A new book has shed light on guitarist David Barraclough — the man credited for saving Kiwi chart-toppers The Exponents — his descent into alcoholism, and his untimely death. Neil Reid reports
David Barraclough’s daughter gave the musician an ultimatum as his health and music career deteriorated due to ever-increasing alcohol abuse.
Tragically, it was one the Australian-born long-time guitarist for Kiwi chart-toppers The Exponents and a 13-year member of legendary Australian band Mental As Anything would ignore.
In the new book, Started Out Drinking Beer: The Mental As Anything Story, Barraclough’s battle with alcoholism and his death only four weeks after seeking medical help for a sore stomach is laid out by his daughter, former band members and Mental As Anything’s manager.
That includes being axed by the Australian band — of who he was a member when they were inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association’s Hall of Fame in 2009 — due to the state he was in.
Author Stu Lloyd said the end came for Barraclough and band member Robbie Souter — who was battling his own demons — after Mental As Anything manager Grant Bartlett told frontmen Martin Plaza and Greedy Smith: “The band’s looking like Dad’s Army. If you’re happy for the act to last another 12 months, then do nothing.
“If you want the act to have some kind of future, then two things have to happen ...”
In Started Out Drinking Beer, Nicole Barraclough, also known as Nicky, reveals her dad took the axing badly, leaving her to give him an ultimatum over his unhealthy lifestyle.
“Dad just went on a terrible spiral at that point,” she said.
“It got to the point where I said, ‘You’ve gotta choose either the drink or me and Justin’. And he chose to drink.”
Six years later, Barraclough sought medical help after developing stomach pain.
He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
“Four weeks later he was dead,” Nicky said.
In the wake of Barraclough’s death in April 2018, The Exponents lead singer Jordan Luck penned an emotional tribute to his band’s former lead guitarist.
He had joined The Exponents in the wake of original guitarist Brian Jones’ departure.
Very sad to hear of the passing of David 'Duck' Barraclough, guitarist and co-songwriter with The Exponents from 1994; a fave he contributed to was was 'La La Lulu'. We're thinking of his family and friends today. https://t.co/Vh11CsE8yy @publicaddress
— AudioCulture (@AudioCultureNZ) April 26, 2018
Luck said after Jones left, he “was thinking it was time to put Exponents to bed”.
But that thought changed after Barraclough, known by his mates as Duck, tried out for the band, with Luck saying the new addition had “saved The Exponents”; a band looked back on as one of New Zealand’s most successful of the 1980s and 1990s.
“Born in Rockhampton, Queensland, living in Sydney, he would spend the next six years living in the hotel units of Kiwi & Oz,” Luck wrote.
“An exceptionally gifted guitarist, an exceedingly excellent touring companion,
“David brought songs to the catalogue with the pummelling potency of La La Lulu, and Shouldn’t Be Allowed and with the gentle gems of One In A Lifetime and The Summer You Never Meant.”
Luck added: “David Barraclough died yesterday of pancreatic cancer. Diagnosed a month ago, he went quickly.
“No more pain, no suffering.”
Mental As Anything was a musical institution across the Tasman from the mid-1970s until 2019.
They also had major chart success — including for songs such as Live It Up and If You Leave Me Can I Come Too in New Zealand — in their home country, as well as in New Zealand, Canada and the UK.
Incredibly, Live It Up hit No 1 in the UK 35 years from its initial success after it was adopted by Scottish glamour football club Glasgow Rangers as its unofficial anthem. Flags have also been produced for the club’s fans featuring some of its lyrics.
Hey you with the sad face, come over my place & live it up.
— Dazza (@BigDaz84) March 6, 2021
Glasgow Rangers champions 💙
Welcome to the party 🔴⚪🔵#RangersFC #SPFL #Champions #55 pic.twitter.com/LTxw2faPOq
For most of the band’s duration, they had two camps in the group; a Smokers Union who regularly partook in cannabis, and a Drinkers Union who preferred alcohol.
Barraclough firmly fitted into the latter, with Lloyd writing in Started Out Drinking Beer that his joining in 1999 was “one more for the Drinkers Union”.
Kiwi-born ex-Mental as Anything guitarist Reg Mombassa said the band had seen Barraclough play during a tour of New Zealand when they were The Exponents’ support act.
“One of the most enjoyable tours I’ve done because The Exponents were such amusing guides,” he said.
“We generally travelled in their vehicles. They were heavy drinkers.”
Added fellow member and Mombassa’s brother, Peter O’Doherty: “And Duck was a big drinker.”
Band members recalled how he enjoyed crosswords, writing poetry and reading “serious stuff”.
Away from music, “his biggest passion was following Crystal Palace in the Premier League”.
Mental As Anything initially wanted to offer Barraclough the lead guitar role after Mombassa indicated he wanted to leave the band he helped form in 1976 with Martin Plaza; the latter who was to share frontman duties with Greedy Smith.
But Barraclough, best known as a guitarist, including with The Exponents, made it clear he wanted to play only bass guitar.
“He came along and hung around a few gigs when I was still in the band,” O’Doherty said in Started Out Drinking Beer. “As so he would’ve been listening and learning by ear. He was a good musician, so he could do that.”
Lloyd wrote how “one of the big pluses of Duck’s joining was that he was a multi-instrumentalist and technically savvy”.
He had his own 16-track digital studio and when the band came to start recording a new album, they “volunteered him” to take on the sound engineer role for the record.
He also “nervously put forward” the song Stretchmarks for the album to be considered for inclusion by Smith and Plaza, who Lloyd said were “two of Australia’s finest songwriters”.
A proud Barraclough later told Lloyd: “Martin heard it and said, ‘I’m gonna sing that’. So it was a nice entry into the band to know that new writing was openly received.”
Another song that made the cut from him was The Ballad of Narelle Parts One and Two.
Nicky later said: “Dad spent a lot of time writing it”.
That and Let’s Cook — which would later be dedicated by the band to her and her brother — were her favourite tracks from Mental As Anything.
Barraclough was also to contribute to another Mental As Anything cult song, Love Concussion, which was a “narrative written about drunken amnesia”.
“Co-written by three experts on the subject, Bird, Duck and Martin, who availed themselves of the North Annandale pub nearby whenever they could,” Lloyd wrote in the book, published by Puncher & Wattmann.
The life of being a teenage child of a Mental As Anything member on tour was a double-edged sword, recalled Nicky in Started Out Drinking Beer.
Numerous children would go on stretches of some of the lengthy tours the band went on; which, over the years, would feature them playing in smaller-sized venues.
While there was a close camaraderie between the children, she said there were times when all she wanted to do was go on a regular family holiday.
“We were the Mentals kids,” Nicky said.
“While other kids were at caravan parks and splashing in pools, we were doing the East Coast tour. I wished we could have a normal holiday.”
She also told Lloyd how she tried her best to keep the fact that her dad was in the veteran Australian band on the down low.
“It was definitely not super-cool as a teenager, because as soon as anyone’s parents or grandparents found out they would ask questions, even my art teacher, so it was a drag,” she said.
“What 15-year-old girl wants to talk about their dad and his friends?”
A year-by-year bullet-point biography at the front of Started Out Drinking Beer diplomatically says Barraclough left the band in 2012 “due to poor health”.
Band members and his daughter recalled how seven years before getting his marching orders, Barraclough’s drinking started to increasingly affect his life.
Lloyd wrote of a 2005 tour that “Duck was showing early signs of really losing it with grog”.
His daughter added of the time: “He went from being a functional alcoholic.
“Mum did an excellent job of keeping it really hidden from me and my brother. It just crept up on him more and more.”
Guitarist Murray Cook recalled how shocked he was that Barraclough’s alcohol intake was affecting both the bassist and the band.
“We were playing the first song at the pretty big concert,” Cook said.
“And there was something wrong — I couldn’t hear the bass really well on stage”.
Wrote Lloyd: “He casually wandered across to Duck’s side of the stage to see what was going on. He was like Martin — they can just get absolutely smashed and still play really well. But Duck was so pissed he hadn’t turned on his amp. I thought, poor Duck, he’s not long for this world.”
Touring life started gradually taking a toll on Barraclough.
Bartlett revealed how the former guitarist for The Exponents “got mugged in Adelaide because someone thought he was a hobo”.
Drummer Wayne “Bird” DeLisle also recalled how a severely inebriated Barraclough had to be rescued from several life-threatening incidents in bars while on tour.
“Roadie Darren Brain and I saved Duck’s life a couple of times in Brisbane,” he said.
“Duck was so pissed he didn’t realise there was a brawl about to start. ‘Quick, grab Duck!’ And we were outa there.
“I always made sure I go with the road crew in case something happens. But Duck would wander legless into the abyss — you don’t do that.”
In an interview before his death, Barraclough told Lloyd: “The band and I had extremely compatible drinking styles. Very similar pre-show, during show and after-show drinking habits.”
Lloyd also explained that as the prestige around the venues they played in, and the size of the crowds that they could accommodate, both dropped, drinking intensified for some band members.
“They played everywhere from racetracks to restaurants. But Martin found playing to ever-smaller crowds in ever-smaller rooms demoralising,” Lloyd wrote in Started Out Drinking Beer.
“And a perfect storm was brewing because in Duck he found a member of the Drinkers Union who was happy to push the limits with him.”
Said Plaza: “We were sitting around airports all the time. It wasn’t like a competition, but we were refusing to grow up. I knocked myself around a fair bit.”
Towards the end of his 13-year tenure with Mental As Anything, Barraclough “was starting to get physically ill, developing necrosis of the hips”.
The condition can be brought on by alcohol consumption and affects the blood supply to the femoral head. It can lead to the bone at the top of the femur dying and then collapsing.
Lloyd wrote how Barraclough was so inebriated he “fell off the stage once or twice”.
A bandmate described how Barraclough would go through “two of three wine bottles a day”.
Added his daughter: “He went from a bottle a day of wine, to a cask every couple of days. It was just escalating. Everyone was getting fed up with Dad’s drinking.”
He eventually required double hip replacement surgery and for a time needed a walker to get around.
RIP to the The Exponents' Dave 'Duck' Barraclough, who passed away last night after a short illness. Thank you for the music, Duck.
Posted by Recorded Music NZ on Thursday, April 26, 2018
In 2015, he was among the members of The Exponents inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame; in the process becoming an inductee in halls of fame on both sides of the Tasman.
Two years later, Barraclough released his own album titled Ducks**t; which became his final released recording.
On its release, he posted on social media: “So this is Ducks**t a collection if stuff wot I do. Some of it are the best word things wot I ever rit. I dare you to enjoy.”
Neil Reid is a Napier-based senior reporter who covers general news, features and sport. He joined the Herald in 2014 and has 30 years of newsroom experience.
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