Interview: Tex Perkins on Johnny Cash, being stoned on stage and flipping off Scott Morrison
The Australian singer-songwriter on being stoned on stage, turning his back on his hopeless AFL team and flipping off Scott Morrison on live TV.
Australian singer-songwriter Tex Perkins, 58, opens up to Andrew McMillen about being stoned on stage, turning his back on his hopeless AFL team and flipping off Scott Morrison on live TV.
Preparing for the upcoming Man in Black shows is making me … work hard, because I’ve had quite a schedule this year. We’ve done this show since 2009; not every year, and we haven’t done it in theatres for four years. The next time we do it, there’ll probably be an even larger gap. I think I’ll be close to the age Johnny Cash was when he died (71), the next time I do this show (laughs). I’ll be able to represent the older Cash even more effectively.
The first money I ever made was … working with a bunch of arseholes in a billiard table factory during the school holidays, when I was about 15 in 1979. My older brothers knew these guys who had a billiard table factory, and of course, I was the young dickhead that got bullied and abused. I did sweeping up, sanding this, stapling that, and delivering tables to the most inappropriate places you could imagine. People would buy 10-foot tables and it would literally take up the entire lounge room. We’d just get these f..kin’ things in, and then go, “OK, see ya!” (laughs).
Here’s my best advice if you ever find yourself sad … “This too will pass.” I don’t mind being sad. There’s a difference between being depressed and sad. With sadness, I feel it; I embrace it. Depression is usually because I’m run-down, I’ve push myself too far, and I haven’t slept well for a while. There’s a place for sadness. I don’t want to live a life devoid of any of the potential emotions: I want to be happy, sad, excited, confused, amazed and afraid. All these things – there’s often results at the end of them.
My routine for warming up before a concert is … I smoke some marijuana, and have a cup of tea. I’ve been doing that for probably 30 years. The cup of tea is to warm up my voice, which may have been dried out by taking that particular sacrament (laughs).
Marijuana is … the answer to everything. It’s good health-wise; it gets me exactly where I need to be, creatively. I make no apologies of my love of not only marijuana, but the hemp plant in all its variations. It’s the “God plant”. I owe a lot to marijuana. I’ve found it incredibly useful, and I’m very grateful.
Being stoned on stage … can be a problem. You can immerse yourself so completely, and be operating on another level, that sometimes – very occasionally – the words may elude me. That doesn’t happen very often. It also helps me bring something fresh to something I’ve done many, many times. If there was a ledger, my use of that particular substance has been way more beneficial than the occasional problems it has given me. It’s probably 10 per cent negative, 90 per cent positive.
The dumbest thing I used to do was … put my mental health and wellbeing in the hands of the St Kilda Football Club. Last year, I decided I’d had enough, after being a supporter since the early 1990s. Once you start believing, you feel like such an idiot when they just piss it away. “How could this have happened? They were up by nine goals!” (laughs) Only this club could do this. I felt really stupid putting my heart, my mind and my soul in the hands of this entity that I had no control over. So I had a year off, and I think I got a lot of shit done.
My favourite kind of fan interaction is … when people come up and tell me a personal story that relates to a gig you’ve done, or a song you’ve written, or something connected to your music and how it’s impacted their lives. It’s often very moving, and it makes me realise how your music can travel. They’re like pigeons: you set ’em free and you never know where the message goes. It’s fascinating when the pigeon comes back, and you find your song has done these incredible things all by itself, without you really controlling it. It’s wonderful.
When I flipped off prime minister Scott Morrison on live television on New Year’s Eve 2020, during the bushfire crisis … I got 90 per cent really positive feedback, and 10 per cent really strong, psychotic feedback, including threats of violence. I lifted one finger, and that was one more than Scott Morrison did during that period of time to help with the whole situation. But I had no interest in stoking the fires of the outrage machine, and when The Australian didn’t get a comment, they drew a political cartoon of me, which is a rare honour for anybody. Of course they made me look like a jaded, old, drunk rock star who has no relevance – which I can’t argue with.
Tex Perkins’ The Man in Black tour begins in Sydney (September 20) and ends in Brisbane (November 24). His 30th anniversary tour with The Cruel Sea begins in Brisbane (November 30) and ends in Sydney (December 16).
More Coverage
