Money For Rope was formed from two bands, which both featured singer Jules McKenzie. “We’ve been together about two years,” Parnaby explains. “The common thread in each of the bands was Jules, our lead singer. Jules took the best talent from both of the bands, including both of the drummers,” he says. The presence of two drummers was part of the original concept; so much so, in fact, that when one of the band’s original drummers left, Money For Rope attempted to revert to a single drummer, without success. “We did one gig with only drummer, and we hated it, so we got a second drummer in,” Parnaby says.
Parnaby says Money For Rope had an early idea to “sound like an Australian band.” “We wanted the band to sound like an Australian band in the way that Radio Birdman, The Saints and The Sunnyboys really sound Australian,” Parnaby says. “And we also wanted to get a bit of soul in it as well – Jules plays a bit of saxophone,” he says. The marriage of garage, rock, punk and soul has created an intriguing Antipodean rock blend. “People have said we sound like a cross between The Doors and The Stooges,” Parnaby says. The band took its name from a John Lennon lyric in Gimme Some Truth: “That was Jules’ idea,” Parnaby says. “I suspect he’d come up with the name a while ago, and he was waiting to form a band so he could use it.”
But back to the double drummer thing. I put the observation to Parnaby that, given the notoriously unreliability of the average drummer, having two drummers in the band makes Money For Rope a dangerously risk prospect, with the odds of combustion dangerously favourable. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Parnably laughs. “It sounds pretty stupid when you think about it, I suppose, especially when you think about all the carting around of equipment you have to do. But apart from that, it’s really good – and our new drummer is easily the best musician amongst all of us, so he’s adding a lot to our music,” Parnaby says.
While the thought of six members of rock’n’roll band travelling in the same van is potentially the source of tension and annoyance, Parnaby says Money For Rope’s interstate travels have been remarkably enjoyable. Parnably nominates the band’s trip to play at Splendour In The Grass last year as an example of when the road trip doesn’t go according to plan. “That was our first really big trip,” Parnably says. “Our bass player was really sick with the flu, but the rest of us didn’t care, but then just as we got past Sydney four of us got really sick as well, and it was just the worst flu. We had this idea that we’d take a detour to Byron Bay and go to the beach, which turned out to be a stupid idea. We ended up going through the mountains, and then a storm hit, and then there was oil at the bottom of the road, and then just as we got to Coffs, another storm hit. In the end we didn’t even make it to Byron, but we added six hours onto the trip without even getting there!” Parnaby laughs.
