Brennan + Janice

Subject Testing 1, 2, 3. Testing 1, 2, 3. Well, let's run for a few minutes and see. Mainly getting the microphone close to the mouth.

Sandra McGrath There you go, that's fine.

Subject Sandra, what I'd like to sort of, I suppose what I'd like to work out with you is that I'd rather not have my name mentioned.

Sandra McGrath You don't have to have your name mentioned.

Subject I'd rather remain anonymous.

Sandra McGrath You are anonymous.

Subject And then the other thing that I'm really wary of is actual sort of quoted statements that are going to hurt other people. I don't really want it, that would not... It's not my intention to do that. It may come out that way...

Sandra McGrath What if I reassure you by saying that anything I use of yours I'll send you to look at first?

Subject Right.

Sandra McGrath Will that make you feel happy? Because I'm quite happy to do that. I mean, I'm not trying to do anything underhand.

Subject Good. But I read your other book and I admired it greatly and... very happy to do this with you.

Sandra McGrath Well, that's wonderful. Thank you. Because all I want to do is make it the most profound and provocative in one way book I can. And I can't do that without some knowledge.

Subject Yeah. If I find, if I can sort of know what's going to be printed then I can feel more comfortable kind of taking it to the edge a bit with you and letting you interpret it. And then if it's gone too far, we can pull it back a little bit, but I'd rather try and chuck most of it out there and let you put it together, because that's what we're doing.

Sandra McGrath Yeah, well no, that would be fine with me. So where do we start first? Because I don't really know who you are and what you're about.

Subject All right. Well, I'm a... first of all, I'm 45 years old now. I met Brett when I first came to Sydney in the early '70s, when I was in my 20s. I'd done engineering. I grew up in a country town, did mechanical engineering, but joined the Filmmakers Co-op, and ever since then I've been kind of on and off making short films, and it was in that... When I first came to Sydney, I stayed with people like Albie Thoms and some of the people that were doing the Yellow House at the time, so I sort of met... I had the Filmmakers Co-op in St Peters Lane early on, so I sort of mixed with a lot of Peter Kingston and the Yellow House people. I met Brett shortly after that through a girlfriend, a woman that I'd just met in Sydney. She'd done some modelling for him, and he was far more interested in her than he was in me, but I sort of come... I was part of the deal. He'd actually come round and visit, and that was mainly to see her. He was driving his little Moke, and it was just after the Yellow House, and he was a bit of a hero for me before I'd ever met him. Um, but when I met him, he completely blew me away. I can remember him doing, you know, like, he'd take a voice tone of a particular culture, and around that sound he'd build an observation about the whole civilisation, and it was a performance, you know.

Sandra McGrath Very good point. He was a real performer. And a great mimic.

Subject Yeah, and a mimic, incredible stuff, the sound, and he was, he was firing. He was really firing in those days. Now, the history from then till now is...

Sandra McGrath Let me just check this. You said you're an expert on this. Anyway, I don't want to... Can you put it so it's a bit louder? If you turn the volume up, there's a mic there.

Subject All right.

Sandra McGrath If you turn the volume up, will it make it louder when you talk?

Subject I don't know. On some of them it does, but if I leave it like that, we should be in business, I'd say. Um, yeah, so it was, you know, it was a sunny sort of time and, um, I don't think I made much impression on Brett, but he made a very big impression on me. He was, he was starting to smoke opium as a bit of a relief from the acid and the other things out at the gasworks about that time. This was the beginning of that, of the whole sequence of events. And, uh, I didn't see that much of him over the subsequent years until I I actually started doing opium and heroin too, and, and we'd sometimes go and score from Brett. And, um, I'd have a line to buy that go and buy something and we'd buy some of it too. And, and then he started buying, it started working the other way when I kind of got onto a good source. So it was a kind of a using relationship, and there'd be a bit of small talk, but that the sunniness, all the performance started to go out of things. And, um, soon after that, it got even grimmer, uh, because that was when th- this same woman re- has remained a friend of mine for over the years, and, uh, she was sharing a house with a place with Michael Driscoll up near Taylor Square, and Wendy started having her affair with Michael. So there was all the drama of that, and that was when Brett started to really hit it, you know. It'd been all right the other way around, but when Wendy started going out there, he really, I noticed a change. Not that I was close, but I could see it. And, uh...

Sandra McGrath It just went on. It went on. Um, is there any truth to the to the rumor, or is it one of, you know, sort of definite... was he the one who actually started them into heavy drugs? I mean, no one can really be blamed for anything like that, but was he sort of instrumental? Wendy always claimed that he just brought the drugs in the house. That's what I heard. I mean, he's definitely... I don't know. I don't know that. That's Wendy's point of view, right?

Subject I don't think it was just Michael Driscoll, but I think it was that gang. It was a group there that was, it was Michael, it was Ian Bent, who used to live with Jeffrey Smart.

Sandra McGrath Jeffrey Smart, who's back in Italy. Yeah, yes, yeah. Ian used to, used to see quite a lot of Ian. He was in the Warwick Hotel and take all of... I can't believe it at that time. Really, it was... And there was big rumours they were all down at Rose Bay there at one stage, too. There was a big Ian in Rose Bay and decided to become a Buddhist for a few months as well. Uh, but yeah, I mean there was and there was this woman, too. They were all, you know, they were a little kind of gang, and I think they... Yeah, but it would be hard to pin it just on Michael. He was certainly in the middle of it. Yeah, as it seemed to me, that Wendy blamed Michael more because of his relationship with Wendy. Yes. You know, so that was in it, all right. Yeah. I mean, I think I think Brett was I think Brett was smoking opium as a relief from the hallucinations of the acid in the gasworks in probably '73, '74, around that time.

Subject And that was before the thing with that started between Wendy and Michael. Certainly bringing it into the house and I mean bringing it in, what he might have meant was kind of bringing it to Wendy and getting Wendy right into it, that may have been true. I think it may have been Michael and Ian provoked that, of, have... But I think Brett had access to it before that.

Sandra McGrath Tell me the difference. I know I'm really dumb, but tell me the difference between opium and heroin.

Subject Um, you can inject heroin, for a start. I mean, heroin is a is a refined form of opium. It goes through a lab. The opium is what you roll off the poppies, and it's a gum, a brown gum like hash. And then, uh, it gets it goes through a process, and it becomes refined into, progressively through sort of brown rocks to a white powder. Um, most of the stuff we get here is Asian. It used to be. Um, so that's a kind of a refinement process. It comes a bit sorts of stronger. So if you, but if you went out on the street now and said, 'I want to buy some opium,' would anyone think you're a bit old-fashioned? Today, here? Um, yeah, you wouldn't [laughs] you wouldn't find it. You'd have to really shop. Uh, what did... well, did I say opium? You know, I probably meant he was smoking heroin like like opium. Ah, so that's... Yeah, I think he was smoking brown rock, sorry, on that. He was smoking heroin? Yeah. Yeah, sorry. The brown rocks, yeah. I mean, it was there was it was much kind of It was different distribution in those days. There was There was heroin around. You could get heroin in Sydney, but the... You mean you could get opium? You can you could get opium, sorry, in Sydney, and we did. That was how I started. Well, that would be quite romantic. Yeah, and that's how it started. It started with the fantasy, the Cocteau fantasy. Right, romantic. Now, I must say that Brett, I mean, Brett, that whole thing, that whole, you know, derange the soul, period, that whole, you know, Rimbaud. I think in the blue book you've got a section in there where he out of one of his letters. It was it was almost a kind of a, yeah, manifesto. Yeah. About deranging the senses in order to find... Enlightenment. Mm. Some sort of artistic enlightenment was the way I understood it. I bought all that. I really bought that. That was a big part of the mystique of those early days.

Sandra McGrath A lot of people bought it. And it started gently with that Cocteau sort of image of opium pipes and very sort of elegant, refined, uh, special pleasures. That was how it all started for a lot of people. And then it got really ugly. I've ne- It amazed me that Brett was actually so someone who was as graceful as he was with his

Subject hands, his paintings, he was he was he was, um, the crudest and ugliest person with a syringe that I'd ever seen. He would jab and stab, and there'd be blood everywhere. It's just awful. It was incredible. It was incredible to watch him, you know.

Sandra McGrath Did you watch him do it? Yeah, but it was still kind of graphic. It was like those paintings. It was like those, you know, the nail through the hand. Later on, what did he do? The Baboon

Subject in the Cage. It was really [laughs] I don't know what was...

Sandra McGrath There was nothing medical about... You know how medical... It didn't practice with an orange, obviously.

Subject No. Well, I mean, you know, in the early days we sort of had these blue Lady syringes and we'd sort of take a lot of care doing it. It was, mm, it was or or whether he's had a kind of passionate hatred, kind of ambivalence in it. Mmm.

Sandra McGrath That's the only thing I don't understand. How, when you inject, when you inject this, you want to inject something in your vein here, if you're stabbing yourself, you can't possibly just do that. I mean, it takes a while to find a vein.

Subject Well, that was what was so amazing about it. It's such a counterproductive way. I mean, the way to do it is you would gently kind of get the vein to come up with a with a tourniquet, and then you just edge a fine needle in very carefully so that the needle is sort of the tip of the needle must be in the middle of the flow of blood, not touching the the edges of the blood vessel on either side, but sitting right in the middle. And then you just jack back a little bit, and that characteristic little plume of blood appears in the syringe confirming that you have a free passage. And then you press without moving anything. That's the crucial bit. You don't move the relationship between the syringe and the vein, and you gently inject. And as long as nothing bulges and there's no resistance, you know it's going in there. You let off the tourniquet, and that's when you get the rush. But Brett, good god [laughs], it was just like

Sandra McGrath Like a wounded animal, whatever. Yeah, it was more like intra- intramuscular, you know, like he'd go, because he'd

Subject go berserk with it. It was a really weird thing to watch him do it. Someone so skilled with his hands, he's just get so kind of, was... Was Christian involved in this? Yeah, Christian was. Sometimes he was driving in the Mercedes. This was when they'd come to Westmoreland Street, and they'd all Christian and Wendy would be out in the car. Sometimes they came in, not really hanging out, because I had some a connection. There was some good stuff coming through, so I was actually supplying them some of the time. Some of the times, you know, I was buying through the same places he was in Darlinghurst. It all that went on, it just became more desperate, more ugly. And I personally lost touch with Brett, as I wanted to. I really was determined to... ...time, and I really was determined to stop, but absolutely could not do it. And I really envied his resources, his ability to to carry the whole thing off. I lost touch with him basically as I went through my hell and, um, my rock bottom and, God, you know, my marriage fell apart and I finished up on the streets and went into detox and finally stopped for the last time, which was in '83, '83, '84, I think it was. And, you know, went to meetings every day and I was a mess and, um, sometime after that, sometime after that Brett started his recovery process. [Interviewer: Around '84, '85?] Yeah. I remember the first time I remember really clearly was I was living with Jackie at Oklahoma and he came over one day and I sort of remember clearly he was actually he must have already been to England and done the detox over there, and he was going to meetings, and he, you know, he was very sensitive. And I overdid it with the tarot cards and the I Ching. And he just went, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. This is all too much." And he kind of backed out the door after a couple of hours and I really regret... I was very enthusiastic and so pleased to see him again, and he was, you know, and I regret it always, because he just, he enclosed... Brett represented something very special to me. He personified that kind of romantic, creative artist more clearly than anyone else to me. Right. And I also had that love of his, you know, establishing that you know, the love of his performance and, you know, everything. So I really wanted to have helped him, but it was very hard. It was very flighty. [Interviewer: Why was he such a difficult addict to break, do you think?] Well, because he had so many choices. [Interviewer: He had too what? He had--] So many choices. [Interviewer: Plenty--] So many options. [Interviewer: Money helped him?] Well, I I ran myself I ran all my resources out when it was when my addiction was... [Interviewer: You mean financial?] I mean financial, legal, medical. Apart from... ...emotional and spiritual, which is less tangible, tangibly defined, but certainly I was having a medical crisis, I was having a legal crisis, and I was having a financial crisis, and I mean I was deep into them. I was on the edges of total and utter disaster before I actually went to detox. [Interviewer: Yep. So do you think his fame and which therefore meant his money, a lot of money, actually protected him from...] Oh, that was, I would say, at a simple level, the fact that he could still always get the... ...money together was what separated him from most other addicts. You know, there are addicts who get clean without going broke. [Interviewer: Do you think he had special problems?] Oh, yeah, I think he had. I think he I think a lot of... I can't clearly say what happened, but I can say that, for me, if... ...I had more money, I would have kept going longer. And I can see that that was an issue with Brett, that simply the amount of money he had was a factor.

Interviewer Well, he told me once, and this is when I was being big and I had a lot of criticism about it, and I was seeing that you were married to Janice, and for, like, uh, for, like, um, fact, oh, he's here in, you know, this big... ...Romeo and Juliet of heroin, that's what they thought they were, uh, and he said to me... "Oh, if you had pure heroin, good orange juice, uh, health food, good health, good food, good orange juice..." In other words, if you sort of kept your life healthy... ...you weren't in the gutter, you kept your needles clean and you...

Subject Actually, uh, yeah, there were books that said that heroin in itself was harmless.

Interviewer Well, that's what he told me.

Subject I researched and made a whole film arguing that we should be given heroin by the government. In fact... ...so I know most of this stuff. I mean, we all...

Interviewer He probably got it from you.

Subject Could be. And, um, you know, we used to, I think we did sit round and, you know, yeah, I know, but...

Interviewer You obviously had heard this before.

Subject Yeah, yeah. Well, that's, in a in a in a sense, that's true. I mean, it does do, you know, if you want to stick to the physical thing, it does do strange things to your calcium, the calcium in your bones. It's a calcium, like, you get very weak bones. They break. We get very, you know, the bird-like old age and early and open sores and that. It It slows down your system so that a lot of you get toxic. The the digestive system doesn't really digest, so the toxins just sort of go out into the body. A lot of nasty things do happen, even with the purest, uh, the purest heroin. So I mean we, but we didn't care to look at that. And and but with Brett, there was much more to it than that. I mean, when I talk of the feeling of, I mean, I got what happened over the years was that we got to know each other at a deeper level and and became better friends, having gone through all of that, and he he got a fair, you know, whack at recovery. He got whatever it was, a couple of years, 18 months at one stage there. But he he always remained devoted to the passionate. He hated mediocrity with such a passion. He he would be there with you always for a limited time, and while he was there, it was full-on and it was enthusiastic. But you always knew there was a point at some point he was going to say, "Well, I've got to go now. See ya." And it was like making a stage exit. And you never really saw backstage. And I I I'm similar enough to Brett to know that I think what what's part of what's at the basis of that is just this kind of devotion to passion. He didn't want normal human beings in his life, you know, the ordinary. The divine passion most of the time. And then he would he would go away by himself to rest. And the way he handled that by himself stuff most of the time was with heroin. So that there would be Janice, the personification, if you like, of his soul, and Wendy before that. There had been these other characters that managed a large, a similar sort of intensity for a short burst of time. There'd be him and his work and his bosses and whatever went on in his creative process. And he he simply excluded all the boring bits. [Interviewer: Must've been nice.] Well, hm. Gifted. [Interviewer: Well, it was the heroin that allowed him to exclude the boring bits, surely.] No, it's his talent that allowed him to use the heroin to exclude the boring bits.

Interviewer He had this devotion just to being... You see, you say, "Tell me, just give me something. Give me something. I'll go deep, I'll go deep into it." And you said that he waited, oh, he said that that passion... What he meant, what he... ...what he always wanted was that he didn't want to just sit there and make small talk. He didn't want to sit there and hang out like most of us... ...normal human beings do. It had to be full-on. And, "So, give me something and we'll go into it. We'll go right into it... ...we'll go deep into it, and we'll..." You know, there was this kind of impatience or intolerance of just kind of the mediocre, just of a state of being human, of just sitting around quietly drinking tea and shooting the breeze. He He It had to be kind of a a very... [Interviewer: Up on top the whole time, on top of the waves.] Yeah, yeah. It was this devotion, yeah, to to kind of ecstatic, kind of passionate... [Interviewer: What drove him to that? Why did he have to be... why? Was it through his habit?] Well, I mean, I'm just observing this as a general...

Subject ...thing with Brett. Like, there was that one, there were those times later on where he managed not to use. When I first met him, he sort of wasn't using. He had that about him. It was always this full-blown, passionate thing. And he'd just drive from one place to another, and he'd go from one thing to another, and it was like continuous, right? I mean, I really observed that closely, because that was my model for what I wanted as well. I wanted, and I still have that, you know, this idea of being, you know, being able to live in different countries during the year and, you know, working working for that and living with people and, you know, a level of high stimulation, excitement, and blah, blah, blah. But I mean, I suppose what I've done, doing analysis, is that that's, um, you know, that's a really driven thing. Incredibly driven thing. [Interviewer: Did he ever go through analysis?] No. [Interviewer: Because I mean, I know Rilke said he would never go through analysis, because if he did, he wouldn't be able to write again. And then there were people in New York, and all around. There was this sort of... the fear that insight into oneself actually steals the tortured creativity, and the dark shadows and what have you, which are creative. Do you think that's that's a roundabout way of saying, do you think that that was one of the reasons that he didn't go into analysis?] Perhaps. He never said that. It seemed like he was always grappling with much more immediate things. And that our conversations, he was interested, and that, you know, he'd sign off, like, I want, you know, to go into analysis. He knew I was doing it, and I we talked about Jung a little bit, but he was incredibly intuitively devout. I mean, he thought that when he did the portrait of Hughes with the, like, the the symbol for trouble, that that was that was his understanding of archetype, having seen that similar archetype between three women. You know, he sort of thought, "Look, look, aren't I... Isn't it brilliant?" Enthusiastic, you know, it is an archetype. And I mean in a sense, he was right, in his normal way, he actually grasped something, some aspect of it, so strongly that it really worked. But he didn't have, you know, he you know, I mean, he also said, "I don't want to waste time reading books. I want to go and see." You know, he's just He wasn't really interested. He just, it was like that thing of reading one page of Artaud and grasped, sort of intuitively grasping a whole pattern from one little set fraction. He was so intuitive, it was sort of... I mean, I suppose if you'd asked some unconscious part of him, of him, that that part would have said, "That's right, we don't want to take all this working from the down, and we want to keep him acting in the subconscious." In a sense, but he he would have never said said that. He certainly never said that to me. [Interviewer: The heroin issue, such a romantic notion, too, at a certain period of, uh, time here in the '70s and '80s.] Yeah, particularly here in Sydney more than in America, it's a lot much... ...more confined to sort of being a lower-class phenomenon. Um, I've never been to Britain, but I understand there's some classy class upper-class people... [Interviewer: Oh, yeah, and France.] Yeah, and in the film industry there. But, uh... [Interviewer: So you're saying, in Australia...] In Australia, it was a bit of a fashionable thing, yeah. [Interviewer: Particularly among artistic people.] Yeah, yeah. [Interviewer: And was it was also quite easy to get?] Um, you know... [Interviewer: A lot easier than anywhere else?] Um, it certainly wasn't hard. Wasn't hard to get, huh. You had to do... ...an adventurous slumming sort of, you know, for those so-called, you know, artistic people, one had to slum, but that was part of the, you know, thing, that was part of the excitement. [Interviewer: Yeah, look, you drive into Woolloomooloo, you drive in there in your Volvo, and you'd ask some guy in Woolloomooloo, "Buy a bag of heroin?" Interviewer: Buy a what? Buy a bag of heroin in Darlinghurst? Interviewer: Oh, buy it in Darlinghurst. Interviewer: Yeah, with a contact, yeah. Interviewer: Why, do you think? Because that that began quite early in his life, didn't it?] I think it's part of the character make-up, of of, uh... You know, I mean... ...let's let's get down to it. I think the... ...drivenness, you know, my theory on the drivenness is that he he's, you know, an an an Oedipal, he's an Oedipal, an Oedipal child, the divine child, was a very was a huge...

Brennan Martin Sharp was very, was a huge, kind of, unmatured, magical child there, who is still incredibly erotically connected with the images of the feminine, which is kind of drive, you know, it drives all his work, all his fascinations, as it is, and that's an archetype, that's a psychological archetype.

Sandra McGrath Is this, what's, is this gone off? No.

Brennan That's called the puer aeternus in Jungian psychology.

Sandra McGrath And are these creatures rare on Earth, so to speak?

Brennan No. Well, yeah, but he was particularly full-blown. Um... I think most artists have that aspect to them, a lot of, a lot of artists. A lot of soft males, soft New Age, sensitive males have that about them. It's a, it's a problem of, you know... Well, that's what's happening. What's happening with the puer is that they've never grown up, so they're still fighting, where us puer still have this battle going on. I mean, I identify myself that way. It's still a battle, unresolved battle to escape the mother. So, it's St George fighting the dragon. You have this ambivalence, like in film noir, you know, you find the woman incredibly attractive, but they're at the same time incredibly threatening. And the thing that Brett said to me the last time I saw him, he just stopped and he said, you know, "I think that at the bottom of every woman's soul is a fiend." Yes. And it was not like a passing comment. It was sort of like we'd been to a men's meeting and the whole discussion was fiends. Yeah. It was only about two weeks before. It was hard to tell. He always would seem, it was... He'd always be so enthusiastic. And then he'd say, "Well, I've got to drop in, I've got to go." You know, and you'd know he was off to score.

Sandra McGrath So he'd just go to the meeting and go off to score?

Janice Yeah. The desperation.

Sandra McGrath Did you see him as being very sick at the end?

Brennan No. No more than...

Sandra McGrath No more than before?

Brennan No more than before, not sort of physically. I mean, there was a lot of pressure. He was he was sick of that. He was sick of all that, you know. All the stuff with Wendy was part of it. You know, he just felt that...

Sandra McGrath And what do you think about the Thirroul? Do you think the Thirroul ending, with him alone in the motel room, was surprising to him?

Brennan Well, no, I mean, one I mean, one always thought that that was what was going to happen, but not yet. You know, I mean, I was incredibly couldn't believe it that it had happened. I just couldn't believe it. I still expected to see, when I saw the body, I still expected him to... ...give an ironic wink, you know, as if it was all a joke. You know, it was just so hard to accept. His image lived so violently, his memory is so vibrant, it's so strong. And I still have trouble accepting that it's happened. Even though one knew it had to happen. He got away with so much for so long.

Janice I think my shock came from, you know, his sort of recovery from the episode, like when I saw him trying so hard, you know, and the desperation. And I think he really wanted to recover, you know, that once once he'd come out of the addiction into recovery, that he would find it again.

Brennan It's so infuriating. It's so infuriating to see the joy and the lightness in them. You know, the such enthusiasm for life in him, and and then for it to fail, and for him to go back, and and you know that it's gone. Everything's provisional, it's all a gift. You know, about two or three out of ten people that come to a 12-step meeting actually recover, you know. And seven out of ten don't. And some people say it's only one out of ten. So you have to, you know, you know that kind of... Sometimes one wonders, you know, how does anyone ever get it? It always seems like a miracle, like a gift. So, at one level you just think, "Oh, I'm just, you know, accept it, accept it. What else can you do?" But it's so infuriating. He was so special. You know, the country's national treasure, in fact. You know, one had visions of him being this grand older man of Australian art. It was sort of so close, having lived through all this stuff, it was, you know... And he'd keep coming back, and charm. It was like he'd be... he'd go away, and then he'd be back. And he'd charm you.

Janice Yeah, this was that to actually teach...

Sandra McGrath Oh, I see. You took a course to teach English, to teach English, yeah.

Janice But yeah, with I... ...and I I can't really talk about that right now, because I'm quite... ...I get so emotional, and...

Brennan I can talk for you, I can tell them, on a daily basis for months and months and months. You were a complete mess, I don't know how you... I sometimes wonder how you could come out of it.

Janice Well, I grasped, you know, I grasped with, you know, trying to stop everything.

Brennan I was going to throw an ashtray at myself, so we have it in common, because we're the last people who stayed on, you know, at the same time.

Sandra McGrath What could have stopped him? Could anything have stopped him? A miracle, an act of God. That's for sure. Yes, that is a good point.

Janice That was our last conversation. Our last conversation was about that. I mean, he was at a point where, like, he just said, "I just want to put a fucking shotgun to my head." And this was straight for 5 days. And Frannie was there at the time, this... ...conversation. And I just started getting stuck into him saying, "You're in this self-pity, you know, look at you, look at the way you're treating yourself, you're bloated, you know, you go back to Sydney, you start using." You know, and then we started talking, in a very gentle way, about nobody else can help him other than himself. You know, that it's a gift of God, and you had to reach out.

Brennan The other image that informs this whole thing is, you know, Dionysus, you know, torn apart as a child by the Titans, tortured forevermore by Hera, tragedy... There's been work done in Sydney on that myth in connection with alcoholism amongst Aborigines. And it's a very powerful...

Sandra McGrath Dionysian, is it?

Brennan Yeah, the Dionysian, the Orphic Dionysian.

Sandra McGrath Who's doing work on that?

Brennan A guy called Craig San Roque, isn't it? There's nothing else fits with...

Sandra McGrath Craig?

Brennan He said that it applied to Brett in the same way as it applied to, in The Doors, in the Oliver Stone film 'The Doors' recently, Jim Morrison talked about the answers, as the whole kind of Dionysus. The words are put in his mouth, but anyway... It's all said as a Dionysian thing, a lot of those people, those popular culture characters that blaze across the sky and disappear are very Dionysian, you know. I don't know that's true. So he was tortured, I mean that dismemberment fantasy, sticking a gun to his head, and blood and all that tortured, those tortured images. The way he's, you know, completely... He was great, he'd have that, he could do it for short bursts, but he he he would always then kind of run away in his horror, Yeah, well, I mean a lot of the Men's Group experience, it is tough. This stuff, it's not many can handle it.

Sandra McGrath Do you think Brett actually did make significant, uh, relationships with women, or did he conceal his real relationship, whatever it was? Do you think he used drugs to prevent himself having a real relationship, or whatever a real relationship is?

Brennan I think, I mean I think he got enough taste of reality with Wendy, so, and so kind of as it were decided he wasn't going to try that again. You know, I mean just, I think he was really terrified because of what had happened there. And that made him want to keep try and keep ruling out anything that gets panic. Yeah, he didn't want to surrender to that sort of force. Yeah, look what had happened then.

Sandra McGrath Are you talking about sexually?

Brennan No, I'm talking about in terms of...

Janice Brett was a good lover. He was a beautiful lover.

Brennan Women expect a lot these days, don't they? I mean, I can't... I mean, the moment was going, and we're too old for that, it's just, it's past, it's gone past, thank God.

Janice About what?

Brennan Well, what does this relate to?

Janice You're saying you're asking me if he'd been a good lover. Yeah, it was more about romanticism. It was more about, um, having the actual mix in the world.

Brennan Yeah, it was incre- We had dinner, not that long back, not very memorable. Good night.

Sandra McGrath What, the three of you?

Janice Well, after the Bird Show, we'd taken off to Japan for a month. Anyway, um, that one particular period was...

Sandra McGrath That was his first time to Japan, wasn't it?

Janice He wanted to, yeah, and he wanted to go and see a sex show, and the conversation at the table that night was a description of the sex show that we'd that we'd finally got in to see. But he said, 'Absolutely no way, they're not going to admit white women.' And he was right, you know, we rolled up at a couple of doors and they took one look at me and went, 'Ah!' So, um, eventually there were there were these guys that were sort of hanging around the street. They sort of looked like drug dealers, and I knew we were in the right area. And, um, one of them came up and said, 'You want to see sex show?' And I nodded. So we trailed off down this dark alleyway...

Arthur Just looking for the Japanese sex show, just to keep the tape together.

Janice Yeah. And, um, and there was this sort of panic in the air and, you know, we weren't quite sure of where he was taking us, and the alley was dark, and finally we arrived at this door and the curtain opened. We paid the money to get in. And the curtain opened, and as we walked in, there was this incredibly beautiful Japanese girl sitting on this round table that was slowly moving around. She had long, dark hair, and she had an ivory ivory skin, pale face, and, um, her pubic hairs were like combed down, like like it's just like out of a Hokusai print, you know? Anyway, the moment we opened the curtain, she's lying there on this oval table that's slowly moving around, and she points to this guy in the audience, right? So immediately both of us were were intrigued by what was happening here, because the sensation also was there was there were all these Japanese men sitting around this round table, and absolute absolute respect. It seemed, you know, there there was no groping, there was no, you know. And she pointed to this guy in the audience, and, who knows, it may have been set up, but, you know, he came up on stage, and she showed him how to wank her. So he started wanking her, right? And then all of a sudden, at a point, she And and it was so erotic, because she was getting off more and more, and at a point she stopped him, and she said, "No, not like this, like this." You know? And it And and all these Japanese guys were just sitting there with their hands in their face and, "Aww! Aww!" Absolute silence, you know. And in about fifteen minutes, finally, the coming of this woman, and that was the end of the act, you know, and and we left.

Sandra And what happened to the poor man? Did he get a did he get an orgasm?

Janice No, it was it was her It was her number, it was her.

Sandra That doesn't seem fair, does it?

Arthur I'm sure the house would have recompensed him somehow.

Janice But the sensation was the respect and the sensuality and the sensitivity. It was a million Yeah, a million miles from the fucking King's Cross, exactly.

Arthur Then Brett started getting into his anecdotes, with that whole spirit again.

Janice Yeah.

Arthur And we were all chucking bits in. It was one of those conversations where you didn't stop for the other person to speak, you just all sort of spoke at once, and we all kind of became one on the phone, you know, one of those special sort of things that went on for a couple of hours, and it was like, God, I'm tired, but it was great. But, you know, that wasn't that long ago.

Sandra How long ago was it? Do you know, Brett did something to One of the things Brett did was destroy everybody's sense of time. No matter who I talk to, they can never remember any time. They can never remember a day, a month, a year. He's made it I think he sucked time out of everyone.

Arthur It must have been...

Janice No, it was like I it was it was like, it was no, not like that.

Arthur I got back into together with Bea, probably around about then, with all of them.

Janice It was after Bea.

Arthur Was it?

Janice Yeah.

Arthur It was after Christmas.

Janice It was after Bea. It was probably January.

Sandra January.

Janice Early February.

Arthur In the summer.

Sandra This year, January '92?

Janice Yeah, this year.

Sandra He came to my house on Christmas Eve. We had a long dance together. First time I ever danced with Brett. It was this long, sort of semi-silent dance together, as if I was communicating things through his toes or something.

Arthur He had a funny rhythm on the dance floor.

Sandra No rhythm. He had this long, sort of semi-silent dance together, as if I was communicating with him through his toes.

Arthur He had a funny rhythm on the dance floor.

Sandra No rhythm.

Janice And in actual fact, if you got into his rhythm, he was a brilliant dancer. We'd we'd have incredible dances together.

Sandra No, well, I never quite got into his rhythm on the floor. I know I didn't. Anyway, what what else did he like about Japan aside from that? That is a remarkable story, that sex show story.

Arthur Well, I said, Brett, you're Japanese in another lifetime. You know, your whole setting is...

Sandra He would have liked that.

Janice Well, yeah, I think also the surprise of of the the quietness, you know, as a as a nation, you know, particularly Tokyo. I mean, you know, our voices would be raised and we'd find ourselves coming down quiet, to to the Japanese, you know, and integrating ourselves into into the culture. And the fascination of, you know, of, um, you'd go into a department store and you'd have a woman in a white blouse greeting you, you know. And in the hotel rooms, you know.

Sandra Where did you stay then? The one near the palace there?

Janice Imperial. Yes. Yeah.

Sandra When you looked out over the moat of the palace, did you see the ducks?

Janice Yeah, I think it was called the Imperial. Because, I mean, he came down with a terrible flu for five days when we arrived, so that was a bit disastrous. He was in bed with the flu. And, amazingly enough, I got this doctor in, and he just worked on the back of his legs, and the next day he was fine. It was like he's he had he had some toxic problem. So he wasn't using in that period,

Sandra Sandra. Oh. But, um, you went to see what? Yeah, we had an invitation through who's I can't

Janice remember his name, who we met at Camp Eden, um, who now works for Sky Channel in London.

Sandra McCloy?

Arthur No, no, no, no, no, it was it was He had organised it, actually. He'd organised

Janice um, to be picked up at the airport, and taken to the hotel, and I can't Anyway, that that particular day when we went to the Imperial Palace to have a look at the bonsai collection, there were four men, two men came with us and two men in the back limousine. And it was very much an official, like the cameras were out and, you know, clicking away, and every Japanese person saw it had a camera and they were clicking away, you know.

Arthur When you say they had a camera, who was with you?

Janice Yeah.

Sandra What do you mean? Did they know who he was?

Janice Well, I well, I I think that that we we'd been introduced to them as as Brett being, you know, one of Australia's...

Sandra Leading artists.

Janice leading artists. And there was a translator. We had one, everyone spoke Japanese, and there was one guy who who spoke English. And we we met the the the actual guy who looked after the emperor's bonsai, and he took great liking to Brett and his enthusiasm. I remember there was a lot of sort of joking going on, and, um, the explanation of, you know, this 500-year-old bonsai tree, and these incredible pots. What was Brett's reaction to seeing, finally, after the

Sandra bonsais after all these years? What was his reaction? Yeah. Did he think they were very funny? No, no, I think it...

Arthur Not funny at all. Unnatural. No, I think I think, I mean, his fascination with

Janice bonsai trees and and his reaction, I mean, it was both, for both of us, overwhelming. It was quite overwhelming.

Sandra In what way?

Janice In the sense of of the age, of history, the science behind the bonsai, how you actually get the size of this of this tree. Yeah, one particular bonsai tree.

Sandra What, one tree be 1,000 years old?

Arthur Yeah, I think so.

Sandra Who would know?

Janice Well, I just remember at that time, there was some, I remember the emperor was very, very sick, and, um, it was just an ill-feeling in the air. I can't think. Don't mind. It doesn't matter about bonsai trees, then. Can't go on about the the Japanese, but...

Sandra Tired.

Janice I had a three-hour sleep last night.

Sandra What did you do?

Janice Well, when you left, I didn't get to sleep till about three in the morning, and I woke up at seven. So, you know, I went down to Bondi Beach and I I barely could walk the beach before I started started getting back into that again. I started crying. You know, I thought I was fine, you know, and I went down to the beach to go for a walk on the beach, and there I am with Brett, you know? And, um, I think I must have got maybe about 40 paces and turned around and went back, mmm, into a coffee shop with so many people, and I I ordered, and I thought, "No, cancel the order," and I just came back to the apartment, you know. So I have good days and I have bad days at the moment, and...

Sandra That's natural, isn't it? Well listen, I won't push you any further because I know and Arthur, you've both been very kind to talk with me.

Janice Look, there's no anguish about this, you know, about being Arthur's projection on on the woman.

Sandra But so in your mind, you don't look like Wendy at all? And and you never in your own mind, or you never in in your thoughts thought you dressed like her or wore hats like her or anything like that?

Janice No. Because I don't No. I mean, we're two completely different people.

Arthur I've known Janice for a few years before.

Sandra But did you think that she looked like that? I mean, people say that Brett...

Arthur It never occurred to me, "Oh, there's someone that looks like Wendy Whiteley." But after they got together, like a typical, you know, Janice is Brett's type.

Janice Yeah. And we all do that. The archetype.

Arthur Well, just type. I don't know, it's just I don't think archetype, it's not what Jung or anyone means by archetype. It's a type. A type of woman.

Janice Yeah, I know. Brett seemed to grab onto that very strongly, the archetype of Wendy.

Arthur The archetype...

Sandra So you didn't see that wearing hats like Wendy's was looking like Wendy?

Janice I didn't know Wendy! I didn't, you know, I I didn't know her. I'd never seen her! But some people grab onto that.

Arthur That yeah, the the, you know, the hat turned up. Yeah, I noticed that. I did think that. But I don't think Janice is doing the same.

Janice I'd never seen Wendy. I didn't know her. It was like, you know, I I knew nothing about her.

Sandra Did Brett dress you?

Janice No.

Sandra No.

Janice But, you know, I mean... You know.

Sandra Did he say, "I'd like you to wear a hat like this, that, or the other"?

Janice No, I've always had a sense of my own style. [laughs] And when I when I came, you know, when Brett and I got together, it was a freedom to be able to express my own style as well, economically.

Sandra I remember when you and I went to the Powerhouse opening once, you and I. I can't remember what you had on, but we were walking within and people go, "Hi, Sandra. Hi, Wendy." And that happened time and time again that night. Do you remember?

Janice I remember. Yeah, it was very offensive. I thought it was offensive.

Sandra Oh, they didn't mean to be offensive. People didn't know. They'd say...

Janice No, no.

Arthur So you can imagine how offensive Wendy found it.

Sandra Exactly. That's what I that that's what, uh, I think is, um, made it a particular irritant into her thing.

Arthur Too right. I think she would play on that as well. I mean,

Janice you know, Brett would constantly say to me that when he was with Wendy, he, I mean, quote-unquote, he felt as though there was a football field between them on occasions, you know. And that he was never to look at any other woman.

Arthur Mmm. He was also he was also really amazed by Jackie. You know Jackie?

Janice Yeah, because Jackie has that archetype.

Arthur Jackie has that same, you know, and she even looked a bit like...

Sandra Who's Jackie?

Arthur Someone Jackie, you know, the one who used to go with John Allen, who came over to see Brett's show, comedy show.

Janice Long, red, curly hair, big lips.

Arthur Very voluptuous.

Sandra Well, I mean, he was very keen on Catherine Walker, too, and she didn't look anything like Wendy.

Arthur It was the power, Jackie's power.

Janice And that as a child. She's like a child. Yes.

Brennan I think what I saw there was that same powerful presence. Jackie had the same sort of powerful presence as baby cat, and he had that...

Sandra McGrath At your peril.

Brennan Yeah, you're right. Very much. [laughter]

Sandra McGrath Oh well. We're still hoping. In a way, doing this book, I can't really even believe he's not here. I feel he's with me every day.

Janice Spencer Uh-huh. I look at anything like BMWs...

Sandra McGrath Who liked BMWs? Why did he like BMWs?

Brennan Didn't he race on it? Didn't they go out on a course with Dire Straits guys and race and drive and race on anything like that?

Janice Spencer I don't know.

Brennan Yeah, they did. Yeah, they had a day's driving with them, I think.

Janice Spencer I think that was that Dire Straits concert tour when they came out. I think it was in '86... Or '85, I think, when Dire Straits did that enormous world tour and they did that concert tour.

Brennan Yeah.

Sandra McGrath What did they do, go out to a racecourse and take racing lessons?

Brennan With someone. They went out to a racecourse with the BMW...

Sandra McGrath Right.

Brennan ...with, and they had a driver like one of the Bathurst 500 men.

Sandra McGrath Uh-huh.

Brennan And he took them around driving first and showed them what sort of speed, which gears, sort of basically how to negotiate a course if you're driving fast cars. And that was a whole half day.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Brennan And they'd drive. And then they used to have a go at it. Mark and Brett had a go at it.

Sandra McGrath Did they go to Bathurst?

Brennan No, in a BMW. Took that car in it. Around Sandown, they did it at Sandown. Must have been Sandown.

Sandra McGrath Where is Sandown?

Brennan It's in Melbourne. Well, what racing track is in Melbourne? I'm sure they did it at Sandown.

Sandra McGrath Bathurst is on the... No, it wouldn't have been Bathurst.

Brennan No, no, it was in Melbourne.

Sandra McGrath It was in Melbourne?

Brennan Oh, it was Sandown, then. So, I think the, the actual connection, that's the main connection I had with the BM, because of him. Before that we had a Mercedes, and before that there was an...

Janice Spencer Lamborghini? No, not a Lamborghini.

Brennan No, no, it was a very sort of middle-class, not luxury.

Sandra McGrath Jensen? No.

Brennan No, no, no. But anyway, it wasn't until the BM that he really got into, you know, that was his fastest car, his sporty...

Janice Spencer Oh, man. It just chugged up, those hills and down, I mean...

Sandra McGrath Do you remember when the car fell on top of his car from the... a carpark?

Janice Spencer Yeah, in Bondi Junction. Oh god, that was unbelievable. I mean, well, that was in a period of time when, you know, everybody was estranged, you know. Arkie'd come to town, Arkie'd be speaking to the mother, and, you know, the mother wouldn't...

Sandra McGrath He'd be excluded.

Janice Spencer ...and Arkie was with Brett. And anyway, they'd gone to eat Japanese, and I was looking at him, and I was sitting up at the bar at the Chitose, where we used to eat every night. And somehow, the explanation was that the guy got the gear in the wrong, in reverse, instead of into first, and the car just came out and crashed on top of Brett's car, like literally maybe within 5 or 10 minutes they'd walked away.

Sandra McGrath That was... Two people died.

Janice Spencer Two people died.

Sandra McGrath I know, it fell three stories down, didn't it?

Janice Spencer Yeah, that's right.

Brennan It was awful. And so the couple that were killed, they got two, the first two paragraphs in the newspaper, and then the rest of the quarter page was about Brett Whiteley, you know. I mean, it was absurd. The newspaper, the insensitivity of the newspaper is wild.

Sandra McGrath I would have thought that would have really spooked him.

Janice Spencer Well, it did, you know, but I mean...

Sandra McGrath Would have spooked me.

Janice Spencer In that period he was using. It was like, you know, nothing's going to ever hit me.

Sandra McGrath Look at it.

Janice Spencer Yeah. Behind it. Yeah. Oh, a new BMW. Yeah, okay, we'll go out and buy a new one, you know.

Sandra McGrath Could you always tell when he was using?

Janice Spencer Oh, yeah. I only just had to hear his voice.

Sandra McGrath What, how different did his voice sound? Or how did his voice sound?

Janice Spencer Well, you know, I mean, if you've used, you know immediately.

Brennan The edge on it, the edge on the words, Brett's words. If he sits further back on the throat, sort of clarity and extra beauty, you know.

Janice Spencer Or, you know, or if you'd just been tipping, you know, he'd just had a little tip. He wouldn't be too stoned. You know, he'd still have the energy, but there was still that sort of... The eyes would be pinned, pinned, you know, and glazed over. It's just you'd get extra energy. You know, you'd feel fantastic, you know, and nothing could touch you. And, um... You know, I mean, my reaction to it was was that you are too clear, you've been in on it again.

Sandra McGrath Oh, for heaven's sake. You mean they weren't pinpointed enough? The eye, it dilated...

Janice Spencer Dilated, and you've been in on it again and glazed it over.

Sandra McGrath If, because I'm innocent of these things, of heroin, um, if you had a, a hit, is that the right term? Say at 4 o'clock, say. If you had a hit at 4 o'clock, how long would that last? And surely your mood would change as it began to wear down or off, wouldn't it?

Brennan Depends on the dose.

Janice Spencer Depends on the tolerance. I had heard that they were using up to six or seven hundred dollars a day.

Brennan Grams.

Sandra McGrath I don't know how much it costs now.

Brennan Around 650.

Janice Spencer So they'd be using two grams, three grams a day. Yeah, that's if they hadn't, you'd have to be enorm—

Sandra McGrath Three grams a day is mega, isn't it?

Janice Spencer Well, yeah, it's serious.

Brennan Serious pain coming on after that.

Sandra McGrath It is? What sort of pain? Stomach ache?

Brennan No, your whole body cries out, you know. The whole nervous system screams, just to feel reality.

Janice Spencer Yeah, and you can't allow it, you know, you feel like you can't allow it.

Sandra McGrath But how long, if you would you if you'd take 1 g, would you imagine, you don't know obviously, would you take 1 g in the morning, one at lunchtime, one at dinner? Was that how you'd space it, or you take them all at once?

Brennan Well, you space it as best as possible, but you're...

Janice Spencer His basic philosophy was...

Brennan What you do is you wake up, and a good way after you wake up, you say, right, I've got to do this.

Janice Spencer Yeah, it was always that trying to space it. He was always trying to space it.

Brennan And, I mean, if he's doing one for one, two...

Janice Spencer And his basic philosophy was, "I'm not getting a bag in,"

Brennan Yeah, right.

Janice Spencer you know, because he'd he'd done that with Wendy. And, um... So, it was always out to score,

Brennan Yeah, and it's always out...

Janice Spencer you know.

Brennan Which is the worst way to do it.

Janice Spencer Which, yeah.

Sandra McGrath Waste of time.

Janice Spencer Day in, day in, day out, you know. I mean, you spend your life...

Sandra McGrath Right.

Janice Spencer Enslaved to it.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Janice Spencer Conniving, how do you get it, you know, who do you get, who drops it off?

Sandra McGrath What a waste of energy.

Brennan And then they pass a bit on just to stay here, too, you know, just to, just to negotiate, so that they're not going to be without it all night. And that took that, and gone.

Janice Spencer Or he'd, yeah. He would stay up till 4:00, you know, the dealer'd come and drop it off, and then that'd be it. Yeah. Or he'd, you know, I remember one night, I mean, at the worst...

Brennan And the dealer wasn't like staying there, so...

Janice Spencer At the worst for me was one night we'd had dinner, and I remember Bea and and Francesca were, were there as well. And we were sitting and talking.

Sandra McGrath Who's Francesca?

Janice Spencer Yeah, two friends.

Sandra McGrath Oh.

Janice Spencer Bea and Francesca, and in town. They've been to the airport, and, um, I was driving his car, and he said, "Oh, will you just drop me, drop me down here, you know, in Surry Hills, at this address?" And like, I knew he had to score, you know. And the my dilemma, I mean, just tears were just rolling down my face, you know, and I said, "I won't do it. Where do you want to go?" I'll just drop you at home and you can walk in.

Sandra McGrath But that must have happened to you a few times.

Janice Spencer No, that's, no, I always, you see, I always tried to, um, when Brett was using,

Sandra McGrath Keep away.

Janice Spencer keep a distance between us.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Janice Spencer You know, because if, um...

Sandra McGrath Too tough.

Janice Spencer Yeah, and also, I mean, he was so blocked, you know, emotionally blocked,

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Janice Spencer you know, when he was using. If he was straight, we were connecting,

Sandra McGrath Mm.

Janice Spencer you know.

Sandra McGrath That makes sense. So, 3 g, the situation is that the routine of the day was really totally dedicated, in the end, to getting and taking and finding heroin. No?

Brennan And painting occasion—

Janice Spencer No, I mean, all three, you know. I mean, it was like this, this dichotomy of terror, going to meetings or finding someone that he can talk to, you know, and getting some help, but not knowing how, using dope, painting to try and get his mind out of what was actually happening, you know, going to bed for three days, watching videos, depressed, knowing that on Wednesday he's got to meet with Wendy to negotiate, you know. I mean, it was... There was a lot of pressure.

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Janice Spencer There was a lot of pressure.

Sandra McGrath Sounds awful, doesn't it, really, when you really think about it.

Brennan It was a long way from using so early in life.

Sandra McGrath Yeah. Well, it's a long way from Cocteau's pipe, isn't it?

Brennan I didn't think Cocteau had a pipe. It's a long, long...

Sandra McGrath Yeah.

Brennan There's that graphic film Cocteau, Opium, an essay on detoxification. And what that meant to him.

Janice Spencer It meant death.

Brennan That all his— or him having to completely— the threat of him having to surrender everything he was born with, if he was powerless, what did that mean? That terrified him.

Janice Spencer You know, when Eric came to town, he he spoke to Brett about about not not not even picking his guitar up for a year, you know? Not painting for a year, you know? You know, yeah. I mean, he didn't he didn't paint for three months when he first got clean, and the first commission was at that time, you know. And um I mean, you know, he'd come around, he'd turn like a kid, you know, on the floor. You know, he'd he'd get the paper out and and and and the brushes out, you know, and start to draw and then tear it up, you know, and then start again and tear it up, and I mean, he had a— creative people have a lot of terror that that's that there's not going to be that creativity there

Brennan the next day. That's right.

Janice Spencer if they get straight, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so the the complexity of that and understanding that is that, you know, I what I believe is Brett Brett was gifted anyway, whether that whether that was drugs or whether that was drugs or not, you know.

Brennan He was powerful, you know. He was always in a decent position, and it always would have balances, right? More original with everything, you know, so highly, specifically gifted, always, you know. Right.

Janice Spencer Mhm.

Brennan The whole idea of losing the daimon, the daimon, is wrong. Anything that I've seen with creative people, if they can do it distracted, they can do it better

Janice Spencer Mhm.

Brennan No. Well, I think I think he was terrified of I mean, sort of surrendering to those people and making other—

Janice Spencer Mhm.

Brennan No, they just disparage someone. It's a collective, that collective collective, uh that regurgitation. You desperately need it, and they're terrified of admitting, desperately rejecting,

Janice Spencer Mhm. I mean, he was working well, you know, at certain periods, really well, and prolific, and um producing, but every now and then, like in the last two months, you know, he'd put a bird out that was like, 'Brett, where is your integrity?' You know, and he'd say, 'Oh, really? Bring it back. Let's have a look at it, we'll rework it,' you know. And you know, there was it was this sense that um that that he had began to acknowledge that he lost

Sandra McGrath All right, well, we'll stop and let you all... I know it's time I know it's really exhausting to talk about things like this.