Veteran members of Melbourne’s heavy music scene came together in 2017 to form Tropical Fuck Storm. From left to right: guitarist/vocalist Erica Dunn, guitarist/vocalist Gareth "Gaz" Liddiard, bassist/vocalist Fiona Kitschin, and drummer Lauren Hammel.
In June 2021, while the pandemic was raging worldwide, Gareth “Gaz” Liddiard, who was isolating during one of Melbourne’s many lockdowns, decided he wanted to cover a Jimi Hendrix song. But the vocalist and guitarist for Australia’s Tropical Fuck Storm didn’t want to cover one of the legend’s hits. “I thought, ‘Let’s do a Hendrix song, but what’s the most ridiculous and ambitious one?’” he recalls. He ultimately decided that Hendrix’s “1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)” fit the bill.
The cover is now the centerpiece of Submersive Behavior, the band’s latest release. The Hendrix version of “1983” clocks in at about 13 minutes and features the kind of guitar histrionics one would expect from the legendary guitarist. Tropical Fuck Storm’s version of “1983” is an epic 18-minute swatch of sonic surrealism that honors the original, but also leans heavily on their own energetic style. From Liddiard’s opening guitar salvo, through the acid-trip, synth-psych middle section, the spirit of Hendrix is heartwarmingly embraced, and raucously and inventively reimagined.
1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)
Submersive Behavior is the latest entry in a growing catalog marked by fearless choices. The band’s 2018 debut album, A Laughing Death in Meatspace, was a singular-sounding mashup of post-punk and psychedelia driven mightily by the crafty guitar work of Liddiard and the band’s other guitarist, Erica Dunn. 2019’s Braindrops further solidified their reputation as one of Australia’s most innovative and boundary-busting exports. It featured an eclectic mix of genres and unconventional song structures, laced with the duo’s now-signature effects-saturated, experimentally recorded guitar sounds. With Submersive Behavior, Tropical Fuck Storm is pushing the envelope yet again, this time by gutting and reconstructing the once tried-and-true covers-record concept.
Gareth "Gaz" Liddiard's Gear
Gareth “Gaz” Liddiard says the vast Western Australian desert is one of his biggest influences. Growing up, he didn’t know if he’d ever get out of it.
Photo by Mike White
Guitars
Amps
- Fender Twin Reverb
- Fender Hot Rod DeVilles
- ’60s and ’70s Goldentone amplifiers
- ’70s and ’80s boom boxes in studio
Effects
- 4MS Mr. Ugly
- Bananana Effects AURORA
- Boss LS-2 Line Selector
- DOD Overdrive Preamp 250
- Jackson Audio 1484 Twin Twelve
- Line 6 HX Stomp XL
- Meris Ottobit
- Mid-Fi Electronics Magick “i”
- Montreal Assembly Count to 5
- ProCo Fat Rat
Strings and Picks
- Dunlop Tortex Standard Picks, .88mm
- Ernie Ball 2627 Beefy Slinky .011–.054
Aside from their own self-described “deranged spins” on “1983” and the Stooges’ “Ann,” the other three songs on the 36-minute EP are originals, credited, tongue-in-cheek, to fictitious bands like Men Men Menstruation and Compliments to the Chef. “Those are some of the band names that we used for our first four gigs,” explains Liddiard. “Since we just had that Hendrix song [for Submersive Behavior], and it’s 18 minutes long, it needed a B side, so that’s why you see some pretend band names on the album cover.” Even the title, Submersive Behavior, accurately sums up just how effective Tropical Fuck Storm is at bucking the status quo.
To color outside of the lines has been the band’s inheritance from the beginning. They formed in Melbourne, Australia in 2017, shortly after Liddiard’s previous band, the Drones, went on hiatus. Veteran musicians from Melbourne’s heavy music scene fill out the band, with fellow Drones alum Fiona Kitschin on bass and vocals, Mod Con’s Dunn on guitar and vocals, and drummer Lauren Hammel from High Tension. By combining elements of their previous endeavors, including rock, punk, and experimental music, and spearheaded by lightning-rod lyrics addressing climate change, political corruption, and societal unrest, Tropical Fuck Storm quickly developed a reputation for their musically chaotic live performances and unapologetic worldview.
“There’s lots of bands with guitars and it’s good. But other things, you just go, ‘What the fuck?’ Something’s really happening and it’s that almost careening-out-of-control thing.”
Dunn says restrictions imposed by the lockdown, like having to isolate from one another, set creative parameters that played a big part in the cultivation and evolution of the original material on Submersive Behavior. Liddiard had a hard drive full of jams that the band had shelved as “fuck-ups,” and when he had nothing else to do, he combed back through them, grabbing program and session files that the band had forgotten about. “He was mulling over things and seeing ideas in a new light, and he kind of fell in love with a few things,” says Dunn. “So he set the beds [backing tracks], which were mostly from mistakes. We all were grateful that he went mad. I mean, we were all going mad, but he really put his energy into that. So it was cool. The lockdown was to blame for that. Or maybe we should be grateful.”
After isolating and excavating material from hard drives, Tropical Fuck Storm convened and recorded Submersive Behavior in a house that they rent outside of Melbourne. Liddiard, who does much of the band’s engineering, relied mostly on Pro Tools as his DAW of choice. “We tried Ableton, but it was just too clean,” he says. “If you turn a drum machine on and you turn a metronome on at the same time, they’ll just stay in sync forever. But when we do it in Pro Tools, if you hear a drum machine start one of our songs, if you were to set a fucking metronome in motion, it wouldn’t keep up with the song because it’s all out of whack. It’s cool. We’re the loosest electronic band in history.”
“I thought, ‘Let’s do a Hendrix song, but what’s the most ridiculous and ambitious one?’”
The ways that Liddiard and Dunn interact with each other and arrange their guitar parts is an important pillar of the Tropical Fuck Storm sound. “There was always some conscious effort to get out of each other’s way, and to know where to double down,” says Dunn. “Gaz is just this unbelievable shredder, and my work is to be the bedrock, keeping something repetitive and rhythmic. I think we’ve really got it going now, having played a lot live, and having more intuition about, ‘Well, if you are going to chuck a wheelie, I’m going to hold it down.’ We understand that balance.” Dunn says that process includes making a conscious effort to carve out different sonic territory. For Braindrops, she put all her guitars through a “crappy boom box” to further separate the quality of the guitars.
To build the Hendrix centerpiece of Submersive Behavior, the band tracked the beginning and end of “1983” first, and then recorded the tripped-out middle section separately, making use of synthesizers and “weird shit” laying around. “We didn’t want to go down the route of the Stratocaster noodling in the middle,” says Liddiard. “A friend of ours had a 7′-long spring that bolts to a wall that’s got a pickup on it. And he uses a violin bow—that’s the drone underneath. So we did that. When we cut and pasted it into the song, and it worked, I was like, ‘Wow.’”
Erica Dunn's Gear
The punny new EP, Submersive Behavior, features three new songs credited to fake bands pulled from Tropical Fuck Storm lore.
Photo by Mike White
Guitars
- Shub Jazzmaster with P-90s
- Fender Mustang
Amps
- Fender Twin Reverb
- Roland JC-120
Effects
- Electro-Harmonix Soul Food
- Gojira Fx “Mr Sparkle” Tubescreamer 808
- JHS ProCo Rat “Pack Rat”
- Pickletech Mega Berkatron
- Veternik Audio Fall Reverb
Strings and Picks
- Dunlop Tortex Standard Picks, .88mm
- Ernie Ball 2220 Power Slinky .011–.048
The idea of constructing a separate song section from odd elements, then dropping it into a quintessential classic rock song, sits well within Tropical Fuck Storm’s songwriting ethos. “We’ll try anything,” says Liddiard. “It’s always an act of desperation because when you start a record, there’s nothing. Sometimes we’ll get a drum machine or some kind of weird sampler to start us off in a way that isn’t your stock guitar or drum thing because when you sit down with a guitar and a real drum kit, you fall into habits. So if you can get a crazy little drum machine and plug it into an Eventide delay pitch shifter thing, it’ll come up with some chopped-up strange beat you would never have thought of. And maybe there’s a synth line in there that we’ll try and learn on guitar, and then we start jamming things out. Once we’ve started from that strange spot, we’ll move on.”
According to Liddiard, Tropical Fuck Storm song ideas are forged entirely in the studio and aren’t required to germinate in a live setting before making it onto a record. “Obviously, it’s a patriotic duty in Australia to admire AC/DC,” he chuckles. “But we’re not like them. We make stuff up in the studio, so we don’t even know what it’s going to sound like live when we’re doing it, because we’ve never played it live. We’re just trying to invent something and then we learn it later. Again, it’s desperately trying to get some material together.”
One might imagine that capturing such off-the-cuff-sounding recordings is challenging, but Liddiard’s ability to craft incendiary, seemingly improvised performances in the relatively controlled studio environment is rooted within some of rock’s most influential and freewheeling acts. The ability to toe the line between flawless execution and teetering on the brink of collapse is an art unto itself, and it’s a quality of performance and songcraft that Tropical Fuck Storm wholeheartedly embraces. “The minute I heard Van Halen, it was like hearing Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin,” he says. “There’s lots of bands with guitars and it’s good. But other things, you just go, ‘What the fuck?’ Something’s really happening and it’s that almost careening-out-of-control thing. I love that. It’s a fun thing to do.”
“We’re just trying to push it out there and keep it fresh and interesting. It’s like Hendrix or Captain Beefheart, just looking for something that hasn’t been done.”
Despite the experimental, loose nature of their songwriting and recording process, Liddiard says a lot of his ideas should translate easily enough to and from an acoustic guitar. “Generally, everything we do is doable in the real world,” he says. “I’ll noodle on the acoustic guitar because you might have a riff, but you want to know what key it’s in, and then you want to know what keys you can move to as well.” But starting songs with guitars and ending with guitars is not something that particularly inspires him these days.
“I’ve been in bands for years, so with Tropical Fuck Storm, we’re just trying to push it out there and keep it fresh and interesting,” he says. “It’s like Hendrix or Captain Beefheart, just looking for something that hasn’t been done. Those are my favorite things. The adventurers like Van Halen or even people like Hubert Sumlin from Howlin’ Wolf…. He had a kooky style that no one had. He introduced the whole eccentric kookiness to that electric guitar thing.”
Tropical Fuck Storm like to experiment. To achieve greater separation of guitar tracks while recording, guitarist Erica Dunn ran her guitars through a busted old boom box.
Photo by Mike White
Dunn shares a lot of the same influences with Liddiard, including Hendrix, but ultimately describes herself as a very “tactile, hands-on sort of person,” and a bit more of a minimalist than Liddiard in terms of effects pedals. “I’m not like Gaz, who is a full-on, self-described nerd when it comes to pedals and knowing them and taking them apart and building them and making them work,” she explains. “I find a thing and I generally stick to it and then I push those parameters. Sometimes, if I’m given too much, I’m overwhelmed, and I shut down.” With that in mind, one of her preferred, go-to effects in any situation is a JHS-modded ProCo Rat. “It’s sort of your base-level sound effect. We had a show the other day and it looked like our bags weren’t put on the airplane and we were just laughing about what we might be able to borrow or beg or steal to make the show happen. And I thought, ‘If someone has a Rat around, I’ll be alright.’”
“I gravitated to the metallic clang of a guitar, the rusty, barbed wire sound like early AC/DC or Neil Young.”
When it comes to framing out their own territory in the modern musical landscape, one of the most significant influences that continues to profoundly affect the Tropical Fuck Storm sound is their geographical upbringing. Had Liddiard not grown up in Western Australia, they simply would not be the same band. “Western Australia is like Southern California or Arizona,” he says. “Really dry desert, but it’s also super vast. So I gravitated to the metallic clang of a guitar, the rusty, barbed wire sound like early AC/DC or Neil Young. It seemed to make more sense and it had a vastness in it because there’s literally nothing out there.”
Western Australia occupies a geographical space roughly the size of the lands between the Rocky Mountains and the West Coast of California. But in the U.S., there are densely populated cities and millions of people occupying that area. “In Western Australia, there’s just nothing,” Liddiard says. “There’s one city, and it really did have an effect.”
When Liddiard was a teenager in the ’90s, he felt like he couldn’t escape. He was too far from anywhere. But somehow, things worked out. “You feel so trapped and you feel like everything that’s happening in music is happening somewhere else, and you’ll never be a part of it,” he says. “There was never any pretension or effort to conform in any way musically. So we just did our own thing.”
Bruce Springsteen: the last man standing.
Maybe these aren’t the first thoughts you’d expect to have after a rock ’n’ roll show, but rock ’n’ roll is getting old, and one of its most prolific stars has been telling us for the past few years that he’s getting his affairs in order. His current tour, which continues his 2023 world tour celebrated in the recent documentary Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, follows his latest LP of original music, 2020’s Letter To You. That record was explicitly and thematically an exploration of the Boss’ mortality, and this year’s jubilant roadshow continues that chapter with shows across the U.S. and Canada.
“The older you get, the more you realize that, unless you’re über-wealthy, you probably have a lot in common with the characters in Springsteen songs.”
I was at the Montreal show on Halloween night, where Bruce, the E Street Band—Steven Van Zandt, Nils Lofgren, Garry Tallent, Max Weinberg, and Roy Bittan, along with Soozie Tyrell, Charles Giordano, and Jake Clemons—and a brilliant backing ensemble of singers and musicians performed for roughly three hours straight. The show rewired my brain. For days after, I was in a feverish state, hatching delusional schemes to get to his other Canadian shows, unconsciously singing the melody of “Dancing in the Dark” on a loop until my partner asked me to stop, listening to every Springsteen album front to back.
“The stakes implicit in most of these stories are that our time is always running out.”
Photo by Rob DeMartin
I had seen Bruce and the E Street Band in 2012, but something about this time was different, more urgent and powerful. Maybe it’s that the older you get, the more you realize that, unless you’re über-wealthy, you probably have a lot in common with the characters in Springsteen songs. When you’re young, they’re just great songs with abstract stories. Maybe some time around your late 20s, you realize that you aren’t one of the lucky ones anointed to escape the pressures of wage work and monthly rent, and suddenly the plight of the narrator of “Racing in the Street” isn’t so alien. The song’s wistful organ melody takes on a different weight, and the now-signature extended coda that the band played in Montreal, led by that organ, Bittan’s piano, and Weinberg’s tense snare rim snaps, washed across the arena over and again, like years slipping away.
The stakes implicit in most of these stories are that our time is always running out. The decades that we spend just keeping our heads above water foreclose a lot of possibility, the kind promised in the brash harmonica whine and piano strokes that open “Thunder Road” like an outstretched hand, or in the wild, determined sprint of “Born to Run.” If we could live forever, there’d be no urgency to our toils. But we don’t.
Springsteen has long has the ability to turn a sold-out arena into a space as intimate as a small rock club.
Photo by Rob DeMartin
Bruce has never shied away from these realities. Take “Atlantic City,” with its unambiguous chorus: “Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact.” (Then, of course, an inkling of hope: “Maybe everything that dies someday comes back.”) Springsteen used those phrases on Nebraska to tell the story of a working person twisted and cornered into despair and desperation, but on All Hallows Eve, as the band rocked through their electrified arrangement of the track, it was hard not to hear them outside of their context, too, as some of the plainest yet most potent words in rock ’n’ roll.
In Montreal, like on the rest of this tour, Bruce guided us through a lifecycle of music and emotion, framed around signposts that underlined our impermanence. In “Letter to You,” he gestured forcefully, his face tight and rippled with passion, an old man recapping the past 50 years of his creative life and his relationship to listeners in one song. “Nightshift,” the well-placed Commodores tune featured on his 2022 covers record, and “Last Man Standing,” were opportunities to mourn Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, his E Street comrades who went before him, but also his bandmates in his first group, the Castiles. It all came to a head in the night’s elegiac closer, “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” performed solo by Bruce with his acoustic guitar: “Go, and I’ll see you in my dreams,” he calls
I’m still trying to put my finger on exactly why the show felt so important. I’ve circled around it here, but I’m sure I haven’t quite hit on the heart of the matter. Perhaps it’s that, as we’re battered by worsening crises and cornered by impossible costs of living, songs about people trying desperately to feel alive and get free sound especially loud and helpful. Or it could be that having one of our favorite artists acknowledge his mortality, and ours, is like having a weight lifted: Now that it’s out in the open, we can live properly and honestly.
None of us know for sure what’s up around the bend, just out of sight. It could be something amazing; it could be nothing at all. Whatever it is, we’re in it together, and we’ll all get there in our time. Until then, no matter how bad things get, we’ll always have rock ’n’ roll.
Jeff Beck playing: the ‘Oxblood’, his 1954 Gibson Les Paul.
Jeff Beck (1944-2023), was a trailblazing guitar icon and legend. A multi-Grammy award-winning artist – twice inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – his inimitable sound led to collaborations with countless internationally renowned musicians and friends including: Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Ronnie Wood, Rod Stewart, Steven Tyler, Billy Gibbons, Jan Hammer, Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, BB King, Buddy Guy, Nile Rodgers, Carlos Santana, Stevie Wonder, Imelda May and Johnny Depp, amongst others.Providing a remarkable opportunity for fans, guitarists and collectors, this unique sale comprises over 130 guitars, amps and ‘tools-of-the-trade’, which Jeff played through his almost six-decades-long career, from joining The Yardbirds in March 1965, to his last tour in 2022. With estimates ranging from £100 to £500,000, highlights will be on public view in Los Angeles from 4 to 6 December, followed by the full collection being on show in the pre-sale exhibition at Christie’s headquarters in London, from 15 to 22 January 2025.
Sandra Beck: “I hope you enjoy reading through this catalogue featuring the tools of my Gorgeous Jeff’s life. These guitars were his great love and after almost two years of his passing it's time to part with them as Jeff wished. After some hard thinking I decided they need to be shared, played and loved again. It is a massive wrench to part with them but I know Jeff wanted for me to share this love. He was a maestro of his trade. He never lusted after commercial success. For him it was just about the music. He constantly reinvented himself with his musical direction and I could not single out one person, one recording or one guitar as his favourite. I hope the future guitarists who acquire these items are able to move closer to the genius who played them. Thank you all for considering a small piece of Jeff that I am now hoping to share with you.”
COLLECTION HIGHLIGHTS:
The sale is led by one of Jeff Beck’s most recognisable guitars – his iconic 1954 ‘Oxblood’ Gibson Les Paul, famously depicted on the cover of his seminal 1975 solo instrumental album Blow By Blow, and used on tracks including the Beck-Middleton original composition ‘Scatterbrain’ (estimate: £350,000-500,000). Purchased in November 1972 in Memphis, the guitar saw extensive live action with the short-lived power trio Beck, Bogert & Appice in 1973. Other notable live shows through the 1970s included his performance alongside David Bowie and Mick Ronson at the farewell show of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars, at the Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973, the film of which was released in 2023, including Jeff’s iconic guest appearance.
The original ‘Yardburst’, Jeff Beck bought his circa 1958 Gibson Les Paul in London in 1966 whilst in the seminal British rock group The Yardbirds (estimate: £40,000-60,000). The history and battle scars of this guitar are legendary. Purchased at Selmer’s in Charing Cross for £175 in early 1966, it was used to record ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ and ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ on The Yardbirds’ album Roger The Engineer, as well as Jeff Beck’s solo track ‘Beck’s Bolero’, co-written with Jimmy Page and recorded with Keith Moon, John Paul Jones and Nicky Hopkins. Jeff removed the black pickguard, switch surround and the original sunburst finish in late 1967, leaving the guitar in its natural raw blonde state. Jeff played the guitar on his debut studio solo album Truth, the first to showcase the talents of backing band the Jeff Beck Group, featuring a young Rod Stewart on vocals and Ronnie Wood on bass, and on tour when the band crossed the Atlantic in 1968, including for a memorable residency at the Scene in New York in June 1968, where nightly encores saw Jimi Hendrix join the band on stage, including for a jam on this very guitar.
The ‘Tele-Gib’ is a hybrid guitar put together by world-renowned pickup designer Seymour Duncan specifically for Jeff Beck in 1973 (estimate: £100,000-150,000). Comprising a Fender Telecaster body and neck with a pair of Gibson PAF humbucking pickups removed from a Flying V, Seymour took the guitar to Jeff whilst he was rehearsing with Beck, Bogert & Appice in London in late 1973. The Tele-Gib can be heard on the beautiful Stevie Wonder track ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers’, from Blow By Blow, and was subsequently used for many other sessions and live performances, including The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball in 1981, alongside fellow former Yardbird, Eric Clapton.
Jeff Beck’s 1954 Sunburst Fender Stratocaster, serial number 0062, was one of his most prized possessions (estimate: £50,000-80,000). A gift from Humble Pie’s Steve Marriott following a late-night session in 1976, Jeff replaced the existing Tele neck with a 1958 Strat neck, which he had used to record many tracks on Beck-Ola (1969), Rough And Ready (1972) and Blow By Blow (1975). The ’54 would become Jeff’s principal performance and recording guitar for the rest of the ‘70s and into the early ‘80s – including for the majority of the 1980 album There And Back, and the A.R.M.S. Benefit Concert and tour in 1983, which saw the three ex-Yardbirds guitarists perform on stage together for the first time – Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton – alongside The Rolling Stones Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and Ronnie Wood and many other world-famous musicians.
‘Tina’ the Pink Jackson Soloist was debuted during the 1983 A.R.M.S. tour, at Madison Square Garden in New York City (estimate: £8,000-12,000). Fitted with a patented Kahler bridge, it enabled Jeff to deliver even more extreme string bends and harmonics and was immediately employed on several important recording sessions with world-renowned artists, most notably Tina Turner. Having lent his unique talents to her Mark Knopfler-written single ‘Private Dancer’, Jeff requested that she sign his guitar in lieu of payment for the session. When the pen failed, she engraved her signature with a flick-knife and then rubbed in green nail varnish for good effect. Jeff would go on to play the guitar on his 1985 album Flash, produced by Nile Rodgers, including for his reunion duet with Rod Stewart, ‘People Get Ready’.
The longest-serving of his Fender White Stratocasters, ‘Anoushka’ was master built by J.W. Black of the Fender Custom Shop (estimate: £20,000-30,000). Jeff modified his Strats – the model he referred to as ‘another arm’ – switching necks, bodies and electronics to suit his needs. The neck of this guitar was Jeff’s favourite and, when united with the present white Strat body he named ‘Anoushka’, became his primary recording and performance Strat for 16 years. It was used to record four solo albums and for hundreds of live performances, including much of Jeff’s legendary Ronnie Scott’s residency, his second induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, a co-headline tour with Eric Clapton, and for his performance at the Obama White House alongside B.B. King and Mick Jagger in 2012.
The PXO is an overdrive/boost where you can select pre or post giving you variety in how you want to boost, EQ and overdrive. We have provided standard controls on the overdrive side such as Volume/Gain/Overdrive and EQ but on the boost side you have a separate Tilt EQ that allows you to EQ with simplicity. You can experiment by cascading in a pre or post situation and experiment from there. The PXO has a lush, thick feel to the bottom end and a smooth top end that begs you to dig into the note.
J. Rockett Audio Designs PXO Phil X Signature Overdrive Pedal
