Robert Dean Lurie - No Certainty Attached: Steve Kilbey and The Church: A Biography

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR NO CERTAINTY ATTACHED

Lurie attempts to come to some kinda understanding of my paradox

that is, I can be so nice

or I can be so not nice

and hardly anything in the middle

and its funny that Lurie puts the boot in a bit at the end

and he reckons that the fambley manne thing is an act

and my Everyman pose is faux

and really Im the same old prick

and Rob, youve hit the nail on the head, actually...

Steve Kilbey

Its already yesterday and I still remember the first time I heard For a Moment Were Strangers back in 81. Sometimes stark and edgy, sometimes sumptuous and fragrant, yet always unique and enticing, the music of the Church helped to enrich my life in many ways. It certainly changed the life of Robert Lurie, who has written the definitive account of the Church and the life of its main protagonist, the ever creative and artistically complex Steve Kilbey. This is more than just a band biography; its also the personal journey of one Church fanatic, a journey to which we can all relate.

Ian McFarlane, author of The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop

(Anthony Collins)

No

Certainty

Attached

STEVE KILBEY AND THE CHURCH

by Robert Dean Lurie

VERSE CHORUS PRESSPORTLAND LONDON MELBOURNE

2009 by Robert Dean Lurie

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Published by Verse Chorus Press
PO Box 14806, Portland OR 97293

Front cover photograph: Wendy McDougall

Back cover photographs: (L-R) courtesy, Nic Ward; Michael Barone/
Dana Valois; Rachel Armstrong/Caroline Barnes; Anthony Collins.
Book and cover design: Steve Connell/Transgraphic Services

The author and the publishers wish to thank all those who supplied photographs and gave permission to reproduce copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to contact all copyright holders, and the publishers welcome communication from any copyright owners from whom permission was inadvertently not obtained. In such cases, we will be pleased to obtain appropriate permission and provide suitable acknowledgment in future editions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lurie, Robert Dean, 1974

No certainty attached : Steve Kilbey and the Church / by Robert Dean Lurie. 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-891241-94-9 (ebook)

1. Kilbey, Steve. 2. Rock musiciansAustraliaBiography. 3. Church (Musical group) 4. Rock groupsAustralia. I. Title.

ML420.K457L87 2009

782.42166092dc22

First and foremost I want to thank Steve Kilbey for his full participation in this project. From our first interview onward, he remained on call, always willing to give more information if asked. Without his cooperation, and the many hours of taped interviews it led to, this would have been a very different book indeed.

I am also indebted to the following members of the Kilbey clan for their contributions: John Kilbey, Russell Kilbey, and Joyce Cooper. They helped bring Steves childhood to life.

Longtime Kilbey co-conspirator Peter Koppes always impressed me with his graciousness and candor. He is truly a sonic magician and deserves a biography of his own.

I owe a large debt of gratitude to the multi-talented (and roguishly charming) Simon Polinski for giving detailed insights into Steves composition and recording processes.

Nic (formerly Nick) Ward provided detailed reminiscences, photos, and recordings, and this book is much richer for his perspective.

Linda Neil and Sue Campbell deserve special mention for encouraging me to include parts of my own story in the larger narrative. This is a deeply personal book, and they gave me the confidence to be up-front about that. However, I have endeavored to limit my own appearances to those directly related to Steves larger story. Readers will no doubt be relieved that sections detailing the travails of my first bandthe Chowder Monkeyswere dispatched to the cutting room floor during the revision process.

The Churchs fans have been a godsend, particularly Brian Smith, creator and maintainer of the Shadow Cabinet web site (and early editor of this book), and Victor Gagnon, owner of the largest Church bootleg archive in America. The following fans also helped in crucial ways: Holly Jordan, Anthony Collins, Pablo Vasquez, Brian Hutton, Duane Handy, Tony Pucci, Jeffrey Shiell, Mario and Heather Cordova, Danny Burton, Trevor Boyd, Daniel Watkins, Patrick Boulay, Greg Hatmaker, and many, many others.

Stuart Coupe provided contextual information on the early 80s Australian music scene, as well as his side of the tumultuous story I have come to call Coupegate. Pryce Surplice also deserves special mention for allowing me to reprint his private e-mail comments on the early 80s Australian scene.

Thank you, too, to my anonymous sources, especially Deep Throat!

I am indebted to several professors from the Creative Writing department of the University of North CarolinaWilmington, especially David Gessner, my advisor, coach, mentor, and occasional therapist, who midwifed this unwieldy project through its first two incarnations and pushed me to be creative in my approach to my subject. The illustrious and prolific Phil Furia deserves a shout-out for the crucial last-minute line edits he supplied prior to my thesis defense. Philip Gerard and Rebecca Lee are also to be commended for their early suggestions and encouragement.

Seemingly late in the game, Verse Chorus Press came along and helped me pull it all together. The infinitely knowledgeable and eloquent David Nichols became my Australia Advisor, setting me straight about many things Id gotten wrong about his country and its musical history. Clinton Walker helped me with some additional fact-checking and generously combed though his archives for Church-related press clippings. My main editor, Steve Connell, operates under a motto of No clich left standing. If any have somehow remained in the manuscript, it will be despite his best efforts. He is rigorous, thorough, and has an unerringly correct vision of what good writing should look like. Finally, a very heartfelt thank-you to Harper Piver for providing a constant sounding board and being a moral cheerleader during the darkest hours when there really was no certainty attached.

While the events depicted in these pages are entirely factual, I have taken certain liberties which should be stated here. Perhaps the most important of these involve the recounting of my interactions with Steve Kilbey. We met quite a few times, in a number of locations, on three different continents. In the interests of coherence and narrative flow, however, some of our meetings have been combined and compressed; for example, a conversation begun in Sydney and finished in Tempe, Arizona has here been confined to a single locale. Also, in the occasional narrative scenesthose written in nov-elistic style, with dialogueI have added certain imagined details to lend depth and shape to the story.

In a few instances, the names and descriptions of individuals have been changed to protect their privacy.