Desert Lights Split Paul Dempsey's Life In Two

30 July 2014 | 3:10 pm | Hannah StoryMark Neilsen

Desert Lights Split Paul Dempsey's Life In Two

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When we were touring Echolalia and The Official Fiction we had Pip Branson on second guitar and Simon Burke playing keys and for a lot of those shows we had string players as well, so our live show had sort of ballooned outward as well.

I think when we toured The Official Fiction we had keyboards and we had a cellist and a violinist and it was all becoming very sort of baroque. Then we did this European tour where just for cost reasons we dropped the keyboards and strings and just Pip came along on second guitar so we were a guitar band again and we loved it. We just rediscovered guitars and rawness and intensity, and we were reacting to The Official Fiction as well, and we suddenly wanted to make a racket again. It was much more guitar-driven, and when we went to record, we wanted to do it much more raw and loose.

when I picture the front cover, it’s like a line, it’s a crack, it’s like a fissure in my life where I was just profoundly changed.

By the time the writing was all done frankly we just wanted to get the fuck out, so by the time we finally had the songs we decided to just get far away. Brad Wood lived in LA and it’s a rock’n’roll town and his studio is in his garage; the idea of going to LA to make an album in a garage sounded pretty good to us. We ended up spending six months there. When we got to LA we were really ready to just soak up the LA experience. We were just recording all day in the studio and then basically going out to bars all night and just letting off steam and it was a lot of fun. It was a return to more like Elsewhere For Eight Minutes, it was just the three of us making a racket and doing things quickly and not getting too fancy.

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Having Mike Garson was unreal, obviously we toured with Bowie after The Official Fiction and he’s Bowie’s piano player, has been since ’72, and Bowie and his whole band and crew and everything were unreal and so nice to us and we kept in touch. So when we were in LA Mike was in LA , we were hanging out and he was like ‘Oh, I could play piano on your record…’ He actually played on half the record and we didn’t keep all of it because it was going to turn into a Mike Garson record. He played some beautiful stuff.

I had dealt with bouts of depression for my whole adult life but I always was able to deal with it on my own, but at this particular point in time it became obvious that I couldn’t deal with it

The writing of that album coincided with a really difficult period for me. Two years of my life that I’ll never get back to depression, so the writing of that album was just shit. I have had some issues with depression over time, over a long period of time and I just hit a particularly bad spell that basically lasted through about a year-and-a-half; through 2004 and pretty much all 2005, I was just not coping with my own depression and I was just in a particularly bad way. It just made everything very difficult. People who have suffered with depression probably know that feeling, it’s hard to get out of bed, it’s hard to do anything, it’s hard to function, let alone work creatively with other people.

I went and got professional help, as I would recommend anybody in that position to do. I had dealt with bouts of depression for my whole adult life but I always was able to deal with it on my own, but at this particular point in time it became obvious that I couldn’t deal with it on my own so I went and got professional help. I saw a psychiatrist for a long time and I went on various different medication that unfortunately didn’t work for me, they didn’t improve my situation, and again I stress that medication work differently for different people, but just in my own case, I was what they call treatment-resistant, so the only thing for it was just to continue seeing someone. The only reason I get uncomfortable talking about it is because I’m better now and I guess I should address that as well, that I got better, and you can get better if you seek the right kind of treatment and help. I get funny talking about it because it’s so long ago now and I don’t want to sound self-indulgent or whatever, but I made the decision to talk about it when asked definitely because if it helps anybody who’s having a similar experience then it’s worth doing. I realised that I couldn’t cope with it on my own and I got help and it saved my life.

I went and got professional help, as I would recommend anybody in that position to do.

By the time we finally got into the studio it was a huge release for me. Once the hard work of writing was done when we got on the plane to LA, I was already starting to feel like I had crossed out of one territory and into another one, so it was very cathartic. The recording was very cathartic and good, it was a good experience, and by the time it was all done I was happy and then all I wanted to do was go on tour and just keep myself busy, because that was so much better than having to sit at home. When you’re writing you’re alone, it’s a very introspective process, and that’s not necessarily a good recipe for someone who’s depressed, to then spend all your time being even more introspective. So it was just really great at that point to just go out and be surrounded by people and just be busy all the time playing shows and being on tour and constantly travelling in a group. Being in a group, just constantly being surrounded by people, was exactly what I needed and it really lifted me up.

When I reflect on that album now it basically just represents a point, I don’t want to sound overdramatic but, when I think of Desert Lights, and when I picture the front cover, it’s like a line, it’s a crack, it’s like a fissure in my life where I was just profoundly changed. I’ve never been the same since and that is both good and bad. In 2005 something inside me snapped loudly into two halves and it wont ever be put back together, but I think I’ve gotten better since. I just accept that and it’s just a fact of my life. My life now is sort of post-Desert Lights; that’s what Desert Lights means to me, it’s like there’s my life before that and my life after that. The more years that go by since that album the better I feel and the happier I’ve been.

If you need help dealing with depression or want to talk to someone, call BeyondBlue on 1300 224 636 or head to beyondblue.org.au.