Last night, Sticky Fingers completed their Great Forgiveness Tour of 2018 with a stop off at triple j’s Hack. Ostensibly appearing on the program to make amends for their reported history of alcohol-fuelled violence and the allegations of misogyny and racism that have hounded them for over a year, they came across like a crew of naughty school boys forced upon threat of expulsion to apologise to those whose lives they have made hell. They hemmed and hawed, snapped defensively back at Hack’s Tom Tilley whenever he pushed them on a point, and stuck to what seemed like a media-trained script like glue.
That is until, pushed by only the most mundane of questions, lead singer Dylan Frost finally buckled and spoke his mind. “Boys will be boys,” he said, gruffly. And when pushed on that egregious cliché, he responded with another, even more egregious one – “shit happens.”
Frost and his band have forged their whole career on the “boys will be boys” mantra.
It shouldn’t have been surprising, really. Frost and his band have forged their whole career on the “boys will be boys” mantra. Seemingly protected by those they make money, and an adoring, mostly pre-teen fanbase, Sticky Fingers have spent years getting into reported brawls that have seen them booted out of hotels and in trouble with venues. And the Australian music media, rather than taking them to task for their actions – or simply ignoring them altogether – has instead painted them as a pack of loveable “vagabonds”; a boy’s club of charming, if slightly boozy, rogues.
So no, it’s not surprising that Frost fell back on the clichés that have protected him in the past, or that he proved so uniquely incapable of apology: he is genuinely unused to being held accountable; as foreign to culpability as it is possible to get.
Nor was it surprising that Frost once again attempted to explain his behaviour away with his recent diagnosis of “bipolar schizophrenia”. Mental illness is poorly covered by the Australian media – misinformation abounds, and when it is broached at all, it’s treated like a shadowy, dark curse rather than an affliction that can account for bad behaviour, without necessarily absolving one of it. As a sufferer of bipolar disorder myself, I understand that the illness can lead one to behave in ways that do not reflect their truest intentions – but Frost’s invoking of the affliction whenever he gets into a scrap feels like it will only reinforce the stereotype that those who struggle with their mental health are violent troublemakers who can’t be held accountable.
The climax of their week of mumbled apologies is a single and a world tour.
What was surprising, however, was the email music journalists around the country woke up to this morning. It wasn’t a clarification of Frost’s clichés, or an apology for another bungled apology. Instead, it was news that the band have a new single, and a forthcoming jaunt around the world.
That’s the big moment that the band’s Forgiveness Tour has been leading up to – not some direct, unfettered apology to the female musician whose life their fans have made hell for a year now; not some acknowledgement of the privilege that has protected them from the criticism and slurs thrown at almost every high-profile female musician in this country; not a promise to do better in any practical sense.
No. The climax of their week of mumbled apologies is a single, a world tour, and more proof that the Australian music industry – a complex system of PR agents, and journalists, and label reps that only months ago threw their weight behind the #menomore campaign – is apparently incapable of speaking truth to power, and custom built to protect and empower alleged abusers.
