Superheist: Kid Rocks!

Superheist play the Orange Stage from 11.15am at the Big Day Out, Gold Coast Parklands, on Sunday.

“We’ve been doing lots of crazy stuff,” beings Superheist guitarist DW Norton. “Did you get the press release…”

The press release in question concerns a reshuffle of the Superheist line up, with the departure of original frontman Rod ‘Berger’ McLeod. Having been a long time fan of the band and observer of all things ‘heist, the split came as a bit of a shock. Over the past few years the Superheist line up evolved into the formidable beast responsible for the massive Prize Recruit album of last year. Rather than fill up on my ramblings, I’ll let DW tell the bands side of the story.

“It’s taken a while to sort things out, you know.” DW continues.

I’ll kick off with the obvious question. What actually happened…

“We’ve been put in a position where we’ve had to move on without Berger,” he explains, ever the diplomat. “It’s the best thing for the band. If it’s the best thing for Berger or not I’m not sure. Press releases always say ‘best interest of both parties’, but whether that’s true or not I don’t know. Basically we got to a point where band management, the record company, all believed it was holding us back. There’s no taking away from the fact that Berger is a great songwriter and a great vocalist, but unfortunately that’s not all it takes to be in a band.”

“You have to be a team player and you have to work harder than you’ve ever worked before in your life to get to this level and take it to the next level, and it just wasn’t happening that way. We had four members of the band pushing to take it to the next level, and one who believed he was already there. It was really disappointing from the band perspective, but in the same breath it’s really exciting, because we’ve already got a new guy in place.”

 A new guy whom at the time of this interview had already done a couple of weeks worth of shows, and will be making what appears to be his major official debut at the Big Day Out.

“His name’s Jimmy Biro, we call him Jimmy The Kid ‘cause he’s just 21. He’s got a great voice, not too different to Berger…”

“What happened was we were supposed to do this big all ages gig in Berwick in Victoria. Berger called up at 7pm that night and said ‘I’m sick, I’m not doing the show’. This happened a hell of a lot. So the show had already started, it’s an all ages thing, we have to do some sort of a gig. He wasn’t keen to do that. We went down there anyway and he just sat in the Tarago and wasn’t going to do the show. We asked this kid from one of the support bands if he knew any of the songs. He said he knew all our songs, so I asked him if he wanted to sing because Berger was crook. He got up there and the kids were like, damn, this is awesome for the rest of the show.”

    “The next morning at 7am in Bendigo we had our sound check for Channel V, and Berger said, I can’t do it, we have to pull out. This is potentially the biggest promotion the band had had ever, and Berger said use the kid. So we did, and he was great. Channel V was stoked, the shows were great. You know, the show must go on, and that’s exactly what I believe, and that’s the attitude of every other member of the band.”

“So here we were doing these shows. Berger called up and said ‘I can’t believe you did that, I quit’. And we said, cool, no worries.”

The split was made more difficult by the personal histories of those in the band.

“I’ve known him for 22 years and we’ve been in the band together for eight years. It’s been a really hard two weeks, because not only do we have a band together, we’ve got a friendship, and it was really really difficult to come to a decision to move on without him. With all the crazy stuff that goes on behind the scenes the bottom line is he’s a great singer and a great songwriter, but at the end of the day do you sacrifice that to have some harmony in the band? In no way am I saying he’s dead weight or anything. A lot of people think we kicked him our for no reason or something. Some of the stuff I hear is just shit. We were jealous he was a star… It’s not about that in Superheist. It’s about respect. It’s got to be enjoyable, and that’s where everybody is coming from. A happy team is a winning team, you know.”