Beach
Boy Brian Wilson might as well have been writing the script
for You Am I when he sighed how “I just wasn’t
made for these times”. Too Pete Townshend-obsessed
for grunge and way too early for the garage rock revival,
these local heroes have always been a band out of time.
But for Tim Rogers, Andy Kent and Russell Hopkinson (and
recent convert, David Lane), rock & roll has never been
about bottom lines and career plans - it’s more about
asses shaking, the sweat dripping off a satisfied punter’s
brow and a tune that’ll stick in your head and maybe
bruise your heart along the way. And 10 years down the line,
they’ve done a lot more than that, thanks very much.
The accolades are lofty: they’ve claimed seven ARIAs,
while three of their albums - 1995’s Hi Fi Way, 1996’s
Hourly, Daily and 1998’s #4 Record - all hit the charts
in the No 1 spot. And their legion of admirers is a who’s-who
of modern rock icons.
There were two key moments in the evolution
of You Am I. The first was when a 10-year-old Tim Rogers
was forbidden from joining the Kiss Army (in a spooky coincidence,
New Zealand-born Kent’s first rock show was the cartoon
rock blood-droolers). The second was when a pre-teen Rogers
heard the Stones’ “Start Me Up” while
strapped into a dentist’s chair. He’d seen the
light on the rock & roll hill.
The band learned their trade in the early
1990s sticky carpet scene in Sydney, playing for beers and
cheers. As Rogers stated at the time, “if you headlined
at the Lansdowne and got the Drum [Media] cover, you’d
made it”. They rocked hard and often, and four EPs
were banged out - 1991’s Snake Tide, Goddamm and Can’t
Get Started (both from 1992) and 1993’s Coprolalia.
The good word spread and record label talent-spotters started
circling.
But You Am I - whose line-up of Rogers
(guitar, voice), Kent (bass) and Hopkinson (drums) firmed
in 1993 after a few earlier incarnations (guitarist David
Lane joined in 1999) - were never going to play the corporate
game. They’d rather talk up obscure Japanese punk
bands, or the merits of such perennial outsiders as the
Replacements and Nazz, than keep their eye on the charts,
bless their maverick hearts. After signing their first “proper”
record deal in 1992, they’ve since given a leg up
to such worldbeaters as Silverchair, the Strokes and the
Vines, and never said a word in anger. If there’s
still a few hundred faithful in Portland or Glasgow or Bunbury
who’ll check ’em out whenever they roll into
town, well, You Am I are more than happy to plug in. Even
the disappointment of almost making it in the States several
times over hasn’t wearied them.
After millions of miles, thousands of shows, hundreds of
hangovers and six incredibly worthy studio albums, their
place at the top of the Australian rock pile is beyond doubt.
They’ve made their name as a live act of earthquaking
ferocity, powered by Hopkinson’s thunder of the Gods
backbeat, Kent’s bottomless basslines and Rogers’
rock & roll preacherman persona, while on record they’ve
been able to flex both brawn and brain. They can drop a
furious soundstorm such as “Sound as Ever”,
riff themselves into a lather with a tune like “Rumble”
and then break hearts with ballads as damned sensitive and
frank and boldly autobiographical as “Heavy Heart”
and “Damage”. And not only can Tim Rogers channel
Keith Richards (circa Exile on Main Street, natch), he can
deliver an entire album of smart, savvy character studies
of Oz suburbia - check out 1996’s Hourly, Daily. And
1995’s Hi Fi Way was one of the few homegrown albums
to ever score Rolling Stone’s perfect five star rating.
Yeah, You Am I know their shit.
The proof is The Cream and the Crock,
a career flashback that samples generously from their albums
Sound as Ever, Hi Fi Way, Hourly, Daily, #4 Record, Dress
Me Slowly and Deliverance. It’s a sonic signpost for
one of the country’s finest rock institutions.
With tongue only halfway in cheek, Tim
Rogers sees it this way: “The Cream and the Crock
isn’t so much a hits record as a benchmark, a watermark,
a landmark audio recording that will set the tone of the
genre they lovingly refer to as rock & roll for eons
to come.”
You Am I are rock & roll true believers. Long may they
riff.
© Jeff Apter 2003
Tim Rogers on The Cream & the
Crock
“Berlin Chair” is a mystery.
Probably written in Chippendale around ’92. A lotta
My Bloody Valentine played by my roommate and brother at
the time is the unlikely source o’ the chorus, but
impatience and Schlitz beer during the recording in Minnesota
robbed it of any MBV finesse, so it ended up being typical
early YAI - “just emote, EMOTE, EMOTE” and disappear
for mixing.
The intro to “Cathy’s Clown”
came from a JJJ radio session that the Hoodoo Gurus did;
a version of The Beatles “Everybody’s Got Somethin’
To Hide . . . ” got my pulse up. Acquiring some decent
gear allowed us to get sounds that we wanted as well, hence
the chords in that song got us some way to the “chang”
of the first Who record, or the Creation, or the Real Kids.
Unfortunately, all the gear was Lee Ranaldo’s, and
we had to give it back, but it gave us a taste. Then I hunted
down Piers Crocker, who made dream guitars, and the whole
caper just opened up like a tuna can. Too many Kinks records
for sure; but not at home sipping cups of tea, it was in
NYC with shitloads of Margaritas and beer and a Patrick
White novel - Tree Of Man - and musing on home and the people
we could trust.
Americans were just fucking bewildering;
the bands we played with and their careerism blew us away
- we huddled together like rubbish in a windstorm and probably
that’s where the more reflective stuff on Hi Fi and
Hourly comes from. I remember the first recording of “How
Much is Enough”, coz at the end I was doing some poncey
harmony stuff and Wayne Connolly urged me to be more, ahem
. . . Tim Rogers, which was the first and perhaps only use
of the term. As much as I whinged at the time, I loved making
Hi Fi; it was really exciting in NYC and we had some stoooopid
good times.
Hourly was as pretentious as we get, I
think, but thank God it was Wayne and Paul recording, not
a Yank. We embellished, but not to the point of Phantom
of the Opera, y’know? Subsequently got flak from some
tosspots for “romanticising the burbs”, or crap
like that, but it was just a way of making sense of stuff
through little dumb stories - sublimating my anxiety, maybe.
The band fucking cooked on this record, too. No. 4’s
probably got my favourite songs on it up ’til then,
not the singles but the rest of it. “Rumble”
hasn’t got enough dirt on it and “Heavy Heart’s”
a little overcooked, but hell, I think it’s an OK
song at the end of it.
I guess that I find it a little difficult
to talk about ’em because - without getting too Sting
- they often mean different things when you play them night
after night, which I love. “Kick a Hole” or
“Get Up” or “Sneakers” don’t
now mean what they did. I know for some folks “Sneakers”
is sentimental, but those chords do something different
each time for me, and it ain’t nostalgia.
I’m not looking back yet . . . my hair was too crap
and I didn’t know how to dress myself.
- Tim Rogers
The Cream And The Crock Lyrics
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