Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
What have The Cruel Sea been up to lately? OR How the lighting technician became the lead singer
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
Get ready to journey down memory lane with Ken Gormley, the rhythmic heartbeat of the legendary band, The Cruel Sea. This bass maestro sits down with us to share his lifelong passion for music and the power of the bass guitar.
Ken takes us through the band's 30th anniversary tour of their breakthrough album "The Honeymoon is Over" and gives us a glimpse into their distinctive sound.
Includes Songs:
Jimi Hendrix - All Along The Watchtower
Steely Dan - Babylon Sisters
The Cruel Sea - The Honeymoon is Over
The Cruel Sea - Reckless Eyeballin'
The Cruel Sea - Better Get A Lawyer
What have The Cruel Sea been up to lately … let’s find out!
To catch up on podcasts from other favourite artists, or for more radio chick stuff simply go to “ThatRadioChick.com.au”.
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
That Radio Chick Cheryl Lee here. Welcome to the Still Rockin' I t Podcast, where we'll have music news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. Today we speak to the Cruel Sea's bass player, Ken Gormley. The Cruel Sea are celebrating their album, The Honeymoon is Over, their 30th anniversary of that album with a tour and singer Tex Perkins says rehearsals have been powerful, emotional and joyful. The Cruel Sea have a sound that can't be found anywhere else and I still feel like a guest singer. I love the sound, I love the guys that make it and I can't wait to share this with you all. See you all soon. To catch up on podcasts from other favourite artists, simply go to ThatRadioChick. com. au. You're with Cheryl Lee and I'd like to welcome into the Zoom room today for the very first time, we've brought him into the 21st century Ken Gormley, bass player from the Cruel Sea. Well done and welcome, Ken.
Ken Gormley:Yeah, welcome to the 21st century. You know, because on my driver's licence I saw it the other day, I had to get it renewed and it said date of birth 1961. I was born in 1961 and here I am in virtual stuff. Okay, yeah.
Cheryl Lee:I'm proud of you and I'm really glad I was able to teach you something. And I reckon now, Ken, there'll be no going back. You'll be zooming everybody now.
Ken Gormley:Yeah, well, you know, soon I'll leave this mortal coil and I will just be zeros and ones in the ether, so I might as well get used to it.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, I was born in the mid sixties as well, so we're of the same era.
Ken Gormley:Yeah, it was a wonderful time to be alive, and this all ties into, you know, being in the Cruel Sea or being in a band, is that? You know? We did live in a little window of post-war prosperity and capitalism, which is now on its hind legs, rearing up and consuming itself. But yeah, we lived through some wonderful times and music was the spirit of that.
Cheryl Lee:Absolutely. We were very, very lucky, and still are very, very lucky. It was an amazing time, wasn't it? Now I'm going to turn right back to the very beginning, Ken, and ask you a little bit about yourself. When did you know that music was in your genes? Are you from a musical family? How did Ken Gormley, the bass player, come about?
Ken Gormley:Well, when you're about nine or 10 years old. like I've got four kids, so I saw this happen to them, you sort of come into awareness. You stop being a kid, you know the Easter Bunny, Santa, all that's gone and suddenly you just arrive on the planet. You just have this awareness and when that happens there's a whole soundtrack. So for me, from like 1969, 70 to 72 and beyond and I became a teenager music was enlightenment and there was an amazing soundtrack to that. So you know there was Jimi Hendrix and it was just the end of the 60s and stuff.
Ken Gormley:But I do remember I used to walk home from my primary school and there was like a hock shop I passed every day and in the window there was this just amazing thing which was a bass guitar and it was just this bizarre looking thing. It was all orange and yellow and just chrome and I used to go into this hock shop and ask a nice man to get it down. Every time I came in he's really lovely he put it on the counter and I would just smell it. It was a bass guitar. I know now it was a Rickenbacher. It was a Rickenbacher, you know, 4001 Rickenbacher, probably from the 60s and they had that kind of nitro finish and when they sort of decayed it had this kind of heart caramel-y kind of smell as the nitro decayed, and it was just so dreamy and I used to smell it and I always thought I'm going to be a bass player.
Ken Gormley:I'm not going to be a guitarist, I'm going to be a bass player. There's sex, there's drugs and there's rock and roll. I don't know what any of that means, but I'm going to do that. So I just knew I was going to be a bass player, since I smelled that bass. So, honestly, that's a true story. So that's it, yeah.
Cheryl Lee:I think you fell in love with the instrument. So not from a musical family any siblings musical.
Ken Gormley:Good, no siblings I've just got, I'm sort of a very Italian on my mum's side and that's the side that I sort of came from. So there's just a lot of music and making, a lot of peasant-y kind of music and tomato paste making and you know, and just rolling pasta and just that sort of thing. That stinky, wonderful kind of life, just sort of tied in with music and rock and roll.
Cheryl Lee:Although Ken fell in love with the instrument even more so than falling in love with the music initially, let's hear a song from one of the bands that was around at the time, that he does remember the Jimi Hendrix Experience All Along The Watchtower, and we'll be back to speak some more to bassists from the Cruel Sea, Ken Gormley, shortly.
Cheryl Lee:Any of the four children followed you into the family business Ken?
Ken Gormley:No, no, they all love music and they all tinker around, but you know, it's not a career path. I never saw it as a career path. I was just like when the lockdowns came and people said, you know, like we really. You know, the music is so intrinsic to us and live music and we really should respect musicians and they should get paid. And you know, I just thought, yeah, but we're scum, right. And you know, I mean, look, you know, if you're gonna play rock and roll and be in a band, just abandon all hope and abandon everything. Abandon yourself, do you know? Piss it all against a wall. Whatever you do, you just do it and then the rest follows. So, yeah, yeah, nothing much has changed in rock and roll. I think I'm thinking that we should have a sort of, there should be a 50th anniversary celebrating the 50th of the $300 gig, because it's still. It's still there. The $300 gig is still alive and well in the 21st century is ridiculous, isn't it? Anyway, what was the question?
Cheryl Lee:Clearly, there was pretty much no plan B for you once you got your hands on that instrument. That was it.
Ken Gormley:Well, that's right. I, because I just discovered, just before leaving school, you know the Stooges and the Velvet Underground and all that stuff and it just sort of it led into that first big bang of punk. You know, up until then I'm sort of, you know I'm listening to Alice Cooper or I'm listening to Steely Dan and people don't realize that that first bit of punk, you know we're getting people that we're from the 70s. You know, like it was the call to arms, you know punk and I just capped and as I left school so I hit the ground running and moved into Darling hurst in like 1979. Year after I left school. It was just a mad call to arms. So there was no plan. It was my ticket out of just the dumbness of suburban Australian life and, like I said, we lived in this window of prosperity where you could just run around on the dole and do nothing and just run am ok. So that's what I did, yeah.
Cheryl Lee:Good on you. Tell us the story of how you met these likely lads and became the
Ken Gormley:Well, Jim Elliott the drummer, we've been friends since we were in year I think it's year five, yeah, year five. So we've been friends since we were like 10 years old. We grew up together. I grew up in the Shire Like I grew up in Sydney. It's like Puberty Blues.
Ken Gormley:I went to school with Kathy Laird who wrote Puberty Blues, and me and Jim did, and so that's where we come from and that's what we were running from. So we were just kind of joined at the hip. So we had discovered this infant sort of punk scene in the city, at this run down hotel in the central station called the Grand Hotel, and that was where the initial sort of punk scene was and it was just like a wonderful little family and we just gravitated towards that. And the first time I went there there was just all these punks there. I was just, you know, I was shitting myself, I was just this little surfy kind of guy.
Ken Gormley:Still at school I saw this band, the Urban Gorillas, playing in front of the women's toilet in the back room is where it was punk central. And there was the guitarist was Danny Rumer at the time. And you know, it's really corny to say. You know, these are the things that change your life and you look back on them and go. I saw that band, I saw him playing, I saw this whole scene of all these punks just running amok. I just knew that was it. That was what I was going to do, and he was so incredibly good. He was just head and shoulders above everybody in his playing. I've been hanging around and playing with him for 40 years.
Ken Gormley:So me and Jim and Dan, we were in a band called Secret Secret, which was a wonderful, amazing sort of post-punk kind of pop band, had a wonderful cult following, could have done great things, but and we became the nucleus of the Cruel Sea and etc. So yeah, we go way, way back. We like brothers, us three Well, we all are now but yeah, that's. We go right back to the beginning of everything in the kind of indie scene in Sydney.
Ken Gormley:G, god, I can talk.
Cheryl Lee:That's what you're here for, Ken.
Ken Gormley:Yeah, f, interrupt me at any time and just like, like, shout up. Okay, you know, I've got another question.
Cheryl Lee:I've read this. Is this true that you've got your lead singer, your Vox man Tex? He was your lighting technician, is that true?
Ken Gormley:You know, lighting technician is a you know a lovely word, it's like. You know, it's like saying I'm a sanitary technician but I'm a Garbo, you know like. So he used to, just do the lights for us. He lived in this big, ramshackle, double-fronted three-story Darlinghurst terrace house with Danny and we were actually just a kind of a house party band and lots of ridiculous parties went on in there and when we'd play at these parties they became mates. We had these instrumental gigs and so that kind of house party vibe just moved to these little pubs and that's the same vibe we have 30 years later. We're just a house party band and so we will do these little instrumental shows and it just became it became a word of mouth kind of moveable feast. It was just here's where the party is this week and everyone will come to the pub, just really loves the band, and so he would come along and do the three lights you know, there's a blue, there's a yellow and there's a you know thing and we would get, we would buy him, you know, two dollar beers and he would do our lights for us, you know, and that was fun and, of course, being an instrumental band. We sort of modeled ourselves on the studio bands like the Booker T and the NGs were the stacks studio band. They were Otis Redding's band. They made their own instrumental records. These were our heroes.
Ken Gormley:But we wanted to invite singers in. So eventually we invited him in and and my memory of it is that he said he really loved us, he really loved what we were doing. But he said, oh look, I'll just, I'll just put a big red nose and floppy shoes on it if I come in there. And we said no, no, no, no, come in. So he would just moonlight. He went off the lights, someone else would do the lights, he'd come and moonlight. He'd come over and do the middle set with us and we threw these ridiculous hodgepodge of covers together and that's how it all started. So from being our lighting technician, he was our guest singer.
Cheryl Lee:And here we are, thirty years later. We've been to get onto the subject we're here to talk about. We need to talk about the 30th anniversary of the album. The Honeymoon Is Over and the associated tour. You are having dates at a left, right and centre added because it's selling out all over the shop.
Ken Gormley:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess it is. We're just playing one show in every major city and two of them, I think, have sold out that Sydney and Melbourne, which was kind of to be expected, which is great. But you know, left, right and centre, it's like I remember you know we would do tours and go to Europe and we'd come back and do a tour and it's like you know you'd see it all the time we spent the triumph or it turned back from a successful European tour, you know. But really we're playing, you know some club in a little German town to you know 12 people, but you come back to Australia and it's like returning from there is successful, you know.
Cheryl Lee:Don't let the truth get in the way of good marketing.
Ken Gormley:No, that's right. I remember reading that James Freud book where you know the same thing. He went to London and he collaborated with Gary Numan and so this was a, you know, tremendously cool collaboration and his triumphant return. But he said he was just staying. Gary Numan was staying in a caravan at the back of his mum and dad's place. They just ate fish and chips and the most horrible shit and they didn't do anything and he had to bunk in this thing and Gary Numan just did really stinky farts and the weather was cold and he was broke and hungry and depressed and they did nothing. And he comes back to Australia and he's getting interviewed by Molly Meldrum about the triumphant collaboration. So yeah, you know there's a whole lot of stick there. But what were we saying? Oh, yeah, ok, yeah, we've got a couple of extra shows on the tour, which is great.
Cheryl Lee:You should be very proud because the album is a five times Aria award winning, triple platinum album. So congratulations for that. I know that you've got a great body of work to be proud of, but you know this one, it was a goodie.
Ken Gormley:Yeah, well, you know, yeah, it was the one that the album after that Three Legged Do g, it actually went to number one. Honeymoon never went to number one but it won all the Arias and stuff and it kind of it was a little watershed thing where before that we had been nominated for Aria's the very year before, I think, and it was kind of Barnsey, Farnsey, Diesel, that kind of world, and so we were the crossover. So now I remember you used to really irk us, it was the changing of the guard, you know, kind of thing. At the time record companies, the major record companies, got into overseeing small labels and just sort of looking after the label and whatever bands and cherry picking the bands out of that, rather than having stealing bands and having a stupid bidding war and putting them into debt. So it was a very indie sort of change over and we were the first to sort of do that.
Ken Gormley:So, yes, and the Honeymoon was just that album that just captured the zeitgeist. It just had the sound of an Australian road trip, it just had this real kind of sound that people were kind of looking for at the time. So we were just in the right place at the right time.
Cheryl Lee:Seems fitting to play that song now, The Honeymoon is over, the title song from the third studio album by Indie Rock Band, the Cruel Sea, released in May 93. The band did win five ARIA Awards in 1994, single of the year and song of the year. For this song, album of the year, best group and producer of the year, the album's linear notes say for Lulu May Ken's daughter.
Cheryl Lee:Get onto the Googleometer. Is it thecruelsecom?
Ken Gormley:Oh, I have no idea. I've only just done my first Zoom. I don't know nothing about web page.
Cheryl Lee:So get onto the Googleometer, we think and see when the guys are coming to a town near you before it's s, you know we've got a new Facebook page, you know.
Ken Gormley:so that's the thing, See, you do know. Yeah, so we've got a Facebook page. You get people to just go and like the Facebook page. It's in its infancy, but there's going to be lots of cool stuff that's not just a dry promotional tool. It's going to be, you know, real people and real silly things.
Cheryl Lee:So get on and like that page so you can keep up with all the C gossip. And, of course, what's important to us in our town is that the guys are coming on Thursday, the 7th of December, to our Hindley Street musical. So you've probably never performed there before, because it's been newly renovated. You're going to love it. It's fabulous.
Ken Gormley:Yeah, I've got heaps of mates in A and they sent me all the gigs they go to. They send me the stuff in film and say you're going to love this place, kenny, it's great. So, yeah, yeah, really looking forward to that.
Cheryl Lee:They are right. I've been to probably three gigs there now since it's opened and it's a goody. So I shall see you down the front when you get to Adelaide. And if you've still got a little bit of time, a couple of other little quirky things I thought I'd ask you about because I did not know this, that Reckless Eyeball and your instrumental track from that album became Australian TV police drama Blue Helers theme song.
Ken Gormley:That's right it did. We did the sort of background library for the first series, but yeah, they just sort of. Then they got this sort of mitts on their back catalogue and they picked that. So that was just this little 90 second ditty. That's on our first album and so that was really great. You know, that was a bit of a luck. Then it sort of did really well. Then it was in like 32 countries. We all shared the publishing on that. So we all actually got some royalties for the first time in our life out of that because it went to 32 countries.
Ken Gormley:Also it was funny and because it just won stupid L every year, you know, every like for about five years they just won all the loggies and it was ridiculous.
Ken Gormley:So the L band, you know, would play like they went to an orchestra but they were sort of the television band would play our instrumental like four times a year at the loggies.
Ken Gormley:And it was just always hilarious to think, oh my god, here we are playing at the Peterson Hotel for $150, saving up for this little record, playing this silly little song, and here it is in 32 countries and now it's being played by the television band. And it was funny. And then, right at the end, en McAiliffe he was the host and he did this fantastic thing right at the beginning of the show and I wish I still had my mom's got it on the VHS somewhere. But he said how sick are we of this song? You know how we have to hear this every year. And so he got the band to play it. But he made up some piss-take lyrics for it and it was really hilarious and that was one of the proudest moments of being in the Crossy apart from getting in the cryptic crossword of the Sydney Morning Herald, that was one of the proudest moments of having Sean McAiliffe write some piss-take songs for our TV theme. That was the best.
Cheryl Lee:You cannot buy advertising like that.
Ken Gormley:You can't. It's written in the stars, it's the zeitgeist, the success.
Cheryl Lee:Let's play eckless eyeballing. The instrumental track from the debut album of the Crossy down below that became the theme of Australian TV police drama Blue Healers. Then we're back to find out what Ken Gormley, the 's bass player, is listening to at the moment and what's on their rider. I'm just going to digress for a moment. I love your pressed iron ceiling.
Ken Gormley:Oh, thanks, yeah, yeah.
Cheryl Lee:Beautiful.
Ken Gormley:I've been in this house for 30 years and I haven't painted yet because it was. I bought it from the Greeks and the entire house, top to bottom, was just full gloss enamel, like oil enamel. So even though it's sort of a bit stained, it's lasted 30 years To paint it. I'd have to prime it to get acrylic over the top of the enamel, but it's just so Greek, it's just like marble. Yeah, it's great. Thank you for that.
Cheryl Lee:It's beautiful. I've been in my house for over 30 years as well. It was built in 1875.
Ken Gormley:Oh yeah, well, you got one of them. Sandstone things have you yeah blue stone. Wow, yeah, it's just that's Adelaide for you. It's classic, that's right.
Cheryl Lee:I'd like to know what is on your playlist If you're driving in your car or by yourself and can play whatever you like. What are you listening to? I?
Ken Gormley:2UE, which is like the AM, you know, golden oldies, so that's where I'm at, so I don't know why. Well, I listened to that. When they have the ads, they have the. I couldn't pick it better myself. I listened to it because I just end up hearing a whole lot of songs that have fantastic arrangements and incredible parts and fantastic bass lines. When it's in AM, the frequency it doesn't have the depth or the bass to it, but it's very flat the frequency and you can hear everything really well. A lot of those old songs they're mixed for AM. I just hear amazing songs with incredible bass lines and fantastic parts, when people could really write songs. Then I go to my shed and start plonking away or start playing guitar and just, yeah, I just listen to that.
Ken Gormley:I don't know why. I'm too old now. I think I've lived through one, two, three, four, five decades of music and it's the same with my whole life. It's just time to digest it all. I'm just sort of digesting my life and now I can come up with a unifying theory of my life and then project it out and be wonderful and carry the message of the spirit of my times and make a really cool difference while I'm still on the planet. That's what I'm here to do. I haven't got a lot of time, and just back in the old days with music, you just trip over music like it was your friends brothers record that he borrowed, don't scratch it or kill you. Now you've got the whole history of the universe at your fingertips. I just let myself trip over stuff, so I'm not really listening to anything.
Cheryl Lee:All the best with the tour. We look forward to seeing you when you hit our town. I'm just going to ask you what's your non-negotiable Ken on your rider? Something, something you've got to have.
Ken Gormley:On the rider. Well, it's just good beer and good vodka. That's it I really am looking forward to. I don't drink before a gig, but this is a feeling of coming off a gig when you've got all those endorphins and you've played well and just mixing a really fat, strong body and orange, just glunk, glunk, glunk the body, slip down that thing, big handful of ice, whack it in there and just have that with all your endorphins and stuff.
Ken Gormley:We used to have back in the day really stupid big riders and over the years nobody changed the riders. So we'd be playing some suburban place or some little town on a rainy Tuesday night. We're so tired and we'd get there and just be stollin. Corona, corona, corona, reds, reds, reds, white's, white. Then we used to just take a duffel bag if we were just on the road in the vans and just come home with a van full of booze. But yeah, I'm not really trying to get off the piss now. It's not doing me any favours now that I'm getting old. But I will be looking forward to some well-earned, good beer. Probably. No, maybe just some Peronis and some good vodka and some good orange juice.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, Nice, a little bit old school, very nice. I'm going to let you go and get on with your day. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day and having a chat with us today and, as I said all the best with the tour.
Ken Gormley:Thanks, darling, it was great to talk at you. I talk too much. I'm sure you can get some shit out of that. Thanks, I really enjoyed it my very first zoom.
Cheryl Lee:Lovely to meet you. I'm glad you liked your first zoom.
Ken Gormley:Yeah, yeah, I'll be looking out for your long, straight blonde hair when we're playing.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, all right, I'll be the girl up the front. All right, see you. Thanks again, bye.
Cheryl Lee:Let's go out with one of my favorite Cruelt songs Better Get a Lawyer released in 1994, the lead single from the band's fourth studio album, Three Legged Dog. Interestingly, the Black and White music video depicts Tex Perkins being arrested and being placed in a cell. Part of the video was censored. Ken explained they didn't like the expression on Tex's face when he was put in a headlock so they had to blur his face. He said the thing is you gotta do what they say, because you spend 20 grand on a film clip will just be a big egg if it isn't played.
Cheryl Lee:Thank you so much for joining me on the till rocking at podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can support Aussie music and I'll see you down the front.