Rowland Howard

I was digging through a box of old cassettes recently and came across one that Rowland had given me in ’74 or ’75.  His distinct handwriting was instantly recognizable – Iggy & the Stooges RAW POWER written on one side, Velvet Underground WL/WH on the other.  Even as a school-kid, he knew which music mattered.
We were at school together, a tiny school of a 100 misfits, the Swinburne Community School in Hawthorn.  He formed a band with some of the others there (Simon McLean and Clint Small), Tootho & the Ring of Confidence (TATROC).  Rowland played squawking sax and rhythm guitar.   TATROC eventually morphed into the Obsessions (with Graham Pitt and Simon).  I can’t remember if they ever played a gig, I just remember rehearsals.

I started (with Clinton Walker and Janet Austin) a fanzine, Pulp.  Rowland designed the logo and page headers.  At the time, he wanted to pursue commercial design and carried his expensive Rotring pen set everywhere he went.  He wrote a few reviews, too.  He had strong opinions.

I organized a concert at Swinburne College in August ’77 with the Boys Next Door, the Reals, and the Obsessions.  Just before the concert, Rowland announced that the Obsessions were over and he was forming a band with a guy he’d met at a party, Ollie Olsen.  They traveled up to Sydney and stayed at a squalid squat (no doors, no toilet) in North Sydney that the Saints had occupied at some stage.  They hooked up with Jeff Wegener (ex Saints, Last Words) and a crazy New Zealander, Janine Hall, and all moved back to a place in North Melbourne together.  They called themselves the Young Charlatans.  I co-managed them (with Philip Morland) and thought they were the best band in the world.  Somewhere, I have some live cassettes that prove I was right.  I planned to start a record label, Au-go-go, to release a Young Charlatans 7”.  The label eventually started but without the Young Charlatans. On the eve of an Adelaide tour, they split up.

Rowland joined the Boys Next Door and I started working for their label, Missing Link.  Keith Glass and I went guitar shopping with him one day to a store on Brunswick St where he spied a white Fender Jaguar for $400 sitting on a wall of Flying Vs and Gibson SGs. It was the perfect instrument for his jagged, jerking, unique guitar style.  

Many years later I had the pleasure (and occasional frustration) of working with Rowland on releasing his solo album, Teenage Snuff Film (and the wonderful Hungry Ghosts album he produced with Lindsay Gravina).  The London Sunday Times magazine wanted to do a story on Rowland after the album came out there.  The journalist rang me in a frantic state because he couldn’t get Rowland to answer his phone or return a call.  I couldn’t either.  The promotion/publicity side of things just wasn’t a priority with Rowland.

Though others may hold memories of Rowland as the “dark prince of (whatever)”, they’re not mine.  To me he was always the smarter, younger, school friend.  The one I was jealous of because he’d found a copy of Raw Power before me.