"My parents had a sort of rehearsal room in Oxford street and I met Mark through a guitar player. The three of us used this rehearsal room and made a horrible noise together," Rick says.

This was the mid 70s and Australian rock'n'roll was about to go into an upheaval. This thing called punk rock was emerging.

"In fact the band we had together went into the Battle of the Bands that Radio Birdman won. We were complete Birdman fanatics. I used to carry their equipment up and own the stairs at the Oxford Tavern."

Later on Rick's band (now minus Mark who'd gone to Townsville with another band) evolved in the semi legendary inner city outfit, The Hellcats, with Ron Peno (now with Died Pretty) as lead singer.

"Then I went to Melbourne to visit a friend for about five days - and ended up staying three years," Rick explains.

In Melbourne Rick played with a number of bands, including Eric Gradman's Man and Machine, before moving back to Sydney where he joined Matt Finish early in 1980. He played with them for two years, performing on their acclaimed Sort Notes album and a live EP.

Then came a phone call asking if Rick would like to join the Divinyls, something he did for the next five years before deciding to have a few years away from rock'n'roll.

"I wanted to live like a normal person for a while," he says.

Then it was time to tread the boards again when 'the call' came from the Hoodoo Gurus.

"I'd always loved them," Rick recall. "I remember seeing them when they didn't have a bass player at the Trade Union club. I thought they were funny! A really funny band. I'd has this break from the Divinyls and I was starting to thing about who I was going to play with and there weren't all that many bands around that I really liked. And then the Gurus rang up and it was fantastic."

After Rick joined they played live for a few weeks and then started recording Magnum Cum Louder. With the release of that album he toured the world for the first time as a Gurus, before work began on Kinky, which Rick thinks is the best album of his and the Gurus' careers.