The Blackeyed Susans

Despite their unique place in the annuls of Australian rock, Phil Kakulas from The Blackeyed Susans tells PATRICK EMERY he’s always considered the band a bit old-world European.

Named originally after a local flower (as well as a Triffids song), The Blackeyed Susans are a band bristling with talent and history. Bass player Phil Kakulas had played in the original line-up of The Triffids alongside school friends Dave McComb and Alsy McDonald, leaving before The Triffids entered into broader national and international consciousness. Singer Rob Snarksi was playing alongside his brother Mark in Chad’s Tree, gradually dragging himself away from the shadow of his brother. Alongside Ross Bolleter, Snarski, McComb, McDonald and Kakulas formed the first line-up of the Blackeyed Susans in Perth in the late 1980s, playing music that blended folk, rock, blues in a uniquely Antipodean cabaret guise.

Variously based in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, The Blackeyed Susans went on to evolve into something of a rotating community of musicians, with its members including Kim Salmon, Martyn Casey (Triffids, Bad Seeds), Jim White and Warren Ellis (Dirty Three), Graham Lee (Triffids), Jim Elliott and James Cruickshank (Cruel Sea), Dan Luscombe (lately of The Drones), Kiernan Box (Disappointments), Marc Dawson (Ed Kuepper) and JP Shilo (Hungry Ghosts).

In 2009, 20 years after the band’s formation, The Blackeyed Susans have finally managed to release a long-awaited box set Reveal Yourself, comprising three CDs and a DVD.

When did you first meet David McComb?
I went to high school with Dave, but I met him in primary school. He was a friend of Alsy’s. My earliest memory of Dave is playing Monopoly with Alsy and Dave. Dave was never particularly keen on board games, nor a patient person. I remember that particular game finishing with Dave throwing the board up and money and tokens and everything flying in every direction. I think it was also the last time I ever played a board game with Dave.

What about Rob Snarski? When did you first meet him?
That must have been probably mid 1980s, I think. I went to [see] Chad’s Tree a couple of times – he would tell you I stood there glaring at the band in disapproval, but I actually quite liked them. I didn’t get to know Rob until a group called the Bottomless Schooners of Old, who were the precursors to the Blackeyed Susans, another of Dave’s “holiday bands”, and Rob was in that. When they went to Perth I played drums in the Perth line-up and I met Rob properly then. The year after we formed The Blackeyed Susans.

What’s the artistic connection between the Bottomless Schooners of Old and the Blackeyed Susans?
Both of them were kind of holiday bands put together in the downtime between people’s main concerns. Musically, where the Schooners had been an outlet for Dave to play his favourite covers, the focus for the Susans was on the songs we’d been writing together, and using the Susans as a vehicle for those songs and for Rob to sing.

What are your memories of the Blackeyed Susans’ first gig?
I can talk about the first run of Blackeyed Susans gigs, about six shows. Our original intention was to play those six shows and record the four originals we had and then split up. It was one of those typically hot Perth summers, and we were recording at Rob’s parents’ place on the outskirts with lots of ducks and chickens. We were in his brother Mark’s bedroom – Mark had left by that time, but the bedroom was still adorned with posters of KISS. They were a lot of fun, those first gigs. We didn’t take it too seriously, and there wasn’t a lot riding on it. It was enjoyable to me to be in a band with Dave and Alsy for the first time since we’d started The Triffids in high school.

How would you contrast what The Triffids were doing at the end of their tenure, and where the Blackeyed Susans began?
I think there was something of a thread, at least in the kind of songs Dave and I were writing for [The Triffids final album] The Black Swan became the type of songs we were writing for the Susans. I suppose where the Triffids were quite expansive and accredited these days for capturing some sense of the vastness of this land, the Susans have always been a little bit more European in a way. I don’t know if it’s my Greek background, or Rob’s Polish background but there’s always been something a bit more old world or European about the band.

There’s been a broad church of artists involved in the Susans over the years, including at one stage Kim Salmon. How involved was Kim in the Susans?
Kim was involved in the second line-up of the Susans. One summer we formed the band, and when the next summer came around I had left because Martha’s Vineyard had gone to Sydney. Martin Casey took my place for that line-up and Dave had gone back to London. So it was one line-up – a formidable line-up – that unfortunately did not record, which is a great shame.

“Where the Triffids were quite expansive and accredited these days for capturing some sense of the vastness of this land, the Susans have always been a little bit more European in a way.”

Why did Dave McComb end up leaving the Susans?
Dave had gone back to London in about 1989, and then had moved to Melbourne where he’d re-joined the Susans around the time of All Souls Alive, when we got Warren and Jim from the Dirty Lee and Graham Lee from The Triffids. Dave was in the band for another two years. We don’t regard him as having left between 1989 and 1994. But by that stage he was wanting to record his solo album Love of Will and it didn’t seem possible anymore for him to be fully involved with the band. He liked to refer to himself at that time as a “satellite member”.
I guess the floating collective is something we’ve embraced with the band and it causes some problems – sometimes you don’t know where people stand. I think sometimes people talk about the music differences in a band, but it’s actually the personal relationships which take the most maintenance.

The Blackeyed Susans started out in Perth, with stints in Sydney and Melbourne. Has the band’s geographical residence had any noticeable effect on its music?
We also used to joke that we wanted to go somewhere where the music suited our clothes. And Melbourne was the best place for that. But having said that, climate change is making it too dry and hot here for us. I don’t know where we can go. Hobart, I guess.

I suppose the environment has had an effect because the line-up has changed each time we’ve moved. With each line-up comes a change in the music. The Sydney Susans with Kathy [Wemyss] and Tim [Rollinson] and Jim and James from The Cruel Sea, had something of a different flavour, a bit more colourful than the Melbourne Susans, which was a bit darker, a bit more blues. It’s the people that make the difference.

In that context, did the arrival of Dan Luscombe and Kiernan Box, and Mark Dawson on drums, mark a turning point for the band?
It has been more stable since then, yes. It allows you to develop the sound of the band and the way in which you work together – if that’s a process of refinement or elaboration. We came to a very good understanding of each other and it paid off in the music, in the coherency of the vision. That’s the flipside of the floating collective – you benefit from the freshness of what people bring, but the downside is that you don’t get to develop that. It’s been great to have JP Shilo in the band, who joined a few years ago, and who’s brought a new voice to our conversation. He’s been most welcome and very talented.

The Susans have always done a good line in covers, including artists as unexpected as Bruce Springsteen and Pat Boone. Has the cover version always been an important element in the Susans’ style?
Yes, we’ve never felt there needed to be a great distinction between your so-called original work and interpreting other people’s stuff. It seems to me that the practice of interpretation by someone like Nina Simone was a lot more original than so-called original work. So what we tried to do – and I’m sure a lot of bands say this – is to make it your own and find something in it that you can twist, a strange reflection of yourself.

I really like that early 1960s period, pre-Dylan, before he ruined it for everyone by making it seem that you had to write your own songs and sing your own songs. I like the era before that when you had producers producing like Phil Spector and songwriters in The Brill Building working away at writing songs. I think today sometimes people can have an inflated sense of their own talents.

What was it like playing on the same bill as Johnny Cash?
That was like a dream come true, as you can imagine. To be in Irving Plaza in downtown Manhattan on the same bill as Wilco and Johnny Cash, we had to pinch ourselves to make sure we weren’t dreaming. That and the Leonard Cohen support earlier this year has been the highlight in terms of meeting our heroes.

Did you meet Johnny Cash?
I did meet him. We’d written and were performing ‘Smokin’ Johnny Cash’ but we hadn’t recorded it yet. We were told afterwards that he’d been side of stage when we were playing and that he’d heard it. So when I met him later I thought, “How do you approach that?”, so I took a polite southern approach and I said, “Mr Cash, about that song – I hope it didn’t cause any offence. And he said, “Not at all. I enjoyed it. Thanks very much.”

The Susans have always been respected critically, but not necessarily successful commercially. Has the band ever worried about trying to make it big and writing a hit single?
You like to reach as broad an audience as possible. The machinations of the industry are a mystery to us and not something we’ve spent too much contemplating. We have musical puzzles that we’re trying to solve, but I guess commercial success brings with it the freedom to do that. It’s certainly never been our priority, but I think we did write a bunch of hit singles. I’m just trying to work out why they weren’t! [Laughs]

In the band’s Melbourne years the Susans were inextricably linked with the late, and great, Continental Cafe in Prahran. What was it about the Continental that was so attractive to the Susans?
There were a few things. One was the layout of the room – it felt like you were playing in a goldfish bowl. It was intimidating – it took us a while to learn to play in that room. I thought the sound was great, and the people that ran it – the two Marios right down to the people who worked there – they all valued what you were doing. All up it made for a great experience. We played there so much in the mid- to late-1990s – it felt like it was our home ground. It feels like nothing has replaced it.

You touched on this before when referring to the “European” aspect of the Susans, but the Susans have always had something of a “cabaret” element. Was that deliberate or coincidental?
It’s something that I’ve always enjoyed. I like people like Ricky Nelson who croon, I like Frank Sinatra, I like the pre-rock’n’roll era and doo-wop and I hope to capture a bit of that flavour. You can’t take the showbiz thing too seriously and to cast it in a cabaret sort of feel is to shine a light on the irony of the whole endeavour. It’s showbiz! [Laughs]

Do you expect the Susans will record again?
If you asked me a couple of years ago I would have said I doubt it. I thought the tour to coincide with the box set would have been a farewell tour, but I’m pleased to say we’ve been writing and I can see a way forward and I think there is another Susans record on the horizon.

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Reveal Yourself is out now on Liberation Music. Tour dates here.