The reissue by Aztec Music of the band's 1979 debut album, X-Aspirations - recorded in a scant few hours - sees a classic and hugely influential album return to record store shelves and the band back on stage.
yourGigs (yG): Most reviews of your show at the Forum in Melbourne suggest that it was a rather significant moment of Australian music history that transpired - did it feel like that to you?
Steve Lucas (SL): I think the three of us felt like kids let loose in a candy shop! Since Ian [Rilen] passed and we got Kim [Volkman] in playing bass, we've sort of had to re-establish ourselves and Kim had to earn his stripes. But doing the Forum show with The Saints and having access to that stage and lighting and big sound, I think a few people had to eat their words after the show. It was exciting ... It was good to validate me and Kim and Cathy [Green] as X ... There's been a lot of people pass through the ranks, and sadly most of them have gone to the other side. But as long as I can draw breath I'll be walking on stage with Cath, or whoever's left standing, and punch it out. I love the music, always have; that's what keeps me going.
YG: Did that show make you revisit some of the feelings and emotions you had from back then?
SL: Yes, the nervous energy, the adrenalin, the fun ... The energy level - watching Cathy pound away on drums - the speed of it, and seeing Kim hammering away on bass ... the sense of unity really united us. We're now a very strongly forged blade, I would say; unbreakable steel - X is as good as it ever was.
YG: Do you think of X as a legacy you have to protect?
SL: Yeah, when I'm feeling a bit down it feels a real obligation, but when I'm feeling a bit up in my spirits, it's a joy to keep it alive. I do actually love the songs, I love the stuff that went on behind the scenes. There were dramas sure, but it feels the same. I've got a very long-standing relationship with Cathy, we're like brothers and sisters.
... One of the key things about X's music and the X relationship is the need for some sort of intimacy. We're not all jumping into bed together, but when we are on stage, we are in each other's hearts and minds, and we physically become one body and energy and that's sort of what makes X what it is, and what makes it different from a lot of other bands. We're not up there going through the motions; the adrenaline is flowing and we're having fun with the music. We love performing to people and love seeing people get off.
When I'm down, it's an obligation and I do really feel like I'm standing on top of a hill surrounded by Indians saying, "We will not surrender, come and get us you bastards". There have been times it's felt like Custer's last stand, but I won't surrender to it. I was actually thinking of getting together a whole bunch of songs Ian and I wrote way back when and teaching them to Kim and Cathy and make a new/old record. The stuff will be vintage Rilen/Lucas compositions; it's just stuff we never got around to recording. That's an indication of how passionate I am about it. I love the band.
YG: Do you have any plans to record any new X songs?
SL: If I record any new songs I'll do with other people. To me X was founded a long time ago. There's been a lot of blood sweat and tears ... I found lots of old rehearsal tapes and stacks of lyrics and things when going thru the archives looking for stuff for the X-Aspirations re-release. But then I thought I'd rather keep it where it started. If I opened that door then it doesn't becomes X any more, it becomes, "Lucas's X" or something, and I don't want to do that - I want to maintain the integrity of the band.
YG: Do you see your influence in modern bands and what do you think of it?
SL: I don't have to see it - people come up to me and tell me about it. Mark Seymour was very frank about it in his book, how X influences Hunters and Collectors. I've had Tim Rogers from You Am I come and say the first songs they tried to do were 'TV Glue' and a couple of others. Hard-ons came to a gig at our house when they were 14 or 15 and thought, "Wow, we want to be in a band" ... All the time I'm being told by someone from somewhere, "You don't know how much of an influence you hold". Not me personally; X, because we did take a very outsider stand, we asked for no quarter and gave none.
YG: It must mean a lot, especially coming from musicians you respect?
SL: It's good to know it wasn't all done for nothing ... I humbly appreciate that kind of feedback because I accept it on behalf of Ian Krahe, and Ian Rilen and Peter and Bob Nimmo and Lobby ... I'm the last man standing of the original line up - I do see it as a responsibility, but it's one I take on happily, trying to associate it with a bit of dignity in all these years. Our manager says, "You've learned enough to have become an 'elderly statesman of rock'", and I don't know if I'll ever get my act together but certainly I'm much more appreciative of the time I've got left and what I want to do with it and with X's music and my music.
YG: The album was originally recorded so quickly - in five hours. Do you wonder what a bit more time and finessing would have affected it for the worse or better?
SL: ... There have been times in the past where I've thought, "I wish they'd open up the guitar in that part," or "It would have been good if we had have done another pass on the vocal here". But that is what makes it what is was. If we had polished it up it wouldn't have had that urgency and the off-the-cuff dismissive, throwaway songs - that's what made it last. It really is a snapshot, it's like a picture - bang! - but it's done sonically: no Photoshop, no Protools, no nothing. It's just raw, that's how it is.
YG: Where do you see X as being at today and what hopes do you have for it?
SL: A number of times I've thought of it as a travelling museum piece because we just play what we played then and didn't really want to evolve it much ... We all had lots of other things going on, so there was never a need to take X beyond what it was ... If you try and force it or try to go any direction with a band it just f**ks with it. So sometimes I feel like a museum piece, but now it's different. There's life and breath at it, it's real. When I look over my shoulder and see Cath on the drums and she's beaming back at me, I feel it's never going to get any better that this. When I see Kim and it's almost like I can see Ian behind him pulling the puppet strings, it's a phenomenal experience.
... I'm not going to write new stuff for X, but there's plenty of old stuff and I'd love to go record it with Cath and Kim ... I do want it to be authentic, I don't want it to be a vague memory of what that songs was ... We've done the re-releases to bring people up to date; it was really important because we all know what commercial radio is like: it's here today, gone tomorrow. Stations like Triple J - you'd think they'd maintain their historical relevance among their programming as well as exposing new bands. I think they're failing drastically in that area, but there may be a shift in that - so maybe they are going to play a few [X] tracks, but the younger people of today need to know where stuff came from.
... I didn't want X to do what The Stones say did, like when disco happens, then suddenly develop X with a disco beat, or [suddenly] start rapping in the middle of an X song. I didn't want to chase fashion. X made a musical statement that sounded like no one else at the time, and I don't think anyone's come close to imitating it, so why would you want to move from that to something else when you've created something that is so standalone?
Andy Ryan
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