Valeno Guitar, c.1972-1975 PHM

Collection

Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Object Name

Electric Guitar

Object/Collection Description

Electric guitar with carry case and accessories, used by the performer Ed Kuepper, in his solo career and in bands such as the Saints and The Laughing Clowns. All aluminium electric 6 string guitar, machined out of 2 solid pieces of aluminium screwed together to form the front and back of the guitar. The neck and headstock are also made from single piece of aluminium which is bolted onto the body. The body has a highly polished finish while the neck and head are semi-matt, and the bridge and tail pieces are black anodized. The headstock is cut away in shape of a stylised “V” for “Veleno”. Manufacturing information is engraved in to the back of the headstock: “Veleno Instrument Co”. Dimensions: 37 mm high X 323 mm wide X 1100 mm high.

Ed Kuepper was born in Bremen, West Germany in 1956. His parents immigrated to Australia when he was about three years old, settling in the south-west suburbs of Brisbane. The suburb he lived in, Oxley, is far from the heart of the city and it’s the kind of place where people live because it is close to the place they work and low cost housing. It is close to the industrial areas of Brisbane and is surrounded today by golf courses. It is also on Oxley Creek, a feature in Ed’s work for decades to come.

School was reputedly not fun for Ed in the early years, being subject to racist taunts from the local students, and it’s unquestionable that he would take the role of the outsider in many of his narratives later on. At school he met fellow migrant Chris Bailey.

Chris Bailey was born in Nanyuki, Kenya in 1957. They left Africa early in Chris’ life and his parents dragged him and “the brood” all over the place - including their native Northern Ireland - before finally settling in Brisbane when he was around ten years old. His home suburb, Inala, was a housing-commission estate filled with welfare and low-income families, aborigines and other migrants. It too was miles from the city, and was close to Oxley Creek.

Ed and Chris linked up early at school, the pair being practically the only two males to have long hair. Bailey had been thrown out of Richlands High School and the pair soon found they had similar interests in music and politics. Kuepper had been spending all of his spare time becoming involved in music, taking an interest in older recordings and newer. He was a fan of Black Sabbath, Rod Stewart, Roxy Music as well as the older bands, such as Sydney’s Missing Links. However, it would be the Stooges and the album “Funhouse” that would have the biggest impact on him. “That album,” he says, “changed the way I looked at music.”

Bailey’s music tastes were given to him by his siblings. His sisters had a love for rockers of the old style - Eddie Cochran, Del Shannon and Australians like the Easybeats. His brother impressed upon him the folk troubadours Dylan, Guthrie and Seeger.

Ed had been playing guitar since the age of thirteen and kicking around with friends, playing and singing. Kuepper preferred Bailey singing, believing that a guitarist and songwriter could stay in the shadow while the singer up front could get all the attention. This suited Bailey fine - “Any rock band worth its salt has the local loony on lead vocals. That was the role I performed,” he says.

In 1972, they would meet Ivor Hay, from the nearby Corinda. The three of them would form a band almost immediately, taking the name Kid Galahad and the Eternals. Kid Galahad was taken from the Elvis movie; the Eternals were from the sci-fi film Zardoz, who were portrayed as a bunch so decadent they were only waiting around to die. This nihilistic view typified their view of the suburbs.

The band would begin rehearsals in Hay’s mother’s back shed. Kuepper on guitar, Bailey singing and Ivor on piano and played it’s first real gig in 1973.

In 1974 the band would rename itself the Saints, which was chosen for a good gang-style ring to it, as well as echoing the fifties garage bands. Ivor moved to bass and the band tried out drummer after drummer. One Laurie Cuff is recorded on the tape from Kuepper’s parent’s garage that would later resurface as “The most primitive band in the world”. Later they played with Jeffery Wegener (who would also play with the Laughing Clowns and the Birthday Party, and return to the Saints in the eighties.

By 1975 the band were be organising gigs themselves, with their booking agency Eternal Promotions, and performing at Communist Party benefits. In early ‘76 they entered a Battle of the Bands with Ivor on drums and Doug Balmanno on bass guitar. Not surprisingly, they came last.

Bailey’s sister rented a terrace house on the corner of Petrie Terrace and Milton Road, near the Windmill Café in Brisbane. Bailey moved in to the basement and, when his sister moved out, Hay and Wegener moved in. The band would frequently play parties there, until the storefront was smashed in by an unhappy neighbour. Unperturbed, the crew nailed boards up and splashed “Club 76″ across the front of the place. The club would be closed eventually when the Department of Health discovered the “club” had only one toilet.

Eventually the band would get a bass player of seemingly permanent status, Kym Bradshaw, and the band booked time at Bruce Windows Studios. It had occurred to Kuepper one day that if he simply called Astor Records - where he had been working in the warehouse - and asked, they may actually press a record for him. They replied that country artists did it all the time.

Booking two hours at the studio with Mark Moffat in the production chair, the band recorded “(I’m) Stranded” and “No time”. The recordings are so raw that Ivor knocking over a bottle at the end of “Stranded” can be heard through the drummer’s mic.

The track remains to this day one of the best pieces of punk ever recorded. Bailey’s lyrics are simple, yet very effective. The opening line “Like a snake calling on the phone/I’ve got no time to be alone” is both hilarious and ingenious, and his snarl belies the anguished isolation of the final verse: “they cut out some heart and some brain/been filling it up with dirt/do you know how much it hurts/to be stranded far from home?”

The master tape was taken to Astor, who pressed the 45 on the Saints’ own Fatal Records label. Kuepper then spent some time mailing them to record companies and journalists around the world.

When the record was heard in the UK - warming quickly to the throes of punk - it would be received with thick hyperbole. Sounds magazine would make it’s famous quote: “The single of this and every week.” it was proclaimed. “The Quo or Ramones? This pounds them into the dirt.” The band, previously ignored by everyone on the face of the earth, suddenly became hot property. The London office of EMI issued orders for the Sydney office to sign the group, despite the protests of local branch. Artist and Repertoire manager Chris Barnes and EMI’s in-house producer Rod Coe flew to Brisbane to get the band into the studio ASAP.

Again the band rushed operations, this time spending a whole weekend in the studio to record the album known as “(I’m) Stranded”. Coe, who was (and still is) making records with country legend Slim Dusty had the grace to let the band do what they thought was right and got a well produced (or perhaps un-produced) album as a result.

The album’s sound is a roaring, rock-and-roll fuelled blast of arrogance and nihilism, but is underlined with a hidden sensitivity and even subtlety. No matter what the Saints may have thought of the Sex Pistols, there is an undeniable link in the relationships between rage and hurt expressed on both albums and the timeliness in the appearance of both bands. The common themes of expatriate Irishmen weave through both records.

The buzz saw sound of the quick, sharp cutting Kuepper guitar would undeniably be the selling point of the first album as far as EMI were concerned. Roaring feedback and an almost impossible level of distortion was the trademark of the fast songs, but a subtle, clean sound is heard on “Messin’ with the kid” and the Kuepper-penned “Story of love”. This was the extent of musical adventure from the Saints, and record company no doubt thought itself on a reliable, unchanging path to success. The band, naturally, would have other, far more contrary ideas.

Now fuelled by a multinational press machine and with financial backing never before experienced, the band got a gig on the Gold Coast supporting rising stars AC/DC at Miami Hall. The band went down like a ton of bricks and AC/DC’s road crew would show amazing hostility towards the band.

In January 1977 the Saints celebrated the release of the album. The cover picture (and subsequent video clip) was taken down the road from Club ‘76 in an abandoned terrace house. EMI also re-released the “(I’m) Stranded”/”No time” single, using the same master as the Fatal 45.

The band relocated to Sydney feeling Brisbane was far too small for them, and they got gigs supporting the equally infamous and unwanted Radio Birdman. Even the Birdman fans disliked them, especially when Bailey drew parallels between the bands iconography and the Third Reich while on stage. Bailey says there was not a lot of kinship between the bands at the time. Kuepper has frequently displayed distaste for ‘nationalistic’ type symbols, which Birdman embraced.

“We were under the assumption there was something great out there,” says Kuepper. The Saints, however, found Sydney as constricting as Brisbane and no more open minded, the band moved to England with low expectations for what they might meet.

The end of May 1977 saw them arrive in London and be greeted by the wave of punk hysteria. While the British music press saw punk as the rawest, most honest music possible, the Saints saw it as a hype machine, a run for money and using image and reputation to sell them, rather than music or particular stance. When EMI attempted to squeeze them in with all the other bands, the band rebelled. Bailey grew his hair long, they continued to wear collar shirts and sweaters while EMI drew up plans for the “Saints suit”. It featured lime-green shirts and ripped up pants and may have involved spiky hair for everyone. The band were not impressed.

“Erotic Neurotic/One way street” was released coinciding with their tour of London, and it sold well enough.

Their first London show was a large one. June 5th and 6th saw them play the Roundhouse supporting the Ramones and Talking Heads - two bands that had made a name in New York years before punk had hit Britain. Despite the fact the Saints predated the Ramones, they were hit with the view they were nothing more than cheap imitators.

The recording of the second album ‘Eternally Yours’ was a different matter to the first. With access to better equipment and a much larger budget, the band experimented with different sounds, styles and arrangements and Bailey and Kuepper produced it themselves.

Horns, arranged by Graeme Preskett, featured on several tracks, blasting the classic Kuepper riff of “Know your product” into less safe (and decidedly less punk) R&B territory. It was one of the best singles of the era, but it would go unnoticed. The horns would also show up on Kuepper’s sarcastic “Orstralia”.

The raw, trademark buzz saw of Kuepper’s guitar was still present on tracks like the ripping “(I’m) Misunderstood” and “Know your product”. Slower numbers like “Untitled” and “A minor aversion” showed the band taking to a less hard-edged territory.

The record company looked on unimpressed when the band played it to them. “Know your product” was chosen as the single and released in February after the band had toured to support it. It was a commercial failure.

“After that didn’t sell,” Kuepper told Clint Walker, “EMI were hinting that we didn’t know what we were doing.” The band was as impressed with the company as the company was with them.

In early 1978, Chris Bailey was suffering from disenchantment from the whole situation. His girlfriend had been urging him to leave the Saints and open a pub with her in the west of England. He eventually capitulated, but the hotel industry was saved, with Bailey never taking up the unfamiliar place on the other side of the bar.

Kuepper, who had been writing at a pace that would later make him legendarily prolific, would convince Bailey to return to the fold and continue recording. He was worried if EMI discovered the band had lost the vocalist, they would can the next album.

Gone completely was the earlier buzz saw sound of Brisbane, and in it’s place was a complex and widely influenced, highly musical album. “Swing for the crime” is an almost perfect blend of Celtic drumming, horns, riffing and Bailey’s much more open, unimpaired vocal. He was almost singing. The words fit the melodies almost perfectly for the first time with a complex collection of characters and poetic style.

Kuepper’s song writing would take a step up with this album as well. “Brisbane (Security City)” could have popped up in its whole form on any of his later solo albums. A much more cerebral and musical version of “Orstralia”, it attacked his adopted home’s political complacency and police harassment.

EMI chose “Security” backed with “All times through paradise” as the single. Both single and album flopped, without Prehistoric Sounds even being released in the United States. It is still difficult to find today, rumoured to be deleted from CD by EMI not long after re-release. After the album failed, EMI chose not to take up the option on the band’s contract.

Chris Carr of the NME made advances on behalf of the band to EG Records. A single was arranged with plans for “Laughing Clowns” to be the A-side and “On the Waterfront” to be the B-side. Kuepper was trying to move into far jazzier territory, however, and Bailey was looking to make a pop-rock statement, the two declined the offer to make another go together.

The Laughing Clowns were put together in Brisbane by Kuepper when he returned to Australia in 1979, and Bailey would release “On the waterfront” on the “Paralytic tonight, Dublin tomorrow” EP in 1980.

After the release of 1980’s “Paralytic tonight, Dublin tomorrow” EP, Kuepper would be rankled with Bailey using the Saints name with a band that he saw as being his own. In 2005 the original Saint performed a one off show at the Fox Studios in Sydney. The original line will perform again at the Queensland Music Festival July 14th 2007.

Chris Bailey lives in Amsterdam now, and has just released a new Saints record ‘Nothing is straight in my house’ featuring Marty Wilson Piper another British migrant who plays with the legendary Sydney band The Church.

Ed Kuepper is living in Brisbane. He continues to be one of Australia’s most influential and highly regarded musicians with over twenty solo albums to his credit¹.

The Saints- I’m Stranded 1977, Eternally Yours 1978, Prehistoric Sounds 1978
Laughing Clowns, Cruel but fair, Compilation 1979 -1984 released 2005
Ed Kuepper, This is the magic mile, Compilation 1990, 2000. released 2005
Courtesy Inner City Sounds.The guitar has historic value. He has used this guitar in his solo career, and prior to this in the bands The Saints and the Laughing Clowns. Both of these bands were extremely influential on the Australian music scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The guitar was bought by Ed Kuepper in 1977 in the U.K. Ed Kuepper is one of the most influential and successful singer/songwriters on the independent rock music circuit in the country.

The guitar has aesthetic value. The guitar is an unusual all aluminium electric 6 string guitar, machined out of 2 solid pieces of aluminium. The neck and headstock are also made from single piece of aluminium which is bolted onto the body. The body has a highly polished finish.