Chapter 1

The Beginning

In the early ‘90s, the small industrial town of Geelong not only manufactured cars, but was also a big part of the beginning of Australia's grunge scene. One of its most promising young bands was Magic Dirt.

Originating from Geelong gave the band an extra sense when it came to dealing with the music industry in their early years.

The initiation in Geelong was getting cans of beer chucked at you on stage. Adalita

“You could sniff out the bullshit that came to town,” frontwoman Adalita Srsen tells Double J.

“Or, you know, when we got signed to a label we had our bullshit radar on the whole time cause that's where we were from.”

The humble desire to play music for the hell of it was the essence of Magic Dirt.

Whether that was at skate parks, house parties or simply practicing in bassist's Dean Turner's parents' garage, it the paved the way for the life of rock'n'roll that was to come.

They started as Deer Bubbles, a melodic pop band, but a new drummer and lead guitarist quickly transformed their sound.

That guitarist was punk specialist Daniel Herring, who lived with founding members Dean and Adalita in a shack by the beach. They changed their name to a reference in ‘Heroin' by Velvet Underground, The Jim Jims.

“We were jamming for like an hour just on one song in the little bedroom in this shack,” she says.

“That's what we'd do every day; just smoke joints, take acid and jam.”

High school-aged drummer and final original member, Adam Robertson, impressed the group by beating flawlessly to their future song ‘Ice'; a challenge no other drummer had matched.

While still encompassing some of the previous bands' melodic elements, Magic Dirt was reborn out of their ashes.

“It was just the music that was there," Adalita told triple j in 2014. "And it was the kind of the same music we were making which was really loud and heavy guitar-based music and lots of screaming and airing out your grievances and being the black sheep, being the outsider and doing it your own way and not editing yourself.

“We were just kind of doing it our own way.”

The crusade of grunge was open to anyone who felt like an outsider, which Magic Dirt welcomed.

“It was just this kind of real melting pot of, you know, angry kids, dissatisfied kids, it's bored kids, you know, with nowhere else to go or nothing else to do but then sort of found each other and created this kind of movement, I guess,” Adalita told triple j.

Geelong's Barwon Club was the place to be for those seeking grimy grunge groups and left Magic Dirt with the aspiration to execute their violent tunes there.

The local bikie spot was infamous for its frequent riots, and hosting shows from the nastiest grunge bands such as like Bored!, Powder Monkeys, Splatterheads and Tumbleweed, and international guests like Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr.

The crowds were tough to please and had strange ways of complementing music as Adalita explained.

“The initiation in Geelong was getting cans of beer chucked at you on stage. That was like a loving gesture,” she tells Double J.

While this form of respect was a little unorthodox, Magic Dirt craved this dangerous attitude they had embraced in their hometown wearing it as a badge of honour to be hailed from Geelong.

“It was rough,” Adalita says.

“I love that I'm from Geelong and that I grew up in Geelong cause, yeah, it was rough but you had to be tough!

“You came out the other end tough and wiser and stronger.”

Chapter 2

The Middle

Magic Dirt started kicking goals pretty quickly. First they scored supports with the likes of Sonic Youth and Pavement, and were later booked for festivals like Meredith, Homebake and Big Day Out.

They signed a record deal with Au Go Go Records and released two killer EPs: Signs Of Satanic Youth (1993) and Life Was Better (1994) and two brilliant full-length records: Friends In Danger (1996) and Young & Full Of The Devil (1998).

We found ourselves label-less, manager-less and were like ‘what the hell are we gonna do'? Raúl Sánchez

They toured relentlessly through Australia, America, the UK and Europe. They were on a roll, picking up every opportunity possible and basically riding the wave of momentum that had started years earlier.

But then it all stopped.

“In '98 we recorded Young & Full of the Devil. It didn't sell all that great and musically the landscape was changing,” guitarist Raúl Sánchez tells Double J.

“It was coming out of the ‘90s where grunge and rock were popular. All of a sudden there was all this electronica, hip hop kinda stuff and we were like ‘What the hell are we gonna do?'.

“Suddenly Au Go Go was running out of steam. Gavan [Purdy, the band's manager], for some business reasons, had left. We found ourselves label-less, manager-less and were like ‘what the hell are we gonna do'?”

“I was a bit burnt out,” Adalita says. “I think we were all a little bit burnt out from all the touring and everything. Suddenly it all came to a bit of a halt.

“I remember this feeling of being a bit over it, a bit tired. Maybe this was time to stop. I think all of us thought ‘I don't know if I wanna keep doing it'. Which was odd, because we'd all just been powering and not even thinking about the future, not even having the thought that it would ever stop.

“It just happened, out of the blue, a bit of darkness and weirdness. Real uncertainty. I reckon it could've gone either way. But then… I don't know what happened.

“I know what happened,” Raúl says. “You wrote ‘Dirty Jeans'.”

‘Dirty Jeans' is Magic Dirt's most widely recognised song. Cleaner and poppier than any of their previous output, it is one of the great Australia rock songs of its time and has aged brilliantly.

“The song's basically based on a memoir of mine,” Adalita told Caz Tran on triple j in 2000. “Going out one night, having a few drinks, liking guy, him not liking me as much as I liked him, but going home happy anyway and just writing a little memoir and turning it into a song.

The one thing we wanted to do was to not have any jammy moments on this record. Dean Turner

“It's just three simple chords. I just kept all the songs I wrote at the time quite simple.

"It's got that pop, melodic kind of edge to it. It just worked out really well. Dean encouraged me to keep working on it and, there you go."

The band shopped the demo of the song around to record labels and signed a new deal.

What Are Rock Stars Doing Today came out in 2000 and ‘Dirty Jeans' wasn't the only pop foray.

“It's an indication of the whole new album that the single is lifted off,” Adalita said in 2000.

“Over the years my vocals have always changed so this is just another change in my voice.

“I've stopped smoking cigarettes so I guess that contributes to the texture of my voice. I'm concentrating more on the sounds of the words and where I'm gonna take the melodies. So naturally it lifts my voice into a different direction.”

“The one thing we wanted to do was to not have any, you know, jammy moments on this record,” bassist Dean Turner said in the same interview. “We wanted to keep it quite concise.”

“Sugar-coated pills of songs, basically,” Adalita added.

Chapter 3

The End

Dean Turner passed away in 2009 after almost a decade living with a rare form of tissue cancer.

“It's hard to talk about,” Adalita tells Double J. “Losing Dean was the worst thing that ever happened to all of us. It's unbelievable, really.”

Magic Dirt pretty much ended with Turner's passing.

“In a way, things had to resolve then,” Raul says. “Because Dean was such a motivating force. He was the captain of the ship. He kept us all focused, in line.”

“But in most casual, cool way,” Adalita adds. “He didn't even know that he was doing it. He was such a captain, the pilot. The dude. Everyone loved him.

“Dean was a very patient person. Very compassionate. He never needed to impress his ego upon anybody. He had a very strong sense of self. He was very centred and grounded. He was never aggressive.

“He would bring out the best in anybody, basically.”

He certainly brought out the best in Adalita. She has said that she never really had any ambition to become a professional musician, but Turner's sheer belief in her enabled her to

“For me, he was my mentor. And still is,” she says. “I still carry his words around. He helped mentor me when Magic Dirt stopped and I did my solo thing. That was Dean's masterminded thing too.

“From day one, Dean always believed in me. If I had not have met Dean I would not be here today. Magic Dirt would not have existed without Dean. He saw something in me and he saw it every single day from that day that I met him. He never stopped seeing that and never stopped believing in that.”

He saw something in me and he saw it every single day from that day that I met him. He never stopped seeing that and never stopped believing in that. Adalita

“He was my number one. Everything to me – family, friend, mentor. I always felt very safe around him. Very supported and encouraged.”

It wasn't just Turner's cool demeanour and solid bass playing that helped make Magic Dirt successful, he was a big part of what happened behind the scenes as well.

“He was fiercely protective of the band,” Adalita says. “And he had great business acumen. We were very lucky to have him on that side of things, dealing with labels. He knew how all that stuff worked. He could talk to those people.”

After Turner passed away, the band embarked on a series of tribute shows in honour of their friend and bandmate.

“We got a call from the Big Day Out saying ‘We wanna do a tribute to Dean'. We were all so distraught but we really felt like we had to do it,” Adalita says. “It was a hard time. It was weird. I just felt like crawling under a rock.”

“But at the same time it was necessary and therapeutic,” Raul adds.

“It felt like Dean would have wanted us to do it, because that was such a big part of his life,” Adalita says. “I remember the last show we ever did, in Perth, I remember Peaches was there. She filmed it and she was crying.”

“Everyone was crying,” Raul remembers. “It was fucked up.”

He was a very private person and his bandmates respected that. But, in hindsight, they realise he must have suffered a great deal in silence.

“He must have been hiding a lot of pain from all of us. I'm still in shock. I will always be in shock about that.”

While the band is over, the love for them remains.

“We run a Facebook page and still have lots of people every time we make a post saying ‘We miss the Dirt, we miss Dean'," Adalita says. "There so much love for the band for Dean. It's good.”