21 years ago when I was 21

I had a handful of song ideas, that is all. I had no idea what the hell I was doing when I put an advert in the foyer of the now defunct Missing Link record store in Flinders lane looking to put a band together. I was listening to bands like the Church, Died Pretty, The Smiths and The Stone Roses. I listed these as influences in the advert.

The first person to answer my ad was Bill. He was older, played in bands for years, had a cool Rickenbacker 6 sting electric guitar which he just picked up in L.A. and a handful of song ideas which blew me away. He liked my song ideas and we decided to start writing songs together. In no time we had about 10-15 songs, the next logical step was to to start rehearsing them.

The second person to answer my ad was Heath. He had just moved to Melbourne from his hometown in Ballarat with his drums and his recently acquired accounting degree. As we wanted to start rehearsing new songs ASAP, Bill asked an old bandmate of his Ivan to play with us as a fill in on Bass until we found someone permanently.

Rehearsals went very well and the songs were sounding great, so we talked about doing some gigs. But Ivan was not interested in playing live at all, so we had to find a permanent bass player. Heath suggested we audition a friend of his from Ballarat, Adam who was studying full time at RMIT. When he came to rehearse, we were impressed with his bass playing, but he was clearly more suited to playing guitar, so he ended up sharing lead guitar and bass duties with Bill.

We rehearsed with this line up for a few months before we played our first show at the RMIT battle of the bands in 1991 where Autohaze ended up winning. It was great experience playing live and in front of an audience. Soon after that we started playing gigs at The Rochester Hotel, Nicholson’s Hotel, The Evelyn and the Punters Club mostly as support bands to support bands on quiet week nights. We didn’t have a demo tape, so to get better gigs we need one, or a 7” single.