HONKY TONK WOMEN by THE ROLLING STONES Story by Kevin Densley

St Albans Clubrooms. Thomson, Geelong. 1979

It was near the end of HSC, and I’d already played in a couple of rock bands, in Years 10 and 11. By this time a few of us had become better guitar players, and prospects looked good for this new band we’d just formed, South Side.

We knew each other from many years in the school brass band, except for BJ, who we got in because we he was good on drums and that’s what we needed.

Will was on guitar, so was Ross, Clive played keyboard and I was on bass – and, BJ was on the traps. Will and Ross did most of the singing, from memory.

I recall rehearsing in a back shed at BJ’s family farm in Lovely Banks, on the outskirts of Geelong, where his father trained harness racers. I remember watching BJ take a spin around the home-made track, steering a horse from a sulky.

We also rehearsed at my family home in Austin Street, Newtown. That was probably the time I plugged my bass into the old radiogram and quickly rendered it nothing more than a cumbersome piece of useless furniture.

Will played footy at St Albans and got us the gig there; one of your typical country town football club fundraisers. That was when Geelong was still a big country town, before the era of big shopping complexes, an era when you could walk around the CBD and know – or know of – almost every person or family who owned the businesses.

We rehearsed a great deal for our debut – these rehearsals made me a better player, as we included stuff like Doobie Brothers tunes that made my fingers go to all sorts of interesting places high on the bass guitar fretboard.

The gig was in the clubrooms of the St Albans Football Club on a winter’s night, with a pig on a spit, a few barrels and a good-sized crowd.

We played on a raised stage at one end of the room, about four feet off the floor. As the night progressed I had quite a bit of the amber fluid.

I also remember walking into the darkness – before the gig started, I think – and seeing unfortunate Porky roasting over the hot coals. I probably had a few pork rolls as I gazed at him.

Sometime during our set, I saw a girl I played tennis with when I was 14 dancing in front of the stage, smiling and waving a cord around – then I realised that it was my bass guitar lead, which she’d unplugged from my amp after sneaking to the side of the stage. Urgently, I signalled her to plug it back in, which, thankfully, she did very promptly.

One of our big numbers was a version of the Stones’ classic rocker Honky Tonk Women:  I met a gin-soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis/ She tried to take me upstairs for a ride.

It went down particularly well. I’ve always found that this one gets ’em dancing, especially late in the evening after the booze has done its work.

That St Albans Football Club gig was the only one South Side ever played. I’m not sure why, really. We were all good mates and didn’t have a falling out, and the job itself went swimmingly. I think we just joined other bands who wanted us more than we wanted to run a band ourselves!

Kevin Densley

Kevin Densley’s poetry has appeared in Australian, English and American journals. Densley’s latest poetry collection, his third, Orpheus in the Undershirt, was published by Ginninderra Press in early 2018. He is also the co-author of many plays with Steve Taylor, including Last Chance Gas, published by Currency Press