SHARON O'NEILL ON SMASH PALACE

Rip It Up, Issue 55, 1 February 1982, Page 22

SHARON O'NEILL ON SMASH PALACE

scrapping of the footage Mick Jagger shared with Robards as Jagger could not spare the time to reshoot it with Robards replacement, Klaus Kinski. The drying of the Amazonian tributary on which shooting was to take place and unruly native extras also delayed production ... The World According To Garp will feature Robin Williams in the leading role. Script is by Steve Fesich ... Milos Forman's Ragtime marks Jimmy Cagney's return to the screen after a 20year retirement.

I thought you were so perfect And you thought Id stay forever Well, maybe . . .

Sharon O'Neill is on the phone from Sydney. Her soft voice sounds both cheerful and serious as she talks about her recent hit single. "Part of the reason it's very important to me is because it reflects my moving from New Zealand and very much sums up the whole situation under which the album was recorded. I'd left my home and friends and what the hell was l in for . . . not knowing the- musicians, the producer or anything. There was a general lack of communication similar to what happens in the relationship in the song."

Initially the shift to Australia was rather daunting for her. "There's such a huge following for live bands here that when I first arrived I thought 'You gotta go live; you gotta go live. If you don't they won't buy your records' and all that. But I didn't go live for very ordinary reasons like working on the album and the fact that, financially, I couldn't support a tour. But now I'm glad that I didn't because it did prove that you can sell records without being out there. I mean you won't sell as many but you can at least sell them." '

Now, however, with the album notching up some respectable sales she is out on the road performing with her band. Does that mean we're likely to get a tour here over the summer?

"We'll probably make it to New Zealand later in the year. It all depends on the dates for recording the next album." She reflects a moment and then adds, "Which is a pity because the movie will have long been out by then." She is referring to Roger (Sleeping Dogs) Donaldson's new film Smash Palace for which she wrote the music. Smash Palace, possibly the most emotionally intense piece of cinema ever to come out of this country, is due for local release this month. How does O'Neill feel about her first venture into filmwriting? "It was very interesting,

particularly in that it was done differently from the usual method. Normally the music is written after the film's been shot but in this case I wrote the music first. 1 had to rely on lots of discussions with Roger and of course I read the script. This meant that Roger and others had heard the music before filming. They said that being familiar with the music helped them in their approach to certain scenes."

O'Neill wrote five songs for the film as well as about 15 to 20 minutes of incidental music. But this should not suggest that Smash Palace is in any way a 'musical'. Apart from the themes that accompany the opening and closing credit sequences, only very brief snatches of the other three songs are heard on the soundtrack (although all five are due to be released on a 12-inch EP). What music there is in the film proper is largely instrumental and moodevoking. "Because of the editing of scenes and so on we did have to make some adjustments with the incidental music. But basically it involved improvisation over a written structure which in most cases was the Smash Palace theme." She laughs at the memory. "For the sax parts I just got Dennis Mason to go in there and blow his little heart out."

For a film so fraught with passion, O'Neill's music is restrained, often even calming in effect. Was such a counterpoint deliberate?

"Well the film has a very New Zealand sensitivity. It's trying to be real rather than sensational a la the Starsky and Hutch type of thing. I wanted to keep this feeling, this perspective, so I wasn't going to go all out with anything horrendous even for the heavy bits. I always tried to keep in mind the overall feeling of the film." In the past O'Neill's forte has been slow to medium-paced ballads and her Smash Palace music, written last summer before her move across'the Tasman, is no exception. In contrast the current album is decidedly rockier with an

emphasis more on guitars than her own keyboards. She rejects a suggestion that the overall tougher sound is due to a desire to crack the lucrative Australian market.

"I don't think it’pays to think that way. • Besides," she laughs, "nothing's definite anywhere. Some very weird things happen on the charts here too. We keep a cross-section of songs in the gigs and I still sit behind the piano for some numbers. I don't have any feeling of This is Australia and you've got to bang your head.' I don't need to compromise who I am, to play any particular kind of music just for Australia. Or wherever. I just do what I do as best I can and so far it's been treating me very well." Along with the harder rocking sound, O'Neill's lyrics are becoming more varied and interesting. Not only is there an increased sharpness-in her observation of personal relationships, but characters such as drug couriers and raunchy street prowlers stalk through her songs. 'Street Boys' from the current album is a dry reflection on the local-boy-turns-rock-star situation. Perhaps it reveals a certain cynicism in the songwriter? "Not really . . . but I don't think I would've written it if I'd stayed in New Zealand. It came out of the way the business is over here in Australia. It's more hair and tooth, more bitchy, more . . . ah . . . interesting. If you come to the fore very quickly here it's easy to bjow it in your first 24 hours of fame." It seems highly unlikely that O'Neill would ever 'blow it' in some such way. From her beginnings in groups, Chapta and Shiner, and her growing solo career, she has achieved a dedication and personal stability during almost a decade in music.

"I don't get bitter or anything. I'm still enjoying it which is why I'm still doing it." She pauses and it's almost as if the quiet determination is coming down the telephone line. "I'm still trying to reach . . . I've still got goals. I'm not about to be put off."

Peter Thomson