Yes Prime Minister: The Church’s Steve Kilbey went to school with Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: Peter Sharp

Seeing your name on an oldies radio station package tour bill with Wa Wa Nee, 1927, Kids in the Kitchen, Pseudo Echo, Real Life and The Church was unexpected.

I’m poor. It’s paying the bills.

You’ve done some of these Pure Live shows in Sydney already. How did they go?

It’s pretty painless. I show up to the gig, nobody hassles me, I sing my three or four songs, I go home. They pay me promptly, it’s a really great gig. People are pretty happy. I’d rather be making a record with Brian Eno, for sure. But all things considered it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I thought it might be tacky but it’s kind of really good. It’s a challenge too. It’s not the sort of thing I’d normally do, but, let’s see if I can pull it off with some aplomb and a bit of grace.

What are the audiences like compared to usual Church audiences?

Most of them are women. A lot of mothers and daughters bonding. They’re rediscovering their youth, that’s not a bad thing. And the one thing people don’t talk about much is that it’s fun. It’s good to catch up with all the old rockers back stage. The house band are excellent. I stand on stage and sing the songs, if I close my eyes it could almost be The Church. There’s very little difference. It’s not a deep and meaningful night, it’s not Siouxsie and the Banshees for sure, it’s all right. The crowd are really determined to enjoy themselves. They’re not concentrating too much on any one act, everyone goes down well. It’s a win-win situation.

Cameras for eyes: Steve Kilbey is learning how to have fun on stage playing old hits.Source:News Corp Australia

You’re pretty open about disowning The Unguarded Moment, the Church’s 1981 breakthrough hit. You stopped playing it a long time ago, have you fallen back in love with it a bit playing it on these shows and seeing the reaction it gets?

I was never in love with it the first time. It’s just a f***ing hit single. It was a hit, a load of people like it. It brings them pleasure when I sing it. But I don’t really want to sing it. But then I don’t really not want to. It’s a funny thing. In the end I get paid really good money to sing that one song. To sing that one song for three minutes I might earn what some people might earn in two weeks being a waitress. So you can’t be too curmudgeonly about it. I have to admit I started off doing it for the money. By the second and third the more I was enjoying it, concentrating on the fun side of it rather than thinking I was going to make a serious musical statement. The Church did 100 gigs in America last year making serious musical statements. I do little gigs on my own making serious musical statements. I release records on my own making serious musical statements. I don’t think it hurts to go out there and sing some fun old songs and have a laugh and jump around the stage and hear women scream and hang out with old rockers like Angry Anderson. There are worse things to be doing, believe me. It’s the kind of thing you shouldn’t think too deeply about.

Most bands get three or four songs. Presumably on a good night you get to sing The Unguarded Moment (No. 22 in 1981) and Almost With You (No. 21 in 1982), Under the Milky Way (No. 22 in 1988) and 1990s Metropolis (No. 19).

You presume correctly. They’re not the ones if someone said go out and play your five favourite songs they’re not the ones I’d choose to do. They were songs I wrote. They’re not my favourite songs. They’re pop songs the crowd like. I’m OK with them.

Is hanging with the “old rockers” like being back in a Countdown green room?

There was cattiness and bitchiness in those days. Worrying about where you were on the charts. Now with the old rockers that’s all gone away. It’s all nice feelings. But if Brian Eno rings me and says come and do an installation where we f*** around with white noise I’d much rather be doing that than singing The Unguarded Moment. But that hasn’t happened yet. But talk about satisfaction guaranteed. The crowd go bananas every night.

Old mate: Malcolm TurnbullSource:News Corp Australia

Life story: Steve Kilbey’s bookSource:Supplied

Your excellent autobiography Something Quite Peculiar talks about how you went to school with Malcolm Turnbull ...

He stayed at our house. He and I got along very very badly. I’d always considered myself a very intelligent guy. I thought I was one of the top groovers on the debating scene. Turnbull demolished our team. At 18 he was incredibly articulate and persuasive. In fact the guy that you see now on TV, it’s a little disappointing having known the 18-year-old Mal. The 18-year-old Mal was so arrogant and opinionated and forceful. What we see now is a washed out kind of version. But that’s what happens with rockers as well. The guys who at 25 were beating up journalists and shooting up monkey glands and jumping out of windows are now sitting there going pontificating on their career. It’s not surprising he mellowed out. He had to mellow out. He couldn’t have been the PM being the way he was.

You said your mother told you back then he’d be Prime Minister one day.

It’s a big joke in our family, the last day he was there, the morning he was leaving he was in the kitchen talking to my mother about politics. He blew my mother’s socks off. She’d never made any predictions like this before, but she said to me ‘I know you don’t like him but that boy is going to be the Prime Minister of Australia’ and when he got back into politics in the 2000, in my electorate in Wentworth in Sydney, my mother said ‘There you go’. Each time he moved a little bit up she’d say ‘I told you’. Malcolm was a fascinating guy.

Have you ever seen him since? Would he remember you?

He might do. I know a few people wrote to him and said You should let Kilbey paint you for the Archibalds and someone wanted to make a documentary about it but he never responded. I don’t blame him. Why would you want to get mixed up with a shabby character like me when you’re Prime Minister!

Old school: Church members Marty Willson-Piper and Steve Kilbey in 1990.Source:News Corp Australia

The book is also very honest about your lost heroin years in the 1990s.

I am incredibly honest about everything that happens to me. I blurt it all out. When I started really seriously revisiting it (for the book) it really depressed me. It was putting me in a really bad place. I realised the enormity of the damage I’d done to other people. It wasn’t so much it was dramatic, it wasn’t like I was on the window ledge, it was embarrassing stuff — ‘Can you lend me $100? I can’t do a gig because I’m hanging out (for drugs)’. Getting a chance to produce someone’s album and you’re falling asleep at the console. Always being dependent every day on a whole bunch of ratbags to find the stuff and bring the stuff.

You also talk about the amount of money you lost.

I spent everything I had. Over 10 years I put everything I owned up my arm. My house, my studio, all my equipment, all my guitars, my car and when I’d run out of all those material things I put my first two daughters up my arm, their mother up my arm, all my friends, my brothers up my arm. Nothing mattered except getting the next fix. Eventually you’re just a guy sitting in a room trying to scrape up $50 and waiting for someone to arrive whom never seems to arrive when they say they will. I’ve been through a few different things in my life but f***ing being a junkie is the worst.

What’s your view on legalising heroin?

That would solve it all, then heroin addicts could have normal lives. A lot of the problems are caused by the expense and the illegality of it. I started off (using heroin) because I was a thrillseeker. I’d done acid, I’d done coke, I’d done speed and everything else, gee I should try heroin. So when it came along I tried it and I got hooked. It wasn’t any underlying problem with me. When I went to Scandinavia one of my best friends was a girl who’d been raped by her whole family since she was about three years old. Now she was about 30 and she was a prostitute. When she’d have a shot of heroin she could forget that. She could forget everything. I figure that society had let her down so badly by allowing that to happen they owed it to her. Another guy who was from Yugoslavia had seen his family shot and tortured in the Balkan Wars, seen bombs go off, been shot at and beaten up. For people like that, heroin’s marvellous. When we say heroin, think morphine. A lady I know is dying in hospital and she’s on morphine. I could see her doing what I used to do, sitting there, nodding off, in a dreamy pleasant relaxed state. She deserved that, she was dying of cancer. Who wants to be in the present and sharp as a tack when that’s happening? So I think these people with terrible problems, violent abusive childhoods, they should be able to have this stuff if it helps them cope. It’s stupid that some idiot who knows nothing about them or about drugs says ‘No, we have to make this highly illegal’. The money you have to pay to get it, it’s crazy. Well maybe not so much any more, ice has come along and changed it. But once upon a time having heroin was like having uranium on you. Now the word the government use all the time is ‘terrorist’, But 30 years ago ‘heroin addict’ was the phrase that made everyone scared and frightening. In actual fact some peoples’ lives justify using heroin. If it gives them a bit of hope or dreaminess or detachment I believe they deserve it.

Now: Jennifer Keyte. Picture Julie KircoudisSource:News Corp Australia

Then: Jennifer Keyte in 1996Source:News Corp Australia

Changing topics, you talked about your relationship with newsreader Jennifer Keyte in the book.

She was my first real love. We had the most idyllic little love affair for about three years and I ruined it by going to Sweden and meeting another woman. Boy, if I could go back in time to 1982 I would certainly stay with Jennifer. We really had a great time. She sure hasn’t lost her looks either. She looks like she hasn’t aged a bit. She looks better now than when I was dating her. It was a wonderful time. It was so romantic. I hope everyone has a time like that in their life where they have a great romance like that.

She said she still smiles if she hears a Church song. Do you still see her on TV?

Recently I turned on Facebook and there she was, she was reading a news story. I haven’t spoken to her for 30 years, even longer, 32 years. I’ve never run into her. Never had the pleasure of meeting her again.

You wrote Electric Lash about her ... she was the girl on the radio.

Loads of songs are about her. All of them. If they weren’t about her they were to impress her. When I first met her I went into songwriting hyperdrive. Sitting at her flat, waiting for her to come home and I’d written another song. She worked early every morning. They were the good times definitely.

Finally, you are a major David Bowie fan. How are you holding up?

I could stand here right now and weep. I’m absolutely devastated and I think I will always be devastated. We didn’t think David Bowie would ever die. It was such a shock. I’m going through a massive Bowie phase along with the rest of the planet. I’m listening to David Bowie day and night. I’ve got a load of David Bowie books. I sit there and watch films about Bowie, interviews with the Spiders From Mars. He was one of a kind. He was the best. He was so far ahead. You could only say, in my world at least, only the Beatles and probably Dylan, maybe the Stones are on a level with him as far as what he achieved and what he did. I copped it from a lot of my relatives who used to come around and I’d show them the cover of Aladdin Saneand my Aunty Lou said ‘We fought the war for guys to look like that? It’s disgusting’. I’m not going to get over it. I won’t get over it. He was too big a part of my life. It’s affected me even more than John Lennon or anybody. I’d give anything I could to bring him back. I absolutely loved and worshipped the guy on so many levels, even though I didn’t really like anything he did from 1980 onwards, but what he did in the ‘70s was mind-blowing stuff. It’s ridiculous to think a pop singer dies and it causes pain, but when someone is as much a part of your life as that it’s painful.

Guitar hero: Steve Kilbey says he will never get over the death of David Bowie.Source:News Corp Australia

Pure Gold Live: 1927, Deborah Conway, Dale Ryder, Real Life, Eurogliders, Kids In The Kitchen, Moving Pictures, Paul Norton, Pseudo Echo, Richard Clapton, Shane Howard, Sean Kelly, Sharon O’Neill, Steve Kilbey, Swanee, Wendy Stapleton, Wa Wa Nee. Palais Theatre, May 13. $89-$131.46, Ticketmaster

JOIN STEVE KILBEY ON FACEBOOK

STEVE KILBEY: THE TIME BEING