The Silver River by Jim Moginie

Author:Jim Moginie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460717486
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

The closer to the light, the longer the shadow

By 1988, ‘Beds Are Burning’ had been a worldwide hit, selling hundreds of thousands of records. We’d had some recognition on previous tours, but this time we really had the song and the album to break through in America.

The size of the response was infinitely bigger than anything else we had previously experienced overseas. After a show to nearly 3000 people in Seattle, we were ushered into a cavernous green room full of overwhelmed radio contest winners and people who wanted to meet us. The door opened and they applauded madly, grinning and screaming, ‘Oh my god! It’s them!’

America! We were a product that they loved and wanted, and scrutinised both collectively and individually. Look what happened to Elvis with all of that sweet adoration. It was claustrophobic, and my reaction was immediate. I turned and headed straight back to the sanctuary of the dressing room. Willie McInnes, our American tour manager, followed me. ‘It’s okay, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘I know what to do.’ He filled a large dixie cup with ice, poured a big slug of whiskey into it and thrust it into my hand. ‘You’ll be all right.’ Things calmed down in the green room and so did I, thanks to the drop of ‘truth serum’, as Willie called it. It made me loquacious and seemingly witty, relaxing every muscle in my body so I could do my duty and ‘work the room’. The trick was to go in, walk in one direction only – meeting people, shaking hands, signing autographs, getting photos taken – and then leave. It was almost pleasant.

That was the beginning of my love affair with truth serum. As soon as our international career took off, alcohol was everywhere – in tubs full of ice in dressing rooms after the show, on the tour bus, in mini bars in the hotels, when carousing with the record label or in bars on our nights off. The business is awash with it. I veered away from alcoholism – self-preservation would kick in – but drinking became a coping mechanism. There’s a line I was treading between feeling good and becoming a rock cliché, but it wasn’t possible to perform our music high on anything: I was playing guitar and keyboards simultaneously like an octopus to replicate the more layered sound of our recent records and would never allow myself to miss a cue. For me, it was a deeply mental and physical gig that required every brain cell. The band was like a sports team with performance indices. We were expected to play hard and well – by our crew, our fans and, most of all, one another.

And we had a new bass player, Bones Hillman. He was just what we needed at that point, a ray of sunshine, and someone who was born to tour. On the first day he joined, in 1987, he asked me if I wanted to play some mini golf. I also discovered he had a wicked alter ego.

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