howler, Melbourne, VIC [w/Bittersweet Kicks + Drunk Mums]
Sun, March 30 – The Gov, Adelaide, SA [w/The Pro Tools + Bad//Dreems]