‘Jimmy Barnes played cupid’: How Mark Lizotte fell in love with his wife

Mark Lizotte is a musician best known for his band Johnny Diesel & the Injectors. Here, the 58-year-old talks about growing up in the US, his sudden “heartthrob” status, and meeting his now-wife.

In LA when the epiphany hit: “I thought, ‘Nothing will make me happier than spending my life with Jep’.”Credit:

My paternal grandmother, Fabiola Bazinette, lived in Somerset, Massachusetts and babysat me as a young child. She raised her children as a single mum. Her husband wasn’t around much and, when he was, he was drunk and abusive. He even stole money from my father, Hank, when he was 12.

Grandma was a devout Catholic who went to her local priest and asked for a divorce from her husband. The priest told her he couldn’t do that, but if she wanted to live with a “friend” that she could. That’s when Norman moved in – they had separate bedrooms. He looked like Lennie from John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, would play drums while Grandma played the organ, and they’d go around and entertain “old people” well into their 70s. I have a book of her song notes in my studio; her handwriting reminds me of my dad’s. We’d scrapbook together for hours, and being with her felt like the safest place in the world.

My maternal grandmother, Rita Morin, ran a convenience store in the US with her husband. He was an alcoholic. They lived above the store and raised my mum, Theresa Rita, as an only child. My grandmother had five miscarriages and later adopted a daughter when my mum was 13.

I am the last of seven children. My mum decided to stop working so she could enjoy me. That didn’t last long as she went back to nursing, but we spent some quality time together. We’d watch Sesame Street and she’d give me a salty bowl of pretzels. She also took out all the pots and pans from the kitchen, so I could make a drum kit. We lived in a small house in the rural area of Rhode Island with potato fields all around us. We would go to the laundromat 30 minutes away and spend time at a local diner while the washing was being done and eat chicken noodle soup together.

Mum passed away in 2002 from a pulmonary lung disease in Tasmania. She read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying twice. She was agnostic and understood what was happening when she died.

We moved from Chandler, Arizona to Western Australia when I was aged eight. I got severely bullied at primary school in year 2. I was a target for the boys and found comfort hanging with the girls, who were kinder and let me join them at lunchtime.

My sister Laura, who is nine years older than me, is the one who could see I had musical flair. She is an accomplished opera singer, teaches singing and can play flute and sing jazz. She would bring me into her bedroom as a kid and test my musical knowledge.

She wrote me letters when she went to the Victorian College of the Arts, and once sent me a tape of her dorm buddy playing cello. I then started learning cello at the age of eight in Western Australia. I played that until I got a guitar at 13. It was my older sister Donna and my older brother Brian who put their pocket money together to get me a guitar.

I formed my first band, Johnny Diesel & the Injectors in 1986, before going solo. When my music career took off, I suddenly found myself a heartthrob with pictures of me inside magazines. I had no control over it.

In 1987, I relocated to Sydney and met my wife Jep through Jimmy Barnes. She is four years older than me. Jimmy asked me to be in the video clip for Too Much Ain’t Enough Love and Jep was in charge of the wardrobe. Jep and I were friends for a long time and I didn’t want to ruin it; even though Jimmy and Jane Barnes were trying to play cupid. There was a point I was going on tour and had to say my goodbyes and Jep started crying. That’s when I thought we were more than friends. Note to self: this might be something deeper!

I was at the Roosevelt Hotel in LA, after playing at the Whisky a Go Go the night before, and had toured the world twice before when the epiphany hit. It was 3am and I thought nothing will make me happier than spending my life with Jep. I rang to tell her I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, to which she replied, “Oh, that’s nice.”

The penny dropped that I was not your typical “will you marry me” kind of guy. The next day we spoke again and pretty much started organising a wedding. We married in 1989 and have two children, Jessie, 32, and Lily, 28.

Mark Lizotte is now on his Bootleg Melancholy Album Tour.

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