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  Stephen Cummings: the reluctant rock star May 16, 2004 Producer : Marianne Latham  Singer, songwriter, author Stephen Cummings has been in the spotlight for a long time, but he's still not quite used to it. "He's the classic person who can get up and perform in front of a whole heap of people as long as he doesn't have to interact with them," says The Age music critic Shaun Carney.Stephen's reluctant career began in the early 1970s with a rockabilly band called the Pelaco Brothers. He didn't consider music a real career choice. "I wanted to do music," he says, "but I was probably just … it was more I just fell into it. I wasn't looking for a career." Another member of the Pelaco Brothers, Joe Camilleri, says, "It was a great fun band, because I don't think anybody could play. I think Stephen was the most tuneful person in the band for some time." The handsome, stylish, but incredibly anxious Stephen Cummings first came under the public gaze in 1978 when his band The Sports won the King of the Pops, Best New Group award. "We became successful quite quickly and one thing sort of led to another and then we were travelling overseas and we were travelling, playing big shows here," says Stephen. "There wasn't any time to think about what we were doing. We were just kind of too busy doing it." After the demise of The Sports, Stephen launched a solo career singing and writing. "You know, he's an incredible songwriter and incredible lyricist," says musician Shane O'Mara. "I hate this sort of thing of, so and so is Australia's greatest songwriter or whatever, but I'd have to say, having worked with a lot of people, his songwriting ability is pretty exceptional." Guitar player Shane and his singer wife Rebecca Barnard are long-term collaborators with Stephen. "You always get a thrill of performance whoever you play with, hopefully, but there's something about doing quite a few of Stephen's songs which sort of transcends that, where you do get goose bumps every time you play it," says Shane. Rebecca agrees. "He's always been a bit of a retro guy, but he does write the best love songs. Like the most heartfelt." In the past few years, Stephen has turned his attention to novel writing. His first book, Wonder Boy, was published in 1996. "Fate decreed that I actually had money for once," Cummings says. "I had some money, which meant I had time and I had a computer, so I just sat down and wrote the first book." Next came Stay Away from Lightning Girl and his third novel is called Kitchen Man. He says that the main protagonists in his books are based on himself. "Yeah, it's always like me, basically," he says. "I like to think of them as basically screwball comedies, but they're books. I started to do songs that were almost like little stories anyway and it was sort of an extension of that." Popular culture has always informed Stephen's writing and singing. When they weren't watching television, his father read paperback westerns, while his mother read romantic novels. "Every Christmas I know what to buy my mother. I just buy her a slab of romance books. And with my father, he just sort of read. I mean, when he died, we had probably 5000 westerns that we had to take to the op shop," says Stephen. "So I was surrounded not by high culture, but rather by a kind of trash aesthetic." Firecracker, Cummings' latest CD, is full of sentimental, romantic lyrics straight out of Mills and Boon, such as "Tell her I love her" and "Why doesn't she love me?" It is, he says, dedicated to American singer Ricky Nelson. "The album Firecracker really plays around with listeners' expectations," says Shaun Carney. "There are those curious, self-doubting lyrics all the way through and it's not just a piece of easy irony, I don't think. I mean, he is a pop culture vulture and he's on top of his game now all these years down the track, much more so, I think, than he's ever been in his career." Stephen Cummings has recently been awarded a project fellowship from the Australia Council. He plans to write and record a 40-minute song cycle, using different styles. "It's got dialogue in between," he explains. "It has a semi sort of story format to it. It's just about the idea of romantic love and, you know, lost love and lost love found again and found love lost and just kind of dealing with all the clichés of romance and things like that." "Stephen has this flame burning away," says Shaun Carney, "that says, I've got to get to the heart of whatever the emotions I want to express are. I want to find out what's really going on in my heart." He now enjoys performing in front of an audience and looking shy has simply become his style, Cummings says with tongue in cheek. "I see him as a musician really, rather than a performer," says Joe Camilleri. "I don't see him as an entertainer. I think his strengths are his songs and the way that he's developed what he does." "Stephen's never made a bad record and, you know, the critics love him and at the end of the day I think he can be proud of what he's done and he's never sold out," says Rebecca Barnard. "Along the way you get sidetracked by ideas of making money and fame or, I don't know, sort of pseudo-glamour," says Stephen. "But now, it's like when I first started in music, it's the kick of doing it that's still really powerful for me." |
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