It's the afternoon before rugby union's World Cup final and the Darlo Bar in inner Sydney is littered with Poms in white football jumpers. One of them - three parts pissed even though it's only 2pm - drops by our table to bludge a smoke.
As the only smoker, Rilen obliges, pulling out a soft pack of filterless Camels, much to the Englishman's bemusement. Whether he's chuffed with the free smoke or wondering about the lack of a filter which will probably have him coughing up bits of lung seconds after his first draw, it's not clear, but he suddenly becomes harder to shake than a head cold and three times as annoying. The Pom decides to reward us for Ian's generosity by trying to deliver an interminable joke about camels and Lyndon B. Johnson.
The punchline receives rougher treatment than the Australian scrum will that night. Unable to raise a laugh, the inebriated would-be comedian's on his way. The episode elicits the observation from Ian that "there's one boy who probably won't make the kick-off tonight".
Fronting a solo band for a show at the Highway Motorcycle Club in 2003.
Q The idea of session work's never interested you?
(Laughs) No-one's ever asked me! 'Righto, let's get Ian Rilen and do this session'. No, I don't think so!
It was fun playing (with Moss). My mate Paul Demarco was on drums. Ian Moss. I don't know who else was in the band. Demarco and I are really good mates but my bass playing and his drumming never really clicked. He reckoned I was - not sure - too laid back or too far forward -
Q Too laid back???
It didn't quite click. It sort of did. It clicked enough to get away with it.
It wasn't like Cathy Green and I or Tony Biggs, the drummer in Hell to Pay. We've been playing together, off and on, for a long time was well. Hell to Pay. The Love Addicts. And his drumming is just - I've been playing rhythm guitar for a long time, it's like rhythm guitar and drums set the deal. The bass and drums always work. With the Love Addicts, the rhythm guitar sets the thing. I think if you took away the rhythm guitar - my particularly 'bad' or whatever you want to call it rhythm - the music wouldn't be what it is.
Q It's the chunky chords.
Yeah, it's like playing bass on a six-string guitar. It's pretty important.
Q How did you first take up the bass?
Ummm...my first interest in bass was when I first saw Max Merritt and the Meteors play, with Yuk Harrison, he was the bass player. When I saw that - I was about 17...
Q You grew up in Melbourne?
Yeah, Melbourne. I saw Yuk playing and that was it.
Q These were the guys in the latter-day Meteors, not the ones he brought over from New Zealand?
Yeah. I used to see them play in various places in Melbourne and I got sucked into bass straight away. As soon as I saw him play, that was it. Then I did a short time in the Long Bay College and decided that, when I got out, that (bass) was going to be it. So I got stuck into bass.
And I got my first real bass - my Telecaster, which I've still got - off Reno (Tehei) who used to play in the La De Das. I bought that bass off him at a pub one afternoon. He had a hot tip on a horse and he needed cash. I bought that old series bass for 80 bucks. It was supposed to be 200 but Reno got busted the next day and got deported. I still owe him 120! So Reno - if you're reading this...
Q And this was pre-Band of Light?
Yeah. My first band was with Johnno from Freshwater, Digger - Dallas Royal - who ended up in the Tatts. It was me, Lee Hamilton and Dallas Royal and Johnno had started rehearsing this band. And Norm Roue. Phil Key - the La De Das had broken up - Phil Key started Band of Light. He come and tried to steal Digger, but Digger didn't get a set of drums together because he was fucked. So he didn't get the gig.
But then Phil heard about Norm Hereway and nicked him. All of a sudden, my band was starting to disappear right under my eyes. And the bass player from the Band of Light left and Norm Roue said: 'Ian Rilen blah blah blah'. And I ended up joining Band of Light. Because I loved Norm's playing. It was to die for.
So that was my first successful band.
Q This was about '72, '73.
Yeah, you're probably right.
Q Where Band of Light a big deal at the time? You had a single go halfway up the charts, "The Destiny Song".
Yeah. The music was pretty good. The lyrics were a bit, sort of poofy. Phil's missus used to write the lyrics and some of them were like: 'Why are you out there/Doing things so wrong/When you should be home/Looking after your wife and kids'. Hippy stuff. But Norm and I were out there playing heavy, slide blitzkrieg sort of shit. 'ROWWWWW!' So I sort of ended up - I dunno what happened there. It's all a bit of blur.
I wasn't writing at the time. After Band of Light, Sebastian Chase got Rose Tattoo together, which was basically Peter (Wells) and I at the start. I was writing songs like "Bad Boy for Love" and "Sweet Love Rock and Roll" and a few others. Pete had the image and the ideas, I had the songs. Off we went.
Q You know you've been credited with the image stuff and ideas. Wearing street clothes and the cropped hair. And everybody had to have a band tatt.
That (tattoos) was Peter's idea. I think my idea was the chopped hair and fucking take your flares in! It was sort of a combination but it was basically Peter Wells' baby. The idea was a dirty, rotten ugly band, but with a good-looking front man with tattoos. That didn't happen (laughs).
Q Who was the first singer? Tony Lake? Where did you get him?
He never actually joined the band. He came up from Melbourne. Said: 'I've got a problem with my, whatever. I can't join the band'. The rhythm player, Lee Hamilton, and myself did the singing. Then we heard about Angry (Anderson), called him up and that was it. He joined the band. Buster Brown had just broken up.
Mick Cocks was sort of a mate of Angry's. He came in because Lee Hamilton sorta disappeared for a few weeks. Mick filled in and ended up being in the band.
Q He must have been young then.
He was about 20. I was pretty young too. I was 24-25.
Q You'd had some experience playing with Band of Light. By the way, what sort of level of shows were you doing in band of Light? How often did you play out?
Shit, I really don't remember! I only remember a couple of shows. One was with Lobby Loyde and the Coloured Balls. Some place in Melbourne. It was packed out. All skinheads. They were there for Lobby Loyde. We were headlining. But that was fun. Lobby had, like, 25 200 watt amps on stage. All the girls and all the boys had braces and shaved heads.
Q You picked up a lot of the skinheads with the Tatts.
Yeah, I remember doing shows with the Tatts in Melbourne and they'd come up. They were all about 30-35 years old. They still looked the same.
Q John has a list of bands from the early days that you were in. He's done some research (more than me!)
Q I did some research on the Internet. What was the first band you were in?
The first band was Band of Light. I was just dreaming about it before then.
Q Well it says on the Net that you were in a band called Space.
Ah Shit...yeah, yeah, yeah...Bobby Jebbett was the keyboard player...
Q David Kane?
David Kane on guitar. Robert Taylor on drums...
Q Terry Wilson?
He was the singer? I just fell into that because Bobby Jebbett was basically teaching me music. He's a jazz player. I was living with him and his missus. He used to make me do two hours of scales every morning at 7 o'clock and do all the stuff I hated doing. All I wanted to do was play rock and roll. They needed a bass player and I just fell into it. I knew fuck all about what they were doing. I just ended up doing it. That band never recorded. We all went to Perth and lived there for six months, playing gigs. I'd forgotten all about that.
Q Who were the Blue Aliens?
Fucking hell! The Blue Alien band.
Q Norm Roue on guitar. Roy Johnson.
I don't know if we played any gigs. That was Lee Johnson. I don't think we ever played live. It was going to be one of the bands that was going to be. I think was that after Band of Light and before Rose Tattoo.
Q I've got that down as 1975. Also, Blackfeather.
Oh yeah, I did a bit of a bass thing with them for a while.
Q Everybody played with Blackfeather!
It's all a blur to me, that period. I probably only did 3-4 gigs with them.
Q I always wonder about what attracts people to playing bass. When you see bands on stage, the guitarist and singer can sort of do what they want. The rhythm section has to work for a living. It seems like it must be harder work than just playing guitar.
Bass is something you're born into. It's a very sexual instrument. It's a drug. People go that bass is pretty easy to play. It's not easy to play well.
Q There seems to be a lot of bass players who are frustrated guitarists. Then there's a small group of bass players who are doing what they want. They're the ones doing something really creative with it.
It really annoys me when I hear guitarists who play bass who play too much, too many notes. It's really hard - same as drummers - to sit on a beat. With a bass player - just to hit that root and really punch it, to lay back. Hit it hard and hit it right. Not easy to find a bass player who can do that. Looking for bass players for years, I know how hard it is to finds one that can do that.
Q By the same token, it must be really daunting for someone trying out for the Love Addicts to know they have to measure up to you.
Q How do you judge them? You'd judge them pretty hard, wouldn't you?
I try not to be too hard on them.Cathy Green ended up playing bass in Hell to Pay. We were living together and we were writing songs. She'd be playing bass and I'd be playing rhythm. Then we got all these supposedly great bass players auditioning for Hell to Pay - 'cos Cathy was going to be the drummer. She ended up being the fucking bass player because she was the best of the lot of them. These supposed fantastic bass players couldn't do the job.
You know, she had the perfect feel of a drummer and, if I may say so, living with me for so many years, she developed my feel, in a way, on bass. Sort of that ooze. My fingers don't move around the frets. They move from one end of the bass to the other. That's the way to go. To me, it's a labourer's instrument. It's like being a builder's labourer.
On bass for X.
Q The speed of your runs is one thing but also the heaviness of your downstrokes...
Yeah, no 'doo doo doo doo'. Sometimes you can do both but if you keep it up (the speed) on the downstroke, it's a positive hit.
Q Have you ever tried to play funk?
I can play funk (smiles). Sometimes when I'm mucking around I do those "cluck-cluck-cluck' chicken things. I like a groove - I don't know what you call it (sounds out a bass line) - as in modern music. I don't know what you call it.
Q Do you read music?
Nah.
Q What size strings do you use on bass?
I try and get the heaviest I can get. But when they brought out the five string bass - so you got G, D, A, E and bottom B. So what I do, is chuck the G away, use the B for an E, the E for an A and so on.
My G string ends up being a D. My D string ends up being an A. My A string ends up being an E. My E string ends up being a B. It's a big fat fucking thing. So when you whack it, it doesn't flap too much. It's a bit like a railway line. It doesn't flop around. You get a purer, harder note.
Q Do you worry much about what sort of rig you're playing through?
Oh yeah. I always like two 15s, and I've always had a Fender 400 bass valve.
Q Do you always DI into the PA?
Always mike it and DI.
With guitar, I always play a valve amp. I always have a Goldentone, old '60s Australian amp. I've had two Goldentones. I think I paid $150-200 for each of 'em. They're sort of collector's items. They're warm, they're beautiful and they work.
Q What do you prefer? Guitar or bass? It's a silly question.
It's not a silly question. But I can't compare one against the other. I don't like playing guitar without singing. I love playing bass. Two different worlds. I probably prefer playing guitar and singing, at the end of the day.
Q Here's a really silly question - ever tried playing drums?
Forget it! No. I can't do it. I fall over after three minutes. The leg goes. I'm just fucking hopeless. I don't feel it in my guts. I played sax the other Sunday night. I can't play sax and he (Andy Thompson) can't play bass. He just went "dong dong dong" and I went: "Skronk" !
Andy and I are a bit of a comedy team.
Q So, you were with Rose Tattoo, you wrote their first single, and you left. The legend has it that them having a single on the radio meant they were going too soft. Is there any truth to that?
No, not really. No truth to it at all. The reason I left Rose Tattoo was because the songs that I was writing - Angry thought they were 'too punk'. Also, the management wanted us to do Rod Stewart songs, and I think when we did "Nutbush City Limits", that was my limit. 'I'm fucking out of here'.
"Hate City": Angry wouldn't play it.
Then I met the boys, the two guitarists from X (Ian Krahe and Geoff Holmes) - which was Evil Rumours. I played just once with them. I walked into this church hall. There were these two young boys with skin and blood over their guitars and I'm going: 'Fucking yeah, this is it!' They'd never played with a bass player ever. I walked in with a big fat rig and off we went. I gave notice the next week.
Q Where did you find Cafiero? Or did he find you?
No - oh, being an ex-cop, maybe he did! There was a guy Irish John, I was playing with Ian Krahe and Geoff Holmes - this is pre-Lucas - and Irish John said to me: 'I know this drummer, he's an ex-cop, he's the hardest hitter in the country'. So we went around to his place. He was middle class, a real estate agent, fucking shag pile carpet in his house and that stuff. And we were, like, Ian Krahe was like, no shoes.
He said, we'll have a jam. He had his kit downstairs in his cellar. We had the amps in the car and off we went. I thought, this is it. That's how we found Cafeiro.
Q He's been in bands before, though.
He was in that band - what was that band? They had graffiti sprayed all around Sydney…
Q The Creatures!
Yeah, he was in the Creatures.
So the first band was called Evil Rumours. Ed Fisher was the drummer. I left the Tatts -
Q Was that easy to do at the time?
Yeah, real easy: 'See you later'!
So I joined this band Evil Rumours. Me and the drummer had a fall-out. I got back to the place I was living at the time at Bondi. There was a telegram there. 'Futile for me - Ed'. Fucking hell! I'd just just left the Tatts, they're going through the roof. And I've just been fired from this band! Fortunately for me - and unfortunately for them - the band split in half. Ian Krahe and I went one way and Geoff and Ed Fisher went that way.
Then Cafiero, Lucas...X was born.
Q Do you remember the first show with X?
Yep. It was the Astra Hotel in Bondi. After the first show, they asked us never to comeback again! (Laughs)
It was really funny. We didn't have a name. Ian and I decided we wanted X in the name. We were sitting around, and I got a potato print and stamped "Rock and Roll" over a poster. Got a red brush and slashed X over the top of it. Stuck it on the door of the hotel. While I was sticking it on the door, this old bloke walked up and said: 'Oh - is the pub closed'?
(Laughter)
Q You were lucky X started here (Sydney) because you had the Sydney Morning Herald which is a broadsheet newspaper - big enough for a poster! Not many cities where they actually have broadsheets any more.
Yeah, it was perfect. I remember, Lucas and I, once we did the posters, forgot to put them up. So we got all these newspapers, sticky taped them to ourselves and did a pub-crawl. We were pretty tattered by the end of the crawl. There wasn't much newspaper left by the end of the crawl.
Q You very quickly attracted a following to X and were pulling 400-500 people who'd follow you to shows. It was pretty quick, wasn't it?
Overnight.
Q You were lucky in one way because the whole live scene (in Sydney) was expanding and you had lots of places to play.
The whole of Oxford Street was rock and roll. Our big thing gig then was the Unicorn (Hotel). Mentals (Mental as Anything) did Wednesdays and we did Thursdays, or something like that. "Dirty Degenerate Boy" and songs like that came out of that period. Some of that was true. Just behind where we played was the hotel bottle shop. Nick a bottle of Scotch. We only sing the truth!
Q Steve reckoned at one stage X were barred from 32 venues in Sydney. Was it mainly to do with the crowd?
It was mainly to do with the skinheads. Who liked us and realised the rest of the punters were easy prey, like little punks and stuff. They used to smack them out and stuff. I remember my wife getting smacked out by some fucking skinhead chick. I didn't even see it - there were too many people. There was a lot of violence around in those days.
And the press used us as leverage for the violence. I remember in RAM once, the front cover was a picture, a drawing, of all these heavy guys with squashed noses and the headline was "X", that we were the springboards for that. "Rock and roll violence and X". We were the reason for all that. And that was when we got banned. We couldn't get a gig for a while because of that.
Q Did it worry you at the time?
(Smiles) Nothing really worried us much at the time.
Q Steve told me a story once when you guys fronted Sam Rigghi at Harbour Agency (ED: the country's biggest bookers at the time). You guys went to see him, abused him and took off.
Yeah, I think we took a bit of pleasure in being unwanted. Ian Krahe said at one stage if it costs more than a dollar to get it, it's not rock and roll anymore.
Q Had Ian and Steve played in a band before?
Ian and Steve and Geoff (Holmes) - X was their first band. Well, Geoff never really made it into the band until after Ian died. Then Geoff came in and filled in. Steve and I thought something just wasn't right. So Steve did a crash course in guitar. "X Aspirations".
Q How long was that course - a week or 10 days?
Yeah.
Q And you went into Trafalgar to record "X Aspirations"?
Yeah, with Lobby Loyde (producing). Lobby had just come back from London. We knew each other from years ago.
He said: 'What are you doing?'
I said: 'I'm doing this' and played him a few songs, on the couch, on bass, without an amp.
He said: 'This stuff is shit hot - why don't you make a record?'
I said: 'No-one wants to know about us'. So it was into the studio right away.
Q So does "Bad Boy for Love" still pay royalties?
Yeah. I'm still drinking "Bad Boy For Love". It always gets put out on some thing like "The Best Beer Drinking Songs". Every time the Tatts go to Germany, about a year later I'll get the royalty on it.
Q I know after you left the Tatts, you went back for one show in about 1980. You did the second last night at the Bondi Lifesaver and it went live to air on Triple Jay. Through the X days, were you still knocking around with some of those guys?
Not sure about that show. Mick (Cocks) and I are still great mates.
Q I was going to ask you about the Illustrated Men. It was basically you and the Tatts without Angry. How did that come about?
I don't know how that came about. It was probably Pete's idea. I don't know what Angry was doing at the time. He was being a TV star or something. Pete said let's do it and you be the front man. Did that and it was fun.
