Online interview with Russell McDougall (2019)
Where and when were you born? Did you live then in a musical family environnement (parents playing or listening to music, older sisters or brothers etc...) ?
I was born in Newcastle NSW in 1954. My grandmother on my mother’s side taught piano till she was over ninety years of age, and my mother also played, winning a number of eisteddfods when she was young. But like my grandmother she disliked the limelight and she gave up the piano when she married my father. So sadly I never heard her play. My father’s family also was musical: the family could fill the room when they gathered to sing around the pianola, my grandfather’s legs pumping the peddles for an hours at a time, and I was part of that as a child. I didn’t know then that he had been a drummer during the Depression, with a large family to support, and that he had had a nervous breakdown, after which he stopped playing altogether. In my immediate family, there was hardly any music at all. My parents supported my desire to learn to play – piano at first, then guitar – and my father even drove me to my first gigs, when I was still a child, sitting in with club bands. But they were totally opposed to me making a life as a musician. By the time of my teenage years my parents’ opposition became a big problem for me; and, with music fuelling my rebellion, I determined to leave home as soon as I could. My brother (now a music teacher) was five years younger and he was learning the piano. But it was many years before we played together, by which time our musical interests had grown apart. He’s now a high-school music teacher.
What was the first song that made an impressive impact on you ? When was that? What did you feel then ? Did you try an instrument there and then (guitar i guess, but i may be wrong) ? Or did you learn playing music later ?
I don’t remember a particular song standing out for me at the beginning. I was three-and-a-half when Lee Gordon's Big Show came to town and my parents took me with them to my first concert (12 October 1957): Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Alis Lesley (the Female Elvis, as she was known) and Australian rocker, Johnny O'Keefe (who had just formed his first band, The Dee Jays). It certainly did not convert my parents to rock 'n' roll and in fact it freaked a lot of people out completely. Little Richard made his entrance on stage "wearing a green jewelled turban, a canary yellow suit and a crimson cloak." In Melbourne he caused a near riot, "peeling off layers of clothes until he was left wearing only the turban and a pair of pyjama trousers." Of course I don’t remember this but apparently I insisted on dancing wildly in the aisles. A year later O’Keefe released “Wild One" (which he co-wrote) on his the “Shakin' at the Stadium” album. (Iggy Pop covered it on the Blah-Blah-Blah album in 1986, re-naming the song “Real Wild Child”). Bandstand started on Australian television in 1958. We didn’t have a TV then but by the early 60s I was watching Bandstand every week, fascinated by the local artists who appeared on it like (Col Joye, Dig Richards, The Delltones, The Bee Gees, Ray Brown and the Whispers, Max Merrit and the Meteors . . . ). My grandmother had commenced my piano lessons when I was was eight. But I was more taken by the new guitar music of The Shadows and the surf sound of Australian bands like The Delltones and The Atlantics. So I ditched the piano and switched to guitar. The first songs I remember learning to play were folk song on an acoustic guitar: “Pearly Shells,” “Tom Dooley” and “Puff the Magic Dragon.” But one night in early 1964, following this usual Bandstand TV broadcast, a special music feature appeared, an Australian production titled “The Liverpool Sound,” starring Gerry and The Pacemakers, Brian Poole and The Tremeloes, Dusty Springfield and a special guest from the US, Gene Pitney (all of whom were touring at the time as part of a “Liverpool Sound” package put together by legendary Australian promoter, Harry M. Miller). I was so completely blown away by this that after a while my grandmother took pity on me and bought me an electric guitar, a red Maton Firebird. I started playing “Pipeline” by The Chantays, “Atlantis” by The Shadows and “Walk Don’t Run” by The Ventures. But in June 1964 The Beatles made their one and only tour of Australia. At ten years of age, I was too young to be allowed to go and see them perform. Still, I was caught up in the excitement, and after that I learned to play all of The Beatles songs, and I started to sing.
Who were your musical models when you started to play music ? Did you took lessons to progress, or did you do everything by ear?
Despite what I’ve said, I didn’t really have models. I listened to everything that the radio played. I had no style of my own. I was too young to really know what I was into. I did take lessons. I learned to read music and my grandmother taught me some music theory. I bought sheet music at first. But it often seemed to be wrong, and lots of what I wanted to play was not available in that form. So I started to work things out for myself and gradually to play by ear more and more.
What was your ambition then ? Playing solo, playing in bands ? If you played in bands before Mac II, what were their names and their music styles ?
I played in a couple of different bands, though I can't now remember their names. In any case, we were not very good. We were into blues rock. My favourite band then was Free, but we were also playing Spooky Tooth as well as songs by sadly forgotten Australian bands like King Fox and the Dave Miller Set.
Did you record with those bands ? Or maybe did gigs in high school or elsewhere (prior to the Warners Bay High School folk project)?
Thankfully, I didn’t record with those early bands. We did do a few gigs, at high school dances and the like, but not many. We often didn’t have the full complement of players. For some reason we always found it difficult to find a suitable bass player. I was at Toronto High School (on the other side of the lake from Warners Bay) then, and sometimes I took my guitar to school, or I invited friends back to hear me play. There was a Toronto band who practised not far away from where I lived, just up the road, called Armageddon, which was making a name for itself in the Newcastle music scene. On one occasion they came to my place to hear me play, as they were looking for another guitarist, but I was too young to know what was going on, I had not developed a style of my own and I didn’t even really understand what they were there for until after they left. (Years later I played with their by-then-ex bass player, Paul “Struck” Matters,” who was also briefly a member of AC/DC.)
How and where did you met Iain McLennan? Was it first on musical grounds?
I met Iain when I moved form Toronto High School to Warners Bay High School in 1971 for the last two years of my secondary education. I can’t now recall the exact circumstances. Probably it was when I joined the school folk group. By this time I was writing my own songs and so was Iain. His first instrument was the drums and for a very short time he played drums in a band with me, though I can only recall our doing two gigs, one at our own high school dance. But he also played acoustic guitar. I had recently taken a strongly acoustic turn, inspired by the music of Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne and other singer-songwriters, although I didn’t even own an acoustic guitar any more. But I borrowed one from my girlfriend and Iain and I started to play together. Iain and I were each writing our own songs by this time, though I don’t think we ever wrote together, and we would sneak away from classes and find empty rooms where we could play together and try out things on each other. We just clicked - and for those last two years of high school we were great friends. I was having (or rather, causing) a lot of trouble at home and one time, after a great argument, I left - and stayed at Iain’s place, until I was ready to go back. The songs we were writing were rather romantic, but sometimes also a bit edgy. On one website recently I saw it described as acid folk, though that was a term I would never have known back then. In any case, a lot of the other kids at school liked what we were doing. They looked up to us and we had a ready audience.
What are your memories of the Warners Bay High School Folk Group and the record you did then (starring also Iain) ? In what year did this record has been made?
Bob Ireland ran the folk group. I didn’t want to join it at first. But a lot of the girls I liked were in it and I was the new kid on the block so I was easily persuaded. Besides, it got me out of classes sometimes. But actually I enjoyed it. It reminded me of those family sing-songs around the pianola, though of course it was more organised, with the vocal harmonising mapped out beforehand. Bob chose our repertoire and it was quite eclectic, including songs by Bob Dylan, Nana Mouskouri, The Seekers, Simon and Garfunkel as well as some traditional folk songs. But whenever the group performed in public Bob also made sure that Iain and I were able to include a song each of our own; and when the folk group recorded an album, “The Folk at Warners Bay” (1971), we each had a song on that too. Personally, I was not pleased with mine. When I heard it, I realised it was a pretty poor composition, and also that the organ backing had not worked. But it was in this way that Iain and I began to find our own small audience and to gauge the reaction to our own song-writing; and it was in a pretty controlled environment, performing locally (mainly in-school) and with the album selling mostly to our parents and to other school kids.
I guess you recorded with Iain the Mac II album after this Folk Group thing. Is it through the Folk Group album that you knew about Audico Records in Australia? Do you remember more about this label?
Through recording “The Folk at Warners Bay” we met Brian Rippon, the proprietor of Audico Records, which was a very small independent label. It fact, Brian was Audico – it was simple as that. Brian’s main gig was making amplifiers and speaker systems for local Newcastle bands.
After the Folk Group and before Mac II, did you recorded other original songs ? Alone or with Iain or someone else ? If yes what happened to them?
I spent a month or two in the States the year that we recorded Mac II, as an exchange student at Nederland High School in Texas. The son of the family with whom I stayed was a guy named John Baucum, who was a year older than me, and who played piano. Through him I met a number of young and aspiring musicians from around Beaumont and Port Arthur. Janis Joplin came from there. ZZ Tops too. Johnny and Edgar Winter. For a musician, it was a great place to be. In Port Arthur, I recorded two songs with local musicians I’d met. This was the first time I was ever in a recording studio. But I left soon after that and of course I had no record deal. So the songs were never released.
Who had the first the idea of the Mac II album project ? Was it a vanity project at the end of high school, or did you hope then to make a leaving through writing and playing songs ?
I have no idea. It seemed to be just a logical extension of everything that had come before. It may even have been Brian Rippon’s idea. I can’t say what I was hoping for really, as I was always on two tracks, the one academic and the other musical. In fact, I was a divided creature on many levels. Reconciliation took a long time.
The Mac II name is easy to understand (both of you have Mc in their family names). But did it have another meaning to you ?
Yes. It was a play on words from fluid dynamics, where Mach 1 represents the speed of sound. At Mach 2 you are travelling at twice the speed of sound. You have broken through the sound barrier and are supersonic. Of course, it depends on the atmosphere and the height above ground, but we didn’t know that.
What are your memories of the recording of this album ? Did you remember the studio, the set-up, the instruments etc... Do you remember how long it took to record it ?
There was no studio or anything like that. From memory, we recorded most of Mac II in Brian Rippon’s lounge room – although I think we may also have recorded one or two tracks at Ted Frost’s place. He played bass on a couple of tracks. The album was recorded pretty quickly. It was for the most party just guitars and vocals. I still didn’t have a decent guitar, except for the Firebird, but I wasn’t playing electric guitar anymore.
How many copies were pressed then ? Where did you sold them ? Through family and friends, or did you start doing gigs with Iain to sell both of you and your music ?
To pay for the EMI pressing we signed kids up in advance at the school to buy the album. We weren’t out to make any money; and I think Brian Rippon didn't charge us, either for his time or for the use of his equipment. We just worked out how many we had to sell to pay our costs and that was the number of copies we had pressed. So the record sold out instantly!
Why did you stop recording with Iain?
The simple answer is that we were on different paths. But life is never simple. I was always on two paths, the academic one (which I was failing) and the musical one (which I was pursuing). After school Iain moved to Sydney and started playing in bands. He was always a great drummer. I stayed in Newcastle and started university, without knowing why, except that I had a scholarship, which gave me enough money to move out of my parents’ place. I had been trying to interest record companies in my work as a solo artist all through school, to no avail. I decided to approach the local radio station, 2NX, with the recordings I had done in the US. It was then the top music radio station in Newcastle and hosted most of the big concerts. It also had links to other top-rating radio stations - 2SM in Sydney, 3XY in Melbourne. I worked freelance with the 2NX production and marketing team, writing jingles, which was good practice for song-writing and gave me access to professional recording facilities. I recorded the theme song for the city’s Mattara Festival at 2SM with Peter Martin (guitarist with the Southern Contemporary Rock Assembly) as producer, and it was in high rotation on 2NX, which is how I first became known in the greater Newcastle region. After this the station invited me to open for the British group, The Hollies, in Newcastle. I hadn’t seen Iain for several months – he was in Sydney, I was in Newcastle - and I had little time to prepare. So I decided to do it on my own. And that really was when we split. I’m sorry it ended this way. I lost a good friend. Of course he went on to bigger and better things. But I miss him.
Did you continue then to write and/or record songs (by your self, or with other bands) ? I've heard about a 7" single under your name called "It's Too Much (For Me To Hide)" b/w "I'll Walk Into the Rain" in 1974. Is it you ? What are your memories of this ? What kind of songs are they ?
The Hollies concert launched my musical career. After it, I was at last able to buy a decent acoustic guitar, a Maton Southern Star (12-string). I opened for Brian Cadd and the Bootleg Family at the old Century Theatre in Broadmeadow (with Kerrie Biddell, from The Affair) and again at the big outdoor Mattara Festival concert in Civic Park (for a crowd of around 30,000 people). I was getting gigs as a solo artist and I was building up a following, albeit still a very local one. All through school I had been trying to interest records companies in my music, to no avail. Finally Chris Gilbey, the A&R manager of Alberts Productions (EMI) agreed to take me on. This is how I got to record the single. The B side (“I’ll Walk into the Rain”) was meant to be the A side, but they were switched on the advice on one of the DJs at 2SM. We recorded both sides at ATA Studios in Glebe, which was owned by Col Joye, and which had been booked for a Bobbi Marchini session. When she stopped for a break, I stepped in with the session band to record the single. Mark Punch was the guitarist, from Renee Geyer's band, Mother Earth. Russell Dunlop was the drummer, from the same band. They were great musicians, but it was all over in an hour, maybe two. Bobbi put down the backing vocal on one of the tracks later, and there was an overdub of slide at some point, but I never even met that guy. And that was that. The single made the Top 20 in my hometown, but I was far from happy with it. I had no say in either the production or the arrangement and the final thing sounded nothing like I had imagined.
What happened then ?
I was supposed to do an album with Alberts Productions, from which the net single would be drawn. Chris Gilbey had two guys in his song-writing stable whom he wanted to write half the songs and I would write the rest. I met these guys and I didn’t like their song at all. I realise now that mine were probably not much better and they were certainly less commercially viable. Gilbey sent me to get my hair styled for a photo shoot for Go Set; and I complied. But I didn’t like the direction in which I was heading. Glam Rock was happening then and Alberts had taken a singer by the name of William Shakespeare to No. 2 on the Top 40 chart. It was written by Vanda & Young, of the Easybeats, but I hated it; and so, as I hadn’t yet signed a contract, I just decided to walk. The success of the single meant that I was able to get a lot more work playing live. But effectively – perhaps perversely - I turned my back on a recording career. I had been failing university and I wanted to change that too. I secured a residency at the Clinker Tavern in the Belmont Hotel, four nights a week, with Bruce Gates on congas – although his stage name was Ralph Mellish (after the Monty Python character). After that we had another residency in Sydney in the basement of the new AMP building on Circular Quay. But it wasn’t really going anywhere, so I went back to university. After that I busked around Britain, Europe and the Soviet Union – west to the Outer Hebrides, east to Uzbekistan, north into Lapland, south into Andalusia. Eventually my interest in literature took over. In fact, I loved the music so much, I wanted to protect it from habit, control, routine – anything that might turn it into a chore, or a job. It was therapy, really, though I don't suppose I could have articulated this at the time. I came back to Australia, wrote an Honours dissertation on Russian émigré literature at the University of Newcastle, did an MA in Australian Literature at the University of Adelaide, then a PhD in African and Caribbean Literature at Queen’s University in Canada. I never stopped playing but for a long time I did stop performing. In 1987 I won the Traditional Bush Ballad Songwriting Competition at the Henry Lawson Festival of Arts in Grenfell (NSW) for a song called “Coal River on a Sunday.” In 1990 I moved to Armidale in northern New South Wales, to take up a job at the University of New England, where I am now Professor of Literature. I played for maybe a year in the Maxwell Street Blues Band, then I teamed up with an English guitarist, Ian Johnson, with whom I formed an acoustic guitar duo called The Missing Years. We performed together for more than ten years, on an off. For a while we were a three-piece band, with Jill Griffiths (later of the Sydney Sinfonia) on double bass. I finally went into the studio again in 2003 and recorded two songs, which were produced by Stephen Phillip (ex- Do Re Me), after which we teamed up for a while under the name "Op Zoom" and recorded three more of my compositions. Maybe we'll put this up on SoundCloud sometime.
Did your children listen to your songs? What do they think about them ?
I have no children. In any case, my family never showed much interest in any of this.
Feel free to add anything else you want.
Every year almost, I travel to Jamaica, and sometimes Trinidad, for research and to play with friends there - reggae, calypso, mento, the old folk melodies - old songs, good friends. Over the years I’ve experimented with just about all kinds of music, mostly for my own enjoyment. It took a long time but in the end I managed to strike a pretty good balance between my academic work and my music. Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to “retiring” or rather “unpaid employment” so that I can write and play as much as I want to.