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The Screaming Jets' front man Dave Gleeson didn’t get his licence until he was 36, and that was for good reason according to the rocker who moved to Adelaide from Sydney more than 20 years ago.
The band’s manager at the time, Anthony Thomas, gifted the Sydney pub rock band a brown Datsun 260C saloon – which was driven around by other licensed members to and from gigs. It became officially known as the band car – and it served its purpose well for a few years.
When the Screaming Jets’ 1991 debut album All for One was certified Gold, the car – nicknamed 'the pig' – didn’t survive a rooftop stomp to celebrate their chart climb – destroying their humble Datsun in a few minutes.
“It’s the first car that The Screaming Jets ever owned. It had electric windows and we nicknamed it the pig. It was brown, and you needed a shifting spanner to change gears in it, because the gears had fallen off,” says Gleeson.
“On the day our first album went Gold, we had it parked out in front of our rental in Sydney, and for some reason when our manager told us the good news, I jumped up on the roof of the pig until we all destroyed it. It was a write-off after that.
“The pig became actual folklore with the band and our fans back in the day."
The back seat was decorated in KISS pillows.
“I was a massive KISS fan and was in the KISS army. I scored these cushions and someone broke into the car one day ready to nick it, and all they took was the cushions, I was devastated."
Gleeson says he finally got his licence when his wife Katie fell pregnant.
“I didn't get my licence when I was 18, because I was the lead singer of the band and found myself having too much at gigs to think about driving,” he recalls.
“Everyone knew early on I was not going to be the right person to be driving a car, which is fair enough. I fell into the routine that someone else was always going to drive me around. It was only when Katie got pregnant that my goals changed."
His first car purchase was a champagne gold '90s model Saab 900.
“Katie and I were out shopping for a RAV4, and after visiting lots of car dealers, we couldn’t find anything. By the fourth car yard, Katie said 'wow, look at that Saab, that’s nice'. To which I replied, we're not looking for a Saab! But we took it for a test drive and ended up buying it,” says Gleeson.
He kept the Saab for three years – and it became their first family car to drive their first-born Bella around [she’s now 37].
The Saab was often used for gig road trips, but didn’t make it back from Robe in South Australia in the condition he had anticipated.
“I was ready to drive the car home from a show, when I noticed there was a big dark patch of petrol around the car and a hole in the petrol tank,” says Gleeson.
“I had to get the hazmat team to lay down sawdust everywhere, and I couldn’t move it due to the risk of explosion. It did make it back to Adelaide in the end, but it sat at the mechanic for two years.”
Dave Gleeson performs his new show Long Way to the Top at this year’s Adelaide Fringe.
Jane Rocca is a Melbourne journalist and author who writes for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald’s Sunday Life Magazine, columnist The Dish at Good Food, Harper’s Bazaar Australia, ABC Arts. She has written four books and hosted a podcast series Some of My Best Work with Mushroom.
