Cosmic Psychos
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Cosmic Psychos

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They’ve become one of this country’s most influential hard rock outfits with bands like Pearl Jam and Mudhoney citing the blokes as influences, and yet through all of it they’ve still managed to keep their heads out of their arses. Eleven years ago, long-time drummer Bill Walsh was unceremoniously kicked out of the band and replaced with Dean Muller who had been playing with singer/bassist Ross Knight in his side project, Dung. Muller says he couldn’t have felt more welcomed and when posed the question of what it means for him to ‘make it’, it’s not fame or influence he looks to but the camaraderie between the musicians.

“Just playing with your mates,” Muller answers. “It is it. I am in it. People think money is it but in my experience it’s not. You need money to live but if that’s all you strive for, you’re certainly never going to be happy because you’re never going to have enough. So money certainly is not it. Fame? Fuck, look what happens to famous people. Half of them top themselves and the rest of them are mental, so fame isn’t really the go. I’d rather be in the Psychos than the Stones. Imagine dealing with Mick Jagger every day. Fuck. If you were told you were a genius since you were 17 years old, what does it do to your mind? No one ever told the Psychos we were geniuses, quite the opposite.”

Not taking anything too seriously seems to be one of the main reasons behind the success of the band who have survived through many line-up changes with some more sudden than others. In 2006, the sudden and sad passing of guitarist Robbie Watts almost saw the band call it quits but they soldiered on recruiting John McKeering from The Onyas. You’d think those line-up changes would’ve had some sort of effect on the band’s sound but with a new album in pre-production, Muller concedes variation still isn’t in the Psychos’ vocabulary. 

“You could put on the first Psychos album and the last one that we did and go, ‘Oh, yeah’,” Muller says with a chuckle. “That’s one of the beauties of it. Even The Ramones deviated a little bit but the Psychos, we are what we are. The whole thing is driven by Ross’ sound as well and he doesn’t change that sound. I took his bass to the music shop to get it fixed up because it was so corroded and stuff. He said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t let them clean it, don’t let them take the strap off it, you’re not allowed to take the strap off it.’ The strap is made of gaffer tape now. He’s had the bass since the late ‘80s so there’s 20 years of gunk. They took the scratch plate off it and looked inside and said it was like a biohazard.

“I guess that demonstrates how traditional Ross is about the whole thing and how unfussed he is about it. That’s the beauty of it. It’s going to be what it fucking is. Don’t stress and worry about it. It’s not a race. If everyone was that relaxed about music, I think music would be a lot better.”

There are two big gigs coming up for the Psychos with headline spots at festivals Chopped and Down On the Farm which the band had a small hand in starting. Three years back, a group-funding campaign was run to raise cash for their documentary Blokes You Can Trust which saw the band fulfil a funding promise to play a gig for a few punters. Out of that one show, the punk heavy mini-festival Down On The Farm was born and now hosts handfuls of acts out of Melbourne’s garage and punk scene. Chopped is an altogether different beast as one of Australia’s premier pre-‘65 hot rod and motorbike get-togethers with old school dirt drag races and a line-up of killer garage rock bands. Muller has both played and been a punter at Chopped and for him the exhaust and dust filled air brings back memories of a time when the world wasn’t run by pansies.

“It’s a pretty unique one, mate,” Muller enthuses. “It’s got elements of rock’n’roll, rockabilly and psychobilly. They try and keep that atmosphere of a bit of a fairground, flat track racing and danger. When I was a kid, I used to go the speedway and it had this red neck sort of atmosphere but wasn’t horrible, it’s not nasty or anything. It’s great with that old school red neck attitude to it. There are guys in ‘32 Chevys bloody racing guys on Triumph bobbers. It’s like going back in time. It’s the kind of spectacle you just don’t get to see in this day and age of the cotton wool society that we live in.”

BY RHYS MCRAE