Written by: Ron Garant
With hits such as 1988's Need You Tonight and Devil Inside, as well as the more recent New Sensation and Beautiful Girl, Australia's INXS have established themselves as one of the world's most successful bands. Bassist Garry Gary Beers consequently enjoys a life many of us have only dreamed about - of assembling a group in high school and carrying it into international stardom. While the past few years have seen the band perform in large stadium-type venues, the band decided to appear in smaller, club-type venues this past year, much to the delight of those fans that were able to obtain tickets. I had the good fortune to catch them at a concert-club venue in Toronto last year, and they blew the socks off everyone with their powerhouse rock/pop performance! Their latest release on Atlantic Records, Full Moon, Dirty Hearts finds the band taking on an even heavier musical stance than their past efforts. While perhaps alienating some of their former audience, they hope to acquire some different fans that might enjoy this new approach. I spoke to Garry both at the time of their "pub tour" as well as at his home in Australia earlier this year.
Q. When did INXS get together?
About seventeen years ago, in high school. The three brothers in the band (Andrew, Tim, and Jon Farriss) had different bands going and then as fate would have it, all three bands broke up at the same time. The remaining members were left in a position to form a band - we only had one of each thing, except for a couple of guitarists, and we formed a band called The Farriss Brothers and played around for a few years until we became INXS.
Q. Are you originally from Australia?
Yeah, I was born in Manly, which is a suburb of Sydney, in '57. I seem to like basses from that era, and I like cars and motorbikes from that era.
Q. You've lived the dream of many musicians in putting a band together in high school and becoming successful, which doesn't happen often.
No, many fall by the wayside but we stuck to our guns and had a lot of luck and hard work. We're very happy that it all happened and we'll never forget that - in the middle of another year on tour you might think, "I've been doing it for such a long time now," 'cause we've been together about 17 years. You tend to think, "Is this really all there is to life?" Then you remember back to how much you wanted it to happen when you were a kid. It's a really good lifestyle, traveling around, making people happy for a living.
Q. What do you think has made INXS so successful?
The sum of its individuals is pretty strong. I don't know how we'd all go individually. We've all sort of lashed out and done individual projects when we had a break after the Kick album, we had about an 18 month break. I made an album called Here's Looking Up Your Address with a bunch of Sydney musicians called Absent Friends. It was, for want of a better term, a supergroup I guess - two members of a Melbourne band called The Models, they were quite big, one of which was Sean Kelly, the singer/songwriter, and there was an expatriate Canadian girl called Wendy Matthews. She's been living here for ten years and has gone on to be Australia's most popular female singer. We had a number one single and the album got to number three in Australia. Wendy's gone on to great things, Sean's gone on to form another band and one day we might reform, who
knows? Andrew (Farriss) was producing and writing with other people, everyone had other projects, but when it came time to get back together again, you just realize that it's not any one person, it's the sum of the individuals. Everyone's got their strength in the band.
Q. Who does most of the composing for the band?
Andrew, the keyboard/guitarist, and Michael, the singer.
Q. The frontman is a very important part in a band and obviously that's worked out quite well for you as well.
It has, he's very good at what he does. Again, it's a lot of circumstances - Michael's almost blind and it's very interesting that he's such a good frontman because he's always performing to the first like, five rows, so it's always intimate. Whereas the rest of us with good eyesight can see the other 15-20 thousand people, we perform to them. We project ourselves out, Michael just plays his intimate show onstage - it's part of his show. There was one show where he put his contact lenses in and just stood there all night 'cause he realized there was alot of people there!
Q. So he's always in a small pub then?
Yeah, I guess so and that's the rock 'n' roll side of him, he's always mischievous, in an intimate mode.
Q. Are you involved in any compositional or arranging process of the music?
Yeah, a lot of bass players I know are into the arranging side of things, they're usually the ones that always remember the format to the song, Michael's always turning to me during the show and asking me what the first line to the song is or what's the next line of some other song. Bass players are usually the guys that remember everything and that's pretty much true with this band. For the new album I flew over to Michael's place in France just to get involved with the arranging and the note taking and made sure when the other guys got there that everything was written down, there was all the formats, the songs had names, all the demos were in order and that sort of stuff. I tend to do alot of the mechanical side of things. The same with rehearsals for the tour, I got everyone together - except Michael and Andrew who were still mixing and writing some of the album - in a room so that Tim (Farriss), Kirk (Pengilly), and Jon (Farriss), the drummer and the two guitarists, and myself, just crammed ourselves in the room, stripped all the gear to the simple pub tour-type gear as opposed to what we had on the last tour, which was very high tech, and just bashed out some feels in the songs, things that wouldn't in fact normally happen unless I took control, that's my job.
Q. How would you say the new album differs from the past?
The album is a little bit harder in most places than our previous album, Welcome to Wherever You Are which makes it much more exciting to play live. There are some places where people might not want to hear commercial bands like us play heavy stuff. We might have lost a few fans, and gained some new ones, in America... the album might have shocked a few people and may have perked up the ears of other people.
On the last album, the sound that we really wanted to convey was the old Motown dead bass-string sound, so for all the bass on the album - except for maybe Heaven Sent, which is more rock 'n' roll bass sound - I used an old Precision with the original flatwound strings on it that were totally dead, through an old Ampeg B15 flip-top Portaflex. The sound I got was a totally warm, flat, Motown bass sound. But this album, I've gone the other way, I've got fuzz bass sounds, I've gone back to my '58 Precision which is alot more alive sounding bass. Our albums do tend to hinge a lot on the rhythm section feels, but the new one especially is pretty rhythm-section oriented.
Q. Do you think the bass is playing a more dominant role in music?
Yeah, totally. We started dabbling in that more on the last album, "Welcome", but this one definately... the songwriters and myself had the same thought at the same time, that the rhythm section, especially the bass, should be carrying everything in most of the music 'cause it's kind of a happy time for bass in music at the moment. There's a lot of great bass players emerging, and a lot of music that's based on rhythm section. Bands like the Chili Peppers are very rhythm section, and especially bass, oriented. We felt it was a good time for me to carry it a bit more.
Q. Although I wouldn't say you were playing anything complex...
Yeah, ultimately I'm just a rock bass player that dabbles in funk. The funk part of my playing is more... joined with the drums, we play funk more as a section than as individuals. I'm not a virtuoso player, I never really have been, I just like being part of a solid rhythm section.
Q. Has the new music altered your sound and approach?
Not too much, no, I've even simplified it more. I've altered a few tunings, I like the simplicity of wearing one guitar all night, so I'll probably end up working out a way of doing the songs without the 5-string as we go anyway. I just can't get past my trusty old '58 Precision and Ampeg amp. The bass I have has such a unique sound - I've got three of them now and the one I play live, I guess because I've been playing it for eight years, it's just me. No other bass comes close. All three of them have exactly the same feel, exactly the same sound, exactly the same weight, and they're 36 year old instruments!
Q. And they're not modified at all?
No, I've put a hipshot on so I can tune down to a D but that's a reversible process - I didn't change anything. When I got the first '58 I just set it up - did the intonation and set up the action, put some nail polish on the bridge to lock it there, and remained unchanged for eight years. The neck hasn't moved, nothing's got out of tune, I think it's the absolutely most amazing bass I've ever had!
Q. Although you've stayed with your mainstay P-bass, you've developed a brighter sound on the new record.
Yeah, we dabbled a fair bit with the bottom end, I took quite a few little amps along to Capri where we recorded the album. I took a tweed Champ with a little 6" speaker and I was even able to use that with a 5-string Music Man for a session recently. I overdrove it to hell and it sounded fantastic! It's an amazing little amp to use for bass, you put it in your pocket... for songs like "The Gift" we just used a Champ laid on its back with a 58 (Shure SM58 mic) laid on top of it and I played a Les Paul Signature bass, a semi acoustic bass, through it. It's got three settings - normal, half overdriven and totally overblown, so I had it on totally overblown and even the microphone was rattling around on the cloth. That's got a pretty unique sound!
Q. And you're using brighter strings?
Yeah, I'm using a hybrid gauge, 40-60-80-100, I quite like a lite E string and I change them every show. I do like a bright string 'cause I play with my fingers, with a pick, with whatever the song wants me to play. I like playing rock 'n' roll with a pick, I like playing funkier stuff with fingers, whatever it takes...
Q. I also noticed you're making quite a fashion statement, I forgot the name of it...
A sarong. It's a pretty hot show and I like moving around a fair bit too, so it's pretty comfortable. I've got about four sarongs in my suitcase as opposed to usually taking four pairs of jeans which takes up more room so I've got a very light suitcase!
Q. So it's a travel statement as well?
Yeah!
Q. But those boots must take up some weight and space...
Yeah, they're Tasmanian hiking boots, they're pretty heavy duty boots so they should last the whole tour!
Q. Why did INXS decide to do a smaller venue tour?
It's kind of a selfish thing we're doing becasue we haven't played the smaller clubs for a long time - we did a few warm-up shows last year before our big charity show in Sydney, Australia and it was just so much fun that we decided to recharge the batteries a bit by getting out and doing a lightning pub tour of the world just to show some people that... we've always done interviews saying we're a pub band from the start but a lot of people have never seen us play in a pub or club.
Q. It must be a little different for you...
It's really what music's all about because I think we are a pretty good large venue band but I think we're also a very good pub band which is really the best way for a band to play because you're not too concerned about how bad the sound is out front. I know as a bass player for instance that most people in a club can hear the bass, whereas in some of the big barns you play at, I have my doubts sometimes.
Q. Speaking of the mix, INXS has a huge drum sound, it seems popular with soundmen to get the biggest drum sound possible, sometimes at the expense of other instruments.
Most nights people come back and say the bass was really prominent, some nights I've wondered if a little too prominent.
Q. I've noticed you're using Ampeg amps...
I'm using SVT's and 1540 boxes, a 125 on the bottom and 4x10's with a horn on the top in the same box. They're actually a design of a box that I used in Australia many years ago and Ampeg brought the same sort of system out.
Q. And you're using the two of them?
Yeah two, and for bigger stadium venues I might use four, but two's quite happening for the smaller venues.
Q. What do you use for recording?
Normally I just use the Fender and sometimes an old Rickenbacker I have with the old Ampeg fliptop - the Portaflex's. I've got three of those, they're magnificent for in the studio. Often I'll use a Marshall too if I want a really aggressive sound and stand in the room right next to it when I'm recording it so I can get a bit more sustain, a bit more feel of the amp killing itself.
Q. Is it a guitar amp?
Yeah, I've got an old Marshall bass amp, but I tend to find the guitar amps are pretty good. A lot of guitarists like to get a clean sound as well, so a lot of their new amps you can get a pretty good clean sound out of. And also Marshall has a great preamp, the JMP-1 valve preamp, I've got one of those in my rack for distortion effects. The guitarists all had them and I just wanted to get a few distorted bass sounds 'cause I've got a few fuzz bass sounds on the new record. Now I just line out of that stereo into my Ampeg power amps - they're SVT 300 watt valve heards. I've always used SVT's, I've always been an Ampeg person - Ampeg's a wonderful warm sound, but if I want to go into overdrive mode I flick over to the Marshall JMP-1. The best thing about it, you can change your sounds via MIDI, and there's effect loops that you can bring in via MIDI as well and there's no glitch when you change sounds at all, it's instantaneous. You can bring effects in and out and change your sounds from clean to distorted with no loss of signal which I found to be a problem with certain effects and preamps.
Q. Do you have any education as a bass player?
No, I've never had any bass lessons, I was learning acoustic guitar for about nine months and I was just terrible, I had a terrible teacher, I hated him, and I'd learned about three chords which was lucky cause I got together with two friends from school with acoustic guitars. We made a deal that the worst person on acoustic guitar would take up bass and that was me. So I sort of lost and won at the same time because a few weeks after that, Andrew Farriss, the keyboard player in INXS, had heard that there was a new guy on the block that had a bass guitar. We met up and I left the other two guys and joined up with Andrew.
Q. Have you been working on any other projects?
We've done one video with Ray Charles, and I'm sure we'll be doing a video with Chrissie Hynde in the near future.
Q. Sounds like you've been doing some other sessions as well.
While we were in America we recorded at Willie Nelson's studio in Austin. We recorded a song with and for Tom Jones' new album. He's been to a few of our shows and we've been to a few of his shows and everytime we see him, he's always screaming for some songs so Andrew finally had a song that we started recording for the Welcome to Wherever You Are album that we didn't use, and for some reason didn't get around to using it on Full Moon either. Andrew decided it was perfect for Tom and we just went to Austin and recorded it in two days. It's called Tight and it's a pretty hip song. It's pretty exciting working live with Tom Jones, we worked live with Ray Charles on the American tour, the Letterman show. It was as much of a buzz, if not more, recording a song with Tom Jones, he's got a voice and a half! He picked up all the vocals that Andrew showed him very quickly and then bang! He did about five takes and all of them were usable, he's a pro that's for sure.
Q. I guess that it will be released soon, will it?
Well it's the first song for his album so it won't be for a little while unless it's used as a first single, he's started his album now with that song. Hopefully it'll give us another chance to get another song and maybe play more, I love playing on other people's albums, it's a lot of fun.
Q. What's ahead for you?
We're touring Australia for the first time since '91 and then we're probably heading back toward America about April/May, and doing South America and Southeast Asia as well.
Q. So you won't be getting much rest!
Definitely not this year, for sure!