4WD Touring Australia – June 2018

REVIEW

4wdtouring.com.au | 097

SIAMESE DREAM // SMASHING PUMPKINS

The search...before it even had a name or a trademark.

In the late seventies Surng World magazine had become the perfect place

for Bruce Channon and Hugh McLeod to show off their disparate styles of surf

photography. Bruce was more of the ‘straight-shooter’, with Hugh lending the

magazine more of an arty edge...these were the days of solarized photos and

weird painted frames around shots, after all.

In 1984 they worked together, with a few other shooters, on a concept book

all about the trek west into the desert breaks of Western Australia. Today, these

breaks are still the bastion of adventurous surfers who want to head far beyond

the crowded parking lots of the east coast. In many ways, this book was one of the

biggest inspirations behind what 4WD Touring Australia was, and still is. Our rst

issue featured the Coral Coast, with some of the same breaks that were featured

in this book. We went back in Series 5 of the show to surf places like Red Bluff and

Gnaraloo, places that had been ignited in my imagination after reading this book.

I’ve since collected a bunch of old surng coffee table books produced over the

years. I’ve got one that’s just on Red Bluff, with heaps of history and photos from

back in the day...when surng was even more of an ‘exploration’ than it is today.

But at the heart of that collection, this book will always have a special place. It

not only shaped what kind of surfer I am, and what kinds of places I’ve fallen in

love with...it helped to shape what 4WD Touring Australia was going to be when

it was nothing more than a rough idea in my head sitting next to a campre on

Teewah Beach.

So thanks boys for the inspiration, for the photos and the dreams!

There is no way that Billy Corgan hadn’t

listened to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless

a few hundred times before he wrote and

recorded Siamese Dream.

It blows my mind to think that the sound

of this album isn’t Billy rocking a million

pedals at once, but it just a fuzzed, distort-

ed Strat layered over and over itself and

then compressed down into a milky haze of

warm vibrations.

In a way, this album was the sound of the

early nineties as much as Nevermind ever

was, even it sold a fraction of the copies.

I think the difference was that Nirvana

went into the studio with Butch Vig kind of

against their will - there’s a legend that says

that Kurt wouldn’t multi-track his vocals until

Butch told him that John Lennon had done

it. And so much of what makes Nevermind

so damned good is what Butch brought to

the table.

Corgan went into the studio fully aware

that he was going to be essentially writing

pop songs in the Loveless style. It was a

studio approach to music, as much as an ex-

perimental, punk way of looking at things.

It’s no surprise that Vig was the producer

on this album too...and it makes you won-

der how much of that 90s sound was thanks

to Vig as much as the artists he was work-

ing with, in the same way that Phil Spector

shaped the sixties and Rick Rubin affected

the eighties.

The studio sessions are pretty legendary

too, with the drummer disappearing for

days-long benders, Corgan re-recording

all of the guitar and bass overdubs himself

and meticulously planning his own suicide

throughout the recording process.

Alan Moulder ended up mixing the

album, requested by Corgan after his work

on Loveless.

Siamese Dream is a symphony for

Generation X, a punk, progressive, grunge

masterpiece in thirteen movements. And it

still works, twenty-ve years later.

SURFING WILD AUSTRALIA – BRUCE CHANNON & HUGH MCLEOD