Dig. David Nichols S.

Ubu Collective, an experimental and low-budget filmmaking and distribution group – brought no little publicity to Proud, though whether it was seen by a broad audience is uncertain. Unlike many short films of the time, for instance, it does not appear to have been shown on television. Bob Cooley, an A&R man at Philips (and/or Phonogram; the company was transitioning at this stage, its parent having merged with Deutsche Grammophon),¹⁰ was alerted to the Proud phenomenon by the film and arranged to re-record the material on the De Da De Dum album with a slightly altered track listing, to be released on the Polydor International imprint. In 1968 magazine writer James Oram quizzed Cooley on Proud and reported thus:

      ‘He is,’ said Cooley, ‘either a genius or an oddball.’

      ‘I am,’ said Pip Proud, ‘a romanticist, an idealist, a writer of fantasy.’

      Whatever he is, Pip Proud is in danger of becoming one of Australia’s biggest singing sensations. I shouldn’t use the word ‘singing’, for he recites rather than sings and does it to a badly played guitar and a cowbell tinkled by his girlfriend.’¹¹

      It may be that Cooley anticipated hiring session musicians to back Proud on these new recordings, but Pip’s erratic timing and inability to record his guitar and vocal separately would in any case have made this impossible. In the end, only two tracks were given additional instrumentation: the feminist parable ‘Adreneline and Richard’ (which became the title for this new version of the album) and ‘Purple Boy Gang’, which Proud had originally written for the Aboriginal singer Black Allen Barker and was transformed here into a rollicking R&B number. Proud did not hear these transformed tracks until after the album was released.

      Philips/Phonogram allowed – indeed, required – him to appear on television, where he was often ridiculed by smarmy hosts and where the freedom of live TV allowed him to turn the tables on producers and cameramen who tried to make him stay in shot and play particular songs. In July 1968 he wrote to Hobbs from Melbourne, where he may have travelled specifically to appear on Uptight. ‘If you wish to see the fulfillment of your ambitions concerning my abilities then you could tune into channel 10 on saturday morning on the 5th of July at 10 AM I do not know precisely at what time “I” shall be on.’¹²

      Proud was in some respects an early example of a music phenomenon better suited to television than live performance, since he was soft-spoken and needed strong, separate amplification on his vocals. He did not shy from performing in front of an audience, however, particularly at the anti-war Arts Vietnam concerts in Sydney, and at his own series of concerts which he dubbed ‘The Best in the World’.

      The press coverage from this time displays an undeniable ambivalence with regard to Proud’s unique style of half-spoken, half-sung, often absurdist and wry but never absurd or clichéd, guitar-based songs. Gil Wahlquist, music writer for Sydney’s Sun Herald (also widely available in Melbourne, which lacked its own Sunday papers at this time) praised the album, concluding rousingly: ‘If he can keep it up (he’s only 21) he’ll go places. If he doesn’t, his contribution so far is considerable.’¹³ Go-Set, on the other hand, would only refer to the album at arm’s length as ‘described as the most poetic disc ever made in Australia.’¹⁴ Proud clearly felt that Go-Set should support him; given the general sycophancy and uncritical outlook that characterised most of its editorial coverage, he certainly could feel unjustly singled out when it did not. David Elfick, who ran the Sydney edition of Go-Set, was less than thrilled, in Proud’s view. He wrote to Hobbs:

      The man from the Go-Set magazine simply doubted his own judgement with the songs it seems. we were foolish in that we mentioned andrew loogold ham [sic] and his rejection of us, and the go set man brought a tired looking beatnick around to listen to the songs, he undoubtedly didnt like it, and so Mr david elfick simply became shy with us . . .

      The reference to Andrew Loog Oldham is curious – it is probably connected to the Paul Jones/Who/Small Faces concert that took place in January 1968, when Proud met the Small Faces¹⁵ – but the wider meaning is clear: Elfick was kowtowing to someone he saw as an international arbiter of opinion. On the other hand, says Proud:

      Some people who came to our house on friday heard the music and began exclaiming and laughing, they said i had a ‘whole metaphysical complex’, what ever that means, and they became quite elated, so isn’t that good?

      He continues, baffled:

      People who meet us seem to get initially very excited, as david elfick, who then suddenly withdraw, and im not sure what this is. we think it may be due to the personal neurosis of inadequacy with some, whilst with others its perhaps a contempt derived from their inabilities they discover from comparing.¹⁶

      Proud told Oram that if the public decided ‘it’s a send-up . . . well, all right. I will be disappointed, but there’s nothing I can do about it.’¹⁷ At the same time, he mixed an insistent dedication to success with despondency: ‘there is no market that can be easily reached. i do not wish to spend this year cultivating one.’¹⁸ Similarly, he schemed:

      There are probably 50 people just like me in Australia, all saying the same things in different ways, and so how I am to succeed is by working into areas where they would not go. – The first album was a good example of this.¹⁹

      And . . .

      For, you see, the artist sets the fashion in music and so people buy his music, which has made itself fashionable. If i cannot succeed in making myself fashionable, then some one else will make me unfashionable.²⁰

      ‘I am already regarded as Australia’s top underground singer,’²¹ he told Hobbs. Proud was in his early twenties at this time, and it’s possible his arch personal style was working against him (even more so than his unconventional musical style) in a scene which prided itself on being both mellow and unassuming. Penniless – he often did not have enough to eat – he boasted of a largesse that was plainly beyond his wildest dreams. David Elfick reported in Go-Set that Proud had ‘tried to go into the Sydney Public Library last week but was barred because he had no shoes on’ and quoted Proud declaring he had ‘decided to offer the director of the library $1,000 if he would allow bare feet into libraries.’²²

      As we have seen from the Missing Links’ experience (see chapter 4), Philips/Phonogram was one label that did not seem to object to fairly low record sales. In any case, Adreneline and Richard must have been extremely cheap to make – the product of less than a day’s recording, and very little mixing. While it is uncertain how well it sold, it was evidently enough for the company to request further product. Proud wrote to Hobbs that he had written a song he thought appropriate for a single: ‘We took a tape to Philips – they liked the song very much but will not record it until we get a drummer. This could be recorded privately for about $50 . . .’²³ Elfick wrote that the song was ‘one of a series of songs that Pip wrote on the Titanic disaster’²⁴ – an unintentionally amusing slip, but telling nonetheless, although there are no songs on the second album, A Bird in the Engine, that would seem to fit this description. In March 1969, the Bulletin told its readers that ‘his new record will have the music of bass, drums, and even a cello, so perhaps some musicianship will be managed without the pretentiousness he says he dreads so much. Certainly, if he’s only feigning his dread, he’s taking a lot of trouble to maintain the pose.’ (Of his fans, Proud apparently said: ‘I think half of them come along to see how bad I am.’)²⁵

      The short-lived Pip Proud Group featured two young men he met at a party: John Black on bass and Peter Fairlie on drums. ‘Tomorrow,’ wrote Michael Symons in the Australian, ‘he spends five hours at another studio recording four possible singles and a fifth if he has learnt piano in time.’²⁶ He might have done so, and he might have involved Black and Fairlie, but no single or Pip Proud Group recording emerged.²⁷ In 1969 Proud recorded a second album accompanying himself on guitar in a small cheap studio in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst. Most of the tracks on this album were in the same vein as the first; there was, however, a truly extraordinary