JOHN BOTICA

Stepping out of the Shadows

Interview by Robert Trenor

16th October 2002

RT: So John, how long have you been a musician?

JB: Since I was around 14 years old

RT: Was guitar your first instrument?

JB: No, I first wanted to be a drummer, but I couldn't afford to buy a drum kit. It was suggested by a local semi pro musician and drum teacher that I practice on telephone books as they've got a similar reflex to drum skins and of course they're not half as loud so they wouldn't drive my parents to the brink of insanity. I did this for a while, until one of the school toughs heard about it and thought it would be a great idea to beat me up in the schoolyard in front of all the girls.

RT: Sounds like it was a pretty rough school you went to?

JB: It was rough if you were into anything other than football or cars. But oh yeah, I did do a bit of hard time there. I used to hang out with all the oddballs, we were just a bunch of fun loving peaceniks out for a laugh and I don't think that washed too well with some of the school yard thugs.

RT: Where was this?

JB: This was in Blacktown in the Western suburbs of Sydney where I grew up. It was a typical blue collar working class environment. Lots of red bricked houses, clothes lines and barking dogs.

RT: When did you finally make the decision to swap the telephone books for a guitar?

JB: About two weeks later.

RT: Was your first guitar a good one?

JB: I saw it in a hockshop window for $39.95 and said to myself "That's the guitar for me" It looked as ugly as sin, had a bowed neck and sounded absolutely terrifying, but at least I could be seen playing it without fear of sustaining physical injury.

RT: What type of guitars do you use now? What's your favourite?

JB: Well my favourite is still my old Gibson Les Paul. It's a 72 custom. I recently gave it a face lift, it used to be a horrible mat black with scratches and stickers and stuff all over it but now it's a pretty polar bear white. Maybe a little too pretty. I've also got an 83 elite series Fender Strat which I keep on stage as a spare incase I break a string or something. I often find myself using it in the studio for certain bluesy type things that the Les Paul can't do so well. It was actually a 23rd birthday present from my mum. I have to say that even though I've had it for around 18 years or so I'm still not entirely comfortable with it. It's weird, the Les Paul feels like an extension of my body and I'm still too scared to use any other guitar on stage. I've had the Les Paul since 1979 and the guitar I had before that was a pretty good Les Paul copy, so I've become pretty accustomed to the Gibson feel. I'm not really that much into guitars actually, I'm definitely not one of those guys you'd see drooling over that rare as hens teeth silver lined 1961 re-edition stratoblaster that was signed in Eric Clapton's blood or whatever.

RT: Who were your influences?

JB: My first guitar hero was definitely Ritchie Blackmore, but that was until I heard "Voodoo Chile slight return" by Jimi Hendrix. I'll never forget how the sound of that guitar struck me in the brain, it had an immediate impact on me.

RT: Can you describe the feeling it gave you?

JB: That's difficult. It was a kind of violent but beautiful sound if you know what I mean? That tone, it sounded like some kind of wounded animal!

RT: So would Hendrix be your favourite guitar player?

JB: I wouldn't say he's my favourite…well, I'd have to say he was one of my biggest influences, and there's no denying the influence he had on my own style and approach to the instrument, but no, I don't really have a favourite guitarist as such. Everyone's different, and that's what makes it so interesting.

RT: Who were some other guitarists that influenced you?

JB: Well, let me think now…Ok, there's Dick Wagner, Steve Hunter, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Robby Krieger, Frank Zappa, Justin Haywood, Fast Eddie Clark, Jose Feliciano, Ted Nugent, Phil Manzenera, Buddy Guy, Freddie King, Howlin Wolf, Robert Johnson, I could go on and on.

RT: Any Australians?

JB: My favourite Australian guitarist, well he's actually a Kiwi, but he kind of made it here, would have to be Kevin Borich. Years ago I used to go see him when ever he was playing somewhere. There's one night in particular that I'll never forget. It was about 15 years ago in a little pub called the Tourmaline Hotel which was way out in the sticks behind Riverstone North West of Sydney, he completely blew me away! He was so bloody intense! I'm sure it was that very night that I saw the true power of the electric guitar. I was so focused and concentrated on where he was going in this particular solo that my mind sort of leapt up into the stratosphere. It was a strange kind of thing that happened, really hard to describe, and it's never really happened since. There were only about 30 odd people there and everyone was just transfixed! That guy can really play when he wants to.

RT: Do you have any favourite Australian bands?

JB: Uh…let me see…The Skyhooks were interesting, really unique, and the song "Women in Uniform" would have to be one of the most powerful little rock tunes ever written by any band anywhere. Of course Radio Birdman were great, really raw, the image and all that symbolism….Yeah Hup! I also liked X, they did a fantastic version of John Lennon's song "Mother". Oh yeah, there used to be a little band called "The Deadly Hume" have you heard of them?

RT: Sure have.

JB: Yeah I really liked that band, they had this real primal sort of sound. I saw them one night at the old Harold Park Hotel and Greg Perano the singer jumped up and accidentally belted his head on the overhead light rigging, cut a dirty big gash right into his head, blood running everywhere! I don't think he even knew how badly he'd injured himself 'cause he just wrapped his T Shirt around his head like a bandanna and kept on singing until he kind of passed out! Real show must go on stuff! There were so many inspiring groups around at that time in the mid eighties. Every night of the week there was something to see and I'm really glad that I can actually say that I was a part of it, with the Labrats that is. It seems to go in waves, every ten or fifteen years or so. Australia's had some great artists over the years, especially around the early to mid seventies when I was a youngster, real world class acts. Bands like Axiom, Spectrum, Jeff St John, Jon English, Renee Geyer, Doug Parkinson. This country had some real talent back then, no bullshit artists with credibility, you know, before all that glam crap started to happen, even a band like Sherbert used to be half descent before the likes of Molly Meldrum got a hold of em. I reckon a lot of those bands could have been anything if they'd have started their careers in England or America.

RT: Who are your favourite bands and artists in general?

JB: Well as uncool as it is to admit it these days, I have to say I really admired The Beatles. Not all that…I want to hold your hand rubbish, but their serious stuff, the stuff they did towards the end when they all hated eachother. Lennon was definitely my favourite Beatle, him and Ringo. In fact I reckon Ringo had a great voice too.

RT: Any others besides the Beatles?

JB: The Doors, Moody Blues, The Who, Black Flag, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Bob Marley, Super Tramp, Willie Nelson, Johnny Ottis, Otis Redding, The Sex Pistols, Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Mozart, Beethoven, Muhammad Ali.

RT: Muhammad Ali?

JB: Well I get my influences and inspirations from a lot of different places. I think from him I got what it means to believe in yourself and your own abilities. I mean really, I don't think there's ever been a braver moment in sporting history than when he went in against Sonny Liston. That must have taken some courage, real guts!

RT: Do you like boxing?

JB: Well, I've never done it myself but I can appreciate it. I mean nobody forces those guys into the ring at gunpoint or anything and they don't make anywhere near what pro golfers do. I could think of easier ways to make a living, although I do think they should wear headgear because if the brain's gone, well.

RT: Did you come from a musical family?

JB: No not at all. I don't know where the music bug came from because there was rarely any music playing in my house when I was a kid, other than the radio which seemed to be permanently tuned to 2SM. I guess 2SM must have been the 2MMM at that time back then in the sixties. Maybe I turned out the way I did because of the lack of music in my home! My older brother took guitar lessons when he was around 12 or so but he eventually lost interest and got into other things. He was pretty good though and I can clearly remember him backing me on a version of Louden Wainwright the third's "Dead Skunk in the middle of the road" when I was about six years old. There was a John Botica who was a musician in the early 1900's in the States whom I found on the web. It's uncanny how closely he resembles my late father, spooky actually. I don't know if we're related but there's definitely a resemblance there.

RT: Was he a guitarist?

JB: No, he played something which looked like a potato sack. Sort of a crude bagpipe type of thing, I can't remember what it's called.

RT: Sounds interesting, I must look that up.

JB: Yeah.

RT: On to other things, why did the Labrats go to London in 1989?

JB: Well at the time we felt as though we were just beating our heads against a brick wall. I mean no one in the industry even knew who we were! We had our faithful few but I suppose because we originated from a kind of suburban heavy metal backwater which never had any media support or whatever, ah… we just weren't in the right circles I guess. To be honest, thinking back, the band was great, really tight! but we were just way out of touch with the industry and how it operated.

RT: Did things improve in London?

JB: We did it really tough in London! We never had a manager or anything, I just did my best to swing anything I could, rehearsing at night, dropping into agencies and companies by day. We were lugging our equipment around in cabs and so-on. We did go across pretty well though in a couple of places. In fact there was one girl at one of the gigs that was just completely blown away! She promised me that she'd bring this guy from Arista records to see us at the next gig. But of course there never was a next gig because our bass player had had enough and went home, leaving me and Freddy with nowhere to go. We were to play at the Half Moon Putney in a few nights time but there just wasn't time to get a replacement, so that was it! But there was some interesting things along the way.

RT: Such as?

JB: The time we met Bruce!

RT: Bruce?

JB: Bruce Dickinson the singer with Iron Maiden. What happened was, we had four or five days booked in this little rehearsal studio in Putney Bridge called the Ritz. The guy who ran it, a lovely old guy called Jim, kept telling me his mate Bruce would be coming around in a couple of days and he'd love to introduce us because this guy just loves Australians. So anyway, we're locked in the rehearsal room putting our heads together trying desperately to get something together for these upcoming gigs, you know, we're a little rusty 'cause we haven't played for awhile and we were deep in musical thought. So suddenly the door swings open and there's old Jim standing there with his mate Bruce Dickinson! None of us were expecting this and I'd completely forgotten to tell the guys anything about this mate of Jim's called Bruce, and as our minds were a million miles away it was a little tense and awkward as Jim made the introductions. We just basically stood there staring at him, not really knowing what to say. Bruce suddenly broke the tension by saying "Well anyway guys I just wanted to have a little look at the room as I'm thinking of hiring it for some rehearsals in a couple of weeks time, I hope you guys don't mind?" No, No, Not at all mate, go right ahead! We were told a few nights later that we should have asked him to have a little sing-along with us, as it's a bit of a tradition in London. In fact it was only a year or two before that we were in Ironheart belting out Black Sabbath and stuff and I was telling Jim all about this! A complete fuckup! Not that we particularly liked Iron Maiden or anything, in fact we couldn't really stand them! But it would have been interesting being Bruce's backing band on a few numbers. We still talk about it…funny, "The day we met Bruce".

RT: Missed opportunities?

JB: No, it's no big deal, just a little embarrassing that's all. He must've though to himself…Fucking dumb Australians. It must have seemed really rude at the time, in fact I don't think old Jim even spoke with us again after that.

RT: How many gigs did you actually do over there?

JB: Oh only a handful. I'm sure that had we stuck it out for a good year or so we would have eventually pulled something off, but of course it wasn't to be.

RT: How did you come to be involved with Tiny Tim?

JB: Just by chance. I just happened to be in the band that backed him a few years earlier on his versions of "Highway to Hell" and "I Love Rock n Roll". One of the guys in the band was an old friend of his Australian producer Martin Sharp, so in 1992 when he decided to give the rock stuff another whirl I found myself involved.

RT: Must have been pretty interesting?

JB: I've never done anything remotely like it since, he was a truly fascinating character.

RT: You worked in the studio and on stage?

JB: Yeah, we recorded a whole bunch of stuff, three albums worth, and played two shows. The first show in 1992 was the best, at the Paddington RSL, a real scream! The one the following year at the Three Weeds in Balmain wasn't so good, he decided to change the whole set right there on stage, it was all disjointed, horrible. I clearly remember him and the keyboard player locked in an argument over key signatures and tempo and stuff right there infront of the audience who sat staring in total disbelief. I wished I could have become the invisible man that night. It was a really embarrassing episode and I remember being fairly distressed about it afterwards because there were all sorts of reviewers from magazines and stuff there.

RT: What made you decide to go out on your own?

JB: I'd just had enough of playing under a dictatorship.

RT: Sorry?

JB: The last band I was in before going out on my own, Good Time Charlie. They used to be called His Majesty, the band that did the stuff with Tiny. Anyway we were offered a management deal a couple of years ago but I couldn't sign it because by that time I'd become a complete outsider and I had my own ideas on what a rock band should be. So I thought to myself…Why not do my own thing?

RT: How would you describe your own thing?

JB: Well I guess it basically sits within the rock genre. It should be filed under R for rock music. Rock music used to be fairly broad. You know it's really sad. If you look at how the music business operates today, especially with the big majors, everything has to sound the same. At the moment there's a hundred million Pearl Jam and Green Day imitators out there and unless you sound something like them the majors aren't interested. Today they work on the formula…If it worked once, it'll work again and again and again! Whatever happened to variety? This is a real shitty situation for music as an art form and it's unfortunate that kids are eating up all this crap that's being fed to them. Look at the top artists of the late sixties such as The Doors, Bob Dylan, Hendrix, The Who, Janis Joplin, The Stooges, Pink Floyd, you name it. Their styles were worlds apart, yet their records could sit side by side on the shelves quite happily. Back then the unique artists were the top artists. Now the top artists are a pack of imitators and the real artists are completely unheard of. When I listen to major radio today I find it hard to tell one band from the next, it's just so bloody boring! I'm sure you could swap the musicians around between a lot of these groups and no-one would even notice! Anyway I'm sure of one thing. I don't consciously try to copy anyone else and my music is my music. I'd like to think that I've got my own sound because it's an honest sound. And that's why I'm so happy to be on a label like Laughing Outlaw because their motto is, "If we like it, we'll release it". They're not into pigeon holing anyone.

RT: So how did your connection with Laughing Outlaw come about?

JB: I was hunting around for a distributor, anyone who could help me eventually get the cd into a few stores. I was calling everyone I could think of, without any luck I may add. I was just about ready to throw in the towel when Stuart Coupe contacted me and said if I was looking for a label he'd be interested to have a bit of a listen, and thankfully he liked what he heard. Stuart's been really great, everyone down there has. Laughing Outlaw's a small label with a lot of heart. They're in the business because they love being part of the artistic process and that's what it's all about, besides, I've been doing this too long to suddenly let my music be bastardised by some power lunching buffoon in a flashy suit.

RT: Why did you call the album Between the Shadows?

JB: Well personally, because that's where I feel I've been for the past how many years. I've been playing around for a fair while now, but I always seem to be moving the goal posts on myself if you know what I mean. I've done some pretty interesting things over the years and had a lot of fun too, but I never seem to be able to take it to that next step, in fact this is the very first time that I've actually had any sort of meaningful relationship with a record label for instance.

RT: How would you describe the album?

JB: Well it's basically a collection of songs that I've had rolling around my head for a few years now and I thought it's about time I put them down in some fashion or other. I think I could best describe it as an album of light and shade, beauty and ugliness. It's got some rapid mood swings in there. Listening back to it I think I was getting some stuff off my chest. It covers a whole range of topics, ranging from corporate greed and domination to the killing of whales for profit, to personal disillusionment and the fighting of ones own demons to the love of travel. Confused? I pretty much put the whole thing together on my own and got some friends to play certain parts. Marvin Druid was a big help. We've done a fair bit together over the last few years and musically we're starting to speak the same language. He played some acoustic guitar and violin parts for me. He also played a little piano on one track called "Little Big Man" which seems likely to be released as a single.

RT: When will it be released?

JB: What, the single?

RT: No the album?

JB: Unfortunately there's been a few technical hiccups with the albums artwork. The entire inner packaging is being reworked to include an eight page booklet with lyrics and stuff. Baring anymore problems it should be out sometime early next year.

RT: Any gigs planned?

JB: At the moment I'm putting together a new lineup of the alibi. There was a couple of people I was after but unfortunately they're unavailable so I think I'm going to have to hold auditions.

RT: Good luck with everything, I hope it all works out.

JB: Thanks Rob.

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