Reflecting on his success, Perkins is equal parts piss-taking and grateful. “I’m very fortunate,” he starts, seriously enough. “I’m one of those people who made what they love into what they do and how they feed themselves. I still don’t take it for granted. I do take pause and think, ‘This is pretty good,’ and there are moments where you go, ‘Wow, if I was a plumber, I’d never get to be in this situation right now.’ The simple fact of me fiddling around with a guitar, making a few funny noises and recording it leads to the way I feed my family and I’m so grateful for that small wonder. I do pat myself on the back, quietly – not publicly of course.”
Perkins finds it almost impossible to build himself up for too long and inevitably, he falls back on a bit of self-deprecation. “You’ll always hear me saying what a dickhead I am and how small my talent is, but actually, I’m pretty cluey about what I’m doing,” he says. “You might think I’m an idiot savant, but I’m actually just an idiot – oh, there I go again.”
Perkins has also described himself as having an anxiety about the necessity to get shit done. Maybe it accounts for why he’s so damned prolific. Having heard his answer, that appears to be true, but it’s a tad more complicated. “I do believe we live in the end times,” he says, in earnest. “I’ve always thought that, even as a kid in the ‘70s and growing up in the ‘80s, there was always this apocalyptic shadow over me: if it wasn’t the Russians in the ‘80s and nuclear war, then it was AIDS, now it’s terrorism and climate change, take your pick.
“I’ve always had the sense that, ‘This could be your last chance,’ and at some periods of my life, I get a sense of urgency. That’s what motivated me subconsciously for a long time: we’re not here for long. We could all go out tomorrow, and I mean we could ALL go out tomorrow, not just one at a time, which is inevitable. That’s a good thing to have in the back of your mind, but you can’t let it completely traumatise you. It leads me to a healthy existentialism. It’s not, ‘Why bother? We’re all gonna die,’ it’s more, ‘We’re all gonna die, so get on with it, this is your chance.’ ”
Moving from the philosophical to something much more profane, although Perkins is a muso through and through, when he was a kid, he briefly dreamed about being something else. “I thought I was going to be a stuntman,” he chortles. “That looked like a good job. I liked to leap off things. We used to find as many cardboard boxes as we could find and put them together or drag out a mattress and jump off the trampoline and into the pool, various things like that. I can remember that stage where I found out, ‘What? People do this for a living?’ ”
Having just said Perkins is a muso through and through, he tells us these days he’s putting his golden pipes to other purposes. “A musician is just part of what I do – my career has developed many different tentacles. I work in the entertainment and media industry and that can take many forms. I’ve done a lot of voice-over work over the last few years and that’s quite enjoyable. In my grown up life, that seemed like an attractive job to have, to be ‘one of those guys,’ [he says, dropping into an even lower bass rumble] or even the guy that does, ‘In a world gone mad, one man stands alone.’ I’ve done documentaries and various ads and even public service announcements. I guess it all leads from the fact that I’m known for being able to open my mouth and stuff comes out.” There’s that self-deprecation again.
He’s a busy dude, so how does Perkins juggle everything he’s got on? “Well, I don’t do them all at once. One thing leads to another. For instance, over the last month I’ve played with Tex, Don and Charlie, I’m playing with the Dark Horses this weekend, I played with Ape last month. You have to make sure you’re prepared for all of these things and sometimes they do overlap a little bit, but I think I’m on top of it. I love working that way. I’m an amazing multi-tasker.”
BY MEG CRAWFORD
