Pucker Up Baby, You're The Most

Newcastle Herald

Monday July 31, 2000

JENNY TARRAN

IT all started for Pucko in the music rooms at Newcastle High School and he swears his early foray into rock 'n' roll is responsible for the Screaming Jets' and silverchair's international status.

The legendary Newcastle-born entertainer (whose real name no-one, including himself, remembers other than he was a `Richard') has more than 20 bands to his credit, umpteen recordings and throughout the 1990s was to be found entertaining sweaty hordes of Novocastrians seven nights a week.

He has appointed himself as Newcastle's `Rock god', but is known by many as `the skinny man who is completely full of himself' who will do anything to entertain a crowd.

It is a description he said he would agree with, if only it mentioned his good looks and sexy dancing.

Pucko jumped into the music scene of Newcastle while still at high school, just before the original band scene boomed with venues like the Tattersalls Club, Cambridge Hotel, Airforce Club, Masonic Bowling Club starting to book bands.

But his early move into the entertainment business was nothing to do with getting lucky with girls or a secret yearning to be like one of his early heroes, Elvis, it was simply arrogance ? he thought he could do rock 'n' roll better than everyone else.

The Year 11 band at Newcastle High School so unimpressed Pucko he started his own version.

`I started the Year 10 rock band and decided to play exactly the opposite to what they (the Year 11 band) did, I played punk and original songs,' Pucko said.

It was this arrogance that turned a scholar called Richard into a man called Pucko who almost 20 years down the track still dresses up in sequins, flares, rubber masks and as little as is legally possible to entertain crowds either with his singing, playing, tomfoolery or deejaying in nightclubs.

Although his musical career has continued in different forms, the band members from that early start were never completely captured by the bright lights of stardom and gave up on their brief music career when university beckoned.

`One became a laser physicist, one a five-star hotel manager ... all my friends ended up being highly successful professional people,' he laughed, adding that his contribution to the world was forging a path for others to follow.

`I think I started something at Newcastle High that promoted the talent coming out of the school like the Screaming Jets and silverchair.

`There must be some vibe lingering in the music room.'

But although he gets recognised on the streets of Newcastle and claims to often have to escape Beatles-style from hordes of fans, the closest he has come to international fame was during his time with ska-band the Porkers, which he left about five years ago, just before they started making it big.

`I've been a bit lazy to get my music out there, but I still write songs and they (the Porkers) record them occasionally.'

There has been another alleged brush with fame. Whenever he gets the chance, Pucko will tell people about his night of passion with a woman he dubbed the `Pleazuuure Machine', but doesn't want to be quoted about it in case his girlfriend Kylie reads about it.

`I'm just bashful about naming names,' he cooed.

When he finished school, Pucko, just like Elvis, was a truck driver and spent plenty of time on both sides of a public bar. He had a brief stint as a university student but as he says, he escaped the hallowed halls of academia before his brain fizzled and got into rock 'n' roll full-time.

Now at 35, he is a seasoned professional and, in his mind at least, one of the busiest and most influential musicians in the Hunter.

`But to me it has always been a fun thing, I've never been heavily remunerated.'

He can play guitar, write and sing a great song, get a crowd up and dancing and spin a record. While he has cut back on the number of live bands he is involved in, Pucko has set up a mobile disco where he dons a perfectly tailored black suit and plays plenty of his favourite '70s and glam rock numbers at private parties. He dresses down for his deejaying gigs at the university's Bar on the Hill and the Mercury Bar where he claims to be `the DJ for the students'.

On the live side he does the Pucko and Andy Show at the Lass O'Gowrie, Wickham, which introduces special guests to unsuspecting audiences, and he also runs solo nights at the same pub were novices can turn up and strut their stuff.

`Essentially I'm still fostering talent, helping out the next superstar, and they can get up and play a song for a beer,' he said.

But he admits that he was in his live-gig prime in the early 1990s ? the boom time for original bands in Newcastle.

It was during this time that Pucko's career was almost cut short when his on-stage antics sent him off to hospital, putting a huge hole in the Newcastle original and party band scene.

He was on stage during a Christmas edition of Pucko's Young Talent Team at the Cambridge in 1991, when he severed nerves in his right hand, ironically during a rendition of his favourite song ? Heaven's in the Backseat of my Cadillac.

`I was trying to stop the song but everyone was so enthusiastic they kept playing so I had to jump up and down to get their attention but I fell and after I cut my hand open, they kept playing,' he said.

This flesh-tearing incident has gone down in Newcastle's musical folklore and has become what Pucko described as Newcastle's Woodstock: `More people claim to be eyewitnesses than were allowed in the club at the time, just like how millions claim to have been at the original Woodstock.'.

At the time of the accident the other bands he was playing in had to either cancel or find new guitarists, because no matter how hard he tried, his stitched hand was not able to get around those power chords.

It was a dark time for Pucko who had never before let illness keep him off the stage, even when wheelchair-bound as a result of one of his sporting feats, he didn't let his fans down. But his hand recovered quickly and he returned not only to the stage but to the playing field.

Because of his high-profile bands, including the Marones, Headbin, Ward Jane and his time with The Porkers, many of Pucko's fans are surprised at his sporting feats and often do a double take when they see him on the field.

But it is the sport that has kept Pucko in Newcastle, stopping him from heading to the bright lights of London where he visits his father each year.

`I've resisted the move to London; Newcastle is my black hole, I'm always sucked back into it ... I've had many adventures in the ocean baths and on the sporting fields,' he said of his love of his home town.

Each summer he dons his whites and plays cricket, while during winter, soccer is his thing.

`Some people put me in the same sentence as Pele, but not Maradonna. I'm too clean living.'

`I'm born on the same day as Pele, maybe that has something to do with my skills.'

He has even managed to meld his love of music and soccer, recently forming CHUB, or the Cooks Hill United Band, which has been performing at soccer functions and is set to break into the hotel scene.

`Of course I wanted to be a racing car driver when I was younger, I used to go go-kart racing but I realised that to be Ayrton Senna, you had to have Ayrton Sennas's money.'

The go-karting has now been replaced with the less thrill seeking sport of golf, but for Pucko, golf does have its advantages.

`It is a sport that is one that you can play while drinking, but I'd also put cricket in that category as well.'