If ever there was a performer in this crazy industry who was innocence and knowing all in one, a perpetual outsider and a Peter Pan, it’s Jeff Duff...and that’s why the angel wings that have adorned a lot of his publicity photos and CD artwork make a lot of sense too. A fallen angel perhaps and perhaps not. Maybe he’s a creation of Wim Wenders circa ‘Wings of Desire’ and he doesn’t know it.

Jeff Duff seemed out of step with Australia in 1978 - so he left for England. Whether or not England was necessarily any more ready for Jeff than Australia in 1978 is a moot point. The Sex Pistols had flared all too briefly but set the course for pop music for the foreseeable future - punk ruled and England was definitely no place for the squeamish. But then, Jeff Duff had never been squeamish. Long before the androgyny of Bowie and Lou Reed had filtered across Australia, Duff was already playing out cross-gender roles - after all, hadn’t he turned up to the audition for Kush, by his own admission, wearing “a diamond tiara, body-hugging mini-skirt and matching stilettos!?” England, though was all torn t-shirts, zips and safety pins. Would Duff’s brand of self-deprecating foppery find a niche?

On arrival, Jeff decided to approach all his favourite record companies - not the majors, of whom he was thoroughly disillusioned (check out Record Jerk on the Duffo album: “I guess every musician who is rejected by a record company has the freedom to vent their frustration, and I did it in a fairly humourous way in that song”). So he approached the “hip” Indie labels that were proliferating all over the U.K., thanks to the punk explosion. Even though he had a friend in Laurie Dunn over at Virgin Records, Duff opted for the smaller “trendy labels”, optimistically assuming they would “get it” and sign him. So he went to them all, putting on his backing tracks, singing live and confusing everyone along the way. He was even thrown out of Stiff Records after leaping onto the office table to sing! Meanwhile he was staying alive by cutting out newspaper and magazine clippings in the press division of Virgin, and even played with the label’s cricket team, alongside Richard Branson and the label’s pre-Sex Pistols top moneymaker, Mike Oldfield.

Within three months of landing in the Old Dart, not only had Jeff Duff, now calling himself Duffo, scored a recording deal with Beggars Banquet, but got himself arrested on the steps of the Prime Minister’s lodgings in 10 Downing Street, as a result of a record company inspired publicity stunt that got out of hand. Found guilty of offensive behaviour, Duffo was fined £60.

It got Jeff the requisite media attention for his first UK single, GIVE ME BACK ME BRAIN (which entered the British Charts in its first week of release), but he still had to win over the all powerful and acerbic British rock press if he was going to get anywhere. Infamous ‘New Musical Express’ journalist, Tony Parsons had given the single a favourable review so Duffo was summoned for an interview in the journalist’s favourite Carnaby Street pub. Duffo arrived with walking cane and dark glasses pretending to be blind. Assisted to Parsons’ table, Duffo offered the journalist a cigarette which promptly exploded in Parsons’ face, which saw him tip backwards and connect rather unceremoniously with the floor, to the great delight of the other journalists in the establishment. Needless to say, Parsons was not exactly enamoured and the incident set the scene for Duffo’s diffident relationship with the British press throughout his years there, even if the Duffo album had the added imprimatur of being recorded in the same studio the Sex Pistols had once used, Riverside Studios.

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