steve fuckin’ kilbey man
yeah i remember that guy
i loved all that stuff man
what did he do again man ?
oh yeah i remember now
i met him a few times ya know
during the eighties
he was working at the markets
selling t shirts
he was getting a band together oh yeah
nice guy nice guy
not really
actually he was ok i guess
hard to fuckin’ get to know
if you know what i mean
sometimes he was kinda quiet and angry
othertimes he was ranting and laughing
he had a t shirt of richard hell with sequins on the eyeballs
he had skin tight crimson cords and brown boots
he just moved up from canberra or something
i’d see him queuing up for a stall
he was still young then i guess
we all were ,man
boy there was simon reptile
and the kung fu guy who sold candles
and the norml guy with his legalise dope stall
and white faced punk girls
and hippies and junkies and alkies
rod stewart breezed through the markets one week
with belinda green on ‘is arm…remember her
australias miss world
kilbey followed stewart round the market
at a discreet distance of course
he was trying to figure out how rod got his hair like that
“i mean, i know” kilbey said but he just wanted to
“see it up close…see how it all worked”
kilbey seemed to be disappearing regularly
he’d take off with other guys
walk back up oxford street to some clothing shop
was it gary wolfes?
theyd go out back of shop
and smoke dope in a leafy courtyard
the owner of the shop n his wife would come out
happy to supply the premises
for a smoke of richard westahofs good “caterpillar” pot
anyway then
when i saw him telly a year later
hed lost a lot of weight or something
he was wearing makeup
he seemed paler too
not like the freckly faced bloke at the ‘kets
my girlfriend at the time said “he must be on the gear”
but it wasnt that
he was just sweating a lot
playing every night of the week
sometimes two shows a night
suddenly he was all over the place
best songwriter in australia he said
what a bloody big head!
they were playing bloody great beer barns in the suburbs by then
we saw em one night
you couldnt hear a bloody word kilbey was singing
my girlfriend thought that was a good thing
the guitars were really loud
and uh i dunno
sometimes i couldnt figure out what was making all that sound
i got backstage
but they were all sitting around stoned or something
we didnt like the vibe so we split
i saw kilbey in the carpark having an argument or something
i dunno maybe they were just mucking around
kilbey had this eye make up on
“i bet hes gay now” said my girlfriend
no no he sure aint gay i said
but he sure fuckin’ looked a mess
we sat in the carpark watching him for a while
he seemed really cranky with somebody
eventually a ford ltd rolled up
and kilbey and the drummer got in and pissed off
we went home and i put on the blurred crusade
“i dont like em its depressing “my girlfriend said
and went to bed
i sat there in the darkness listening to his record
how strange to think that i knew him
kind of
sorta
yeah
he was a great guy
no
not really
he was ok
i guess….