The Beasts pay tribute to fallen brothers and face the rock’n’roll myth Still Here record

When the Beasts of Bourbon lost Spencer P. Jones and Brian Henry Hooper, it seemed Australia’s baddest rock band were done. Now they’re back as The Beasts.

The Beasts of Bourbon are no more. The “baddest, ugliest, filthiest” hard rock band to command Australia’s pubs for 25 years ceased to be after the deaths of bassist Brian Henry Hooper and guitarist Spencer P. Jones last year.

In the wake of their passing, the band’s charismatic frontman and rock’n’roll renaissance man Tex Perkins and four other members have now christened themselves The Beasts — as their fans have always referred to them — and have released an album Still Here which pays tribute to their fallen brothers.

As they tour Australia to share the record and celebrate the lives of Jones and Hooper, Perkins is confronting the price paid by musicians for a life lived according to the tenets of the rock’n’roll myth.

The Beasts pay tribute to their fallen brothers with new record Still Here. Picture: Martin Philbey/Supplied.

The Beasts of Bourbon would set new bar records whenever they played and grateful venue owners would reward them with bigger riders for their own consumption before, during and after the gig.

“I think everyone bought into the rock’n’roll mythology, especially Brian and Spencer, and I think they paid the price,” he said.

“It was always ‘Let’s get a second bottle of whiskey, let’s get so drunk we have to crawl’.

“Let’s be the baddest, ugliest, filthiest rock’n’roll band we could possibly be. Now I think we can play powerful music without that destructive element.”

Perkins said the loss of his rock brothers naturally provoked some painful self-examination of his own life.

“Mentally, I haven’t done myself any favours with my self-examination,” he says.

“You do wonder if you could have been kinder, more tolerant, you could have been whatever and is it too late?”

The seeds for Still There were sown last April when various members of the Beasts of Bourbon assembled to perform a benefit for Hooper in Melbourne.

Before he died, less than a week after playing at that gig, Hooper had urged Perkins to get the band into the studio.

Frontman Tex Perkins said the deaths of his friends caused “painful” self-examination. Picture: MATHEW FARRELL

He assembled guitarists Kim Salmon and Charlie Own, bassist Boris Sujdovic, drummer Tony Pola and Jones in a Melbourne studio and in two days, they had an album.

Jones contributed the wry observation and darkly comedic At The Hospital during the sessions, facing his mortality with the lyrics: “There’s a clean waiting room, there’s a sense of pending doom, at the hospital.”

“The songs were all done so very quickly and instinctively,” Perkins says.

“We have always written songs about impending doom and the possibly consequences of a foolishly-led life. To have turned away from confronting that at this point where it’s actually happening around us would be hypocritical and not courageous.

“When Spencer came in with At The Hospital, that set the tone. ‘We’re going there, are we?’ Ok, let’s go boots and all.”

There’s nothing maudlin about Still There. It’s a bluesy rock record rendered with heart by musicians who have long been acknowledged as some of the best produced in Australia.

That musicianship and their camaraderie helped to counter the bittersweetness of making a record without Hooper and with Jones’ final contribution before he died in August.

The new look Beasts features band members who have never played together in the same line-up. Picture: Martin Philbey/Supplied.

“The new configuration of the band, which were all members who had played in the band but never at the same time, just clicked in a miraculous way,” Perkins says.

“I’ve got to say the musicianship was the thing that made it special. A lot of people are interested in the combination of Charlie and Kim that has never happened before and the rhythm section of Tony and Boris worked so well. I still view their musicianship with a ‘Wow!’

“Even though this was a farewell to Spencer, it has turned out to be a rebirth and it’s an absolute joy to be workiung with Kim and Boris again after so long. I’ve known these musicians longer than pretty much anyone else in my life.”

But as much as Perkins is continuing the Beasts’ musical legacy with the new record and current tour, he credits his wife Christina Higgins and five children as “really the only reason I do anything.”

Perkins says his job has afforded him the opportunities to give his wife Christina Higgins and their children “a good life”. PIcture: Christian Gilles.

“I am very lucky. I have got myself a job that’s something I love doing and the thing I love feeds them; I try to give them a good life,” he says.

“If I didn’t have kids, I would quite possibly be a completely different person. I think we should all be grateful I have kids.”

Still Here is out now. The Beasts perform at ANU, Canberra on Thursday, Metro Theatre, Sydney on Friday, Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle on Saturday. For other shows,

www.facebook.com/thebeastsstillhere

Originally published as The Beasts pay tribute to fallen brothers and face the rock’n’roll myth Still Here record