50 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com October, 2017LIVING^ L
EGEND
S
eve lucas is a vision of unre-
pentant rock & roll glory. Statu-
esque, platinum blond with just a
hint of blue eyeliner, he’s dressed
like a Harlem dandy complete with
walking stick – a stylish necessity after a
devastating injury in 2009. The last re-
maining member of Sydney punk outfi t X
has learned to live with death, betrayal, ex-
cruciating pain and commercial reward far
short of his reputation. How? With a twin-
kle in his eye, that’s how.Any kid in a Ramones T-shirt knows Radio
Birdman, the Saints, the Birthday Party.
X is a legend for afi cionados. Do you take
pride in that?
Yeah. The secret to our success is a total
lack of success. Every time we had a chance
to do something we fucked it up gloriously
and just rolled on.
How deliberate was X as an act of rebellion?
Well, you had [drummer] Steve Cafi e-
ro, who cut his teeth as drum roadie for
the Easybeats. [Bassist] Ian Rilen had just
been booted out of Rose Tattoo. [Guitar-
ist] Ian Krahe and I were 10 years young-
er and all we’d ever done was read Roll-
ing Stone. So [Cafi ero and Rilen] were
already institutionalised: You get onto an
agency, you make records, you get your
three per cent, you go on tour and you shut
up. Krahe and I were like, ‘Fuck that. There
has to be another way.’ So they embraced
our enthusiasm.
Your debut, X-Aspirations cast you as out-
siders, victims of police harassment. How
true?
Rilen wanted to be the bad boy. “I’ve
been in Long Bay [Prison].” Oh really,
how long were you in for? “Ah, they found
some pot and I was in a holding cell for
eight hours.” He would go out of his way to
make trouble with the police. Krahe and I
were into John Lennon’s outspokenness;
the idea of rebellion. “Something in the
Air”, “My Generation”, “Won’t Get Fooled
Again”... those anthems were our lifeblood.
Krahe died in ’78, Cafi ero in ’88... how did
tragedy inform your resolve to continue?Ian Krahe’s death was the fi rst taste of
death I had known. I had seen people [fl irt-
ing with] death with smack, but it took six
months for me to accept what dead real-
ly meant. We were doing a gig on Oxford
Street the night it fi nally hit me and I just
broke down. I remember Ian Rilen shak-
ing me. “You cannot do this! You’ve got to
take it like a fucking man!” We didn’t have
words like “closure” then. The process was
denial, breakdown, be a man, and move on.
X broke up countless times over three al-
bums. Was there a single issue?
At the heart of it, Ian had had Rose Tat-
too and “Bad Boy For Love” and he want-
ed that again. Now, X was becoming infa-mous but we weren’t a commercial band.
Ian was chasing something.
Groody Frenzy, Double Cross, A.R.M, The
Empty Horses, Los Trios Derros, Strawberry
Teardrop, Pubert Brown-Fridge Occurrence... you’ve been a marketing nightmare as a
solo name, haven’t you?
I had a manager for about three months
and he said, “What you’ve got to do, Steve,
is reinforce your name.” So just as the
Groody Frenzy thing was coming out [in
1990], we had these huge [posters]: “Steve
Lucas”. And honestly, I felt so embarrassed
walking down the street. I just wanted to
be in a band. The minute I call it Steve
Lucas and the Blah Blah, it’s not a band.
Did the Groody posters work?
The single got into the Top 40 with a bul-
let and the record company went into liqui-
dation. That was devastation number one.
Devastation number two? When my
daughter was 18 months old, my wife took
up with Ian Rilen. Then my fucking dog
died. So it was a 1-2-3. “That’s it, I’m down
for the count. I’m just gonna be a dad.”
Music became a sideline. I did Bigger Than
Jesus because I didn’t have to think about it.
You toured the US for the fi rst time in 2010
under extreme circumstances. Care to re-
count that story?
I ruptured a disc in my spine. I went to
an osteopath who basically squeezed all
this shit in the disc, mainlining it right into
my spinal column. My left leg was para-
lysed and I was starting to lose control of
the right. The pain receptors in my brain
were so traumatised they couldn’t switch
off. Then I got a call saying, “We wanna do
a vinyl release of X-Aspira-
tions for America. Will you
come?” I was taking 500mg
of time-release morphine
twice a day. I had a phar-
macy in my carry-on.
How did you perform?
As long as I had my feet
planted, I could stand and
deliver. Twenty-one gigs in
23 days, under extreme du-
ress. I began to wonder, “Am
I a musician, or just some punch-drunk pug
that just doesn’t know when to stay down?”
Did you consider giving up?
More than once. But what kind of mes-
sage would that send to my kids? The pain
was so excruciating I couldn’t be touched
without wanting to scream. A Buddhist
friend said, “The only way you’ll get over
this is to learn to love the pain and what
it’s giving you.” I remember waking up one
morning and realising, “I defi ne the pain.
The pain does not defi ne me. I’m gonna
get better.”
X just played a 40th anniversary tour. We
lost Rilen in 2006. You’re the last man
standing. What makes you do it?
Who else is going to keep [their memo-
ry] alive? They lived their lives to a certain
extreme that left them with no other re-
course. Any number of times I could have
been dead. I’ve gotta be here for a reason.
Playing in X is as good as any.STEVE LUCAS
Sydney punk mavericks X were in a state of thrilling implosion from
1977 onwards. Forty years on, only one man has been thrown clear.
✦By Michael Dwyer✦
PHOTOGRAPH BY MATT COYTEEVERY TIME WE HAD
A CHANCE TO DO
SOMETHING WE FUCKED
IT UP GLORIOUSLY.”