fearless
Member
I once know a girl called Margot. She died last night. In 1986 we moved next door to each other in Bondi, Sydney, when I had first arrived in from New Zealand. She lived with a band of teenagers from Brisbane called the Toxic Garden Gnomes. They’d moved to the big city to try and make it in the big time. My first memory is of a girl with ruby red lips, dark eyes and a white painted gothic face, knocking on our door to cadge money for cigarettes. She turned out to be a lovable nut and she and the Toxics became my closest friends in those years. We all had some unforgettable times. The Toxics turned into a great band and a few years later, when living in Melbourne, Margot made a demo. She knew about 5 chords, wrote a bunch of songs with them and put them on a cassette –just her voice and a no-name acoustic. I had to admire her guts. I lent her some cash for airfares, clothing and accommodation and she sat in the EMI Sydney office foyer until she forced someone to listen to it. She secured a multi-album record deal with EMI and was on her way.
First album was great, but Margot couldn’t handle the success. She couldn’t really handle life actually, successful or not, without being wasted. She nearly cracked the U.S. but was too erratic to hold a band together and really shine the way she could have. Second album was darker. She had an acute sensitivity to emotional pain. We all know that music is about feeling emotion and transferring that to our playing so that it can be heard and shared. Margot seemed to feel an internal pain so strongly it was too much to bear sober. She had an insatiable thirst for emotional gratification too. She came to my 40th birthday having travelled 600 miles, with an alcoholic seizure halfway in which she fell and fractured her cheek and eye socket. She discharged herself from hospital against strident advice and made it to the party in time to frighten my children with horrendous black/green/red/blue bruising and a blood eye.
She was such a loyal friend and would drunkenly phone to talk about love and friendship and devotion and the great times and talks we’d had. Over her increasingly self-destructive years she collaborated with Daniel Lanois, Steve Rayner, Steve Kilbey and The Church amongst others including the Toxics. Always with an incredible voice and style and pain which just tore at your heart – sometimes too much to hear, particularly in her later work.
She told us she was dying a year ago. No one was surprised she had liver damage but we expected that the doctors had “put the wind up her” in an effort to stop her drinking. She had a pretty bad prognosis. But she didn’t stop drinking. Her management abandoned her as did most of her friends, including me I am ashamed to say. Well I didn’t abandon her, but I was very short with her the last few years and pissed off because she needed to pull herself together and give up the booze before I’d let her see my four kids. Not that I can talk about moderation.
She was a joy, an embarrassment, a delight and a pain. She was godmother to my eldest daughter. And she died last night. Alone.
Steve Kilbey has some words. There may be links to her work in there somewhere. If not I can probably dig up some up but not today.
http://thetimebeing.com/2011/04/margot-smith-rip/
http://thetimebeing.com/2010/08/margot- ... ly-gifted/
Thanks for listening - I just needed to write about her, god bless.
First album was great, but Margot couldn’t handle the success. She couldn’t really handle life actually, successful or not, without being wasted. She nearly cracked the U.S. but was too erratic to hold a band together and really shine the way she could have. Second album was darker. She had an acute sensitivity to emotional pain. We all know that music is about feeling emotion and transferring that to our playing so that it can be heard and shared. Margot seemed to feel an internal pain so strongly it was too much to bear sober. She had an insatiable thirst for emotional gratification too. She came to my 40th birthday having travelled 600 miles, with an alcoholic seizure halfway in which she fell and fractured her cheek and eye socket. She discharged herself from hospital against strident advice and made it to the party in time to frighten my children with horrendous black/green/red/blue bruising and a blood eye.
She was such a loyal friend and would drunkenly phone to talk about love and friendship and devotion and the great times and talks we’d had. Over her increasingly self-destructive years she collaborated with Daniel Lanois, Steve Rayner, Steve Kilbey and The Church amongst others including the Toxics. Always with an incredible voice and style and pain which just tore at your heart – sometimes too much to hear, particularly in her later work.
She told us she was dying a year ago. No one was surprised she had liver damage but we expected that the doctors had “put the wind up her” in an effort to stop her drinking. She had a pretty bad prognosis. But she didn’t stop drinking. Her management abandoned her as did most of her friends, including me I am ashamed to say. Well I didn’t abandon her, but I was very short with her the last few years and pissed off because she needed to pull herself together and give up the booze before I’d let her see my four kids. Not that I can talk about moderation.
She was a joy, an embarrassment, a delight and a pain. She was godmother to my eldest daughter. And she died last night. Alone.
Steve Kilbey has some words. There may be links to her work in there somewhere. If not I can probably dig up some up but not today.
http://thetimebeing.com/2011/04/margot-smith-rip/
http://thetimebeing.com/2010/08/margot- ... ly-gifted/
Thanks for listening - I just needed to write about her, god bless.
