John McConnell Tribute

I originally posted the following tribute on Instagram in March 2017

It was 1995 and only my second ever gig. The first was a complete disaster with the frontman saying over the mic, “This is the worst sound we’ve ever had in our whole carrier” It was Friday the 13th at Billy The Pigs in Bondi Junction and the band was called The Shy Guys.

I told the guy I was working for how it went and he said, “This next band you’re doing is the band all the bands go to see. Don’t F*** it up.” I guess he had no other options.

I was feeling the pressure. Anyway so I’m bumping in for this next gig at the Bridge Hotel in Rozelle and there is this red headed guy pacing up and down in font of the stage. I didn’t know who he was so I kept loading in. After a bit he says to me, “Hurry up mate, I’ve got a gig in 2 hours!” After a little bit I became aware that bands hired “walk in” sound guys to do their sound. I was relieved that I didn’t have to mix.

A little later on, John (who was the guy pacing up and down) was on stage tuning the monitors calling out frequencies and I was trying to find them on the 31 band graphic EQ. After a while he says over the mic, “You don’t know what you’re doing do you?” To which I embarrassingly responded, “No”

From that point on rather than blow me off, I felt like John took me under his wing and he guided me through that night giving me advice while showing me how it’s done.

There were phase problems with the PA that John could hear requiring a soldering iron and unscrewing the speaker box to fix. The first bar of the first song of the night the stage power went down. It turned out that due to inexperience I had plugged everything including the lights into one power board. I guess that’s why they call them show stoppers!

The band that night was Chasin' The Train and the gig apart from the awkward start went on and no one in the audience would have known the problems that were solved leading up. They would have just heard John’s signature great mix and had a great night.

This is what John did, whether it was having to deal with someone green like me, or the problematic Systems Tech or substandard gear. He would walk into whatever situation that presented to sort out what could be sorted preparing the way for the band and ultimately the punters (audience).

A few months later I would by chance meet John again. This time he invited me to come to his studio in Manly. He introduced me to great music, to vinyl and mixes he was working on and so my education and our friendship began. Over the years we would spend hours and hours and hours! listening to recordings while watching the ferries slowly pass by out the front window at 15 Commonwealth Parade and later at Stanmore looking out the window at the brick wall next door.

After sometime I ended up moving into John’s place around the time of the Album recording of, The Ballard Of KB by The Flood. I was working night shift and remember sleeping all day through these sessions and coming out at night ready to go to work and seeing and hearing what John had been working on with Kevin and the band. These were special and formative times for me observing from the peripheral.

One time I remember John asked me if I could get ahold of some DA-88 portable recorders. He knew that I tinkered around in a studio that had some. He wanted to record an upcoming Chasin The Train gig and he didn’t want the band to know cause he felt that they would deliver their best performance if they didn’t know that they were being recorded. This meant that John would need to take a punt and personally hire the recorders and additional bits and pieces. We literally had to smuggle in the recorders and hide them under a towel above the drive rack. I remember John was nervous about the band noticing the room mic's and working out what was going on. Periodically through the night John would pop his head under the towel to check levels etc while mixing FOH. I remember how initially disappointed he was with the recordings and how “digital” they sounded to him. He put a lot of work in, transferring them to tape and treating them with assorted gear to warm the whole thing up. The end result was the NYE 97 album. An outstanding result in my mind.

We often met up for a soy chai at Badde Mannors, coffee at Well Connected or breakfast at any number of places in Manly, Glebe and later Stanmore. We would chat about gear, friends, projects and just hang. He would always have his copy of the Sydney Morning Herald with him. Sometimes you would rock up and John would start to berate you about the latest religious or political scandal. On those days you knew it was going to be a bad day.

John never had a drivers license but still managed to own one or two trucks and several cars over his lifetime.

I had the “pleasure” of being what felt like his taxi driver for many years. I know others did as well. Driving John was a bit like driving a miss daisy/grumpy Paul Keating hybrid which would often drive you around the bend! Some of the regular phrases he would use were, “Marcus drives quicker than you” “Common mate we’re wasting time, more importantly mine” “Ignore your $800 Gregories and just do what I tell you!” “Jason you are part of the problem and not the solution” He would say this because I owned a car & didn’t take public transport and he would say this while I was driving him somewhere to fix a speaker or have a guitar modified or to checkout an old church that he wanted to investigate turning into a Daniel Lanois style recording studio!

He also took great delight in farting in my car as he new it would make me virtually dry reach. Often I would threaten to leave him on the side of the road. He would smile and say, Ok I won’t do it again, but would do it again a few minutes later.

We would often drive past certain places and John would tell a story of something that happened there in his rock n roll days. Eventhough I heard the stories like 10 times and would remind him of the fact it was still good to hear it again.

We had many pleasant driving adventures as well, driving to the Megalong Tea rooms, The Hydro Majestic, Central Coast and many other places over the years.

Megalong Tea rooms

While John and I had many differing views on things, our friendship was much deeper than that. Like something forged in fire I think.

Later I moved to QLD with my family, “The land of the great white shoe” as he called it. We would catch up when I would come back down to Sydney for work and we would pretty much carry on where we left off.

We would fairly regularly talk on the phone. I’m grateful that I had the chance to talk with John on the Monday before he passed. John Suffered his stroke on my 14th Wedding Anniversary. So in unusual way I will have an ongoing reminder to mark and reflect on his life and our time together.

I had the opportunity to attend John's funeral yesterday at Newtown Mission. It was a really good service. Heaps of people turned up. Afterward a bunch of us went to a hotel up the street and reminisced about our individual and collective journeys with John.

It became evident that we were all spokes and John was like a hub. We all knew what each other was doing from a distance over the years cause John would keep us up to date. So when we came together it was like we had already been hanging out in a way.

While John’s sudden passing is a shock and has left us with this sadness. I am grateful that he is now in the presence of the one he prayed to. He is in a better place now free from pain.

John,

Thank you for the friendship. I miss you.