Tim ll Fix It

I lead a very, very straight existence. I love a couple of drinks and Aussie Rules footie and a couple of authors Joyce, Tim Winton, Nick Kent and a couple of pairs of good pants. I like having sex with my girlfriend. And I like dogs. I like bebop. I like a couple of good country singers. I like Solomon Burke. I like The Faces. I like The Misfits. I like the MC5.
Tim Rogers, singer and guitarist with Sydney power-pop minstrels You Am I, is clearly, as you may have guessed, a man who knows what he likes. Anyone else you d care to mention, Tim?
I m a big fan of George Jones and Dizzy Gillespie and the Art Blakey Jazz Messengers and Lee Dorsey and Smokey Robinson And The Miracles but there s no discernible influence in our music of any of these. . . except maybe the spirit of it.
Even a cursory listen to You Am I s new album, Hourly, Daily, will reveal this to be the case, although it is a glorious mish-mash of Kinks, Beatles and Stones-influenced grooves with plaintive folk balladry also taking a non-smoking seat and vertiginous string arrangements parading up the aisle.
On stage, however, You Am I become the bastard grandsons of The Who. The ability of rock n roll to transform someone as nervy, shy, and amiably neurotic as the 27-year-old teenager I encounter in Blooms Hotel into the manic, saliva-spewing, shape-throwing Pete Townshend wannabe who struts across the Olympia stage later that evening in a bright red, wing-collared shirt, is truly awe-inspiring.
When you get up on stage and you ve had a couple of drinks, explains Tim, you want to kick out the jams and get your rocks off. Live, what we re good at is being a ramshackle poncey garage band. I love listening to old Stones bootlegs where they sound crap.
I was inspired by all these geeky-looking blokes or gals who somehow looked good when they had guitars on. I m no fridge magnet myself but when I m up on stage, it s the easiest hour of my life. The other 23 hours were always pretty uncomfortable.
So rock n roll came to your rescue?
It s pretty cliched, but yeah, definitely, says Rogers. I was in a psychiatric hospital before I started this band it was nothing much, just a bit of late teens anxiety but you re allowed to be that way when you re playing in bands. It s on the job sheet.
pyjama party
Rogers can remember the exact moment when he experienced the first stirrings of his passion for rock n roll.
I was 11 or 12, he recalls, and I was getting my teeth done in the dentist. And as I was getting drilled, that song Start Me Up by the Stones was on the radio. I d listened to the Stones and The Beatles around the house but for some reason when I was in that chair getting a drill shoved down my mouth, it all made sense.
The next day all I wanted to do was get a guitar. It s ridiculous that in 1981, one of the more forgettable Stones songs like that would have such an effect on such a young kid.
Now it s his turn. You Am I have already had No. 1 albums in Australia and have headlined gigs of up to 6,000 young uns, as well touring with the likes of everybody from Teenage Fanclub to Soundgarden. However, it s not as if they look out their bus window with rose-tinted shades.
Being in a band, admits Tim, you spend so much time looking out of the window of your transit van and waiting around, thinking about the next gig or trying to find a bar or looking at girls . . . It s just a large retarded pyjama party.
But it can be so good at times that everybody goes home with a stupid grin on their face. And you ve got a case of beer under your arm and you can stay up and talk shit all night.
Rogers lyrics are, not to put too fine a point in it, rather cryptic, preferring the keep- em-guessing narrative approach to strightforward autobiography.
I don t know the way I feel, really, he purrs. Maybe I m just a very shallow person. I think a lot about the way I feel but I just can t figure it out. The only thing that makes sense is what I see other people doing. If you ve got a problem with yourself, go figure it out; don t write about it.
Some people are brilliant at writing about their feelings. There s a lot of beautiful soul and r n b stuff about being mixed up but I like the idea of being a high-energy rock band with a lyrical bent.
But whatever of Rogers likes, does the committed pacifist have any dislikes?
Sometimes I d love to stab as many people as possible, he confesses. Sometimes I really would love to kill a large number of idiots. It could just be the guy who calls you a faggot as you walk down the street. But so far I haven t written too many hate songs. n

Hourly, Daily is out now on Ra Records/Warners.