school in the afternoon and then walk to training. I’d come home really tired and then I’d have to get up early the next day to go swimming again. It was intense. Now the smell of chlorine makes me sick.
I tried to be good at everything I did when I was in primary school – that was my attitude. It’s the same now: whenever I go out and play a show with the band, I want to raise the bar, I want everyone to come away thinking, That’s a great band, or, That dude’s a great drummer. Back then, I wanted to be the best at all the classes. Except for Maths – I was absolutely awful when it came to numbers – English was pretty cool because I enjoyed writing stories. Later, when I went to high school, I loved Science. I thought it was fun because I could blow things up, cut cows’ eyeballs open and do other weird stuff.
At times it was hard for me and Mum because we were on our own. We didn’t have a lot of money and we’d struggle to eat from week to week at times. But that became a normal thing to me. I’d go to a friend’s house and they’d say, ‘What do you want for dinner?’ I’d tell them, ‘Oh I’m fine, I don’t want to intrude.’ I was used to living on a budget but that was my whole childhood. We did what we could to get by.
Mixtape ′94
One of my earliest musical memories happened when I was around seven or eight. I used to have a tape recorder and I would sit in my room and wait for my favourite songs to come on the radio. Then as soon as I heard a riff I liked or recognised, I would press ‘Record’ and tape the track, and at the end of the day I’d have a whole album full of stuff. It’s funny, we have a lyric on our single, ‘She Looks So Perfect’, which goes, ‘I made a mixtape straight out of ‘94.’ That line was inspired by those days.
I guess my musical education really started when Mum met her boyfriend, Warwick. He was a drummer in a local band and he loved music. They were always listening to albums together, and I remember at the time it used to really annoy me because they would play music so late at night. It was always bands like Counting Crows and Smashing Pumpkins, and the guitars would be blaring out of the lounge, but it was nice because they were in love. The sight of them staying up and listening to music together is a really cool memory for me.
Those times also taught me a lot about different bands and developed my taste in music. My musical tastes were a little bit different to a lot of kids at school, I guess. I didn’t go to the same place as the other guys, and when I started at Richmond High School I was really into pop–punk bands like Green Day, Blink-182 and The Living End – stuff I’d discovered when I was making my mixtapes. Green Day quickly became my favourite band ever. I loved their energy and the songwriting.
I think the first song of theirs that blew me away was called ‘Jesus of Suburbia’. I used to love their singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, and I would play a Green Day live album called Bullet in a Bible all the time. I listened to it so much that I knew the words off by heart – even the parts where Billie Joe would talk to the crowd. They were definitely the band I wanted to be in when I was growing up.
When I was around nine, a friend of mine called Lachlan asked me if I wanted to be in a band with him. He was a guitar dude and he had a drum kit at his house. I figured, ‘Yeah, I want to be in a band, just like Green Day!’ The only problem was, I hadn’t learned to play any instruments at that time – but that didn’t stop me! I told Lachlan that I could play the drums and he seemed pretty happy to have me come round to his house to play.
When my mum dropped me off and I got inside, I sat behind the kit and tried to play a song called ‘The Mexican Hat Dance’, but it was so bad. Lachlan looked at me funny. He was like, ‘You can’t really play drums, can you?’ I tried to laugh it off. ‘Yeah, I can,’ I said. ‘I’m just not very good today.’
Luckily for me, Warwick was a drummer. I remember seeing him later that day and saying, ‘Hey, can you teach me something? Next week I’m going back to Lachlan’s and I want him to think I can play.’ As soon as he gave me a lesson, I picked it up really quick. I fell in love with the drums after that. I couldn’t get enough – that’s all I did from that moment.
When I got to high school, the swimming started to be too hard for me. I was competing in regional events, and I even reached state level, but by the time I was 14, I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t get to hang out with my friends or play the drums as much as I liked, so I told my mum that I didn’t want to swim any more. It was devastating for her, but I’d had enough. I hated it.
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