By Travis Johnson
If the title sounds familiar, it could be because it’s near-identical to Steve Kilbey’s 2014 autobiography, Something Quite Peculiar, and unavoidably covers some of the same ground. Then again, perhaps you, like millions of others, recognise those three words from ‘Under the Milky Way’, the anthemic single from The Church’s 1988 album, Starfish. Kilbey, of course, co-wrote that, having co-founded the band back in 1980.
However, this is not the film of the book. As Kilbey explains, Mike Brook’s film, Something Quite Familiar: The Life and Times of Steve Kilbey, had its genesis when Kilbey was roped in for a brief appearance in Brook’s 2014 film, Don’t Throw Stones, based on pugnacious Australian singer/songwriter Stephen Cummings’ memoir, Will it be Funny Tomorrow, Billy?
“In his book he slags off a whole load of people,” Kilbey recalls. “Tells tales about them. I’m one, Joe Camilleri’s one, Michael Gudinski’s one is one, Nick Cave’s one, and they got some of the people to read the bits about them and comment on them. So after I’d done my bit, Mike Brooks says, ‘Oh, I wish I’d done the film about you instead of him’ and I said ‘Why is that?’ and he said, ‘Because you’re more loquacious – you can tell a stories, you can riff – because every time I’ve put the camera on him, he’s frozen up.’ So I said ‘Do your next one about me!’ And he said ‘Alright’. And sure enough, a couple of years later, he said, ‘Alright Kilbey, time to do it.’”
So Something Quite Peculiar the film is, in effect, a companion piece to Kilbey’s own memoir.
Kilbey nods. “The film has only a loose relationship with the book. They’re two different things, really. Definitely.”
Still, they both travel similar paths. Th film traces Kilbey’s life from his teenage dreams of stardom to his early successes with his iconic – and famously fractious – band, The Church, through his dark years addicted to heroin – Kilbey took up the drug at 37, an age when many are putting aside their youthful vices – to his current status as an elder statesman of Australian music: still active, still exploring, still productive. A new album with The Church, Man Woman Life Death Infinity, is due this year, and live shows and tours are always on the cards.
For all that, we must ask, do the memoir and the documentary coming so close together indicate that Kilbey is in a reflective space these days? Is he taking stock of his life and contextualising his past?
“It’s worth telling the story,” he says of his life. “It is a story; it sort of has its mild arc of pigheaded young fool, pathetic junkie, suffers in wilderness, comes out the other end and it’s alright. ‘Hey everybody, I made it! I’m alright!’ It follows this arc that I could see… it’d be stupid not to have a little film about it.”
One thing that comes across is how driven and methodical Kilbey was in constructing his public avatar, even from a very young age. “Ever since I was a child, my teenagerdom, I was planning my public persona, and how he would look and what he would do and the things he would say, and I had very much the ability to step outside myself and see myself as a product. I’m a product, I’m competing with all these other guys who are also products, they’ve all got their thing, and I’ve gotta have my thing. I still see it like that.”
That’s an element of the entertainment industry that few interview subjects like to dwell on – we’re encouraged to believe that our stars and heroes are free range, naturalistic and just born to the roles they play and the positions they occupy. Kilbey candidly dispels such illusions, though.
“It’s like being a kid and wanting to be a football player and looking at what you got.” he says. ” You might go, ‘Well, I’m skinny, I’m good at marking, I’m good at kicking, not very good at tackling, so I’m probably not gonna be in this position or this team,’ and you figure it out.
“I looked at myself and went, ‘Well, you’re kind of good looking enough to be a singer and a rock star, you’re not incredibly talented, but you’ve got a sort of intelligence so you can figure it all out, you’re the greatest singer or bass player that ever existed, but if you have the right attitude, if you can surround yourself with the right guys, you’ve got a chance.’ That’s all I thought, really. So yeah, I always saw myself as a commodity, and I still do.”
But if public persona is product, then we must ask, how much of what we’re seeing is real? What is genuine, and what is performance? Ultimately what is the difference between Kilbey the construction and Kilbey the man?
“None, really,” Kilbey says. “There isn’t. I am exactly what I seem. I am no different in anything I do – it’s always me. It’s me on stage, it’s me when I’m hanging out with my kids, it’s me when I’m at a funeral or a wedding or hanging out with my mother – that’s just what I am. I don’t have a public persona and then a private persona – it’s all the same thing.”
Something Quite Peculiar: The Life and Times of Steve Kilbey is screening at the Australian Music Week Film Festival.
