LARRY SCHWARTZ
Stephen Cummings’s vivid, sometimes melancholic songs, often about faltering romance, move some to wax lyrical when describing his talent. He has a fervent following, ranked among such fine musicians as Paul Kelly or Michael Thomas. The acoustic edge to much of his music, often
backed by the adept playing of guitarist Shane O’Mara, may invite comparison with players in a folksier tradition – but Cummings sees himself as a soul singer who’s work evokes “something out of reach or the longing for some state …”
“If I’m in the right mood, I can be quite an engaging performer,” he says. “I can talk and do various spiels. Be amusing. But when it comes down to it, it’s just too tiring to do that. I think I am a soul singer.”
We’d arranged to meet at a first-floor restaurant in Swanston Walk. He is waiting when I arrive, a silver-haired 44-year-old with a stubby of beer. Though famously good-looking, he has a hesitancy about him, as if not quite certain of himself.
It has been a busy year for Cummings. His second son in 13 years was born six months ago and he has been working on his second novel in as many years. Mostly he has lain low, out of the public eye, involved with his literary and musical endeavors.
“I’ve hardly played,” says the singer-songwriter who has emerged for a
few shows this month at an inner-suburban hotel. “So I just wanted to start playing again and getting familiar with doing it and trying some of the songs out.”
He was reunited recently with his old band, the Sports, for Mushroom’s 25th anniversary concert at the the MCG. “I was doing it more for the others,” he says. “It was a matter of us getting together at the last minute. We had hardly seen each other in 15 years.”
With guitarist Martin Armiger unable to play after breaking a leg, any curiosity that Cummings might have had about performing with the Sports again was satisfied at rehearsals. Did the event live up to the publicity? “Going to the MCG was the excitement,” he says. “The rest of it was very
disappointing.”
Formed of members of the old Pelaco Brothers in 1976, the Sports had late-’70s and early-’80s hits with albums (Don’t Throw Stones, Suddenly and Sondra) and singles including When You Walk In the Room, Who Listens To The Radio and Strangers On A Train.
Cummings achieved most success as a soloist. After the release of his late ’80s album, Lovetown, Australian Rolling Stone voted him best male singer of 1988. But the broad appeal that might have seemed inevitable has eluded him in the past decade. His most commercial move may well
prove to be the advertising jingle he once did for Medibank Private.
“My girlfriend always says, ‘Why don’t you write a sporting song or something like that?’ A thing that touches a whole lot of people,” he says. “But I just can’t do that kind of thing. It has to come naturally.”
Still, he is largely contented with his lot. “l’m sort of happy where I’m at,” he says. “But I could be doing it better. I’d like it to sell one more level of record which would mean that instead of playing the Commercial or the Continental I could probably play the National Theatre. But I wouldn’t
like it any bigger than that because the music that I do doesn’t function above those sizes.”
Polydor last year released a best-of compilation; Cummings has since switched labels and the new album, Wishing Machine, is due from Festival in February.
Steve Kilbey, of the Church, produced his last two records, but Cummings has reverted to taking this role himself. O’Mara and Jeff Burstin, with whom he’s playing live gigs this month, are on guitar. Rebecca Barnard is among the backing vocalists. Others involved include Bruce Haymes and
David Bridie on keyboards.
Music is still Cummings’s “main thing” although he has been preoccupied with another kind of writing in recent years. “It’s not a very good second job because its really badly paid,” he says of novel-writing. “It’s a bit of a bad career choice.”
The fiction reveals more of the man than the songwriting does. “The books are more me,” he says.
“I think with the music sometimes I paint myself into a corner that I’m kind of a world-weary old guy. Actually I’m not like that at all. It’s not really me. So the books I look at as more a reflection of me.”
The loosely autobiographical Wonder Boy was published in 1996. It enjoyed an encouraging response from critics and healthy sales. His next, Stay Away From Lightning Girl, he describes as being in “a light, humorous vein”.
“It’s based loosely around the music business,” he says, outlining a plot that involves a Melbourne songwriter who settles in Vancouver, Canada, but returns after his mother has a heart attack. Determined to stay away from the music industry, he meets up with a young woman Cummings
refers to as Lightning Girl and “gets sucked back into music”.
“I decided to write the book when I was at a friend’s house,” he says. “My friend was talking about her sister. She was angry at her sister, saying, ‘She’s so lucky. She should be in the Guinness Book Of Records. She’s been hit by lightning three times and nothing’s ever happened to her.'”
He’s seen enough of the literary world to appreciate the kind of camaraderie enjoyed by musicians who frequently work together in more than one band and appreciate each other’s precarious existence. “The book business is a lot nastier,” he says. “There’s more people going for a smaller
pie and so they’re more piranha-like and nasty. I was quite surprised at that.”
Now that another book has been written, he looks forward to the music again.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” he says, “and being able to keep doing it is a victory of sorts over inertia or despair or anything like that. If you keep doing it, you come back to the reasons you started in the first place. You go back to doing it because it’s something mysterious and you love
it and you get something from it. When it works it’s really good.”
The Sunday Age, 06th of December 1998
Larry Schwartz Writer 