The Duff with the smooth: Jeff Duff explains everything

The will to shock has always been a stock-in-trade for this daring performer.

British Prime Minister David Cameron walked up to a podium on Downing Street late last month and, facing the world’s cameras, announced his resignation. Briefly, he looked like the loneliest man to ever stand outside No 10.

But that title surely rests with Australia’s Jeff Duff.

In 1979, as part of a publicity stunt to mark the singer being signed to London-based Beggars Banquet record label, Duff — by then going by the moniker Duffo — came up with the idea of a “naked rendezvous with prime minister Maggie Thatcher”.

It was the era of such antics. The Sex Pistols, drunk, had signed a record contract on a folding card table outside Buckingham Palace. But they were dressed.

Duff went to No 10 in a flesh-coloured body stocking with a single rubber breast cut from inflat­able sex toy attached to his chest. (He had lost the other on the trip from Melbourne.) He stood outside the prime minister’s residence, arms raised in then-popular punk defiance, for his picture to be taken. Within seconds, two mounted Queen’s Guards arrived, swords drawn. Sensing trouble, the photographers hired for the occasion fled for the Underground and Duff was arrested and taken to Cannon Row Police Station.

He was charged with “lewd and insulting behaviour”. When the court case came around the judge, informed by the arresting officer that Duff had not actually been naked, dropped the lewd charge, fined him £60 for insulting behaviour and issued a six-month suspended sentence.

There must have been a sense of deja vu as Duff paid up: he had been fined $60 in a Ballarat court three years earlier convicted of offensive behaviour after performing the song I’m Your Football Kick Me, I’m Your Ice Cream Lick Me while similarly attired, but that time with the dismembered head of an inflatable doll attached to his crotch.

These days such behaviour would hardly raise an eyebrow, but 40 years ago rock music was seen as a possible threat and provoc­ative, attention-seeking androgyny almost incomprehen­sible.

It is hardly surprising that his autobiography is dedicated to the memory of David Bowie.

“We’ve lost our breath,” Duff writes on the opening page, “our hearts have lost a beat, and for the moment we’ve lost our way. But your music always leads us back to a better world … your world.” Each artist emerged about the same time from what might well have been the same parallel universe.

Duff’s book is ambitiously titled This Will Explain Everything. And there’s much to explain.

From the early 1970s, Duff was a musical pioneer and perhaps the most fearless artist in the country.

He has always been a thin man, sometimes almost skeletal, and has at times had an aversion to food, this later evolving to anorexia, which was little understood at the time. Along with his sometimes effeminate demeanour and daring attire, it all added up to make his robust baritone all the more surprising.

The stick insect with the powerful rock pipes made his mark fronting the raucous jazz-rock outfit Kush. The eight other band members combined to look and sound like a local Blood, Sweat & Tears or perhaps Chicago, many of whose songs they performed.

But it was 1974’s driving (Livin’ On) Easy Street, written by Kush keyboardist Steve Ball, that put the band on the map, assisted by an appearance on the popular Paul Hogan Show.

Taking a line from an Ian “Molly” Meldrum review of one of the band’s live shows, the Kush album Snow White and the Eight Straights also climbed the charts. The follow-up jettisoned the American jazz-rock hits and was mostly composed by the band, with Duff’s unusual songs sitting towards the front. The cover of Nah Tellus Wh’t Kush Means Yer Great Sausage showed the band about to lynch Duff.

In the end there wasn’t room in this big band for its unpredictable singer; indeed, the country couldn’t accommodate him, and he headed off to England where his outlandish performances were categorised as a sort of prog punk, enough for Duff to be spat at on stage.

He appeared with a Duff-like wooden mannequin in the hope that it might deflect any physical assault — it was beaten nightly but survived a couple of years.

It wouldn’t have lasted the first night, and neither would Duff, had the London punks singing along to his modest British hit — the irony-free Give Me Back Me Brain — had measurable IQs.

Meanwhile, Duff mixed with the capital’s rock elite: he attended Paul McCartney’s birthday party and was spotted around town with Rolling Stone Bill Wyman and Britt Ekland (the tabloids had them in love) and he famously presented Andy Warhol with his latest album — signed, of course.

Warhol, who became a fan, responded with: “Sinatra, Presley, Jagger, Popeye … and now Duffo.”

Those fortunate to hear him sing were astounded by his voice. But, like the unconventional boy he had been, Duff was attracted to territory others seldom sailed.

His uncompromising independence led to a few tensions when Duff was growing up in suburban middle-class Melbourne, attending the same school as this year’s American NBA No 1 draft pick, Ben Simmons.

Simmons stood out because he was more than 2m tall; Duff was notable for the school jacket he had remodelled, his coloured shirts, gold cufflinks and the tie worn back to front — other kids were soon copying him and they elected him prefect.

It wasn’t long before the lad was bumping into authority, setting a lifelong trend. In any case, while a gifted student he wasn’t academically inclined and knew from early on that he was headed towards music and art.

Early bands led to Kush and a solo career, Duff making a different, mostly outrageous, costume for each of his Countdown appearances. But being different came at a cost: after returning to Australia following a decade in London, Duff was seriously bashed and kicked by a Kings Cross gang and needed his right arm reattached.

He still has the capacity to inspire a reaction, and not always one he can control: trying to demonstrate the harmlessness of the F-word after a NSW magistrate ruled that uttering it in public would no longer be a criminal offence, Duff, seeking to release the word from its taboo, encouraged patrons at Sydney’s The Basement to turn to the person next to them and “politely tell them to f..k off”.

They did, but not always politely enough. A full-on riot broke out, sparked by two men bashing each other at the bar. The Basement banned Duff for a year.

While Duff’s recordings have sold in modest numbers, his live performances are regularly sold out, particularly his acclaimed tribute shows in honour of the likes of Lou Reed, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Bowie.

But, of course, Duff cleverly abstracts the idea. The show and album, Ground Control to Frank Sinatra, are predicated on the idea that it is the mid-1970s and Sinatra and Bowie have been booked for gigs on the opposite coasts of the US. But there’s a mix-up: Bowie is mistakenly sent to the Sinatra gig and must perform his songs with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra; Ol’ Blue Eyes must do the same with Bowie’s Spiders from Mars.

Duff’s father John got it right. Before he died recently, he looked at the son who had lived a life seemingly set to no score, at least not one anyone else could hum. “Jeffrey, you are the bravest man I have ever known.”

This Will Explain Everything by Jeff Duff is published by Melbourne Books ($49.95).