All Lit Up Down Under – a chat about words with Dave Graney

With Australia taking a third Man-Booker Prize this year, writer-musician Dave Graney talks to Remy Dean about creative culture, writers' festivals and the mythic quality often found in word-wielding of an Australian origin...

Oz...

The Great Southern Land...

Australia, to me, has long been a place existing only in imagination... a British Romantic idyll of vast empty wild spaces, dwarfed only by the human soul.

From the early films of Peter Weir, I expect ancient bewildering magic or prophetic apocalyptic visions of awesome natural forces. Through films like Encounter at Ravensgate and Razorback, I get the poetically lit isolation and strange, sudden brutality. Dust and close-cropped hair. In Man of Flowers, and other films of Paul Cox - aching poignancy and poeticism spilling out from the sensitive hearts of wise fools across the fountained parklands or shifting sandscapes. The loss, wide open roads and estuary beds of 'The Triffids', the long-gone childhoods, cattle and cane fields of the 'Go-Betweens'... 'Hunters and Collectors' loading their long wide loads with deals and memories that thunder from ghost town to run-down suburbs. Bone-pointing, the shout that kills, kangaroo meat, road warriors, lake monsters, autistic organists, ghost ships sailing on empty seas to the land of the dreaming… Kylie Minogue in denim dungarees with a ‘designer’ smudge of sump oil across her cheek... or was it Vegemite?

Dave Graney drives us through his mythic landscape, whistling

I first interviewed Dave Graney more than twenty years ago, when he had recently finished with the hugely influential combo, ‘The Moodists’, and was exploring new musical territories with his bands, ‘The White Buffalos’ and ‘The Coral Snakes’. And, being the nicest guy in rock’n’roll, he has kept in touch and I have interviewed him several times since, most recently for the ‘Brought to Book’ section of The Scrawl. Over those two decades, he established himself as a prime-time celebrity, was crowned ‘king of pop’, became the housewives’ favourite and now, with two books brimming with his own distinctive writer’s voice, is fast establishing himself as a leading light of the antipodean literary scene, a song-writer and author who has inhabited and helped to build that grand mythic landscape that is so far away, yet has touched me so often.

I have never been to Australia, but at times I have lived there. I know the real Australia is a different place. So, where does all this rich, myth-building imagery come from? What inspired these writers to create such uniquely rich and ‘cinematic’ visions? What marks the Asutralian literary scene apart from others? Who better to ask than Dave Graney?

“I love to collect small print run books of Australian poetry. Especially from the 1970s which was a great period of cultural awakening here. Some great poetic heroes from that time, lived out heroic, doomed junkie lives. One called Michael Dransfield, from Canberra - his poems about being a junkie are full of drama and poise. A woman called Vicki Viidikas also wrote wonderful poems of bohemian travels as a young woman through Melbourne and India. A young guy in Melbourne in the early 1970s called Charles Buckmaster - he apparently appeared on the scene, talking of the place he came from, Gruyere… We used to go for drives outside Melbourne looking for it and that is how we ended up where we live now!

“To me, his poetry is interesting for its self-mythologising. My favourite poet would be Robert Grey, an amazing writer from Northern New South Wales. He published a memoir called The Country I Came Through Last. In a way, it earthed all his writing for me. Before that, it was all hovering and suspended. When he fleshed it out with dates and times and his parents’ lives, it was exciting to follow it with flashes from his poetry I'd known, but it kind of took some of the power away.”

Richard Flannegan won this year’s Booker Prize (as Dave correctly predicted) and is the third Australian to do so. This indicates that there really is something special about, at least some writers, who emerge from the scene there. Is there anything apparent in the Australian culture that may be blamed for the abundance of creative talent and the distinctive poetic voices of its writers?

“Australia’s a pretty brutal country and artists are either cossetted by each other in their little scenes or ridiculed in the wider community.

“There was a famous incident just after the second world war called ‘the Ern Malley Affair’. A modernist magazine was launched called The Angry Penguins. Taken from a line in a Max Harris poem referring to men in tuxedos looking like, ‘angry penguins of the night’. Max was born in the same town I grew up in and was a very interesting character. To see his picture from the time, he looks like something from the early 1980s music scene.”

Max Harris, he was angry with penguins.

…the ‘Ern Malley Affair’?

“Two young poets, both in the army, played a prank where they faked a letter from a woman in the country, saying she'd discovered these poems written by her late brother, an itinerant farm labourer. Max Harris and the painter Sidney Nolan, who ran the magazine, announced the arrival of this poetic voice all over the next issue of Angry Penguins. The two hoaxers stood up and basked in the infamy their outrageous trick. They were James McCauley and Harold Stewart, both staunchly anti-modernist. The story reached the front pages of the daily papers, the only time poetry has ever done so. Instead of retreating, Max and Sidney taunted the hoaxers that, in putting on the mask of 'Ern Malley', they had created a true surrealist Australian poetic voice!

“The hoax knocked all the stuffing out of Max Harris, though he continued to publish some books - of which I have a few. McCauley was a great poet too, more in a pre-modernist style. His epic Captain Quiros's Journey is amazing. He ran a conservative journal called Quadrant, financed by the CIA, which still publishes… Stewart lived in Japan from 1966 to 1995, writing a single long poem!

[ There is an official Ern Malley website. ]

"I refer to a Max Harris poem called, Upon Throwing A Copy Of The New Satesman From The Window Whilst Driving Along The Coorong, in a song from my 2014 record, 'Fearful Wiggings' called Country Roads, Unwinding.



"Personally, I find Australian writers, hit me harder than any others. When they're good. Of course, there's a strain of international cafe bite sized bullshit that probably hogs more of the scene. Easy to ignore!

"I love the poet Les Murray, the historian Henry Reynolds, who was the first to begin writing the history of Australia from the indigenous perspective. He began by asking people to consider aboriginal people seeing ships coming into Sydney cove rather than through the eyes of the sailors cruising in. Simple but very powerful."

Recently, Dave has been appearing regularly on discussion panels at literary conventions. What were his observations at these literary festivals and what did he talk about at them?

“I put out a memoir in 2011, 1001 Australian Nights, through a small publishing house called Affirm Press and it was a very enjoyable experience. Each city is Australia has a Writers Festival and I did most of them over a two year period.

“I felt like an outsider - like a character doing a  cameo scene. I didn't feel encumbered with any notion of ‘career’ type networking or anything. Perth is the most isolated place in the world, let alone Australia - the festival there was lovely. All the writers stayed at the same hotel and travelled to and from a distant university in an old bus. It was like being back at school, but sharing the bus with the brains of the country.

“The Brisbane one was great, I met an Indian writer called Jeet Thayil, who was up for the Booker Prize that same year. He had a great novel about the dope scene in 1970s Bombay. Byron Bay was lovely, of course. It’s a beautiful place. In general, there was a depressing feeling that all writers had to be more like performers so you saw people having to ‘flick the switch to vaudeville’. I craved something serious, mostly.

“In Melbourne I had to do a session chaired by an Australian writer-musician with two other musicians. One was a Canadian who'd written a book about homeless world soccer, called Home and Away. In Australia there is a famous soap opera of the same name. Nobody told him. He read fictional letters he had written to Canada’s biggest musical icon, Gordon Lightfoot. It would have had a great impact - in Canada.

“The American was skinny and young and had his shirt open to his waist and wore a bandana. His name was Simone Felice. I enjoyed his book more than his music. I asked him where he was from. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I come from a place called Woodstock - they had a festival there once...’ I said, ‘oh yeah.... what sort of music do you like?’ He looked at me and said , ‘I really like a guy called Neil Young...’

“The audience ate up everything he said and read from his book. He was totally authentic to them. The other three - myself included - paddled as hard as we could but failed to get off the ground, really. Australian audiences are toughest to their own. Always have been and always will be. We don't really believe in ourselves much.

“In general, I like the festivals. It doesn't seem like any kind of work to me.”

I have enjoyed the way many Australian singer-songwriters use landscape as a metaphor for emotions and memory - they externalise the internal - and this is something I find really effective. It can be very evocative and poignant. I am probably thinking of a lot of the bands I was listening to in my formative years, yourself included, 'Triffids', 'Go-Betweens', 'Apartments', Nick Cave, etc.,. This seemed to be a characteristic of many Australian creatives - why do you think this is?

"I find that stuff a bit corny. 'The Triffids' had great impact with that geographical colouring. A great unit as a band. Lovely people. Peter Milton Walsh from the 'Apartments' is a great songwriter. He's probably much more literary than me. I get emails from him that are amazing! Nick created his own world and is a fantastic performer.

“My records over the last decade have been more personal. I was just very influenced by the language in the post punk scene. Bands like 'Wire', 'Public Image Limeted' and 'The Fal'l and 'Pere Ubu'. It was a brief and very interesting period.  I've also recently been much more into the musical side of it. I love to play guitar. Shoot me! I play bass with 'Harry Howard and the N D E' too. Also in a hip hop duo, 'Wam and Daz'.”

For some of your EPKs, you ventured into little films - not to mention your brief cameos for Neighbours and some imdb surprises - is this an area you would like to get more into?

“Film is tough! We did a soundtrack for a comedy called Bad Eggs, in 2003, and absolutely loved doing that. I loved being a part of a big machine. More please!”

In terms of prose on a page, what books can we expect from you in the near future? Will you venture into pure fiction, or keep it, at least loosely, 'biographical'?

“I am trying a longer piece. It's painful. I like the thrill of steering very close between fiction and not so much...”

'The MistLY' … 'Fearful Wiggings' - you change the name of your band projects almost with each album - please tell us a bit about your recent releases and how they differ whilst remaining indelibly stamped with your personality?

Dave Graney and Clare Moore

“I've played with Clare Moore all the way from 'The Moodists'. We had some success here in Australia with 'The Coral Snakes' in the 1990s. Since then, have had very little support or contact with what thinks it is ‘the industry’.

“Everything we do is very self-generated. We put out an album pretty much every year. We have been such a constant we have NO nostalgic power at all. Our activities having stretched across decades. All the albums we have done, since 'The Moodists', have been of a very high quality. So we have also never ‘returned to form’!

“The 2014 album is 'Fearful Wiggings' and is the second to be credited a s a ‘solo’ album - Clare is on it a lot on vibes. I did most of it, and recorded the vocals at Lisa Gerard’s studio (Dead Can Dance). The 2013 CD was Clare’s band 'The Dames' which was mixed by Barry Adamson in the UK
.
“The 2012 album was the best pop-rock recording of my band called, You’ve Been In My Mind. Previous to that we'd done Knock Yourself Out, which was the first ‘solo’ album, a lyrical explosion and filthy R’n’B pealer. Before that - apart from a couple of remix/re-recordings albums - was one called We Wuz Curious in 2007. It was an R’n’B masterpiece! In my humble opinion. Probably twenty albums before that....”

…and we’re looking forward to the next twenty! Yet again, thank you Dave Graney!

You can read an archive Scrawl interview with Dave Graney here... 

(PDF from newsstand edition)...

Info on all things Dave and Clare related can be found at The Dave Graney Show official website.

- Dave Graney was talking with Remy Dean

Erase the State: Remy Dean on 'Scraps', Twenty Years On…

On the 20th anniversary of his debut novel, Scraps, author Remy Dean talks to Winston Dominic about movies, music, art and finding the time to 'write the wrongs'.

Scraps by Remy Dean - across the decades...

So, it has been twenty years since Scraps was first published… where’s the follow-on novel?

"Arghh! Deadlines! There is one… it’s on the way… I already have scraps of writing that want to become a sequel novel. But I have been writing ever since, working on several projects…"

Fact or fiction?

"Oh, that’s a fact… Since Scraps came out I have had ten books published. That averages out as one every two years – not too bad… but they have been mainly commissions, fact-based books. And I have always been doing a bit of journalism and editorial work."

Your writing background was in journalism?

"I was trained in audio-visual design, which covered film, photography and screen-writing, but my first 'proper' job was writing captions and copy for Design Magazine - the magazine of the old Design Council. From that, it just kept rolling, bits and pieces for national newspapers... that led on to editors coming to me with commissions, which is quite a privileged position to be in for any writer. But I do love fiction - that’s where I find the joy. I have been writing stories since before I was a teenager and will continue to do so… no one can stop me!"

The Race Glass - three short stories by Remy Dean

The Race Glass came out this year and has a selection of short stories from different periods spanning your career, and there is the recent novelette, Final Bough. How do you think your writing has developed over the two decades since Scraps?

"Slowly… I write whenever I get the chance, but I fall foul of many diversions and distractions, such as the reality of living in a capitalist economy where you have to make a living. I could almost make a living from writing, but only by taking those paid commissions – if you are a serious writer, and a publisher comes to you with a commission, then you really have to say 'yes' – and so I found myself writing about things that I was not really interested in. Sometimes subjects that I wasn't interested in would turn out to be interesting once I started on the research and interviewing people around the theme... like Suede and Celine Dion! The last ‘proper’ commission I was offered was a biography of the Spice Girls... I didn’t progress that project. So to make a living, I became a teacher – I know, ironic – but that is something that does interest me. A more reliable, regular income, as far as any professions go these days, and it is rewarding.

"As for developing… the way I write has changed a lot. I tend to use my writing in different ways. As a teacher, I use words to explain ideas and concepts, this resulted in the book, Evolution of Western Art. I find it comparatively easy to sit down and write fact-based text in a journalistic way. If I just manage the odd half-hour here and there, this is something I can do, research and write about themes in a clear and academic way… or write articles for magazines… or pieces for my blogs. That is text as communication and though I still try to keep it lively and flowing and have a few surprises, it is not that creative. It does hone skills that are of great use when applied to creative writing, such as structure, logic, brevity and clarity. Any writing a writer does, does a writer good!"

Remy Dean in conversation, 1994
(courtesy questing beast books)

So creative writing is more difficult?

"Not really, I don’t find any writing difficult. Except filling-in forms! Creative writing, in my case, needs time to live inside me. The characters need to be able to play things out in my imagination… and creativity works best with an open-ended time scale. In some ways it is more difficult to actually do, yes – to find the time to focus without forcing it, allowing the flow of a story to come naturally with its own language and cadences, but that’s also much more joyous and rewarding, when you become immersed. That’s what I love.

"I could sit down and approach creative writing in the same structured and methodical way as journalism, but then the results would be much more formal and would read more like someone who was fresh out of creative writing class – just like so many authors.

"To write fiction well, I need time to settle into the mind-frame of a particular story, become absorbed in its world and mythos, get to know the characters. Then the story just flows into words. It is much closer to play than work. More like magic than science. It can take me a few days to get going along with that flow, though, so when my mind is constantly occupied with teaching and working and shopping and DIY… Yes, it can become frustrating – just as you reach that stage of being able to flow you have to divert yourself to do something else. But those other things also bring varied experiences and interactions with varied personalities that can only feed your writerly repertoire.

"I mean, there aren't many jobs like teaching in the creative arts - every year I get to interact with a fresh batch of fifty or sixty young, agile minds and talk about concepts and ideas with all these people from different backgrounds, bringing their own viewpoints and ways of speaking... I feel I know the 'YA' readership and want to write something for them. And the joys of parenting are innumerable... I've discovered and re-discovered many books, and telly series, and films, and had experiences that have only improved me as a person and also as a writer. You can't live in an ivory tower, can you.... unless you've got a big tower made of ivory, cocker! I couldn't go with that because I care about conservation... and those Greenpeace guys would be on my case, book sales would plummet... though maybe not in Russia and China,"

Then: Remy Dean in a photoshoot for the press launch of Scraps
(courtesy questing beast books)

So if you wrote Scraps now, would it be a very different book?

"Well... I don’t think I could write Scraps now! Just as, back then, I could not write how I write now. Scraps has a lot of energy and bravery in the prose – I re-read it this year and it still impressed me with its relentless pace and the way it relishes language, uses it in an almost physical, percussive way. It is so flip and punky, yet at the same time there is beauty and poignancy in there.

"Now? Well my experiences as an educator, editor and journalist have focussed my writing skills. I hope that my creative writing has more clarity now – a clarity that enhances rather than diminishes its poetic dimension. I hope I still take the risks…

"I still approach creative writing in a way that is closer to abstract expressionism, perhaps as a painter would use colour, brush strokes and texture, I use rhythm and words. I still pay attention to each conjunction and punctuation, y’know, is that full-stop really necessary? How does that ‘and’ affect the overall rhythm of the paragraph it’s sitting in…

"Aristotle used the term ‘melody’ to describe the flow of a dramatic narrative – I try to write in a way similar to a song-writer composing a piece of music – the length of sentences and syllables of the words sometimes create a form that is independent of their direct literal meaning – like films have mood music that enhance the action. I think my writing has become less staccato and probably less over-demanding of the reader – perhaps more ‘prog’ than ‘punk’ nowadays."

Now: Remy and Barnie, in 2014

So what are you working on now, two decades on?

"A few things, the main one right now is a fantasy story for… I was going to say young adults, but it is for the young, including those adults who can remember being young. It will be set in a parallel world …and there will be fairies!"

I’m guessing something like Martin Miller’s Fairies of New York?

"Maybe it started out in that vein, but it is actually being written with my daughter in mind – she has been the major inspiration behind it. It grew out of an old synopsis I had for a much more adult take on the fairy world, but that story has changed and become much richer and… very different from what it was going to be."

So from 'punk-crime-noir' to fairy tales?

"I always considered Scraps to be a fantasy novel. It has all the elements of a fairy tale. It is a fairy tale. A very violent and morally challenging fairy story."

But Scraps is certainly not a book for children!

"No, definitely not! It is aimed at adults. Nouveau adults, I suppose – I wrote it in my twenties…"

There is some pretty strong stuff in it. It caused a bit of stir, mainly because of its sexual content, some of which is not quite ‘PC’…

"Well, thank you. That was intentional. I find it – not surprising, in this society, but strange that people fixated on the sex scenes so much. Its core theme is morality, the morality that is given to a person from parents, peers, priest, bosses and so on and also the core morality that is their own, that develops from their own experience and thinking and heart… personal morality.

"There was a tendency to equate sexuality and sexual practices with morality. To have ‘loose morals’ used to mean expressing sexual freedom, or ‘sleeping around’. Not so long ago, even in this country, it was illegal and considered morally wrong to be homosexual – as if love was immoral and always, exclusively, linked to sexuality!

"I was interested in sex, as many people are! My favourite comment about Scraps came from Lydia Lunch – one of my most favourite authors and critics – when she said, ‘the sex was hot’. That was a huge boost to my confidence as a writer, especially coming from her – a great writer, a generous, positive force, full of energy…

"Yes, some people were shocked by the few pages that dealt with sex, which I think adds up to about four sides in the entire novel, but they were not openly shocked by the violence and murders, which are equally graphic and I would consider much more morally questionable! Our culture still accepts violence in its media much more readily than sex. It reminds me of what Lenny Bruce said on the subject of censorship – I can’t remember the entire sketch, but he makes a comment about a film that cannot be shown on TV because of nudity and an implied sex act, yet in the afternoon they show the story of Jesus, where there are floggings, infanticide and murder by crucifixion. He says that the censors are worried about the young and impressionable imitating what they see. So, that would mean we don’t want our kids to grow up and procreate, enjoy sex and continue the human race, but we’re fine with them killing babies and nailing people to big crosses…"

So what motivated you to write Scraps?

"I really enjoy writing. I wanted to write a good book... and there were characters in my head that needed their independence. I loved reading good books, but much of the writing in some books, that I really wanted to like, was too slow and flabby – I wanted to write a fast-moving, lively novel, where the violence was visceral and the sex was sensual, shocking or seductive. I wanted it to be… not boring. I hoped that the reader would feel something, get involved, question their own responses… and I wanted to irritate those who irritated me back then, the Mary-Whitehouse-Margaret-Thatcher brigade and their reactionary right-wing cronies.

"Also, I had read a ‘how to’ article about writing and it had a list of five things to avoid in a first novel – no excessive violence, no explicit sex, don’t have a main character with amnesia or a central character who is a writer and don’t try to be ‘experimental’… So I made sure I had all of those things in Scraps!"

Why! Why would you do that?

"The whole mind-set of the book was to buck the norm, question authority, challenge convention… It was sort of Dada. If there’s a wrong, I will write it.

"Also, a bit like the Decadents and the early Modernists. Artists like Cezanne and Matisse deliberately avoided the traditional approach, even if that meant doing something the ‘wrong’ way, going against the accepted colour theory, not using perspective in the usual way, not painting the figures to scale… Art usually reflects culture, but they were trying to change culture."

What were the main influences at the time?

"Music and cinema. In the author’s note to the 10th anniversary edition, I explain the connection with music – the novel has a soundtrack… Six Dead Birds, a song by The Moodists – Dave Graney’s band in the eighties – a huge influence, and that milieu merged with Luc Besson’s film, Subway, Alex Cox’s Repo Man and its soundtrack, a bit of Argento in the set-pieces… The title of a Lydia Lunch track, Motor Oil Shanty, also evoked some of the vibe along with The King of Junk, a song by Virgin Prunes… those were the seeds that sparked my imagination back then – there were many other inspirations, from art and life. I was reading books by authors like Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory, Richard Miller's Snail, Nick Zedd's Bleed...

"I wanted to produce a kind of poetic collage of things that were important to me - books, songs, films, art - that I loved. Do a sort of David Bowie response to the culture I surrounded myself with, that had strongly affected me at that time. Things I have experienced through books and films have had just as profound an effect upon me as actual primary experience...

"Scraps is crammed with references and symbolism - not that it is explicit, and most readers should be totally unaware of that side of the story, but maybe they get the feeling that there is a richness and a poetic depth - 'more than meets the eye'. For example, there is a narrative structure inspired by the journey through the major arkana of the Tarot... and some of the characters partly reference important periods of Art History - Tom's amnesia is the Mediaeval period... Mary is the Renaissance... "

A bit of Quentin Tarrantino?

"Not really. Scraps was written around the same time as Reservoir Dogs was – contemporary with it. Perhaps it was down to the late eighties zeitgeist… I can see parallels with True Romance – which is no bad thing – that was in cinemas around the same time as Scraps was published, so the reviews that compared them were probably helpful in finding an audience for the book. And of course, Pulp Fiction was also released in 1994."

…there was talk about a cinematic adaptation?

"Perhaps some talk, but no one ‘walked the walk’. Not yet. I was coming out of a film background and Scraps reads like a ready-to-go screenplay. I tried to write visually, there’s not much internal dialogue, always more show than tell. I tried to evoke the dianoia - what the characters may be feeling or thinking - by their actions or in a poetic way with what’s going on around them.

"I think Scraps is already a movie, I saw the film in my mind and the text projects it onto the brain screen within the reader. But, of course, I'd love to see it made into a film... in the style of independent French, or Italian, films from the 1970s or 80s..."

You said, in the author’s note for The Race Glass, that Scraps was autobiographical…

"Yes, I say 'a highly stylised form of autobiography – in the same way that dreams are'."

So is any of it from your real life experience?

"None of it and all of it...

"I like what Oscar Wilde said in, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 'An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them'. But when you come down to it, personal experience, or your own interpretations of the experiences of others, is the only material a writer ever has to work with in order to link imagination to the, so called, real world. So all creative work becomes an element of self-portrait.

"The characters are collages of real people, amalgams, elements from different people merged to form one. The locations likewise, ranging from Wigan, Stoke and Blackpool to London, Paris and Rome... The events are exaggerated versions of real experiences and expressions of my responses to them, warped and coloured in different ways to suit the story. The story is as real as a dream – and a dream seems real while it lasts."

Do you have any advice for up-coming writers?

"Read or write whenever you can. Write because you love writing. Respect your writing, even if you're the only one that does! Publication is a nice bonus, but the writing defines the writer. Don't pander, just keep on writing and keep hold of the joy."

Thank you, Remy - long may you dream (and write) on!

- Remy Dean was talking to Winston Dominic

Scraps is available as a direct download e-book and also as a tree-book.

More info and up-dates can be found on the Official Remy Dean Weblog.

Check out Dean's listing on the Writers of Wales Database 

and his author's page at amazon.co.uk

Remy Dean has since been Brought to Book by The Scrawl

Dave Graney - Brought to Book

What was the first book you can remember reading that really grabbed you and carried you along?

I grew up in a house with three bedrooms and eight people living in it, so there was very little in the way of privacy or a little place to be by yourself. Mostly, we ran in and out of the house, madly playing football and cricket.

I read books at school but they made you read things that perhaps weren't right for a teen. I must mention here the Australian author Patrick White whose novel, about two strange brothers, The Solid Mandala, was given to us to read when I was about 15 or 16. It was too weird and slow and interior for us. I read it a  couple of years ago and - like all his work- it's pretty much a  total masterpiece.

I think, growing up, I read little bits of things here and there, and took them in quite hungrily. Things like J D Salinger’s For Esme With Love and Squalor. When a young adult, I read a lot of crime fiction. It was hard to find, mostly out of print. That made it good too. So I would say, The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M Cain, had a big effect on me - made me think of ways to express things and illuminated my mind with thoughts of a wide open California. A definite adult world of drifters and working people. It was good to put my head in it when I was just moving into the rock music world which was becoming institutionalised youth culture.

Dave Graney, book-lover...

Do you have a favourite book, one that changed you or that you have re-read a few times?

I don't think I've ever read many books twice. I used to collect all the Richard Stark books involving the character, Parker. Lee Marvin played him in a film called Point Blank. The books were all very formulaic, written by Donald E Westlake under the ‘Stark’ pseudonym. I loved all the masks involved. Each book had the same format, so it was almost like the same one! We did an album called The Devil Drives with an image of Lee on the cover and I did a live show called Point Blank as well. There is an amazing hard-boiled novel by Paul Cain called Fast One that I have actually read two or three times.

What was the most recent book you read and thoroughly enjoyed?

It was either a book about Captain Bligh’s trip in an open boat after the mutiny on his ship, The Bounty, and then the subsequent mutiny in New South Wales, when he came here to be governor... or a book about an explorer called McDowell Stuart, who walked from Adelaide to the top end for the first time. I probably most enjoyed Somebody Else, a book about the poet Arthur Rimbaud in Africa, after he'd given up writing.

Actually, I just remembered - I loved, A Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan. It’s just been listed – deservedly, too! - for the Booker prize. (Since announced as the 2014 winner - ed.) An absolutely monumental, epic novel set in Adelaide during the Second World War and the Burma Railway. I highly recommend it - a masterpiece!

Who have been your favourite authors, and what have you learnt from them?

I bought four Patrick White books in hardback a few years ago and absolutely roared through them. He won a Nobel Prize for literature - the only Australian, and deservedly so. His books are unpopular - Too Good! An amazing writer. Everything I've read: The Vivisector, The Tree of Man, The Cockatoos, Voss - about a German explorer - Riders in the Chariot... Amazing.

I love a lot of Australian writers. David Foster is quite experimental and wrote a recent book called Sons of the Rumour, where he tried to tell the thousand and one nights in contemporary colloquial language. Two women, under the name 'M Barnard Eldershaw' wrote a great modernist- futuristic novel in 1945 called Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow - amazing work. A contemporary writer called Delia Falconer wrote about Custer’s last battle in a great novel called The Company of Soldiers. I have read two great novels set in convict era Hobart which seemed to be a reconstruction of Georgian London of thirty years before - one by Christopher Koch called Out of Ireland. The other was by a writer with a very shady reputation called Hal Porter. It is magnificently ragged and raw but electrifying. It’s called The Tilted Cross. It’s about British class, seen through the Tasmanian reproduction.

Do you have a writing ritual, regimen or a tried and tested process?

I wish I did! Something like George Simenon or Zane Grey who seemed to be machines! I just avoid it like everybody and then panic and sit down for hours. Feel great and then feel shit. The usual!

So, what motivates you to write?

Its quite enjoyable! I don't know whether it’s as enjoyable for me as playing music or singing. That’s quite an unconscious thing that I really love, also the camaraderie of fellow players. Writing to order for stories is enjoyable. Trying to write an extended piece is a great challenge. I'm suffering that challenge at the moment.

What are the major differences between your approach to writing prose for a book and writing songs for an album?

Well, musical things are just dumb luck or mistakes for the most part. Also very intuitive and you make your own rules. Australian artists all make themselves up, we have very few archetypes to model ourselves after. I don't know what the business side of it is like or how its going to hold together in either pursuit. There's no retiring in music.

Do you think a writer has any social or moral responsibilities?

Well writers are mostly just scratching out a life yeah? Like everybody. These are pretty brutal times and the days of self destruction are pretty much over. Nobody cares much for that sort of thing, do they? It’s also a world of cheap sensation and buzz. It’s easy to stir up a lot of people but it’s hard to get a lot of sustained momentum from that sort of thing. I'm talking about outraging the mob. The mob just drifts away don't they? I live in Australia which at the moment is run by Rupert Murdoch and several mining magnates and companies. It is being destroyed. Ravaged. I guess artists have a responsibility to at least express their cognisance of the great scams that are going on.

Who do you admire, who would be your heroes / heroines?

I admire some people from a distance who would have probably been pretty hard work up close. The explorer Richard Burton, the dandy Beau Brummel. Those two mainly for their notoriety and the fact that people know so little about them. Jerry Lee Lewis, Jim Morrison, Hank Williams, Charlie Rich, Charlie Chaplin, Mick Jagger, the guitar players Grant green, Davy Graham, Kenny Burrell. I love some early TV shows like the Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan and the Avengers series. I love Dave Chappelle and a lot of British comedians. I think they're amazing actually. Those long shows by Stewart Lee and those Fast Show guys, Higson and White, Mitchell and Webb. I love the drama of Apollinaire and Rimbaud and the great, compact writing of the mysterious A E Coppard.

Now you have a long and successful writing career, do you have any advice or ‘words of wisdom’ for aspiring young writers of songs or prose?

My advice is to BE LUCKY. And also happy. Why ever not!

Why ever not, indeed! Thank you, Dave Graney! 

Dave Graney - King of Pop

UPDATE: we have since added a more recent Scrawl interview with Dave Graney here 
...and you can also read an archive Scrawl interview with Dave Graney here 
(PDF from newsstand edition)

STOP PRESS: Dave Graney is currently playing select venues in the UK with his band 'The MistLY':

October 2014 dates include:

Tuesday 14th at the Brixton Windmill, London. 

Thursday 16th  at the 12bar Club, London. 

Saturday 18th  at the Mucky Pup Islington.

Tuesday 21st  at the Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh

For more info on the music and books of Dave Graney, go to his official website.

Click here to read reviews, hear samples or to purchase Dave's latest album, Fearful Wiggings.

Check out Dave Graney's Facebook for more info and any additional live dates...

- Dave Graney was talking to Remy Dean.

Scraps by Remy Dean - Kindle Edition

questing beast books are proud to present the new Kindle edition of Scraps a novel by Remy Dean:

Tom doesn't know which city he is in or what drug he is addicted to and is forced to confront himself on a strange journey of self discovery - or maybe self deception.

On the run from the cops and two factions of the mob, he falls in with a gang of street punks and poets.

Under the influence of three very different women and assorted substances, Tom must sort out his dreams from his memories and come to terms with what he has done, or failed to do...

Scraps is brave and uncompromising - a surprising story told with startling style - brutal, flippant and fun.

Lydia Lunch, author, confrontationalist, musician and multi-media artist, said of Dean's first novel, "great language, poetry and images..." she also commented that, "the sex was hot".

Miles Hatfield in his review in 'The Champion' described it as, "a twisted tale... a freewheeling, experimental novel". He realised that, "Dean has taken a few risks... there are some startling and surreal episodes," and goes on to say that, "there is plenty of energy in the writing and the yarn rattles along at a cracking pace".

Susan Watt, a senior editor at HarperCollins described Scraps as, "a really moody, and inspired portrait of urban life at its seediest".

Writers News called 'Scraps', "a fast moving, gripping story of love, lust and moralities," whereas Writers Monthly branded it as a, "shocking debut novel, also describing it as, "racy, gripping, brutal and startling..."

Others have likened Dean's distinctive gritty-crime-noir fantasy style to the films of Quentin Tarantino and Scrawl UK said, "An intelligent crime novel with a romantic twist... A dense and powerful debut novel, 'Scraps' has the visual impact of cutting edge cinema and the lyrical quality more often found in good song writing. The theme challenges you to re-think your own morality."

Remy Dean has added this note to the new edition: "Music was an important part of the writing process for this novel – it helped me to create and capture certain moods and atmosphere. I was writing as if describing a film I had dreamt, and I had music in mind for the dream soundtrack of that film. The sounds that were playing as I wrote, and in various ways filtered through into the text, included music and lyrics by the following artists, to whom I wish to extend my gratitude for their positive influence upon this piece of writing and upon my life, then and now: Dave Graney (The Moodists / The Coral Snakes), Lydia Lunch (8 Eyed Spy), Gavin Friday (Virgin Prunes), BrainDeath, Slab, Eric Serra, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Go-Betweens, Hunters & Collectors, Nick Cave (Birthday Party), Scott Walker, Gordon Lightfoot... If you really listen to this book, you will hear them all."

Buy Scraps direct on-line

Authors: G

William Gibson - The first author to be called 'cyberpunk'...

Michael Gira and s w a n s - Writer and musician with power, intensity and integrity

Dave Graney - Another true poet hiding in rock 'n' roll