My Autobiography

by Mick Tulk

Home page | Autobiography Part 2

A Start in Life

I was born in West Ham, London at a very early age but I don't remember it, I was only a baby at the time.

My parents, Fred and Mary, already had two children, Joan and Kate, when I arrived in 1949. It was just after the 2nd World War and times were tough, as dermatitis had put a stop to Dad's bricklaying career. The only job available to him was through my maternal grandfather, a job in London's Royal Docks. That involved many mornings 'On The Cobbles' as a casual labourer with no guarantee of employment, just waiting to be hired. This bred a sense of insecurity and the strikes were a way of life we got used to.

Dad was always generous to a fault and I, having become interested in modern music through such stars as Bill Haley and Little Richard, Elvis and the rock n rollers of the 50s as well as the family record collection, became determined to become musical. So I was thrilled when Dad mentioned the possibility of getting hold of a mandolin for me from a Chinese seaman he knew. The mandolin was eventually replaced with a guitar and from then, I never looked back.

But not so in other areas of my life; there were still many hurdles to face before I found contentment, one especially that was not to come for many years.

Religious Stuff

Where religion was concerned I was of two worlds; my father was nominal C. of E. and Mum a nominal Catholic - Joan, Kate and I were educated by Catholic nuns and monks respectively and were required to go to church both at school and at the weekend on Sunday. I didn't always get there though as the temptation to bunk off and spend the offering money was too strong. The services were in Latin and although I found learning the rudiments of the language quite useful in later life, it seemed, at the time, a complete anachronism as I wasn't acquainted with too many ancient Romans. By the time I was 13 I had stopped going altogether.

The lessons in the Friary which filled the first two years of my school life were to have a serious effect on my already poor self confidence (it was an all boys school which was not helpful). There was a Victorian atmosphere in the cell-like classrooms where I was subjected to the Jesuit code. There was a great sense of emancipation among us all when in the 3rd year we moved into the modern part of the school and the remainder of my school life degenerated into pure rebellion.

Most of my spare time was spent trying to learn the mandolin and guitar. I was painfully shy with girls, a feeling that plagued me for all my adolescence.

My First Band ( and 2nd, and Gormenghast !! )

At age 14 I joined up with 4 other boys forming a band called The Abstracts (we called them Groups back then!) We weren't as good as our rivals The Aztecs - all the other bands had transit vans and roadies but we had a builders barrow and pushed it ourselves. Well, this was Plaistow! At 16 I joined a group called the Five Short (it will remain unsaid exactly what we were short of). I met my first girlfriend while in this band but I was mean to her. Although shamed by Dad's lectures over my drunkenness it didn't stop me drinking (that gave me acceptance). On one occasion I was a passenger in a car driven by Mick, the group's singer. He was blind drunk and we had an accident. Fortunately no-one was hurt and the police even gave us a lift home. Things were different then. He also had one of those bubble cars which caught fire one day...while we were in it!

Leaving school at 16 my first job was trainee manager in a supermarket in Canning Town. I stuck it for 18 months playing in the band at weekends. Then came the opportunity to play a residency in a club in Germany. WOW the big time. Following in the footsteps of the Beatles etc. In fact it was the Savoy club, Hanover. Bit of a dump really but nothing could have been more exciting at the time.

We all got fixed up with girls but my one was so beautiful I was terrified and nothing came of it. The language barrier didnt help, I tell myself.

Gormenghast

Although I drank, not as much as some of the other guys, I never touched drugs though some of the other bands we met touring obviously used. A few years previously we had done a gig in Slough with a weird band whose act involved lots of strange lights and stranger music. They were called Pink Floyd, in the vanguard of the drug culture in Britain. In contrast our stage act consisted of soul hits and me being plastered with crazy foam by the singer.

It was inevitable really. The drug scene so infiltrated through the music of the time that the curiosity and peer pressure was too much for me. It happened this way; after the demise of the Five Short I was wondering what sort of future I could find in music, all the time battling with a sense of inadequacy at realising that my rock image was only a front for the real person inside, someone with a pretty huge inferiority complex. So now, at 18, the introverted extrovert answered an ad in the musicians wanted column of the Melody Maker. A guitarist in Lambeth, John Wheeler, was seeking another guitarist to start a band. When we met we clicked musically, my style was rhythm and blues and John's forte was Latin American guitar. It seemed like a good mix as Santana were becoming big. We found a phenomenal drummer, Chris, a graduate of Leeds Music College, enlisted Terry on bass but something was missing so we advertised in MM for a sax player and after a few guys that didnt quite fit, a wild mixture of pot smoking Aussie and existential philosopher turned up in the form of Mitch. He doubled on flute so he was well in.

Going downstairs upwards

I became curious when he said he smoked weed. One evening he stuck some Pharaoh Sanders on the turntable and passed around the joints. I must admit it didn`t do too much for me but the next time it was Lebanese hash and I was sold on it. All my spare cash went on dope now and sure enough it opened up my mind to new and strange things but not always pleasantly: I can remember getting stoned by myself one night and meditating on a lighted candle. I suddenly felt the presence of something tremendously evil in the room and I was terrified. It eventually left and I got some fitful sleep. There would often be feelings of sheer paranoia - that terrifying feeling that you are being monitored by someone or something evil. And now my personality started to change as I became less and less responsible. I left the family home and moved uptown to a flat in Hampstead, sharing with 3 girls. I broke Dad's heart when I just left like that (maybe Mum was a bit pleased to see me go). Incidentally nothing happened between me and the girls and the drugs were just another means of escape. Our band, called Gormenghast, started to play at some of the cool venues in London such as the Marquee and Roundhouse with bands like Fleetwood Mac, Hawkwind and later upstairs at Ronnie Scotts. You felt cool playing Ronnie Scotts, it made you think you could really play! Ha!

These were the heady psychedelic days of swinging London and love and freedom was the password. I was later to discover that this kind of freedom comes at a very high price.

Intercontinental Mick

Its hard to say what actually broke the band up. Maybe Mitch moving to Europe or maybe just stagnation, but we did bust up. I passed the time trying to build up my little body (and in so doing my self confidence) but I didnt have much success. Then Mitch phoned from Switzerland saying there was a gig in Switzerland in a showband (Dave Lee) so it was on with the lederhosen and off to Chur, Switzerland. In that band we had 3 English, 1 Irish, 1 Swiss, 1 Austrian, 1 German and 1 Australian.

We toured Europe but things were beginning to take their toll on me physically, emotionally and psychologically and any other alley you can go down. I had used the music to form an identity that I found acceptable but under it all I was very lonely so I was happy to get back to a shared house in Beckenham, England.

There had been a germ of an idea planted in my mind by Mitch who had to return soon to Australia. He said something like this... Look Mick, the guys from my old band in Sydney are coming over to London for a few months. I'll be gone back by then but why dont you team up with them when they return to Oz and get a gig as ship's band for the sea passage. Then we can all meet up in Sydney and form a band over there. I felt I had nothing to lose. I sincerely thought there was no future for this world but a nuclear war so I gave up on it.

What had sold the idea to me in the end was that when Mitch's Australian band arrived in London they turned me on to acid (L.S.D) and described how they had used hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. They made it sound so exciting I couldn't wait to get over there and get stuck into it. It was the ultimate form of escape and I fell for it. So in six weeks, after I had talked John into coming too, we were on the S.S. Fairsky bound for Sydney, Australia.

Oz Or Bust

The voyage was pretty uneventful. Someone had a book by some rock poet but it was either over my head or under it. We stopped off in Durban to buy some rubbish grass. We didn't realise the chance we took scoring in a black neighbourhood. The black guy told us that their day would come! When we stopped in the Canaries I couldn't believe the poverty - still, it didnt mean much to me then. I was midway between cultures on that ship. I thought ..Look at all that ocean, I'm so tiny and so alone out here. But finally..finally we arrived.

My feelings changed when we all made it to the rambling colonial mansion rented by Company Caine otherwise known as Co.Caine, a local band of impressive originality with a hypnotic sound mainly due to Gulliver Smith's far out vocals and Russell Smith's guitar work. They had just made their first album, Product of a Broken Reality. The night we arrived they were doing a gig and we got invited up to jam. What a privilege I thought. It seemed like this insecure kid from the suburbs of London had finally been initiated into the counter culture. From then on it was instant double culture shock, the new country and its ways and the very Americanised counter culture of Sydney. Then the inevitable happened, what I'd heard so much about, the ultimate high.

Bad Companions

Our drummer walked in one night with some brown rocks (Chinese Heroin crystals) Some of the others injected and I, seeing it was my first time snorted some. Well, I wont go into the details but I can tell you I wanted more right from the start. The next time someone scored I smoked some and the time after that I got injected by the bass player. After that I wanted to be a big boy and do it myself so now I was well on the road. I met Anna and we lived together for a year or two. She was a user too and we messed ourselves up with any drug going at the time. She was bisexual although I didn't know it and she left me for a girlfriend. That was a big downer and what with the deterioration through all the drugs I left town for Melbourne to dry out.

I can't begin to describe what its like to try to kick a habit. I felt inhuman, degenerate, as though I had died. To see non users around me made me realise what I had lost by getting involved with that stuff. I stayed with a band called Daddy Cool, a successful outfit, and non users. One day a drummer from another band came in to practice. I had dropped some magic mushrooms and as he played I could see strings attached to his hands and some unseen power was controlling him. You know, the penny dropped at that moment and I realised the existence of a personal devil and demons. It was so obvious after unwittingly dabbling in his kingdom for so long, and now I realised that this evil entity had control of me.

Wassapnin2me

I had to get back to Sydney, to the familiar, so I hitched a lift with a trucker. Drugs were so much a part of life then and this trucker shared his pills with me. As we talked I told him about my experiences and we came to the conclusion that if there is a personal devil there must be a personal god too. I was persuaded I needed to get in touch with this god somehow but how? I remembered some of the basic teaching I had as a child about God but going to a church never even crossed my mind, it wasn't in the equation. When I got back to Sydney I looked up our old drummer (bad move!) I told him I'd cleaned up but he couldn't believe it. Then right on cue someone turned up with some smack! All that time in Melbourne wasted as I couldn`t resist the temptation and had a hit. The guy who turned up was actually Mitch's (our sax player in England ) brother and he was kind of a ringleader for all the others (Except Mitch, who hated it ).

Bottom of the Barrel

I had proved I could not kick it (I had never even heard of rehabs or the like) so when the suggestion was made to go to Canberra, all join up with Mitch who was at the Uni. and form another band I knew there was nothing to lose so we all got in the van and cleared off to the capital. Here we were facing Mitch in Canberra, his brother and I in much the same state. He either didn't notice or chose to ignore it. Anyway as we set about to infect Canberra with our brand of musical mayhem I stayed in Mitch's room on campus at the University (he had a brain, you see) while he was out at lectures.

Lying down in the room, empty except for the bed and a few books, it began to sink in exactly what a position I was in. I knew nobody in this country except a few rock musicians, I was thousands of miles from any home halfway across the world and I was hooked on heroin. Nice place to be! I started to get into real remorse realising I would never see my parents or sisters again and end up some anonymous deadbeat somewhere on the street...... and just as I came to that awful realisation something happened.

Autobiography next page... | Home page