A Tribute To Spencer P Jones: Australian Rock'n'Roll Will Never Be The Same

Yesterday the great Spencer P Jones lost his ongoing battle with inoperable liver cancer, a loss we knew was coming but which for fans of Aussie rock’n’roll nonetheless hits home hard. He was a rock’n’roll lifer, born to have a guitar slung around his neck and perfectly at home during that often-interminable wait between soundcheck and gig-time; his presence in the dingy recesses of the Australian scene for the last few decades, basically a given.

This writer’s first encounter with this rock’n’roll legend took place way back in the mid-‘80s at the tail-end of the booming pub rock circuit. Back then Melbourne’s bayside establishment the Mentone Hotel was still a cavernous rock venue known as “The Edgy” (rather than the gentrified development it would later devolve into), and as a baby-faced teenager raised in the world of no photo ID, I’d turned up super-early to a gig by Jones’ band The Johnnys to find the singer sitting by himself at the bar, working through a beer as he waited for the action to commence. I watched awe-struck from a distance as he quickly demolished his pot, then summoned the courage to awkwardly sidle up and proffer politely, “Can I buy you a beer Mr. Jones?" He looked me up and down and chuckled (not cruelly), "I don’t pay for beers son,” before smiling to the barman, "Get this kid a beer from my tab," and shuffled me off on my way. A true man of the people, he loved music as much as his most ardent fan and had no time for pretence or fame’s facade.

It wasn’t always this way though. Jones was born in Te Awamutu, New Zealand back in 1956, and after teaching himself guitar in his teens, set off for London in 1976 to chase those elusive rock’n’roll dreams that seemed so distant from his far-flung corner of the globe. Fortunately for us, he only made it over the ditch before becoming musically immersed in what was happening in the fertile Australian scene and by the early-‘80s had settled in Melbourne and was playing in bands such as The Cuban Heels, North 2 Alaskans and Olympic Sideburns. The opportunity to join a fledgling incarnation of aforementioned cow-punks The Johnnys, found Jones relocating to Sydney in 1983, and in that same year he founded a “side-project” with Tex Perkins called The Beasts Of Bourbon, that would keep him busy (on and off) for the next 30 years.

These notoriously hard-living bands also exhibited a ferocious work ethic during the pub-rock boom, Jones recalling to this writer for The Music in 2012 about The Johnnys’ heyday:

“I think we had trees named after us on the Hume Highway [laughs]. In 1986 we did the most gigs of any band on the books of Premier Artists, the most anyone had done in a year. The record at that time had been held by The Radiators, and in '86 we actually beat them by 15 gigs. And it wasn't a deliberate thing — we weren't out to do the most gigs — it's just how it panned out. We did about 318 shows, and we still had a couple of months off! Back then you could come down to Melbourne on a Friday, rehearse Countdown on Friday morning, play lunchtime at Melbourne Uni, film Countdown on Friday arvo, fly back to Sydney do a support for Jimmy Barnes at Sydney Uni and then do a 1am show at the Kardomah Cafe.

“There was a lot of lunchtime gigs back then at various educational facilities, and it was possible to do two or three shows a day in some cases. And I'm not talking about multi-line-ups and twenty-minute sets, I'm talking about an hour-and-a-quarter on-stage each one.”

But by the onset of the ‘90s, The Johnnys and had pulled up stumps (for now) and The Beasts were onto their second incarnation, so Jones headed down to Melbourne to ostensibly kickstart his solo career — with backing from Ian Rilen and Cathy Green of X — but this soon morphed into a fully-fledged outfit in its own right called Hell To Pay, with Jones back playing guitar. It wasn’t until 1994 that he got to start his solo career properly with his debut Rumour Of Death (his band for that album featured members of The Triffids, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and The Dirty Three amongst many others).

By this stage, Jones had himself grown from a brilliant guitarist, sideman and interpreter of songs — he could make any tune he deigned to cover his own, inhabiting that conjured landscape and recasting it entirely in his own laconic image — to a fine songwriter in his own right, especially from a lyrical perspective, so unsurprisingly his solo career quickly blossomed.

During this time he would work with an amorphous array of musicians, on their work and his own — playing his inimitable sidekick role alongside artists like Paul Kelly, Chris Bailey and Maurice Frawley — while each of his ensuing solo records would be constructed with new line-ups of Oz rock mainstays, all chosen via Jones’ friendship or admiration rather than any commercial considerations. His legend as a music purist was large and wide-reaching, hence him also collaborating with overseas artists such as Sonny Vincent, Kid “Congo” Powers and members of Television and Violent Femmes. In that 2012 interview, he readily recalled his many highlights from this amazing musical journey:

“Neil Young watching an entire show from the side of stage and telling us how great we were and how fantastic the guitars sounded! He said [adopts Neil Young drawl], 'It sure ain't country, but it sure is good! I hope you guys get lucky tonight!' Playing with John Lydon was cool — he really liked us too. Plus [playing with] Iggy Pop, people like that. We lucked out and kicked a few goals. Co-hosting Countdown was good. We played hard but we played fair, and had some pretty cool adventures, and you can't really ask for much more than that at the end of the day.”

Amen. The Australian rock’n’roll scene isn’t going to be the same without SPJ rolling though town with one of his many outfits, whether an old staple or some new project he was invested in at that moment, giving his all. It’s as if that indefinable and amorphous power of rock’n’roll was his lifeblood. Plus he never lost interest in the local scene, often throwing his support behind ensuing generations of rock bands that he admired. He affected countless people in this way during his incomparable lifetime, as the outpouring of support at the various fundraising benefits held around the country to raise him much-needed funds to fight his illness during the last few years would readily attest.

I met Spencer Jones on numerous occasions and he was always humble and down to earth and quick to offer a smile or laugh, completely bereft of artifice or pretence. As a youngster drinking that beer back in the ‘80s, I was possibly the happiest person on the planet for those few minutes, not because the beer was free but because it had been given to me by my hero.

On this sad occasion of his passing our thoughts go to all the people close to Jones’ heart — particularly his current wife Angie and other family members — but we take solace in the fact that he leaves behind not just a massive canon of timeless rock’n’roll, but an indomitable spirit and life force that will long live on in the memories of all that knew him.

RIP Spencer P Jones.