On the afternoon of Sidewinder’s first show with U2, guitarist and singer Nick Craft wandered around inside the empty Burswood Dome in Perth, trying to psyche up. Their largest audience so far had been 10,000 at a Big Day Out shows. Tonight they were facing 17,000 on definitely the largest stage they’d performed on. It took almost an hour for the sheer magnitude of the show to sink in.
Usually when he’s just waiting around, Craft likes to sketch. This time he reached into a bag, pulled out a notebook and started scribbling down his thoughts. He’s kept a diary for years, and makes an entry each day. "There are 350 people working here, it’s almost like a little city here" he observed. Later on, he stared at the huge props and jotted down, "Every band eventually faces the problem of getting all their gear into their van. U2 don’t have that a lot of musical equipment onstage. But how would they get that giant lemon, and that golden arch, and all those lights in a van?" At 5 pm, U2 arrived for their soundcheck. At 6.30, Sidewinder did their 20-minute test. The rest of the band were nervous, slipping into a Sidewinder gibberish that most bands on the road use so no one else understands. Just before their set, Adam Clayton came over. "I’m really glad you’re playing with us," he said. "I really like your album. I’ve been listening to it a lot." It’s moments like this which Craft files into
his memory bank. As a teenager starting to play, he had the usual fantasies about where rock and roll fame would take him. Seeing Stooges Ron Ashton play in Sydney with Dark Carnival some years ago and being given one of his guitar picks was one dream come true.
"I’m always awed when things like that happen to other people," he says. "Like George Harrison wandering into a guitar shop in Sydney, recounting Beatles stories and playing ‘Something’ to the three people there." Sidewinder are one of the quiet achievers of the Australian rock scene. They don’t get mentioned in gossip columns or have hotel owners go pale because of outrageous behaviour. They have their share of drinking stories, sure, like the time Nick jumped up on his hotel bed and inadvertently put his head through the ceiling, and another member threw himself into a rubbish skip.
There have been magical shows, in particular the Annandale in Sydney and the Corner Hotel in Melbourne. Sidewinder aren’t an easy band to pin down musically. It’s their strength and weakness. "I like the fact that our music works on ever-changing shifts. It confuses some people, as much as the fact that both Martin (Craft, bassist) and I handle the singing, and that we’re all really diverse songwriters." So sadly, they have to rely on making excellent music to sustain.
They cut good albums like ‘Tangerine’ which quietly ticks over in sales without setting the charts on fire. Onstage experiments with a sampler cast more colours on the music. "We’re still learning to work it, so that in itself gives us a logical direction to our next record. I’m very proud of ‘Tangerine’. I pull it out once in awhile to give it a listen, whether to pick a single, or because someone’s asked about a lyric line or made an observation about a track, and I’m impressed with it."
Craft admits that in their more bored moments on tour, Sidewinder have sat around in their rooms and hatched up a headline-grabbing stunt. "The silliest idea I’ve had is to put someone in a giant bear costume to dance on stage and hand us our guitars when we swap them around through the set." Despite such stunts (or lack of thereof), their career has advanced in the last six months. ‘Tangerine’ got rave reviews. Their following widened when ‘Titanic Days’ was feature song in the Australian movie ‘Blackrock’ (some remember the song more than the movie), later at Homebake, and when You Am I asked them on for dates between Brisbane and Sydney. There’s an in-joke that if they’d kept ‘Titanic Days’ for six months longer, ‘Titanic’ director James Cameron might have dumped Celine Dion for them! Without a doubt, the biggest coup was scoring U2.
Hart insists tongue-in-cheek that their releasing ‘God’ as a single didn’t sway the Irish lads either. "I’m not sure the U2 dates will kick start our career overnight," he gets serious. "But it got us in front of a lot of folks who probably wouldn’t have known us." It was a thrill particularly for guitarist Pip Branson, an ardent U2 fan who saw them four times during their "Love Comes To Town" tour. He paid the first night and apparently blagged his way in the other times.
Sidewinder, who’d tried to get the Foo Fighters and Radiohead tours, were naturally thrilled when their manager casually rang and told them they were one of the biggest tours of the year. "I was initially surprised because I’d heard very early on Ollie Olsen (Aussie techno whiz kid, and former Max Q member) was doing it. Then I got excited, going ‘no, no, no, how did this happen!’ We were leaving Sydney for Brisbane that afternoon, so on the way up, we stopped for a bottle of champagne and drank it out of plastic cups. Quite a pathetic celebration really, but we were chuffed." While some of the others suffered from nerves during the first song, Craft took it in stride.
"I just saw it as another gig, because we were doing exactly what we do before a crowd of 200, although you exaggerate your movements a lot more to fill in the space. I actually get more nervous when we play to 10 people. On our last time in West Australia we did country areas, and at Bunbury only 20 people turned up and I was as nervous as hell! Large audiences are easier to take, and I love hearing our music boom out from a huge PA system."
After a tour of their own in March, Sidewinder record another single and take a break. The members individually head overseas on holiday, and will take their records along to see if they can get record labels in Europe and the US interested.
- By Christie Eliezer. BEAT MAGAZINE - Wednesday 18th March 1998.
