Posted December 23, 2001

PSYCHEDLIC SIREN SINGING FROM THE DEEP:
PENNY IKINGER TAXIS INTO THE BAR

Described by admiring critics variously as "Nico defrosted" and "Nancy Sinatra fronting the Velvet Underground", guitarist Penny Ikinger started out in the seminal Sydney garage-punk band Wet Taxis in the early '80s.

After the band broke up, she went on to support former Wet Taxis leader Louis Tillett on his first two solo albums, before slipping away to Melbourne in the early '90s.

While making an all-too-rare visit back to Sydney to promote her "Songs From The Deep" EP (the harbinger of a solo album to come in the new year), Penny generously found time between rehearsals and meetings with record distributors to slide into a booth at the back of the Bar with rabid gig reviewer John McPharlin and give him a few clues about life after (and before and during) the heyday of the real Oz Rock.

JM: Penny, you were closely associated with the Sydney music scene, particularly the Wet Taxis and then some of Louis Tillett's subsequent solo projects, but now you're based in Melbourne. How did that come about?

PI: I was brought up in Melbourne and I moved to Sydney in 1979 to study archeology at Sydney Uni. That's where I met Louis. Then I came back and finished my degree in Melbourne. When I first moved to Sydney, I didn't know anyone there, er here, at all and it was a bit lonely, but I did make friends with Louis. He was a very important connection that I made that year. I went back to Melbourne, finished my degree there and I was sick of Melbourne so I went back to Sydney and that's when I started playing in Wet Taxis, in 1983. Then I moved back to Melbourne in 1991 and that was to study again. I did a postgraduate diploma in museum studies. I swore that I'd be back in Sydney within the year, but I just kept staying in Melbourne and then I started playing music again. That year I studied the museum studies course, I actually took probably 10 months off from playing music, which was the longest I'd taken off since I started. Then I played in Red Dress and then some other bands, like Sacred Cowboys, and all the time still playing with Louis, coming up from Melbourne to do gigs in Sydney and I'm still there! I love Sydney but Melbourne's very livable. It's a lot cheaper and I think there's a lot more venues to play in. It's a better city for musicians.

JM: That was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. A number of Sydney musicians have gone down to Melbourne and we keep hearing good things about it, but it's like a black hole. We hear that it's good, but we don't ever get any details. What sort of venues do you play down there?

PI: Well, I think compared to Sydney there are more venues and there are all types of venues, not just your pub rock'n'roll type venues. There are venues that are more like small clubs, with couches; you can get coffee there; different sized venues, so depending on what "level" you are, there are places for you to play; more interesting venues for you to play, so instead of just the pub with the tub, with the big bar, venues that might have a little more going on with the lighting and the decor. From my experience, musicians in either city really don't make that much money, but certainly in Melbourne you get paid better than you get paid here. I've found from dealing with the people who run the pubs in Melbourne that they're not as cutthroat there as they are here. I get quite shocked every time I come up here. I don't know if I should say that, but maybe it's a good thing (if I do). Maybe it's the city too; maybe Sydney is just a bit more money hungry and greedy.

JM: So when you started playing down there, you were playing with bands. What then made you decide to go solo?

PI: I kept playing in these bands and we'd be going along, playing together for a couple of years and record companies would start getting interested and then the band would break up; the shit would hit the fan for some reason, whatever that might be. I got really disillusioned. The last band I played in before I started singing solo, I was really put out by the band breaking up - for about a year. I was really upset by it, because I put a whole lot of work into it as a guitar player and then I just thought well I'm going to have to do something about this. I thought it through and thought well I'm going to have to sing and write my own songs. It seemed the only way around it. That hadn't occurred to me as an option before that.

JM: I'm surprised, because the three songs on your EP are all very good. I know you've got a co-writing credit with Louis on one song ("Dream Well") on his first solo album. Had you written anything else between that and what's on your EP?

PI: Not much.

JM: So how easy, or hard, is it to decide "I'm going to write some songs now" and then sit down and start doing it?

PI: Well, again it was brought about by a lot of sadness; I don't know if that's the word, hardship? Just the fact that I was really pissed off. So that was quite a powerful motivator. Then I really had to do a lot of work on myself. You get these ideas in your head that you can't do something or whatever. I had to do a lot of work on those sorts of things, like I thought to myself that I've been playing with a lot of people who are singing and writing songs, but aren't total geniuses. Some are quite brilliant like Louis, but others... I thought if they can do it, then so can I. It's interesting, when I was in grade 5 at school, I had this English teacher who was really creative and she... I used to do really well at poetry then, when I was ten. Then when I decided that I was going to sing and write my own songs, I didn't really have a reference point, but then when I remembered back to when I was ten and this teacher had really helped me on the creative side and said to me "Your poetry is really fantastic". I remembered that and I thought, "Well shit, if I could do that when I was ten, then I can do it now!". It was sort of mind over matter, determination, just seeing it as the only alternative. Once I'd pinpointed it as the only alternative, then I would do whatever I had to do to get there.

JM: How was your first solo gig when you were standing out at the front and it's all focused on you, instead of standing at the side just playing guitar?

PI: I did my first solo gig supporting Louis and Charlie [Owen] at the Globe in Newtown. It was pretty nerve wracking, because I'd never even really sung into a microphone, except for backing vocals. I was never one of those people who'd sung in the shower or while they were doing the vacuuming; never any of that stuff. So I wasn't convinced that when I opened my mouth the sound was even going to come out. That first gig I did I was using Charlie's guitar and I got on stage and I started playing and I was thinking there's something weird with the chords. I thought my hands were shaking so much they were going to the wrong chords, but as it turned out Charlie had the guitar in a different tuning and he hadn't told me. So I got up and started playing and the guitar was in a completely different tuning. I had to stop and it was one of the worst moments of my life. There was complete silence. I'd stopped playing and I said to everyone, "There's something wrong with this guitar" and there was complete silence in the room, while everyone was waiting for me to work out what was wrong with the guitar. Charlie ran on stage and he's checking the leads and asking, "Is there something wrong with the amplifier"? and I'm saying, "No, no, no, there's something wrong with the guitar" and he goes, "Oh, I tuned it to a different chord" and I go "Oh no" and then I had to tune it up and everyone's just silent, just waiting for me to start again. It was like the worst possible scenario for your first ever solo gig, on the first chord you strike. After that, I thought "Well, it can't get worse than this", so I just went on and did the gig and I got through it and it was fine.

JM: I actually remember that gig.

PI: Do you? Do you remember the start?

JM: Yeah.

PI: Did you know what was happening?

JM: No, I didn't. I don't know how many people closer to the stage might have. I didn't realise it was your very first solo gig either. There was just this cloud of tense anticipation hanging over the audience, like "What's the holdup? Why is there no music?", but it was fine once you got going.

PI: Yeah, but I was very nervous. I did want to do the first one solo too, as opposed to doing it with a band, because I thought, "Well, if you can do that then you'll be right", because that's the hardest thing to do. I always try to get the foundations strong in what I do, so it may be the hard path rather than the easy path sometimes, because I think you end up with better results in the end.

JM: So down in Melbourne you're now working mainly with Rosie Westbrook and Shamus Goble, whereas up here you're playing with Jim Dickson and Nick Fisher. Any thoughts of recording anything with them for the album, or is it all going to be done down in Melbourne?

PI: I'm quite open to anything at this stage. We're going to record the gig tonight. I see myself very much as a solo artist now and I would like to swap around rhythm sections and do recordings with different rhythm sections and play around with different genres, but I do live in Melbourne so it's convenient to do it in Melbourne, but its also convenient for me that I can play with Jim and Nick here. It makes the logistics of touring a lot easier, financially, and also it's good for the music, because they play my songs quite differently to how Rosie and Shamus do. I get different things out of it and they're a great rhythm section. I'd like to try other rhythm sections too and change the sound around.

JM: How far along is the album?

PI: I'm just a bit over halfway through. I've been recording it since February, so it's a long time. Basically the holdups have been with money. I'm doing it at this studio in Melbourne called Hothouse with this sound engineer Craig Harnath and he and I are producing it together. It's sounding really great... well, I'm happy with it, but it is taking a long time, because I can only go in there every so often. We're recording on downtime, so I can only go in when he hasn't got other work in there. He's been getting lots of young boy pop bands with a shitload of money, so... I'm hoping to get a move on with it in December and January, so hopefully it'll be finished in February or March.

JM: How representative is the EP?

PI: The album's quite different to the EP. I picked those three songs because they all fitted together, into a thematic piece, but there's a lot more rock on the album. God these things take so long! Have you ever tried to write anything else, like a book or something?

JM: No, I have enough trouble just writing reviews.

PI: It's hell. Not just the creative side of dragging things out of yourself, but the whole... I can't believe it. I'm amazed how anyone ever gets any album finished, any book finished or any painting, exhibition...

JM: Someone once said that when it comes to works of art, it takes two people to create them. One to actually do the work and someone else to tell them when it's finished. You're talking from the opposite perspective, about how hard it is to get things done, but sometimes isn't it hard to know when it is done? A lot of people who have made albums that I think are good, then have said in interviews later, "If only I'd just had another week... if only I'd redone that vocal... if only I'd just mixed it a different way... if only I'd just done this or that...", but if you're going achieve anything, don't you have to do what you can in the time that you've got and then let it go and move on to something else?

PI: My holdup has been the studio time, not anything else. We are working really quickly in the studio when we're in there. There aren't drop ins and stuff. I mean, if there's an obvious mistake there is, but otherwise all the playing on all the instruments has gone down really quickly. It's just the time, the time in there and time equals money.

JM: I read somewhere that Christina Amphlett has been involved in some capacity?

PI: In the pre-production, yeah. I did demos in Shane O'Mara's studio in Melbourne. As you'd know, he's a guitar player [Stephen Cummings' backing band and Rebecca's Empire amongst others], but he's also got a studio now and I did a run with some of the vocals at that studio and I wasn't very happy with them. I played them to Chrissie and she said to me, "You should be doing some of those vocals again" and I had to agree with her, because some of them weren't very good at all. So she came into the studio with me and she basically cracked the whip and I learnt a lot. We did a couple of days in there with her. I'd be standing at the microphone and she'd sit there with her pad and pen and I'd have to sing every line like three times and she'd tick which was the best one and tell me what I'd done wrong like, "you're doing this...", "what about this phrase here?", "you mispronounced this..." She went through with this fine tooth comb and at the end after these couple of sessions I was completely stuffed. It was twelve to fourteen hours of someone cracking the whip over you, but I learnt so much. I was really lucky, because I hold her in very high esteem and there's not too many musicians that I actually do hold in such high esteem.

JM: How did you come to hook up with her in the first place?

PI: Well I've known her for a number of years, because Charlie used to play in the Divinyls for a while and did tours with them. He was with them for about seven years. Charlie and I were partners (but we're not now), so I used to go along to the gigs and I got to know them all pretty well.

JM: It was good you were able to get her involved.

PI: Bloody lucky, yeah. Like I said I do really respect her and there's not many people... being kinda pig headed I suppose, like everyone else, there's not too many people I would actually listen to, but she's one I would.

JM: That's interesting, because Christina Amphlett is your archetypal eighties "woman in rock", being a singer who doesn't play an instrument, while you started out playing guitar strictly as a sidewoman [sideperson?], not singing much at all. Back in those days wasn't it pretty unusual for woman to be in a band and not be just the singer (and maybe get to play some guitar, if she'd also had a hand in writing some of the songs)? How did you come to take up the guitar?

PI: By accident. This friend of mine, Bruce Butler, who ended up working in the music industry as well as an A&R guy, manager and stuff, gave me a guitar for my birthday. This was when I'd left school. I would have been about 19. I've always loved music and Bruce and I used to work together in a record shop in Melbourne called Gaslight Records. I remember my sister saying to me before he gave it to me, "Penny, Bruce has got this really great present for your birthday" and I was thinking diamond earrings, bracelet... and then he rolled up with this guitar and I just looked at it and I thought, "What the hell am I going to do with this? I can't wear it around my neck". It stayed in my room for about three months. I used to think, "What did he give me this for?" and then I thought I might as well learn how to play it. I knew some other boys that played guitars, so I used to have to badger them to get them to give me lessons. I'd go round and I'd ring them all the time, because after I'd started having a few lessons I just wanted to learn more. That was the hardest part, just getting these guys to teach me something new. I always wanted to learn something new and I'd have to really harass them. In a way, I ended up with a very different style of playing from what they were teaching me and I think that was definitely intentional.

JM: What sort of music were you listening to at the time?

PI: Around that time I liked Joni Mitchell, because she was someone I knew of who played guitar. I didn't know any girls that played guitar. So you'd think that would be bizarre, because I'm more coming from a rock background, but she could play guitar and she plays very well. Otherwise, it was all girl punk bands like (from Germany) Xmal Deutschland, Malaria!... I was listening to a lot of all girl bands in England like the Raincoats, Modettes... Patti Smith, which you'd expect. I was very interested in what the girls were doing. I'd grown up on all the boys' music, so I knew all that stuff already.

JM: So when you first met Louis, back in 1979, were the Wet Taxis going then?

PI: No, I met Louis at uni and he wasn't even in a band then. I don't know when Wet Taxis first started. I joined in 1983, but they'd been going a bit before then, since maybe 1980 or '81.

JM: I only moved to Sydney at the end of 1984 and the Wet Taxis were well established by then, but they also had this reputation from their very early days for being highly weird and experimental. By about '83 I guess they were well past that, but there was still some of that aura about them. What sort of support did they have from paying punters when you joined?

PI: A lot of support. I think the scene then was different anyway. It's funny; I had a play with Jim and Nick last night and Jim was telling me that in 1979 the support bands then would get paid more than support bands do now. I don't know if that's because it was more of a thriving scene; whichever way, you'd think that support bands would be getting paid twice as much now, just with inflation. Wet Taxis had a lot of support from the public. We used to draw lots of people, but initially when they started, we're talking very early before that sixties psychedelic thing, they were playing what was called industrial noise. That used to clear the room, but when they changed the sound, within a couple of years they were more popular.

JM: By the time you got involved with Wet Taxis, had Louis hooked up with Brett Myers and Damien Lovelock? Were the Wet Taxis already part of that circle then?

PI: Yep. We used to play a lot with the Celibate Rifles and Died Pretty, so that's how that No Dance thing came about [the "Carnival Of Souls" EP put out by Louis Tillett, Brett Myers and Damien Lovelock]. The Rifles were with Hot Records, but Died Pretty were with Citadel. We did a big tour around Australia with them [the Celibate Rifles] and another Hot Records band, Mushroom Planet. Those three bands, the Celibate Rifles, Died Pretty and Wet Taxis were very closely connected.

JM: What about Paris Green, how did that affect the Wet Taxis? I believe that's how Louis first met up with Charlie. Did you or the rest of the Wet Taxis play in Paris Green as well?

PI: No, Paris Green was put together by Louis with Jeffrey Wegener, who played drums in the Laughing Clowns [he was also the original drummer in the Saints], and a bass player Raoul Hawkins. They started as a trio and played various residencies doing more bluesy covers, jazz, blues, soul, maybe not so much soul. Then because of the nature of that sort of music - they were playing twelve bar blues or whatever, songs that other musicians knew - they used to get a lot of other people coming in to jam. So, although they started off as the initial trio, they'd get lots of people coming in to sit in, so that could be like Greg Jordan, who used to play in Rose Tattoo, he'd play a bit of guitar; Charlie Owen... then they changed drummers and Louis Burdett started playing; Tony Buck was another drummer that played. There'd be a lot of movement amongst the musicians, but in terms of the musicians in Wet Taxis, no we didn't play with Paris Green. Maybe Nick played drums and maybe someone else might have sat in once or twice, but never consistently and I never played with Paris Green.

JM: The Wet Taxis had a bit of a hiatus around 1985, then returned with a slightly different line up. That first edition of Wet Taxis (or second, if you count the industrial noise phase separately) put out a single, then an album. Louis still plays the songs on both sides of that single to this day, but the subsequent "From the Archives" album still had a bit of "experimentation" on it, for want of a better word. What was the atmosphere like when you recorded that?

PI: Well that was recorded in bits and pieces on a very low budget, like no budget. Oh boy, you're stretching my memory. I'm just trying to remember all the songs. Some of it was recorded with Tom Ellard, who had been in Severed Heads. He had a studio and I think it was at a space called Art Unit, maybe in Redfern... I could be wrong. It was all pieced together with different songs from different studios. I can't really remember the rationale behind it. I think we'd always hoped that we could do a proper studio album; that maybe that would come next and this was just something to get out before we did that. There was some live recording on it too from, I think, a Triple J gig at the Trade Union Club... or Double J as it was then. We'd always hoped to do a studio album, but there was no money. Then the band did the single "Sailor's Dream", which was done in Paradise [Studio], with Rob Younger producing it. It would have been good to have a studio album after that, but I think we broke up after that, maybe about '87, and Louis decided to go solo.

JM: There'd already been a bit of a hiatus in between. You did that first single and the album and then the Wet Taxis basically went into hibernation, then came back with half the line up: you, Nick Fisher and Louis from the previous line up, but everybody else was new.

PI: Yep.

JM: The first time I ever saw the Wet Taxis was when you supported John Cale, which would have been in 1986, so the Wet Taxis were well established then.

PI: I didn't even know we supported John Cale...

JM: I've got a tape of it!

PI: Where was it?

JM: The Trade Union Club.

PI: Well, well, well. You sure it wasn't Nico?

JM: You supported Nico as well.

PI: We were lucky, weren't we?

JM: I can't remember if her show was before or after Cale (I think it might have been before). I didn't get to the Nico show, but I did see John Cale and someone recently gave me the tape I mentioned of the set from that show, which would have been the "Sailor's Dream" line up. Although they play the first single and a couple of tracks off the album, you can hear that the older garage/psychedelic sound is being replaced with the jazzier, for want of a better word, style that Louis has gone on to do solo. Was that a conscious decision when the band (effectively) reformed in '86, that there'd be less of the garage and more of the sort of music he was writing?

PI: No, it just came about. As far as I know, there wasn't any rationale behind it.

ON TO PART TWO