'Why Haven't We Stopped?': Regurgitator & The Fauves Frontmen Go One-on-One

Regurgitator's Quan Yeomans arrives at our designated interview location well before The Fauves' Andrew Cox, who eventually wanders around the corner wearing an awesome Starsky & Hutch-inspired cream jumper. Once inside, we monopolise three stools facing out towards High Street as ABBA's The Name Of The Game aptly plays through the Northcote restaurant's sound system.

AC: Well we supported you on that - did we do anything post that TISM/Regurgitator thing [the Caveat Emptour, 1998], which would've been late-'90s, I s'pose?

QY: Wow! Yeah, it must be close to 20 years - 17, 18 years or something like that at least, I reckon. 

AC: It'd have to be, yeah. 

QY: Maybe even longer, yeah. Nuts. 

AC: I've actually got a great memory from the first time we played together.

QY: Oh, really? What was that?

AC: We were supporting Pansy Division at the Punters Club.

QY: Oh, yes, that was our first national tour that we ever did, we toured around with them [throughout] the whole of Australia.

AC: Ok, you played all the shows with them?

QY: Yeah. So I don't know if we were on first for most of them, but I seem to remember having memories of just playing to bar staff for a lot of that tour so that was probably what happened.

AC: Yeah, yeah and so Regurgitator were on first and we were in the middle slot and I remember just watching and thinking, 'Fuck, these guys are blowing us off stage!'

QY: Hahaha.

AC: And we played again not that long afterwards, except we were on first the next time. So there was that one fleeting moment - it was just like you were clearly gonna be way bigger than us!

QY: What made you think that when you watched us?

AC: It was, like, you just had a great sound, great playing. It was just not - you know, you get pretty cynical about first-on bands in small pubs; you just expect them to be shit and, yeah! It was just clear that you weren't a first-on band even then and so we were already completely intimidated when we went on and then, yeah! It was literally a month later that we were supporting you.

QY: Pansy Division were great, really good. Kinda Ramones-ish, I guess. It was pop-punk. I dunno what happened to them, though. I assume they just went on and then stopped, like most bands. Why haven't we stopped?

AC: Hahaha. Yeah, you're not s'posed to be our age and still doing it. Unless you're Bob Dylan and you're just gonna play until you die! 

QY: No, he should've definitely stopped. His voice, oh dear. Unbelievably bad.

AC: Hahaha. But Bob still pulls great crowds... The market isn't telling him [to stop] and his people aren't telling him 'cause they're drawing a wage from Bob touring so, yeah.

QY: That's right. But clearly the market's been telling us certain things for some time, but we're just not listening. 

AC: Hahaha. How did [Regurgitator] get together, though? 

QY: Oh, just the Brisbane scene and everyone was kinda doing their [thing]. They [Ben Ely and Martin Lee] were in two bigger bands than me. I was in this really strange punk band - they were all addicted to heroin except for me and I was just like, 'Oh, I don't think this is gonna last.'

AC: Hahaha.

QY: Yeah, it was interesting - they were really interesting characters - and then I met Ben randomly at a party and he'd heard about my other band. And then we just started playing together somehow and then I had a few things on my four-track and we did a recording together, and it just all came together after that but, yeah!... There were some terrible bands when we were coming up. I mean, the reason why we did what we did was because we hated pretty much everyone else that was out there. It was so conservative. I mean, there was some interesting stuff going on and a lot of kind of like older, swampy kind of music that was the indie sound of that era, but none of it appealed to me particularly at all. I mean, we just wanted to do weird, noisy, hip hop, pop - anything we could get our fingers into kinda thing... But, you know, it was around Farnsey and Barnsey and all that fucking shit and I just couldn't connect with it at all, you know? I mean, as bad as The Fauves were...

AC: Hahaha.

QY: ...At least they were doing something awesome... I remember those days we played with The Fauves - those first tours - being really fun and really interesting. And I will admit I had a bit of a man-crush on Andrew for some time, which he did not reciprocate.

AC: Hahaha.

QY: But I always really liked his writing. He ran a zine [Shred] for years, it was very funny. I recently watched that [Fauves doco] 15 Minutes To Rock. Oh my God! I think The Fauves represent the ultimate Australian, self-deprecating act. Like, we have a little bit of it in our psyche, particularly me from the band, so I kind of identified with it - I had a lot of success thrust at me at an early age and I was like, 'Really? Ugh, this feels wrong!'... We got very lucky, we had a really good [record] deal and when you're selling records it's fine, they don't fuck with you, [but] as soon as you stop [selling records] they come into the studio and tell you what to do with your verses and choruses and stuff. It's like, 'Ok, really?' But, yeah, it was always an unsettling thing for me to deal with that shit. 

AC: Talking about being on major labels, it did kinda seem like you were never gonna get anywhere unless you got signed to a label; that was the dream... The levels of motivation were just insane compared to where they are now. I mean, we'd drive up from the [Mornington] Peninsula at 1am to streets like this to put up pole posters in the middle of winter.

QY: Hahaha, oh my God! 

AC: Yeah, and we'd walk with a demo tape just to every pub in the street: 'Do you guys do like music?' - hand the cassette over.

QY: Wow!

AC: And then you just get to a point where you go, 'We're never gonna make money out of rock, and hopefully you're at an age like we were where you can just let it all go. And so there's just no stress involved with it now. I mean, we got dumped from Polydor - we somehow squeezed four albums out of them. 

QY: That's what we did as well, four records [with Warner]. 

AC: And our biggest-selling record with them was 30,000 copies, which for a major label was just a pittance! 

QY: Back then, now it's pretty good. It's top ten! Hahaha. 

AC: Yeah, hahaha, so, you know, our recoupment account was a couple of hundred thousand in the red and then - oh, actually, they got bought out by Universal! 

QY: Hahaha. That [Band In A Bubble] project was the first record we did by ourselves, with Channel [V]. It was based on the idea of Big Brother but also doing something creative in the space. When I was living in London I'd seen David Blaine sitting in a bubble just doing nothing and Paul [Curtis, manager] had talked about doing it a long time ago... and then it all came together and we were like, 'Yeah, let's do it!' Hahaha. And we just lived in Federation Square for three weeks. 

AC: Yeah? It was three weeks!?

QY: Yeah, 24 days. With Jabba from Channel [V].

AC: And you didn't come out of the bubble the whole time? 

QY: [Jabba] escaped once, but no one else did; we all just stayed in there. And we just kinda woke up with, like, crowds of people staring at us in our underpants and stuff - it was super surreal. There was a one-way speaker system so we could talk to people, we could shout at them and they'd be like [pulls confused face] through the glass and, like, sending us messages and stuff. It was just bizarre; one of the most surreal experiences I've ever had.

AC: Oh, it must've been, yeah.

QY: Very strange. But once again we didn't really capitalise on it, either; the record [Mish Mash!] didn't sell that well...

AC: It's a good record, I really like it! 

QY: Oh, thanks! I mean, I haven't really liked any of our records for a while - oh, apart from that one we did later on called Super Happy Fun Times Friends - I thought that had some decent songs on it. But it's funny when you listen to your own material. Unless you're Donald Glover and you fucking listen to your own shit all the time!

AC: Hahaha.

QY: ...And you're just, like, driving down the street or whatever and playing it to your friends... Do you listen to your own material? I find that a really weird thing...

AC: Mainly only when it comes time to try and remember how to play certain songs.

QY: I know, I have to google my own lyrics - that's what it's come down to.

AC: Hahaha.

QY: Totally! It's ridiculous. 'How does it go? They're not the chords!' But how do you feel like you play as a band now? Do you play better or about the same, or worse? 

AC: Better if we've done some rehearsal and maybe got a couple of shows under our belt.

QY: Right.

AC: But we've always been a really uneven live band.

QY: Hahaha.

AC: Like, we can be just dreadful, yeah. I mean, I know it sounds overly self-deprecating, but I see Phil [Leonard] and I as - when I look around at bands, I don't think there are any two worse guitarists playing in a semi-professional capacity anywhere around the country; we are just remedial-level guitar.

QY: Hahaha.

AC: And just with a lot of mistakes, yeah, we're very mistake-ridden. Adam [Newey] our drummer's really good - he's really solid - and Ted [Cleaver] used to great, but booze has just got him fried, hahaha. So we can still be quite good and hopefully we will be on most nights this tour.