Imagine, you show up at a friend's house, and
you think you're just there to hang out. Right,
maybe have a few drinks, listen to some records.
Exactly. But the second you walk through the
door, your friend just shoves you into this sweltering
commercial kitchen. Hands you a chef's knife,
points to this massive mountain of raw ingredients,
and just says, hey, we have 50 hungry people
out there. Start cooking. That sounds incredibly
stressful. Right, because you didn't plan on
it. You were prepared for it. In fact, you don't
even know how to cook. Yeah. But suddenly you
are entirely responsible for the meal. So welcome
to this deep dive. Glad to be here. Today we're
diving into the really chaotic archives of a
1980s Australian rock band called the Vanilla
Chainsauce. Such a great name. It is, right?
And we're trying to answer this massive question.
How do you keep a creative vision alive when
your entire team is basically falling apart?
Especially when, you know, you didn't even want
to lead the team in the first place. Exactly.
We're using their run, which was from like 1986
to 1995, as a lens for you to explore the sheer
messy reality of creative collaboration. Yeah,
and the struggle to capture that raw energy.
And the incredibly serendipitous nature of making
art. Because that kitchen analogy I just mentioned,
that is the exact phenomenon of how this band
started. I love this origin story. So let's set
the scene. It's 1986 in Sydney, Australia. You've
got frontman Simon John Drew and guitarist Mark
Alexander. OK. And according to Drew himself,
he and Mark were absolutely not trying to start
a band. It just... wasn't on their radar at all.
Right, they were just hanging out. Yeah, but
two other guys, drummer Peter L .W. Kelly and
bassist Cameron Lee, essentially cornered them.
They practically bullied them into it. They literally
did. They said, if you're going to start a band,
we want to be the rhythm section. What's fascinating
here is... the psychological starting point for
this whole endeavor. How so? Well, we have this
deeply ingrained kind of romanticized cultural
narrative that great creative projects always
begin with, like a singular burning vision. Oh,
sure. The tortured artist in the garage. Exactly.
We love the myth of the lone genius dreaming
of changing the world, but the origin of the
vanilla chainsaws completely subverts that myth.
Right. It reminds us that some of the most interesting
complex projects don't start from grand individual
ambition. They start from spontaneous, almost
aggressive peer encouragement. Like someone just
pushing you into the deep end. Yes. It's that
external push. Someone looks at you, sees a potential
that you haven't even articulated to yourself
yet and forces your hand. They volunteer you
for the mission before you even know what the
mission is. But I mean, when you're bullied in
to forming a band by your friends, you inherently
lack a master plan. You definitely. You don't
have a five -year roadmap or a clearly defined
brand identity. Yeah. And that total lack of
a plan is, well, exactly what led to one of the
most confusing debut singles of 1987. Oh, this
is where it gets... Really good. Okay, let's
unpack this. Let's paint a picture of the environment
first. If you're an indie rock band in 1980s
Sydney, you're playing the pub circuit. Right,
the sweaty pub circuit. Sticky, beer -soch carpets,
aggressive crowds, and incredibly loud, visceral
music. It's an environment built on raw power,
heavily influenced by bands like ACDC or the
Angels. It is profoundly anti - pretension. Totally
anti - pretension. So keep that setting in mind.
It's August 1987, and the Vanilla Chainsaws released
their debut single on Phantom Records. It's called
T .S. Was it really me? And a reviewer at the
time, Steve Gardner, from a publication called
Noise for Heroes, describes the track as having
a, quote, thick, dense guitar sound. Which fits
the pub rock mold perfectly. Exactly. But then
he notes that the lyrics are entirely about turn
-of -the -century industrialization and cities
of gray. and the TS in the title. It stands for
the 1920s modernist poet, T .S. Eliot. Wow. They
literally quote him in the middle of this heavy
rock song. And I have to be honest here, quoting
a modernist poet in a sweaty Sydney pub just
sounds unbearably pretentious to me. I can see
why you'd say that. Like, why do you think an
indie rock band from 80s Sydney felt the need
to mix heavy guitar riffs with early 20th century
poetry? Were they actually being intellectual
or just slapping a smart sounding name on a song
to hide the fact that they barely knew what they
were doing? It's easy to view it as a gimmick,
sure, but I argue it was actually a highly deliberate
strategic move. Really? Yeah. When an emerging
band drops a T .S. Eliot reference into a wall
of distorted guitars in 1987 Australia, they
are basically engineering cognitive dissonance.
OK, explain that. Well, as you pointed out, the
pub rock scene was visceral. It was anti -pretentious.
So by injecting highbrow modernist literature
into a thick, heavy guitar track, the vanilla
chainsaws are signaling this intellectual ambition
right out of the gate. I see. They're trying
to elevate standard genre tropes. into something
highly thematic. It's a bold statement of intent.
They are essentially saying to the listener,
yes, we are loud enough to make your ears ring,
but we are also demanding that you pay attention
to the text. Huh. They're demanding you read
the syllabus before you come to the mosh pit.
That is exactly the dynamic they're aiming for.
They completely subverted the audience's expectations.
Right. If you walked into a pub expecting a standard
aggressive rock set about drinking or rebellion,
and instead you get a dense literary critique
of urban decay and industrialization, it forces
you to listen closer. It's like a Trojan horse.
Precisely. They use the raw physical power of
alternative rock as a Trojan horse to deliver
complex ideas. But having those high concept
ideas and a massive layered wall of sound...
that runs straight into a brick wall when you
actually try to record it. Oh, absolutely. The
studio is a totally different beast. Right. It's
a hurdle any new project faces, but it's a sparely
brutal when your output is that dense. We have
this review from October 1987, written by Jim
Dwyer in Thrunka Magazine. And Dwyer is completely
conflicted about this debut, right? Totally conflicted.
He points out that the release clearly have a
lot of energy, that energy seems, and I'm quoting
here, toned down in its production. Yeah. He
goes on to say that if the band is as good live
as all the local rumors suggest, the recorded
song should explode into sheer energy, but somehow
it just doesn't. It just falls flat. It sits
flat on the record. Yeah. It makes me think about
trying to explain a wild, terrifying roller coaster
ride to someone using nothing but a spreadsheet.
The roller coaster and the spreadsheet, that
is a perfect analogy for what is happening here.
Because you can hand someone a spreadsheet that
lists the exact speed of the roller coaster,
the angle of the main drop, the specific gravitational
force you feel in the loop. Yeah, and the data
is technically 100 % accurate. Right. But the
spreadsheet completely fails to capture the visceral
thrill. It loses the wind whipping your face
and that awful, wonderful feeling of your stomach
dropping out. If we connect this to the bigger
picture, what Jim Dwyer is isolating in that
Theronka review is the eternal agonizing friction
of artistic translation. Artistic translation.
Yeah, because the recording studio and the live
stage are two completely different mediums masquerading
as the same art form. Yeah, that's a great point.
Think about the mechanics of a live show. When
a band plays a pub, they were relying on sheer
volume. They're literally moving physical air
through a room with massive speaker cabinets.
You literally feel the bass in your chest. Exactly.
There's sweat. visual spectacle, and an immediate
electric feedback loop with the audience. The
energy is environmental. Now move that same band
into a recording studio. Right. It's completely
sterile. All of that environmental magic is stripped
away. You're placed in an isolated, foam -padded
room. You're often wearing headphones, playing
along to a sterile clip track. Separated from
your bandmates by glass partitions. Yes. You're
trying to artificially manufacture the energy
of a riot in a completely sterile laboratory.
For a band whose entire local reputation was
built on being an explosive live act, that translation
process is devastating. I can imagine. It requires
a completely different skill set to make a piece
of plastic or a digital file feel dangerous.
Which is something you see in almost any industry,
really. You have an incredible brainstorm session
with your team. The energy is electric. The ideas
are flowing. But then you have to put it in a
PowerPoint. Exactly. When you try to formalize
it into a slide deck for the client, all the
life gets sucked out of it. The format basically
muzzles the idea. It really does. And it seems
like that critique, that realization that their
studio output felt muzzled, forced the vanilla
chainsaws to make a major pivot. Oh, definitely.
Because by mid -1988, they release a five -track
EP called Wine Dark Sea. It's produced by John
B. And suddenly, Steve Gardner from Noise for
Heroes is noting that the band seems to be actively
seeking more moderate tempos and more subtlety.
Right. They're moving away from just the supercharged
noise of those first singles. Yeah. They aren't
trying to force the roller coaster onto the spreadsheet
anymore. They're designing a different kind of
ride altogether. Which demonstrates a remarkable
level of self -awareness, honestly. Yeah. It
takes maturity to realize that... You cannot
just turn the studio amplifiers up louder to
artificially recreate a live show. They adapted
to the constraints of the medium. Right. Leaning
into the subtlety. Exactly. They realized that
subtlety, pacing, and moderate tempos often translate
much better to a recorded format than sheer unbroken
volume. They stopped treating the studio as a
documentary tool meant to just record what they
did on stage and started learning how to use
the studio itself as an instrument. But that
quest for subtlety and a new, refined sound didn't
just change the music. It completely broke the
band apart. Oh, yeah. The logistics become a
nightmare here. The search for the right aesthetic
reshaped who was actually playing the instruments.
And this brings us to 1989, where the story turns
into pure logistical chaos. Chaos is the right
word. The band decides to make a massive global
push. They sign to a German label, Glitterhouse
Records, and they head overseas. They'd move.
But almost immediately, the lineup turns into
a revolving door. First, before the tour even
really gets going, the original drummer, Peter
Kelly, is out. He's replaced by D 'Wilio Hernandez.
OK, one replacement, not too bad. Right. But
then, for the United States and United Kingdom
legs of the tour, a guy named Andrew Marx joins
on drums. OK, so that's drummer number three.
Wait, it gets worse. Marx leaves. So now, the
band is in the middle of a European tour, scrambling.
They literally have to hire local German musicians,
check off Helm K on drums and Henning Warner
on bass, just to finish the booked tour dates.
Wow. Just pulling people in off the street, essentially.
Basically, Simon Drew, the front man, has to
switch from singing to playing second guitar,
and at other times he's playing bass. just to
cover the gaping holes in the lineup. That is
wild. And then in December 1989, they record
their thousand EP in Germany, and they bring
in yet another new drummer, Bill Walsh from the
Cosmic Psychos, just for the studio session.
So many drummers. I know. If you've ever had
to take over a Massa group project at work because
your entire team dropped the ball or quit, you
know exactly how Mark Alexander and Simon Drew
felt in Germany. It is the ultimate survival
mode. Imagine the sheer friction of that reality.
You're thousands of miles from home, operating
in a pre -internet era. Oh man, yeah. No Craigslist
or social media. Right, you can't just post a
listing online to find a new bassist. You're
hiring local musicians who might not speak your
language natively, trying to teach them your
complex literary rock songs in the back of a
transit van, just so you don't breach your touring
contract. Here's where it gets really interesting
though. It reminds me of the ship of Theseus.
Ah, the classic philosophical paradox. Exactly.
If you replace the drummer, the bassist, and
use local fill -ins on a European tour, is it
still the vanilla chainsaws? Like what actually
makes a band a band? This raises an important
question about the reality of indie rock survival
because what you're seeing isn't a band playing
musical chairs for fun. You're seeing the desperate
necessary adaptability required to keep a project
alive on a global scale with practically zero
budget. At this point, the band had transitioned
from being a fixed group of four friends from
Sydney into this fluid, evolving idea. And that
idea was anchored entirely by Mark Alexander
and Simon Drew. Yes, they were the only two constants
through that entire European blur. It really
reminds me of a startup company where the entire
development team quits the week before the product
launch. Oh, that's a great comparison. The founders,
who maybe handle the marketing or the initial
concept, are suddenly staying up until four in
the morning reading coding tutorials just to
keep the servers from crashing. Yep. That is
Simon Drew switching from lead vocals to second
guitar to bass. It isn't about artistic expression
anymore. It's about keeping the lights on. They
stopped being a traditional rock band and became
project managers in leather jackets. I love that.
Project managers in leather jackets. As long
as Alexander and Drew were there to dictate the
aesthetic blueprint, you know, the thick guitars,
the underlying ethos, the T .S. Eliot references,
the specific personnel holding the other instruments
became entirely secondary to the survival of
the project itself. Just cogs in the machine
almost. Exactly. It strips away the romantic
illusion of a rock band as a perfect, inseparable
gang of brothers, and reveals it as a relentless,
pragmatic hustle. You swap members, you switch
instruments, you bring in a ringer from the cosmic
psychos for a recording session, you just do
whatever it takes to get to the next show. But
you can only sprint on that treadmill of survival
for so long before your brain completely fries.
Absolutely. Burnout is inevitable. And that exhaustion
brings us to the final act of the vanilla chainsaws.
After playing this chaotic game of member swapping
across the United States, the UK, and Germany,
the sheer fatigue of constantly training new
people pushes the core founders back to square
one. Back to Australia. Yes. It's late 1990.
Alexander and Drew return to Australia. And in
the surprising twist of fate, they reunite with
Cameron Lee and Peter L .W. Kelly. Wait. The
original guys? The exact two guys who cornered
them in 1986 and bully them into forming the
band in the first place. That is incredible.
Right. They get back together for an Australian
tour in April 1991. Now, it still gets a little
messy from here. Of course it does. When they
record their December 1991 album, Red Lights,
which came out on Phantom Records, a new guy
named Peter DJ Kelly joins on bass. Okay. but
Cameron Lee also continues in the band playing
bass. Two bassists. Yeah. And then Peter L .W.
Kelly, the original drummer, leaves again early
in 1992 to join the New Christs. The band finally
officially dissolves for good in 1995. Across
a nine -year run, they had 12 12 members in 9
years. That's exhausting. I have to ask you about
this 1990 reunion. After traveling the world,
getting a European record deal with Glitter House,
and playing with all these different international
session musicians, they go right back to the
two guys who forced them into the project back
in Sydney. It seems counterintuitive. It feels
like giving up, doesn't it? Is this just a massive
retreat because they couldn't hack the global
pressure? It's very easy to look at a band of
retreating to their hometown and linking back
up with their amateur friends and label it a
defeat, but I would argue it's not a retreat
at all. No, it's a homecoming. Think about the
difference between technical proficiency and
shared history. You can hire the best session
players in Germany. You can find technically
flawless local musicians who can play your songs
perfectly on a technical level. Right, the spreadsheet
musicians. Exactly. But technical proficiency
cannot manufacture the intangible weight of shared
history. Returning to Lee and Kelly represents
a profound, almost desperate desire to recapture
the initial spontaneous spark that birthed the
band. The spark from before they were project
managers. Yes, exactly. It's a recognition by
Alexander and Drew that while internet touring
is an incredible milestone, the unique chemistry
of the people who originally pushed you into
the creative act is irreplaceable. That makes
a lot of sense. Those original members shared
the DNA of what the vanilla chainsaws were before
they ever had to worry about glitter house records
or language barriers or European tour logistics.
Even with the later edition of Peter DJ Kelly
on bass, alongside Lee also on bass, which by
the way is an incredibly chaotic and muddy sonic
choice. Oh absolutely muddy. But the gravitational
pull was always back toward the original, messy,
enthusiastic genesis of the project. They wanted
the comfort of the people who knew exactly what
the band was supposed to feel like, not just
what it was supposed to sound like. So as you
are listening to this right now, how does the
wild history of an obscure 1980s Australian rock
band apply to your life? That's a great question.
Think about the things you are building. Maybe
it's a startup company, a community organization,
a massive group project at university, or even
just a long -term personal goal you've been grinding
away at for years. Yeah. The story of the vanilla
chainsaws from 1986 to 1995 proves that an endeavor
does not need to last forever to be deeply meaningful.
It doesn't need to maintain a perfect, unchanging
structure. You don't have to cross the finish
line with the exact same team you had at the
starting line. Exactly. A project can be a chaotic,
evolving collaboration. It can completely fracture.
It can force you to frantically learn new skills
and switch roles just to keep the lights on.
And it can still leave a mark. Right. They accomplished
a lot despite the chaos. They did. The vanilla
chainsaws released multiple EPs. two full -length
albums and left a footprint in both the Australian
and European alternative rock scenes. Chaos,
turnover, and exhaustion do not invalidate the
art you produce along the way. And if there is
one lingering thought to take away from all of
this, it's about the hidden figures in any long
-term endeavor. Ooh, I like that. The historical
record of this band lists 12 different people
who rotated through the lineup. We've spent a
lot of time talking about the founders and the
key players, but there are names listed. People
like Sabina Collins, Gerard Prezlund, Murray
Shepard, Rudy Morabito. All the people who cycled
through. Right. And their exact contributions,
their specific moments of holding the rhythm
together on a Tuesday night. in a sweaty pub
are completely lost to the footnotes. The historical
record doesn't even specify what years some of
them played. That's kind of sad, actually. It
is. But they were there. They held the structure
together for a moment in time when it desperately
needed holding. So think about the transient
contributors in your own life's projects. Yeah.
The people who step in for just one difficult
quarter, one chaotic season, one stressful launch,
and then quietly exit the narrative. How much
of your final output, how much of your success
is secretly shaped by the people history forgets?
That is a fascinating way to look at it. Keep
digging into the hidden stories all around you
and appreciate the people who show up to help
you chop the ingredients when the kitchen gets
overwhelming. We'll see you on the next Deep
Dive.