The Shotguns
written by: Sean O’Leary
Pete was my greatest friend, and he could sing. Man, he could sing; blues, soul, rock n’roll, country, and all variations. We went to uni together and picked up girls and got drunk and stoned, and he formed The Shotguns. In my humble opinion, the greatest rock n‘roll band in Australia’s history. I’m not the only one to have written that. Some people say that I owe my career to him. That I was merely driven along on his coattails and that all I did was record his journey on my way to becoming a respectable music journalist. They said I owed him. Forget all the others, Pete Salinger was the man.
I wrote an article about The Derelicts, having seen them at The Bandstand in Richmond. They were white hot that night, and all I did was record the moment, and the editor at Hipster liked it, and I was in. Hipster was a free music press mag here in Melbourne. The kind they dump outside music stores and cafés. Mike Collins was the editor, and he told me he wanted a review article every week, preferably on the latest new entry to the live music scene. So, I told Pete about it, and in my mind, this is what got him thinking about maybe making it as a singer in a band.
We met in a politics lecture; he was a Whitlam freak. He introduced himself and, in the very same sentence, said if this were 1975, we wouldn’t be paying to get an education. I had to laugh, and right there and then the friendship started. He asked me to come over to his place in Collingwood that night. He lived in a share house with three others. I agreed.
At 8 pm on a Wednesday in 1996, I walked along Sturt St, Collingwood. I stopped at the front door of number 10. I could hear Marvin Gaye singing, What’s Going On. Only when I pushed the unlocked door open and wandered through the house to the large room at the back. It was The Shotguns, and there was Pete, this thin, tall, white man, singing like Marvin Gaye, and when he saw me, he just adjusted the little pork pie hat he had on and continued singing with a grin from ear to ear. I sat down, totally blown away. They went straight into The Beatles, Here Comes the Sun, and man, it was just amazing. They stopped after that one, and Pete looked at me and said,
“What’d you think?”
I looked at him and said,
“Do you do any originals?”
“Yeah man, of course,” he said, “and we have our second gig on Friday night at The Crane in St Kilda, on Grey St. I heard you write for Hipster, can you cover it for them?”
Is that why he made friends with me in that lecture, asked me over? He told me he mentioned to Ivan that he met me, and I didn’t know Ivan. Maybe it was just great timing. Shit like that happens. We sat and talked music for two hours. Then these two girls arrived out of the blue after the other guys in the band had left. Pete knew them vaguely, and they’d turned up just on the off chance of I don’t know what. We went drinking, and I ended up in bed with the cute blond one. Pete went back to the young eighteen-year-old, Sissy’s place.
Friday rolled around, and The Crane is kind of like the old Kardomah Café in Bayswater Road, Kings Cross, Sydney. It’s subterranean. You walk down two flights of stairs into this cavern-like, medium-sized band venue. Low lights and plenty of room for the dance floor/mosh pit. I turned up solo. I hoped to run into a few mates that I’d told about the gig, but the reaction had been, Oh yeah, Sean’s going on about another so-called great band. I had this reputation for hyperbole when it came to music, and quietly, I was hoping that I was going to see history being made. I’d be the first guy to write a review of The Shotguns. Like Molly Meldrum getting the scoop on The Beatles’ breakup.
At 10pm, I walked down those two flights of stairs and paid the $7 cover charge. I thought I might see Pete before the gig started, but he wasn’t to be seen. I spotted Nigel, the bass player, but he snubbed me, and I didn’t take it badly. I wasn’t anybody. I wanted to hear the originals. A lot of guys can sing, maybe not like Pete, but what were they like live? This was their second gig. The joint wasn’t exactly pumping, so the first night couldn’t have blown too many people away. I nursed a beer and smoked. I saw Sophie, a girl I used to go out with, and she came up and said,
“The great music critic. I saw your review in Hipster.”
I still liked her. She’d dumped me for the lead guitarist of Superman.
“Did you like it?”
She smiled and said,
“It was great. You should be proud, but Sean, some people do it, and some people write about it.”
And she walked off. Shit. Finally, at 11.30pm, Pete walked onto the stage in black jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. Boots on his feet. Looking tall and relaxed. The band then strode on and did a little tune-up thing. Pete had his back to the crowd, which had steadily built up, and a guy beside me said to his girl,
“You’re gonna love this. This guy is amazing, the whole band rocks. I saw them last week. So good.”
The Shotguns played the opening chords to The Beatles’, Paperback Writer and Pete said, still with his back to the audience,
“We’re gonna get you in the mood with this cover.”
They played fast and frenetic. Pete buzzed along with the band, and people took notice. They didn’t take that sip on their beer, didn’t take that drag on their cigarette. They looked up and saw the future of Australian music as The Shotguns burst into their first original song, and Pete sang the first line,
“I’m gonna take you on a sweet ride,”
And the crowd was his.
Sissy and my blond girl, Sonya turned up and Sonya clung to me tight as the band played their second encore and Sissy was glowing and Pete stepped off the stage and through the crowd and came straight to us and he lifted Sissy up and screamed this wild primal scream and Sonya and I burst out laughing and girls started to circle Pete but he had eyes only for Sissy. Afterwards, we all went out into the cold, wet Melbourne night and walked down Fitzroy St with no destination in mind. I wanted to ask who wrote the songs, the words, and music.
We stopped at a taxi rank near The Prince of Wales, and I said to Pete,
“It sounded like you guys have been together for years. It was just amazing.”
“We have. We’ve all known each other since we were kids. All the guys are my best friends. We’ve been practising for two years, playing our own stuff for one year. We just needed a gig. We went into The Crane and begged the guy for a gig. We had to come in and play a few songs for him before he’d give us a chance.”
And all of that and my feelings about the band went into my review, and word spread, and in two weeks, they were playing five nights a week. Two nights at The Crane and three nights at different pubs all over town; The Corner Hotel, The Gershwin Room at the Espy, pubs in the suburbs, clubs on King St, whenever and wherever, but five nights. No more. And yeah, I started to manage the band.
I found myself dealing with booking agents and pub owners, and the big one. Mason Records told me they wanted to put out a CD by The Shotguns. I had no experience, no idea of how to negotiate these deals other than the bookings at pubs and clubs. I did the right thing. I told Pete I couldn’t manage them anymore. The other guys saw this a sign that they were getting big, that they needed to make life changing decisions and so, Hector Alonzo from Mason Records took over as manager and when they went up to Sydney for the first time Hector paid my fare and put me into a hotel and told me to write the best damn review of a band of all time. The review would appear in the Sydney version of Hipster and also the Sydney Morning Herald, EG. I was now writing for the newspapers courtesy of Hector, and let’s be honest, my association with Pete, and I’d fallen in love in a short space of time with Sonya. Pete, who could have had any girl he wanted. He was in love with Sissy, and no-one could turn his head away from her. Life was good. No. It was fucking great!
The Shotguns were due to play their first gig in Sydney at The Basement on a Saturday night, and there was enormous hype around the band from the articles I’d been writing in the free press and the feature article that appeared the day before in EG. Their song, Zooming, was in the Australian top ten, and the word was that Rolling Stone was going to feature the guys on the cover of next month’s issue. It was that sudden, that big, that quickly. I was sitting in the band room before the gig with Sonya, Sissy, and the band. Everyone was cool. They had confidence; they knew they were good. Those two years practising in that front room at Collingwood had honed them. They were tight on and off stage.
It was the same deal as that first night I’d seen them in St Kilda. Pete ambling onto the stage, the other guys doing a quick tune-up. Pete with his back to the crowd. This time they played Steve Winwood’s, Higher Love, first. They always started with a cover because it always got the crowd onside, and it showcased Pete’s voice. Then the flood of original songs came, and Pete was getting more and more confident. I wrote for Hipster that he is the most audacious lead singer in Australia. He can sing like an angel and belt out a blues number or scream like Brian Johnson from AC/DC. He looks like a rock star should, and the band plays tight and right in behind their talisman. The Shotguns will conquer the world.
On my return to Melbourne, I had a letter waiting for me at home. It was from a newspaper, and they wanted to employ me as a full-time journalist, writing music reviews, and further discussions would take place as to what else I might write for them. The newspaper was the Morning Star, one of three daily papers in Melbourne. Within two months, I’d gone from a small first article in Hipster to the Sydney Morning Herald to this, and The Shotguns were also on a meteoric rise that was far more glamorous than my life.
I hardly saw Pete at all. I was out watching bands six nights a week, but I always managed to get down to Grey St on a Friday night to see The Shotguns play. But getting into the band room after the gig was almost like an Olympic sport.
One Friday morning, I managed to get up early. I had moved and was living in St Kilda, and I’d quit university just as Pete had. It was about 10am, and I called up Pete, who was still in the Sturt St house, and Sissy answered the phone.
“Sissy, hi. Pete around?”
“Yeah, you want another exclusive, do you?”
And she was serious, and I said,
“Sissy, they’re not the Stones.”
“No, but they will be on the cover of Rolling Stone.”
I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, so I said,
“The Australian edition, not the…”
She hung up on me. I had a quick shower, put on some black clothes, and walked down to Fitzroy St and caught a cab over to Collingwood. I knocked on the front door, and to my relief, Pete opened the door and gave me a big hug. We walked down the long hallway to the back room, which I thought of as the band room, and I asked him,
“Are we OK, Pete? I got some bad attitude from Sissy. What’s going on?”
“We’re going to America. The band and me. Not Sissy.”
“That’s a pretty big decision, Pete. You think you’re ready to conquer the world?”
I’m not sure why I took that attitude. Somewhere in my mind, they were my band. I’d discovered them. Whose decision was it that they should go to America?
“We’re ready, Sean. You know it. That music critic from The Age, he said in an interview on Triple J, that we might be the greatest Australian Rock band of all time. Come on, Sean. Be happy for me. We signed with Hosier. It’s going to be everything, man; the travel, money for great video clips, radio station interviews, hype on all levels. Hosier believes in us.”
I looked at him and shook my head. He was right. They were that good, and why should I be so petty about it? So, I said,
“It’s cool, Pete. You know what. I was a little jealous.”
We hung out and smoked a joint and talked music because above all sense, Pete was still the biggest music fan of all time and he still believed in Gough Whitlam and a free education. Hosier is the biggest music label in the world and also the most innovative, putting out and promoting music online in 1996.
One Sunday, I saw Pete on the back page of the newspaper, in the gossip column. He was with another young redhead, but it wasn’t Sissy, it was, it doesn’t matter. It had been four months since that first time I’d heard him singing like Marvin Gaye. One month later, they left for America. Pete didn’t return any of my calls, and it turned out it didn’t matter who that redhead in the paper was. She was the daughter of the Australian head of Hosier music.
I went to America six months later and saw The Shotguns at the Whisky in LA. Only they were called The Move, and even though Pete was as charismatic as ever, something wasn’t right. The crowd went collectively ape-shit, but near the end of the first set, Pete fell over on stage, and Mike, the lead guitarist. He rolled his eyes, and the drummer missed a few beats. I managed to get backstage. The band room was a tense place. I kept asking for Pete, and they told me he was in the toilet. I waited an hour, and finally he appeared, and what I thought on stage had been black eye shadow wasn’t, and I could see he was out of it. I’d seen enough to know he wasn’t the real Pete. He mumbled some bullshit at me while drinking straight from a bottle of Bourbon, and a skinny little white girl hung off him, and I knew that the next day Pete wouldn’t even know that I’d been there.
Was it fate that we were in the Whiskey? Would Pete be remembered as the Australian version of Jim Morrison? An enormous talent wasted. And that’s part of what I wrote about Pete when I heard he died in a car crash two years later. About three days after that gig in LA, the band had been dumped by Hosier. Chewed up and spat out like some new line of kiddy fashion. The Move would never make the Rock and Hall of Fame, but The Shotguns were the greatest Australian rock band I ever saw.
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