Phill Calvert
Encyclopedia
Phill Calvert is an Australian rock
drummer
and producer best known for his playing in the influential post-punk
band The Birthday Party
with Nick Cave
. His playing with the Birthday Party was noted for its use of tom-toms
("Zoo Music Girl", "Release The Bats"). Numerous sources incorrectly spell his first name as "Phil" with one l.
, he started learning the drums at four years of age. At the private boys school Caulfield Grammar
in the early 1970s he met vocalist
Nick Cave
and guitarist
Mick Harvey
and formed a rock band with other students, playing parties and school functions with a mixed repertoire of protopunk
material (David Bowie
, Lou Reed
, Roxy Music
, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Alice Cooper
).
The band picked up Cave's friend Tracy Pew
on Bass
, and after they finished secondary school they named themselves The Boys Next Door in 1977. They swiftly became a leading band in the Melbourne Punk rock
scene, playing New Wave
style originals. Calvert worked at a variety of jobs including record store clerk but his heart was set on playing music. After making recordings for local independent labels Suicide (a subsidiary of Mushroom Records
) and Missing Link
, and playing hundreds of live shows, the band left for London
in 1980 and renamed themselves The Birthday Party
. Signing first to 4AD Records and then to Mute Records
.
After his split with The Birthday Party in 1982 (most sources claim he was sacked), Calvert joined the UK group The Psychedelic Furs, touring the U.S., but never recorded with them. He left before they recorded Mirror Moves in 1984. Drums for that LP
were programmed by producer Keith Forsey
.
He returned to Melbourne and in 1985 became a founding member of the rock group Blue Ruin. They achieved moderate success, recording five LPs with Calvert and travelling to the UK, but, like so many other promising Australian acts, failed to turn heads outside of their own country. Calvert split with Blue Ruin in the late '80s and the band continued with some new personnel until 1995. Blue Ruin reformed with Calvert for some shows in 2006.
Calvert filled the drum chair in a succession of Melbourne based acts including In Vivo and The Sunday Kind. In the latter he met guitarist Ben Ling and the two have been collaborating since the late 1990s under a series of names: Sugarhips, Bulletproof and currently (2006) The Enthusiasts.
In recent years Ling and Calvert have co-produced the Melbourne band Witch Hats
.
Calvert currently lives in Melbourne with his wife Julia.
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
drummer
Drummer
A drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...
and producer best known for his playing in the influential post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
band The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (band)
The Birthday Party were an Australian rock band, active from 1973 to 1983.Despite being championed by John Peel, The Birthday Party found little commercial success during their career...
with Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
. His playing with the Birthday Party was noted for its use of tom-toms
Tom-tom drum
A tom-tom drum is a cylindrical drum with no snare.Although "tom-tom" is the British term for a child's toy drum, the name came originally from the Anglo-Indian and Sinhala; the tom-tom itself comes from Asian or Native American cultures...
("Zoo Music Girl", "Release The Bats"). Numerous sources incorrectly spell his first name as "Phil" with one l.
History
Raised in the suburbs of MelbourneMelbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, he started learning the drums at four years of age. At the private boys school Caulfield Grammar
Caulfield Grammar School
Caulfield Grammar School is an independent, co-educational, Anglican, day and boarding school, located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1881 as a boys' school, Caulfield began admitting girls exactly one hundred years later...
in the early 1970s he met vocalist
Singing
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
Nick Cave
Nick Cave
Nicholas Edward "Nick" Cave is an Australian musician, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and occasional film actor.He is best known for his work as a frontman of the critically acclaimed rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, established in 1984, a group known for its eclectic influences and...
and guitarist
Guitarist
A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...
Mick Harvey
Mick Harvey
Michael John Harvey , is an Australian rock musician, composer, arranger and record producer. He is best known for his long-time collaboration with the singer and songwriter Nick Cave...
and formed a rock band with other students, playing parties and school functions with a mixed repertoire of protopunk
Protopunk
Protopunk is a term used retrospectively to describe a number of musicians who were important precursors of punk rock in the late 1960s to mid-1970s, or who have been cited by early punk musicians as influential...
material (David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
, Roxy Music
Roxy Music
Roxy Music was a British art rock band formed in 1971 by Bryan Ferry, who became the group's lead vocalist and chief songwriter, and bassist Graham Simpson. The other members are Phil Manzanera , Andy Mackay and Paul Thompson . Former members include Brian Eno , and Eddie Jobson...
, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
).
The band picked up Cave's friend Tracy Pew
Tracy Pew
Tracy Pew was an Australian musician, best known as the bass player for The Birthday Party.Born in Australia, Pew moved with his family to New Zealand in 1959, returning in May 1964...
on Bass
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, and after they finished secondary school they named themselves The Boys Next Door in 1977. They swiftly became a leading band in the Melbourne Punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
scene, playing New Wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
style originals. Calvert worked at a variety of jobs including record store clerk but his heart was set on playing music. After making recordings for local independent labels Suicide (a subsidiary of Mushroom Records
Mushroom Records
Mushroom Records is an Australian recoJrd company formed by Michael Gudinski and Ray Evans in Melbourne in 1972. After its sale in 1998, it merged into Festival Mushroom Records. From 2005 to 2009, it is one of the record labels operated by Warner Bros...
) and Missing Link
Missing Link Records
Missing Link Records is a record store in Melbourne, Australia. The shop first opened in 1971, but was then called Archie and Jughead's, named after the comic. The shop's co-founders, David Pepperell and Keith Glass, established the shop as a much-needed rock record shop...
, and playing hundreds of live shows, the band left for London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1980 and renamed themselves The Birthday Party
The Birthday Party (band)
The Birthday Party were an Australian rock band, active from 1973 to 1983.Despite being championed by John Peel, The Birthday Party found little commercial success during their career...
. Signing first to 4AD Records and then to Mute Records
Mute Records
Mute is an independent record label based in the UK. It was founded in 1978 by Daniel Miller and featured several prominent musical acts on its roster such as Goldfrapp, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Erasure and Fad Gadget.-Beginnings:...
.
After his split with The Birthday Party in 1982 (most sources claim he was sacked), Calvert joined the UK group The Psychedelic Furs, touring the U.S., but never recorded with them. He left before they recorded Mirror Moves in 1984. Drums for that LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
were programmed by producer Keith Forsey
Keith Forsey
Keith Forsey is an English soundtrack composer, drummer, songwriter and record producer.-Biography:Forsey's first recordings were as the younger member of the group The Spectrum, better known for the end title theme for Gerry Anderson's Captain Scarlet, but hit makers across Europe in their own...
.
He returned to Melbourne and in 1985 became a founding member of the rock group Blue Ruin. They achieved moderate success, recording five LPs with Calvert and travelling to the UK, but, like so many other promising Australian acts, failed to turn heads outside of their own country. Calvert split with Blue Ruin in the late '80s and the band continued with some new personnel until 1995. Blue Ruin reformed with Calvert for some shows in 2006.
Calvert filled the drum chair in a succession of Melbourne based acts including In Vivo and The Sunday Kind. In the latter he met guitarist Ben Ling and the two have been collaborating since the late 1990s under a series of names: Sugarhips, Bulletproof and currently (2006) The Enthusiasts.
In recent years Ling and Calvert have co-produced the Melbourne band Witch Hats
Witch Hats
Witch Hats are an alternative rock, classic rock and post punk band based in Melbourne, Australia.-Formation & Wound of a Little Horse :...
.
Calvert currently lives in Melbourne with his wife Julia.
Albums
- The Boys Next Door - Door, Door
- The Birthday Party - Hee HawHee HawHee Haw is an American television variety show featuring country music and humor with fictional rural Kornfield Kounty as a backdrop. It aired on CBS-TV from 1969–1971 before a 20-year run in local syndication. The show was inspired by Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, the major difference being...
- The Birthday Party - Prayers On FirePrayers on FirePrayers on Fire, by Australian rock group The Birthday Party, was released in April 1981 on the 4AD label. This was the band's first full length release on an international record label . After leaving Australia to broaden horizons in England, the band returned to Melbourne to record this album...
- The Birthday Party - JunkyardJunkyard (album)Junkyard is a 1982 album by Australian post-punk group The Birthday Party.The album was recorded with Tony Cohen at Armstrong's Audio Visual Studios in Melbourne in December 1981 and January 1982. Additional tracks were recorded in London's Matrix Studios with punk producer Richard Mazda in May...
- The Birthday Party - It's Still LivingIt's Still Living-Birthday Party:* Phill Calvert — drums* Nick Cave — vocals* Mick Harvey — guitar* Rowland Howard — guitar* Tracy Pew — bass-Credits:* Engineer — Chris Thompson,* Mixed — The Birthday Party, Tony Cohen...
- The Birthday Party - Live
- The Birthday Party - Peel Sessions
- Blue Ruin - Such Sweet Thunder (1986)
- Blue Ruin - Flame (1987)
- Blue Ruin - Lighthouse Girl (1989)
- Blue Ruin - Strange Things In The Corner (1988)
- Blue Ruin - I'm Gonna Smile (1990)
- The Sunday Kind - The Sunday Kind (1993)
- Sugarhips - Sugarhips (1999)
- Bulletproof - Exciting Real Life Drama (2002)
- The Enthusiasts - I Hate Everybody (2006)
Further reading
- Inner City Sound, Clinton WalkerClinton WalkerClinton Walker is an Australian writer, best known for his works on popular music but with a broader interest in social and cultural history and theory....
(2005) - Bad Seed: A biography of Nick Cave, Ian Johnston (1995) ISBN 978-0-349-10778-3
- The Birthday Party & other epic adventures, Robert Brokenmouth (1995)