Simon Juliff

After a long break from making music, Simon Juliff (The Roys) returns with a new LP, his first  solo LP titled Stars. And while he may not have been in the studio or on stage for a long while, Simon has spent the last few years dabbling away at writing tunes at his own leisure. Stars is a ripper LP and the first released on the revamped legendary Melbourne label Dog Meat Records. Produced by Joel Sibersher, Stars features some great powerpop and ballads, it so good it makes me hope it doesn’t take Simon another 16 years to put out another record.

Munster: Is Stars your first release since the Roys, in 2007?

Simon: it is. I was dormant for that time, I was just writing songs and occasionally thinking about doing something else, forming a new band or getting the old band back together. And not getting around to it, having kids and all that.

Munster: so for all that time you were writing for your own enjoyment?

Simon: yeah and I played songs my brother, and my friends, sometimes with the guys from the Roys. But really just writing because I wanted to. Sometimes not writing anything for a while, sometimes getting in the mood and writing quite a lot, there was a few acoustic guitar songs I wrote that didn’t make the LP, and I kept writing rock songs as well, with the hope of one day starting a new band.

Munster: must have been good writing at your own pace as opposed to writing with an LP in mind?

Simon: I’ve never really had a deadline, and in the old band, we had at least four of us writing, and there was plenty of songs hanging around, and it’s still like that. Dave Laing (Dog Meat) asked me to release this LP, and to do it as a solo record as he kept track of what I’ve done, or haven’t done since the Roys. Basically I had a huge backlog of songs to choose from. But when I realized there was a release there was motivation to finish the songs that were 2/3s finished, which was most of them, and some of them were quite old that never saw the light of day. I let Joel take his pick, from all the songs I gathered. I’m not prolific, I just had a lot of years to columellate. 

Munster:  were you comfortable with it being a solo record as opposed to calling it a band?

Simon: it wasn’t the Roys, as it doesn’t sound like the Roys, and it’s a different collection of people. I resisted the solo LP as I thought my name didn’t mean anything in terms of brand recognition. But Joel and Dave said, well that’s what it is, assembling a band around my songs and it has an effect on how you approach the music. So maybe I’m a little bit higher in the mix. The next LP, if we do one, will be more collaborative. These songs were all ready to go, the demos was all there ready to go. The only reason to not call it Simon Juliff is if I didn’t want it to be called that, and I sort of didn’t but now I like the idea in terms of creative control. I was in a band with five guys who all wanted to call the shots. It was messy but it worked. This is much more enjoyable, not that I have full creative control as Joel’s hard to control, but they were all there to serve my project which was nice.

Munster: I really enjoyed Stars, kind of felt like Big Star meets Melbourne 90s rock.

Simon: Big Star has been mentioned, it does remind me of Big Star which is great, and that’s the sort of music I enjoy so much, probably the writing veers in that direction. And Joel and the other guys love it.

Munster: What was it like having Joel as a producer?

Simon: he’s not the engineer, Joel’s sort of directing the traffic, you know he’ll say that’s enough takes for now let’s move on, let’s try this. He’s really good at coaching me when I’m singing things a little strange, you don’t sound natural now he’ll tell me. He’s got a very good ear for what bits are punchy, what matters, what doesn’t matter, to my mind, he knows what I like before I know it, and able to make it sound like how I hoped. And we’re such old friends. He and I there were no surprises in the dynamics, even though we never really worked with each other much. In the past we done stuff like late night drunken Christmas carols with wah wah peddles, or the single we recorded for Dog Meat Records in 1991 that never came out. I know how he operates, and he knew I was going to trust him enough to not push back. Its rock n roll and pop music, and he doesn’t over complicate the idea.

Munster: After such a long time in-between releases, it must have been flattering that your old friends Dave and Joel pushed you to get back out there.

Simon:  yeah it is, it’s really great, it’s flattering and reassuring to my confidence to go back out on the live circuit after so many years, and to have that support. Dave is great in terms of how he really likes my stuff and tells people about that. Joel and Jim Sfetsos and Greg Bainbridge are a perfect band for me, and the fact they wanted to continue after the recordings was great. Was flattering how they wanted to do the recordings, but the fact they wanted to keep going as a band, made me feel sure we had something to go on with. Gives you the confidence to go on stage with a band like that.

Munster: So the band on record is the same band live?

Simon: yup, and the live show won’t sound that much different from the record.

Munster: how many gigs have you done with this band?

Simon: about eight or nine since the lockdown finished. We tried to play gigs in 2021 but kept getting shut down. It happened to everyone but these where my first shows in ten years, so I thought maybe it wasn’t meant to be (laughs), but once we got going we’ve played a bunch of shows and it feels better each time. We’re a good unit and used to each other now.

Munster: You mentioned a single you and Joel did that never came out, was that a band called Evil Dead?

Simon: yes Evil Dead. The single was called Just and Idiot. A teenage rant on a suburban suit and tie guy that hates his life, kind of a rocking song, someone offered to put it out recently, and I listened to it with some sort of cringe factor but we were only sixteen.

Munster: So plans are for the band to continue on and make further releases?

Simon: yeah, Joel sends me these sounds he makes sometimes, as a voice recording on the phone, texts me to keep moving to do new stuff all the time. I think he wanted me to write another 30 songs to so he can choose 11 from 30. I’m only up to a dozen. But there was plenty I wrote that was left off the LP. We got a records worth of songs but still working on more, some are collaborative with Joel, and some are in the live set already. If we had the money and time I’d start the new records now. But we will sometime, which is exciting.