Louis Tillett
Letters to a Dream

If I know Louis, it's largely thanks to Ronnie and Robbie and, to a lesser extent, my passion for reading credits on album covers.

Ronnie's last name is Peno, and he sings in an Australian band, the Died Pretty; they released an album called «Free Dirt». The song that opens side B, «Life to Go», is something else.

Then there's Robbie, Rob Younger, who used to be in Radio Birdman and is now in New Christs; they've just released an album, after three or four singles each more beautiful than the last, “Distemper”, and that song, «The Burning of Rome», is something else.

Ronnie and Robbie share being Australian and playing in Australian bands, being part of a scene from the decade '77/'87, which is the best story I lend my ears to during my adolescence.

«Life to Go» and «The Burning of Rome» share being phenomenal tracks featuring pianist Louis Tillett.

The first idea I get of Louis is of a Nicky Hopkins or Al Kooper type, someone so talented that everyone seeks him out and wants him to play on their records: Nicky is practically a rolling stone, Al is a Dylan collaborator, Louis is a new Christ and much more; and if you're arguing that the comparison doesn't hold, it just means that of the rock played in these antipodes years, of things like «Life to Go» and «The Burning of Rome» and everything around it, you've realized less than nothing.

Louis racks up credit after credit on the right record covers of the great Australian thing until he decides it's time to cash in those credits, and his name appears to him in a dream, emblazoned large and prominently on the front cover.

As happens with «Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell», it's 1987, Louis' solo debut. Such things never quite register with me and won't for many decades still because, for me, pianists either play classical or jazz and Gene Taylor – the one in the Blasters – already sounds strange to me, let alone Louis; Louis does the same thing but in a completely different way, playing on the same field but with different rules, that is, doing rock but I challenge you to find someone who plays rock piano like him.

At some point, I hear another who, the first time, astonishes me as much as Louis did: it's a jazz musician named Dave Brubeck, the track is «Blue Rondo à la Turk», the emotional photocopy of «Trip to Kalu-Ki-Bar». And I see the light, Louis is Dave Brubeck lent to rock, I'm right when I argue that a pianist must necessarily be a jazz musician, even if he plays in a rock band.

If I can explain something to myself, I end up living it better, and so Louis' strangeness now pleases me, and the album that follows flows by with pleasure, without much need to mull over what that sound coming out of the grooves is: so much blues, equally rock, even soul and R&B crowd «A Cast of Aspersion», 1990, a beautiful album, as beautiful as «Ego Tripping», only less astonishing because I've already heard and assimilated Nick Cave, the same with Kim Salmon, Tex Perkins, and other eccentrics from the other world, and now that I also know Dave Brubeck, nothing surprises me anymore.

«If someone goes to the trouble of spending their money to attend one of my concerts, I think it's only right to give them two hours of rock in return. I'm not going to show up on stage accompanied by a string quartet. However, I also believe that it's essential to catch the listener by surprise, to offer them something they don't expect from me.», words of Louis printed on the pages of some out-of-time fanzine, the translation is not at all literal, but the meaning fully reflects his thinking, perhaps contradictory, or perhaps perfectly linear.

Perhaps it's just another way of saying that the adolescent lost to Radio Birdman's punk and Lime Spiders' garage now wants something else, more than just a soundtrack for a drunken night.

Or perhaps it's just another way to introduce the difficult third album, as Billy Bragg would put it, «Letters to a Dream», October 1992.

«I want to avoid any form of extravagance, that's not the road I want to take, I'm not interested in being a kind of circus clown. The devil does the devil's work, not God's, and vice versa.», from faded pages remembered: that's how, at the end of a series of concerts in Europe with Nick Cave, Louis decides it's time for change.

«Letters to a Dream» is the new sound, nothing to share anymore with the rock, blues, and jazz of previous albums, not even with the band atmosphere of the Ego Trippers or Aspersion Caste: spartan to the extreme, dominated by lyrics and piano, it marks the new course.

Only, the new course of Louis isn't exactly the new course taken by the multitude – that one's marked by Nirvana's «Nevermind» – and Louis vanishes into nothingness, and «Letters to a Dream» with him.

I dare say thankfully: because of who I am, in 2020 and even today, this album is the most beautiful thing played by Tillett; in 1992, given who I was, this same album wouldn't have survived in my record collection. In short, if I appreciate «Ego Tripping» and «A Cast of Aspersion» fully only after understanding Brubeck, «Letters» I fully appreciate only today, after having understood Beethoven and Chopin – understood to a small extent and in my own way, of course.

A classical record in the literal sense, wavering between the invincible epic of a third symphony and the fragile intimacy of a nocturne, between the unease inspired by the cover image and the trust inspired by the story behind it (long, I'll spare you); which is then the characteristic of all Louis' work, always striving to fly high only to plunge into the abyss after a moment, as a «Carousel» followed «Condemned to Live» a few months earlier, now an «Entering the World of Morpheus» must follow a «Tempest», a «Dancing with the Devil» a «Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night», and a «Work Song» a «Daybreak's Reprieve», without forcing or ripping, in absolutely natural ways, because between heaven and the abyss, there is no difference whatsoever.

«Just as there is no difference between the desert and the sea, the same feeling of splendid solitude and urgency to survive», always Louis – this one has stuck with me perfectly.

Louis who, in a way, will do even better in «The Ugly Truth», he and Charlie Owen in perfect solitude, perhaps the ideal starting point to approach a unique talent, even in that hotbed that churns out talents without pause that is the Australian scene of the '80s.