EXCLUSIVE: Sarah McLeod Looks Back At The Making Of The Superjesus & 'Sumo'

Before we were The Superjesus, we were called Hell's Kitchen (pre-Gordon Ramsey). Myself, Chris Tennent, Stuart Rudd and Paul Berryman spent 18 months rehearsing and writing before we played live. Then once we played our first show, the rise was somewhat meteoric. We've broken it down into a series of tipping points, each one propelling us up the ladder another rung. Here are the quintessential 10 steps to Sumo.

Step 1. Hell's Kitchen First Gig At The Synagogue, Adelaide

In 1995 there was an electric buzz around Adelaide about this new band "Hell's Kitchen". Previously we had all been in well-known local acts and the rumours were out about our 18 month in the making secret project. We booked our debut gig at The Synagogue in the East End , which is now a dance club called Mary's Poppin'. We pulled together some homemade PR in the form of hitting the streets on our push bikes at night, armed with a backpack of freshly printed posters and some sticky tape. When we arrived at the gig on the night it was packed. The anticipation was huge, everyone was curious as to what this combination of musicians would create. 

Step 2. The Adelaide Fringe Festival

On the strength of our successful debut at The Synagogue we were booked to play at the Adelaide Fringe Festival in support of The Cruel Sea. We played very early, hardly anyone was there except for two young men sitting on the grass in the sun wearing black sunglasses; Dan Hennessy and Steven Betts from Aloha Management. These two had been friends since school and had created Aloha out of the sheer fan boy love of indie rock 'n' roll. Their name Aloha came from Hawaii Five O because the characters in the show were named Dan and Steve. They did not care that no one was there to watch us, it wasn't about that, they were looking long term and they pretty much signed us on the spot.

Step 3. Big Day Out

Our pack had expanded, we had management and we meant business. Our first booking under our new leaders Dan and Steve was on a small side stage at the Adelaide '96 Big Day Out. We played before Front End Loader, whom Dan and Steve also managed. We were booked to play this show as "Hell's Kitchen". On the eve of the artwork going to print, we had a last minute epiphany and changed our name to The Superjesus.

Big Day Out '96 poster

Step 4. The Sando

The Sandringham Hotel in Newtown, Sydney; our first interstate gig. We were so excited to play this show that we accidentally arrived a day early because we had no idea how long it would take to drive from Adelaide to Sydney and we didn't want to be late. We were supposed to all be staying at Dan's house. When we rocked up a day early he had to put us all up in a backpacker room in Bondi for the night because he had guests over. We thought everything was awesome no matter what. We were green and really pumped! The Sando gig turned out to be a historical event. Every single representative from every single record company in the country was at the show. They all paid to get in and were all shocked to realise that they were not the only ones who had the 'next big thing’ tip off. It was such a rarity that they took a polaroid of all of them out the front.

Step 5. Eight Step Rail

We carefully chose five of our best songs and went into a studio in Adelaide to record them with engineer Frank Castel. Having been VERY attached to our 4-track demos, we couldn't quite recapture the feeling, so we scrapped the recording and went elsewhere. The second attempt landed us at Birdland Studios in Melbourne with Lindsay Gravina (who had just finished a Jebediah record). Overly self-critical we hated that as well and ditched it on the same principal as the first effort. On our third attempt at Mixmasters Studio in Adelaide with Mick Wordley, we ditched the Marshall amps entirely and recorded all the guitars directly into the desk through our Samsap pedal, exactly as we had done on the 4-track demos…. After a lot of trial and error, we decided we could live with this one. 

Eight Step Rail cover (left)
Original lyric scrawl for Shut My Eyes (right)

Step 6. Sign worldwide record deal with Warner Bros.

After The Sando gig, offers from every label were coming in thick and fast, Dan and Steve had their work cut out for them. There were all sorts of bribes , white goods being one of them. I thought that meant washing machines and dryers but now I'm not so sure. We decided to go with Warners, mainly because they had signed Regurgitator and we were fans. Our A&R team Michael Parisi and Mark Pope, what a couple of bloody legends these two were. Together with Dan and Steve we signed the very first 'joint venture' deal with Warners USA. Now everybody had skin in the game... globally. 

Signing with Warners

Step 7. Heavy Weight Kings Of Rock Tour

In preparation for the release of Eight Step Rail, Dan and Steve set us out on our first national tour in support of two other bands they managed. Front End Loader were the headliners, then a little known New Zealand rock band going by the name of Shihad and the openers being this new Adelaide band called The Superjesus. What a life curve this was! This tour taught us how to rock, prior to this we had modelled ourselves on 'shoe starers' like Sonic Youth and Swervedriver. Now suddenly we were watching the most rocking performances we'd ever seen in our lives night after night before our very eyes and we had to compete. This is where we went from gentle to mental.

This was our first ever merch stand, manned by our GTR tech Daniel

Step 8. Bush support

We released Eight Step Rail under 'Aloha Records' with distribution through Warners. The catalogue name on the spine of the cd was MDR001, an ‘in joke’ from Hawaii Five O - 'Book em Danno, murder one..." The lead single from the EP Shut My Eyes was thrashed on triple j and struck a chord with music fans around the country. Its success lead to us being offered the national support to US rockers Bush who were in the prime of their career riding on the single Glycerine. Everyone I knew at the time was all gah gah for Gavin Rossdale, I was more impressed that the bass played Dave used to be in Transvision Vamp! Armed with a filthy determination to wipe the floor with their soft American asses we slayed every entertainment centre in this country, playing to about 3,000 people a night.

In this photo is The Superjesus, our sound guy Everett in the TSJ shirt... and Bush.

Step 9. ARIAs '97 

After the Bush support, we flew to Atlanta, Georgia to record our first full length record for our new label Warner. We chose Triclops Studios because thats where the Smashing Pumpkin's recorded our favourite record, Siamese Dream. 

Engineered by Jeff Tomei (who performed the same duty on Siamese Dream) and produced by Matt Serletic. Once it was in the can, we came back to Australia and were asked to play at the ARIAs. Sumo had not been released yet so this was off the strength of Eight Step Rail. We flipped a coin whilst at sound check at the Jindabyne Hotel. The coin spoke, we said yes. We attended, we were nominated, we played, we won... twice.

News clipping from the 1997 ARIA Awards

Step 10. Sumo 

Riding high on the success of Eight Step Rail we prepared for the release of our full length record.  In true Superjesus tradition, it was titled The Absolute Truth until the night before the artwork went to print and then we changed it to Sumo. The pressure was on because we were following up a very successful EP. We shipped over 30,000 units into stores on pre-sales alone , so the record went gold before it even hit the stores. It was released worldwide, went double platinum and won Best Rock Album at the '98 ARIA Awards.

The Superjesus' Sumo 20th anniversary tour kicks off at the end of this month. Check out theGuide below for more info and dates.