The Cruel Sea’s honeymoon exhumed for seventh album Straight Into the Sun
Life, loss and longevity: behind the scenes with The Cruel Sea amid a surprise victory lap for the veteran rock act — with no less than Cold Chisel watching on in a packed arena.
Band in van, en route to concert. It’s an experience as mundane as they come for touring musicians, for whom the audience offers proof of existence. No crowd? Death. Big crowd? Life.
Spend enough time in a van with the same bodies and faces over enough years and if you don’t want to murder someone or step out of a moving vehicle at some point, you’re made of stronger stuff than most.
The road is tedium. The road is joy. The road is sorrow. Often all three feelings at once, layered like a truck-stop lasagne.
This particular road leads to Homebush in Sydney’s western suburbs on a Wednesday afternoon in early December 2024. The band in the van, The Cruel Sea, has been working together since 1987. That’s 37 years of undertaking this sort of trip, from accommodation to venue, to take the music to the people.
Manager Vera Rizzo is behind the wheel, and as she pilots the van from the city out to Qudos Bank Arena, she enlists her driver’s seat passenger to make calls on speaker phone, requesting trips to bottle shops to procure special gifts for special people, for this is the final night of what’s been a prize opportunity for this well-travelled band.
Earlier today, the five musicians partook in a photograph session with Review at a central Sydney pub, then ascended to the rooftop for refreshments while frontman Tex Perkins sat for a chat.
Perkins, 60, is the sort of garrulous conversationalist who leans into the grandiose. Right now he’s eyeing the bitumen from behind aviator sunglasses while Rizzo steers the van down Parramatta Road. For reasons known only to him, Perkins has chosen to spend the first leg of this road trip speaking in Germanic tones – but suddenly, he self-diagnoses that the gag has hit its limit.
“Stop with the accent!” he yells to himself. “It’s not funny!”
“Is that Gregory again?” asks Rizzo, referring to the singer’s birth name.
“What, shouting unnecessarily? Well, you know, I’ve had a margarita and a fish sandwich, so … look out.”
The road is tedium, but today, at least – with Review riding along in the centre seat – there’s much levity on board, led by the frontman, who’s presently saying, “Yes, it took me a while to realise the benefit of underpants. Many tragic things had to happen.”
Perkins forever straddles a knife’s edge between seriousness and jocularity. This is a man whose many and varied gigs include embodying the late Johnny Cash on stage more times than perhaps anyone other than The Man in Black himself. A sense of humour isn’t a requirement to do something like that, but it helps, as does his habit of getting stoned before each and every show for the past 30 years, as he disclosed to Review in 2023.
Today, Perkins is in high spirits and attuned to the lucky cosmic joke of being paid to sing songs for a living, including with this most unconventional of bands which is riding together once again after a long period of inactivity. When reminded of a mid-flight spill he took at the height of The Cruel Sea’s success in the mid 1990s – he fell down a carpeted staircase while wearing cabin socks, after necking copious champagne-and-vodka cocktails with a Home and Away actor, thereby injuring himself badly while exposing his absence of underpants – he replies, “I do have troublesome knees. That’s mainly from kneeling; mainly in church, as a child. Then, when I was working my way up through the industry, there was a lot of kneeling, as well.”
“Working your way up to where?” asks Review, setting the singer up for a punchline as his bandmates’ laughter cascades around us.
“To being able to stand,” says Perkins, smiling.
When a company executive dies, board directors meet to appoint a new leader and press on, not least because shareholders demand it. When a member of a rock band dies? Much trickier.
There is no one-size-fits all solution when it comes to navigating such a delicate and emotional decision, particularly when they’re tied so closely to both art and commerce.
Some major Australian acts have found ways to keep rolling down the road of song after grieving the loss of a beloved bandmate. When Michael Hutchence died by suicide in 1997, INXS eventually elected to press on with a new man on lead vocals, starting with Kiwi powerhouse Jon Stevens from 2000 to 2003.
Crowded House was on hiatus when drummer Paul Hester died in 2005; when they returned to studio and stage, his bandmates enlisted Matt Sherrod behind the kit, while Neil Finn’s son Elroy has warmed the stool since 2020.
And when Cold Chisel drummer Steve Prestwich died in 2011, his grief-stricken colleagues eventually came to see continuing to play music together as the best way to honour their late mate’s legacy: with US-born drummer Charley Drayton, Chisel released three more albums and undertook four major tours, most recently late last year.
For The Cruel Sea, when guitarist and keyboardist James Cruickshank died in 2015, it seemed the band died with him, just like Led Zeppelin did when John Bonham failed to wake up after a bout of heavy drinking one night in 1980.
Established in 1987 by guitarist Danny Rumour (aka Daniel Atkins) and drummer Jim Elliott – who were joined by bassist Ken Gormly the following year, as well as Cruickshank – The Cruel Sea was once a little-known surf instrumental act plying its trade in Sydney pubs.
The band’s fortunes changed dramatically in 1989 when the quartet invited Beasts of Bourbon frontman Tex Perkins to join on vocals, after he had volunteered to become its low-key lighting operator one fateful night at the Harold Park Hotel.
His lyric-writing nous and focus-pulling charisma saw the group unexpectedly morph over time into a commercial outfit, most notably with 1993’s The Honeymoon is Over, which spent a year in the ARIA top 50 albums chart while reaching triple-platinum status (210,000+ sales). It also swept the ARIA Awards by winning five trophies, including both album and single of the year in 1994.
Its commercial peak wasn’t a fluke; the songs were simply too sturdy and catchy for its success to be minimised as accidental.
Besides the album’s defining title track – which featured in The Australian’s list of the best Australian songs from the past 60 years, published last June – one of its most enduring songs is Delivery Man.
Led by a distinctive strummed riff, powered by an ice-cold bassline and an irresistible percussive stomp, the song’s narrative centres on a defining Perkins character study that begins with the singer intoning: “Whatever you want, I got it by the dozen / I got it by the pound / Gimme a call, I’ll bring it round …” In its chorus, he makes a definitive statement that can be read as either promise or threat, or perhaps both: “I’m the delivery man / I deliver.”
Amid the 1990s-era alternative rock wave led by bands such as Silverchair, You Am I, Regurgitator, Grinspoon and Spiderbait, The Cruel Sea emerged as a dark horse in the music scene. Its unique melting pot of multiple genres – country, soul, blues, funk and reggae among them – meant its sound appealed to men and women alike, and resisted being pigeonholed.
The band’s ascent to popular notice can be illustrated by the fact that when The Rolling Stones’ Voodoo Lounge tour touched down in Australia in March 1995, they landed the national support slot.
“Some people thought it was a bit of a coup for us to get that tour and I suppose it was,” wrote Perkins in his 2017 biography, Tex, co-written with journalist Stuart Coupe. “On the other hand, I think they just got the biggest band in the country at the time and that just happened to be The Cruel Sea. Six months later it would have been Silverchair.”
Also in 1995, its fourth album Three Legged Dog reached No.1 on the ARIA chart, led by a memorable single named Better Get a Lawyer (“Don’t drop the soap / Don’t smoke no dope”).
Yet most good things come to an end, and after a sixth album release in 2001, tours became intermittent – a few festival or winery gigs here and there – until Cruickshank’s death in 2015 from bowel cancer, which seemed to draw a permanent line under this most unusual chart-topping act.
In terms of new music, the band lay dormant for more than 20 years – several lifetimes in the average span of a rock band’s existence. Until 2023, that is, wherein the bones of The Cruel Sea were exhumed, the dust brushed off, and the remains examined and weighed.
What lay beneath? A strong, distinctive set of songs that felt unconnected to a particular time and place, and thus continued to travel well.
Cruickshank’s surviving bandmates retained both the ability and the desire to reprise those songs. And crucially, the creative flamehad never been extinguished, having been lit decades ago by the shared chemistry of the core duo in Rumour and Elliott, then bolstered shortly after by bassist Ken Gormly.
The combination of these three players, with their idiosyncratic approach to their instruments, is what powered The Cruel Sea, then and now.
It wasn’t until 2023 that the surviving quartet of Rumour, Elliott, Gormly and Perkins regrouped with its tools, having welcomed into the fold guitarist Matt Walker — an ARIA Award-winning musician in his own right whose many gigs across the years have included touring in Archie Roach’s band, and playing alongside Perkins in various combos.
What spurred a reunion, after 10 years between gigs, was the 30th anniversary of The Honeymoon is Over. The band’s record label, Universal Music, was planning to issue its biggest-selling album on vinyl for the first time; 1993 being, of course, a point in the history of the music business where the LP format was dead, buried and cremated – unlike today, where vinyl has become a surprise perennial seller.
Having been around the block a few times in this industry, Perkins is unsentimental about the role of record labels. Since it was Universal’s idea to reissue the older album, the thinking was: why not stick with them for the new one, too?
“If they can get it out there and promote it, good; but we don’t expect to conquer the world or anything. We were already in bed with Universal, so it just made sense to continue being f..ked by them instead of somebody (else),” he says, laughing.
The band’s return to the stage in late 2023 to sold-out theatre crowds while marking that 30th anniversary milestone was a success. A few songs into the Brisbane debut, Perkins paused to dedicate the show “to the memory of James Cruickshank”, and left it at that, drawing a loud cheer from the 3000 or so fans in attendance.
When Adelaide-born rock quintet Cold Chisel announced a national tour alongside its own 50th anniversary tour last year, The Cruel Sea earned another prime support slot. Speaking with Review in October last year ahead of the tour, Perkins was also unsentimental about his band’s role in proceedings.
“With such an iconic band, you know no one’s there for anybody else: you could put a f..king juggler, two greased pigs and a watermelon on before (Chisel), and that would be acceptable,” he said with a laugh.
“We’re lucky to be there, really, and to have the ear of so many people. There’s no pressure on us. We’re just the garnish; we’re like the chips you don’t eat on a counter lunch meal.”
All of which brings us to the concrete bowels of Qudos Bank Arena, once known as the Sydney Superdome, where Cold Chisel’s mighty national tour – dubbed The Big 5-0, and composed of 23 shows comprising about 225,000 ticket sales – draws to an end in early December.
As The Cruel Sea exits Rizzo’s van and enters via the loading dock to find its spacious and well-appointed green room backstage, they’re chuffed to find gifts of Penfolds wine and handwritten cards addressed to each band member.
The message from Cold Chisel in each of the cards reads: “We never thought it could be this good! Thanks for bringing the calm seas and the good vibes. Let’s do it again … sometime.”
Tucked into the quintet’s proverbial back pocket is a new set of songs that began with guitarist/songwriter Dan Rumour passing a demo CD to Perkins at the first band rehearsal in 2023.
That hand-off resulted in a flurry of writing that culminated with recording at Soundpark and Union Street Studios in February 2024. Titled Straight Into the Sun, the 10-track set opens with a guitar riff played by newest member Walker, momentarily foregrounding the new guy.
About half of the songs are based on Rumour’s demos, and The Cruel Sea’s seventh album is a typically eclectic and engaging listen, complete with a couple of mid-set instrumentals in Razorback and Storm Bird.
Asked about this iteration of the band while sat in the green room, bassist Ken Gormly replies: “Well, it’s just beautiful, because getting old is just fine as wine. I don’t know whether it’s just (that) when you get old, testosterone levels are falling. This is where you become a squishy grandparent, here; this is where you tear up a little bit at (watching) pet food commercials or something.”
“Now, everything’s sweet, and we’re all begetting wisdom and a little bit of gratitude, and it all seems so completely inappropriate and dumb to carry on about anything,” says Gormly, 63.
“As you get older, the line between the living and the dead starts getting blurred,” he says. “And so you just carry them with you, when you’re out there. We’ve just got a sense of f..king belonging. Sometimes, I get this swoon; I just go f..king floppy, ‘Oh my god, I’m so f..king so in love with (music)’.”
While we talk, black-clad Chisel frontman Jimmy Barnes stalks into the green room and makes a beeline for Gormly, who stands for a gracious hug. “Thank you for doing the tour, pal,” says Barnes, grinning. “Such a pleasure, mate.”
We watch his retreating figure as the singer greets the other band members warmly.
“At the beginning, I was sceptical,” says Gormly, “Because I said, look, if we’re doing this, the only things we’ve got – our main assets – is our love for one another and our vibe; if we lose that, we’re gone. And the other is our reputation.
“That might sound like a band killer, you know, trudging around doing f..king 20 support shows for Cold Chisel. ‘Is that a band killer, guys? Because I’d rather say no to the money if it was gonna kill us, and we were all going to be shitty.’
“But it’s the complete opposite; I was completely, utterly wrong,” says Gormly, shaking his head. “Watching these cats, it’s been an education, just to watch them tick, on and off stage. Get deep inside their songs, you realise they’re greater than the sum of their parts.
“There’s fantastic playing, but there’s a real sophistication in their sound. They’re synonymous with ‘bogan rock’, yet they’re these take-no-prisoners f..king road warriors. There’s something really sophisticated about them, and it’s why they endure.”
It’s not until months after this conversation that it occurs to me the bassist could well be talking about his own band, perhaps minus the “bogan rock” association.
A little later, Gormly and co are out on stage, faithfully fulfilling the role of opener. Big crowd. (Life.)
The headline act is soon to play its final Australian show until god knows when, before about 13,500 punters – but rather than pacing the hallways with nerves, here’s three-fifths of Cold Chisel watching from the wings, which means none of them appears to be comparing the support act to pub lunch chips.
Pianist and songwriter Don Walker stands alone in a leather jacket, taking it in with a silent smirk; drummer Charley Drayton bounces onto stage for a guest spot on vocals and percussion, and even the most famous man in the building, Jimmy Barnes, is there: out of sight of the crowd, but listening keenly, and soaking up both band and crowd while he psyches himself up.
On stage, as his four bandmates work their instruments while playing songs old and new, Perkins stands at the microphone and projects to the back row of the arena. As is custom, mid-set he retreats from centre stage so that The Cruel Sea can briefly return to its former role as an instrumental act. As he waits in the shadows behind Jim Elliott’s drum kit, what he hears – then and now – is a band that delivers.
Straight Into the Sun is released on March 7 via Universal Music Australia. The writer travelled to Sydney with the assistance of UMA.
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