Meanwhile,
Duffo made his first appearance on a British stage at the legendary Lyceum in
London, where he was gobbed off stage before he could finish his song GIVE ME
BACK ME BRAIN. The cling-wrap with which he’d wrapped his slender frame
as his stage costume for the night was covered in the saliva of a hard-core
London punk crowd. Later that night, a number of National Front supporters took
their revenge at Duffo’s “stunt” of tossing warm sheep’s
brains into the front rows of the audience by beating him up. Not the most auspicious
of debuts but you could say Duffo had “arrived”.
So he wasn’t going to win over the National Front, even if he could come
up with the appropriate expletives. “I think my sense of humour actually
saved me in that first period in London, because you definitely need something,
in an antagonistic environment like that - fortunately, I had a bucket of sheep’s
brains”. The second song on his eponymous debut UK album, LET ME FUCK
YOUR MIND, was too caressing, played with more irony than angst, though it perturbed
his record label enough to have them tell him he could not have that title printed
on the record sleeve in English. Hence, the “alternative” Spanish
title, DEJAME JODER TU MENTE.
“In fact, on that first album, LET ME FUCK YOUR MIND and RISE IN YOUR
LEVIS
were the only two songs played on radio in Italy. I guess the lowest common
denominator in any universal language is sex, so I suppose the word fuck is
universally accepted”.
Europe embraced Duffo in a way that some of the more conservative British rock
press had not, even though they had even less chance of understanding his impish
sense of the ridiculous and warped vision of the world in Paris or Berlin than
in London. Nevertheless, during his first visit to the Netherlands he was invited
to write a song that could cash in on the popularity of the first of the Alien
movies, starring Sigourney Weaver. The result was I BE THE ALIEN, released as
a single exclusively in Holland, not as Duffo but under the pseudonym Joopiter
Jones, and recorded on an eight-track recorder with toy instruments.
“Nick Cave arrived in London just behind me, with his then girlfriend,
Anita Lane. At the time Nick didn’t have a recording deal, so I invited
Beggars Banquet down to the Rock Garden in Covent Garden to see The Birthday
Party and 4AD (Beggars Banquet’s offshoot label) signed them immediately.
Nick and Anita didn’t have much money at the time so we’d live on
French bread sticks and red wine and share the occasional Indian meal. Nick
became well known very quickly. He really fitted in well with the pulse of the
English Rock scene. He was very much in keeping with that dark, Gothic thing
of the time”.
If the debut album, Duffo, proved anything, it was that Jeff Duff wasn’t
going to be easily pigeonholed because there was everything in there, from the
angstless punk to the emerging New Wave, tongue-in-cheek reggae to glam rock
and even straight-ahead though well bent 50s rock ‘n’ roll. His
escape from the restrictions and preconceptions of Australia had sent his fervent
imagination into every direction at once, and if it was going to find any direction,
he was going to need a little help. That came in the form of producer Peter
Vernon-Kell, who heard him perform on the BBC’s The Old Grey Whistle Test
(a live to air television rock show). Peter was to produce Duffo’s next
album, THE DISAPPEARING BOY.
“The Duffo live thing was becoming increasingly popular because it was
pretty bizarre. Woody Woodmansey, Bowie’s drummer in The Spiders from
Mars, sent me a letter asking if he could join my band. At the time I was flattered
but of course I already had a wonderful drummer and a great band”.
Vernon-Kell had his own label, PVK, and had been the man who had coaxed the
reclusive guitarist, Peter Green, founding member of Fleetwood Mac, out of his
self-imposed exile. Green then ended up contributing to two tracks on The DISAPPEARING
BOY - LOST IN MY ROOM and the song that Duffo had written after seeing Iggy
Pop in concert - THE IDIOT. There were certainly enough enthusiastic musicians
ready to get involved in Duffo’s projects. Trading guitar licks with Peter
Green was speed guitarist Ronnie Johnson, while it’s David Ball from British
band Procol Harum on the rest of the album. There would be more high profile
players to come.
A certain sombre melancholy infused part of the album, despite the obvious whimsy
still present in many of the lyrics, a result of the unexpected passing of Duffo’s
mother during the recording. “Even though there was some occasional humour,
there’s an overall feeling of melancholy. But I think it’s mainly
in the instrumentation. It’s fairly keyboard-orientated and very Doors
sounding with a Jim Morrison narrative approach on a few songs. Around this
time something strange was happening to me”. The resulting depression
manifested itself in more ways than just in Duff’s music.