JOHNNY KANNIS AT THE I-94 BAR
PART TWO

Q I thought the Hitmen staked out some sort of middle ground, somewhere between the Flaming Groovies and the Dictators, while some of the early demos had a real ‘60s feel. Fair call? How should a label have promoted the band?

You are right on with that analysis Barman! Fair call. I wouldn’t have a clue how they should have promoted us. I wish I knew what I know now back then … maybe we should have promoted a few more of our own shows and made them more special rather than flogging ourselves all over the place.

I dunno. It was hard getting the masses to come to us, so we tried to get to them. There’s a lot to be said for promoting your own shows though - Birdman had already mastered the Blitzkreig and we were a product of that. We just tried to be different. Experimented a bit and had a great time travelling around the place.

Chris Masuak and drummer Mark Kingsmill ponder comic books in a Bundaberg
motel. The rest of us ponder Klondike's golden boots.

Q Handsome Dick is an obvious precursor for the Johnny Kannis stage persona. Any others you’d admit to?

James Brown, Iggy Pop, Elvis Presley

Q You guys seemed to tour absolutely everywhere on the back of that first album and it was a killer line-up – maybe the definitive one for me. Where were some of the more obscure places you played?

Broadford Hells Angels Concert in Victoria,…the tour of North Queensland in 1981 was strange.. Rockhampton, Mackay, Cairns. Wow talk about lack of Judo Jams in Joh Bjelke land! Chris was nearly arrested for wearing a studded belt in Queensland.

We actually had a number one hit in Bundaberg with “Didn’t Tell The Man”. The Federal Hotel Bundaberg was an amazing gig. The support band played “Didn’t Tell the Man “in their set. . they were the reason the song became so huge up there.

Let me see… sorry Barman...memory loss...some of the Civic Hotel gigs and Stagedoor Tavern shows were memorable. The Bondi Lifesaver with INXS supporting us were fantastic gigs. The War & Peace Disco in Parramatta with Men at Work supporting us was also wild. There were so many…the Cold Chisel Tour, The Midnight Oil tours… every gig was new to us.. The Clash Tour.. Steppenwolf….Stranglers shows They were the best..

Q How did the move to RCA come about? Was the split with WEA amicable?

Warners didn’t want to make a new record so we split on good terms I think. It didn’t take long for Sebastian Chase (Dragons Manager) to get the RCA deal… we had a leg in because of “King of The Surf” and the label guy was his mate. Our co manager was Darrell Nugent who was also the talent co-ordinator for Sounds (Donnie Sutherland) that’s why we were always on the show! Secret’s out!!!

Q Whatever happened to the proposed single of “Suspicious Minds”? Did you record “Shake Some Action” in the studio too?

Who knows? Can’t remember. I think there is a studio version of “Shake Some Action” . You see, all those plans came to a halt I think because of my car accident.

Q You wanted Ron Asheton to produce the second album,. You got a production team that went under the name “BAD”. Care to comment on the recording sessions with those guys, who I believe were producers for Mental as Anything?

Yep. Biggest mistake dealing with those guys. They didn’t have a clue how to record or mix us. Ron wanted to come out but nobody wanted to pay for him. So, we had to go with those two or no album. They just didn’t have a clue. Chris got pretty upset, he tried to fix it all up but struggled. Brad felt left out of the creative process during those times. It was hard on everyone actually. They used some of my guide vocals for lead tracks!

I was relieved when Chris remixed it and found the real vocals. We weren’t allowed to be present at the mixes. Big mistake.

Q Chris’ re-mix is a vast improvement. Are the master tapes still around and will there be another re-mix job for a future re-issue?

Nobody knows where the masters are but I have the remix DAT copy. We’re getting a clearance from BMG. We have control overseas as well. We all want to see the CDs re-released.

Q How did Brad’s departure soon after shake up the band? I believe there were some ill-feelings at the time that appear to have dissipated.

Well… he quit because he got an offer from Clyde Bramley to join the Hoodoo Gurus. He was becoming distant…. felt left out I think.. It’s a pity because he was starting to write some great songs.

Johnny with The Kid (bassplayer Tony Robertson).

Robbo, Brad and I were drinking at the Manzil Room, Kings Cross, the night before our 10am shoot for “Pay Up or Shut Up” video. That’s when Brad told me he was leaving. I was shocked and upset and didn’t want to believe it… so we just kept on drinking.. The video shoot’s a blur but the worse thing is that we had to back up that night at Caringbah Inn to play to a full house… I had no voice left by midnight. I think that’s when we first did our 15 minute version of “Louie Louie”.

I was really disappointed Brad left because he was fun to tour with. Like I said, he cracked me up.Q I thought some of the shows you did with you playing rhythm guitar were pretty good. Had you played much before?

Yeah I loved playing guitar. I’d played in The Jackals.. and the school band. My studded belts ripped the crap out of the guitars I used to borrow.

Q Was that about the time you started playing the odd Birdman cover in the set? I know people could be precious about that sort of thing back then, so how was the reaction?

Went over really well. People went nuts. So we kept playing the odd song. Chris and Warwick didn’t mind so I went along with it. I think we were playing Birdman songs right from the beginning…songs that Chris and Warwick had a hand in writing were the priority.. like “What Gives?”, “Death by The Gun”…with “Aloha”, “Non Stop Girls” and “Do The Pop” coming along later.

Q I can certainly remember those songs popping up then. Was that about the time you started doing Night Train? What brought that project about and who was involved?

Time lines escape me … sorry about that. You seem to know more about me than I do Barman. Hold on, I need a drink… Zeus Juice (Vodka).. I put the Nightrain together when the rest of the guys went off with Rob to support Iggy Pop as The New Christs in 1983. The Nightrain was Rupert B with a horn section and I had Steve Harris (Visitors) on keyboards and Chris’s girlfriend Lynne on backing vocals. Sweet soul music. I love it!

If it wasn’t for the car accident, I think we would have been the first band to record a “Soul Deep” album.. nearly 10 years before Jimmy Barnes did.

Q Of course, it was a drive to a Night Train show that almost ended in you dying. Tell us about the accident and the time spent recovering.

It was tough. Can’t remember three weeks of my life post accident. It occurred at Waterfall just past the toll gates on my way to Corrimal Leagues Club (it was before the gig). Some drunk hit me head-on, travelling 110km/h on the wrong side of the freeway. I spent months in hospital, Hitmen ended up splitting and continuing with Rob as The New Christs.

Q When did you move into management and promotions and who were your first bands? I’m presuming the Screaming Tribesmen were one of them.

1984. It was such a confusing part of my life. I didn’t know what to do with myself when I got out of hospital. They threw a benefit concert for me and I remember not being well enough to attend. They hired a wheelchair for me.
One day I decided to look into band management and convinced Rob and Chris to let me be the New Christs manager.. we had some good times and recorded one of Rob & Chris’s best songs, “Like a Curse”.

I also managed the Screaming Tribesmen three-piece original line-up prior to that. It was a good way for me to get back into it again. My recovery was a blur. I also booked Olympic Sideburns, Happy Hate Me Nots, Celibate Rifles and Managed The Psychotic Turnbuckles.

I was also manager for Brisbane band Voodoo Lust. A great bunch of guys who had a killer power pop/thrash band going. 

Q Why didn’t the Tribesmen become huge in Australia? I might have been biased but I thought they had the potential to rival the Gurus.

The Tribesmen were on their way to becoming huge. Unfortunately when Bob’s (bassist Bob Wackley) American girlfriend followed him back to Australia after our 1988 American Tour, the band started to splinter and fight. We were actually booked to support Joan Jett and The Blackhearts during her stadium tour of America in March 1989 but I had to cancel the tour when Chris followed Bob and quit.

On tour wiht the Tribesmen in Boston in '88.

When we hit America in October 1988 we had the number 20 song on commercial radio in LA, when we headlined our first LA show four weeks later, “I’ve Got a Feeling” was number six and when we left the USA in December it became number one. I was getting tour requests from all over the place - the next album would have done it for them in the USA and Australia. The return Australian tour was also the biggest grossing tour they had ever done and the biggest crowds they had ever played to.

A new tour in 2005 with Chris, Bob, Mick and Warwick would be huge with a re-release of “Date With A Vampyre”. What do you think?

Q Sounds like a plan! What was the story with your song-writing collaboration with Ron Peno? Was that because of him being connected with Tony Robertson, who ended up as Warwick Gilbert’s replacement on bass? Did it produce much apart from “It’s So Hard”?

I didn’t actually spend any time with Ron, we used to bump into each other at parties and gigs. Shared a few stories and drinks.. Actually, I asked Tony if he had any lyrics floating around and he gave me “It’s So Hard”. He said they were lyrics from a song he and Ron Peno played in the 31st , I think. I wrote the music to “It’s so Hard” and Ron and Tony did the lyrics.

Chris, Johnny and bassist Tony "The Kid" Robertson at the last Tora Tora Tora DTK
Farewell Tour show at the Family Inn, Rydalmere.

Q You developed a reputation in management circles as a pretty hard operator. Any regrets on that front?

Well yeah I guess but every band I managed progressed very quickly through some tough channels. I had to dig deep in the trenches to pull off half the stuff I did, with limited resources. In most cases, I had to sink a lot of my own money into shows or tours to do some of the things we did. So I guess you can say I was also protecting my investment.

I used to give roadies and support bands a hard time to make sure that the shows went off without a hitch. My bands also meant a lot to me and I wanted to make sure they were treated with respect by crews, the press, record companies, venue owners and agents. I had to stick up for them so I made some enemies along the way. Big Deal!

I was a loyal manager. I know now that the gossip which spread when the Tribesmen split was exaggerated 10-fold. There’s always two sides to any story, isn’t there?!?! Rob spread a bit too when The New Christs split. Deniz might have told a few stories when his comeback tour failed to draw crowds and lost money.. I became the scapegoat for a few… easy to blame Kannis.

Q How did the decision to do a farewell Hitmen tour come about and why the choice of Richard Jakimiszyn as second guitarist? Was that a result of him having played in the New Christs?

It was my idea for the farewell tour. I had to say good bye and thank you to all the fans that followed the Hitmen. The guys were going to stick with Rob in the New Christs so it was easy to just grab them back for a tour. Rob didn’t like the idea and gave me no support. So, that’s what prompted me to quit as New Christs manager. After all, he’d taken my band from me so I was just borrowing them back for a one off tour. No big deal, I thought.

Yeah, Richard came along because he was in the New Christs and a damn good guitarist.

Q Where you happy with the resultant live album? How did it end up on the ABC label?

I loved the live album! It’s my favourite. No overdubs by anyone. Raw energy at its awesome best. Chris organised it I think with some help from Michael McMartin. We had played a few Triple Jay live-to-air concerts in the past so the “mobile”crew were familiar with us. Chris is a great producer.

Q Of course the Hitmen story didn’t end there. How did the next line-up come about and how did the “U.E.L.A.” EP sell?

I didn’t like the recording of “U.E.L.A.”. It seemed too rushed. We were using our own money and ran out of time in the studio. The songs are some of Chris’s best but I feel in a better studio and with more time, they would have sounded better. Didn’t sell many. They were songs Chris took with him when he left the Tribesmen, songs he’d written. They were going to be on the next Tribesman album which never happened. I also felt a bit uncomfortable about it all because I was the Tribesmen manager.

Q The “D.T.K.” appendage to the band name was because you were considering the American market where a (funky) Hitmen were in existence? How serious were the plans to re-locate to Canada and live in Chris’ parents’ basement?

Yeah that’s right some other Hitmen lineup was living in America. DTK is short for “Down To Kill” or “Don’t Talk Crap”… one roadie asked me if it meant “Don’t Trust Kannis”.

We were very serious about relocating. That was the plan! Chris was organising it with his dad and we were going to support Steppenwolf to begin with. My accident put an end to that idea!

Q You and Klondike actually made it to the States to talk about potential re-location plans, didn’t you? How did you hook up with Manitoba’s Wild Kingdom and what went down in the studio?

We caught up with the Handsome Dick Manitoba when we were on tour with The Screaming Tribesmen in 1988. Dick met us at our record launch in New York City and that night, he got up to sing three or four songs at The Cat Club. Chris played on the recording of Wild Kingdom’s “The Party Starts Now” while we were there.

It was so cool when he met Ross The Boss for the first time. Ross came up to Chris, shook his hand and said “Hi, I’m Ross…. The Boss!” You had to be there…

Q Dark Carnival marked your move into international promoting and the Hitmen DTK went around as support on that Australian tour. How did that tour do and why didn’t Manitoba's Wild Kingdom make it down here?

Deniz Tek introduced me to Ron Asheton and Dark Carnival. When I moved to America in 1991, I met Ron and worked out a deal to tour Australia. I released the CD on my label Zeus Records and I booked the tour with the muscle of The Harbour Agency. We had such a great tour! Niagara and (her husband) The Colonel have remained my friends.

With Wild Kingdom, I’d always kept in touch with Manitoba because of our original meeting, but his agents and managers were difficult to deal with. They confused things and I lost interest when negotiations became too slow.

Q I suppose the next thing to canvass is the Sugar Hill sessions and the album that followed, “Moronic Inferno”. Why go to Texas, to record an album and how did Deniz Tek become involved?

We heard that Mort Bradley, Radio Birdman’s sound guy was running Sugar Hill studios in Texas so we called and put the idea of a production deal to him. He went away, asked his bosses and came back to tell us to book our airfares!

I ended up moving to the USA after the recording to try and get us a deal but most record companies remembered me from the success I had with the Tribesmen and were scratching their heads trying to work out what I was doing singing in a band again! The guy from Atlantic Records in LA actually told me that they’d release the band if we got a new 18-year-old singer and I became their manager! So, I made my way back to Australia, set up Zeus Records through Shock with help from David Williams and off we went again!

We knew Deniz was living in Montana so Mort organised him to fly down for the recordings. It was so cool jamming and recording with Deniz.

I signed up to be his manager while we were there and I ended up renegotiating his publishing deal through Polygram.
I also got him a record deal with Red Eye and he toured Australia to promote it. He went back to Montana after the tour and sacked me as manager.

Only mistake I believe I made with Deniz was believing the hype surrounding him prior to the tour. So, instead of performing smaller venues, he played bigger ones and most rooms were less than half full. It was an expensive exercise and with no tour support to back it up, Deniz had to put a lot of his own money into keeping it together. His accountants didn’t help much so I took most of the flack for the tour failing and losing money.

It was hard getting over all that because I became very close with Deniz and his family. It was like losing a brother when we had that falling out… It took him a while to recover from that too. I do still feel bad about it all. Anyway, he ended up getting back to his roots and the rest is history.

Q Mort Bradley says there a stack of tapes left over from those sessions.

Mort recorded everything he could…. All the jamming.. everything!

"Moronic Inferno" line-up in the studio with Deniz Tek (centre).

Q Any chance they’ll ever come out?

I hope so, I’d love to release some bonus tracks with some of our earlier albums.

Q The resultant album (“Moronic Inferno”) was probably the most pop thing the Hitmen ever did. Why didn’t it crack it big time? I remember the live music scene was in a bit of a trough in Australia at the time but you seemed to pull good crowds for the accompanying tour. You got airplay in Texas, didn’t you?

I don’t know why it didn’t crack it big. I guess it needed a major record company behind it to spend the money. I was using my own money to press the CDs and advertising to promote the tours and album .

Radio didn’t play it and there was no film clip… mmmmm, there are a few reasons there I guess. The only support I had was from publicists I used for our tours. I think Mort gave the album to a Houston radio station who played it a few times. That’s about it.

Hitmen DTK backstage at the Annandale Hotel with Deniz Tek on the "Moronic Inferno" Australian tour.

Q Tours with a handful of other line-ups and with the Trilobites as your backing band also followed. What led you to decide to throw in the towel as far as the Hitmen were concerned? What brought about the move to Queensland?

I didn’t really toss in the towel. It’s just that there was nowhere else to go after the Dark Carnival tour and “Moronic Inferno” recording. I had already sunk thousands of my own money into the band and being that I had a young family to look after, I had to start providing a bit more of a steady life for them. So, I got involved with Frontier Touring Company and Harbour Agency who ended up offering me the opportunity to book their bands in Queensland. Problem is, I had to be in Queensland! So, I moved and slowly started to lose contact with the band and Chris.

Q You weren’t part of the Birdman reunion in ‘in 96 for various reasons. Any regrets about that estrangement? Have you checked out any of the shows? If so, what did you think?

I would have loved to have gone to a show but The Deniz Tek tour debacle was still fresh and I’d heard a rumour that Deniz and Rob asked the Birdman promoter to black list me from the Playroom show. (EDS: A rumour denied by them.) It was sad and funny getting that info because I was the local promoter for The Playroom which was owned by a Greek friend of mine. I had free reign of the place anyway, but I didn’t want to stir things up. I haven’t seen any Birdman shows. Sometimes, I sit and think about the old days back at the Funhouse, look over to the Birdman tattoo on my arm and it saddens me to think that I did become estranged with those guys.

Q There’s been talk about someone re-releasing the entire Hitmen back catalogue. What’s the status of that project? Will they be re-mixes and will there be any extra tracks?

Still working on it and yes, it would be great to get some bonus tracks on there.

Q How serious is the prospect of shows?

Very serious. I sent Chris an email yesterday 20th January 2005…. I’m not sure of his Birdman schedule. If it fits I’m sure we’ll do it.

Q Since we’re in a Bar, what are you drinking?

I still drink Zeus Juice…. Vodka & Lime thanks Barman. Yasou!

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