“This time next week, I’m going out.
I want to break all my stitches.
I want to burn all my bridges.
I’m getting tired of being mild.
I want my pants ripped off by someone wild.”
— The Fauves, ‘Tying One On’, Future Spa (1996)

“Yeah, Doctor and I got hired to play acoustically two songs at a wedding in Sydney. The only real stipulation being that one of the songs would be ‘Tying One On’. And I remember us practicing in a park near the Harbour Bridge beforehand, desperately trying to make sure we were going to remember it. Again, like, it’s just amazing, though, when I go back and have the songs, you know, discuss them. It’s the same thing as ‘Skateboard World Record’. It’s the person that I’m not. And that’s totally what this song is about. Yeah. Daring to be something that I’ve never really been. Never really tied one on in my entire life.”
— Andrew Cox, The Fauves (2025)

My contribution to this episode of Fauves Are the Best People was recorded in November 2024, when I was in transit in Korea, and on my way back to Australia for a flying visit. So the sound quality was pretty much what you’d expect from a hotel room in downtown Seoul. I was extremely jetlagged and my contribution to the episode was a bit more rambling and incoherent than my previous hot-takes. So, I thought I’d harness the power of digital transcription services and include some of my most relevant (edited) ‘insights’ here.

JB: We are here tonight to review the great song–whoops, I’ve just given away my opinion–the great song, track 10 on Future Spa, ‘Tying One On’. What do you think about this song, Davey?

DP: Well, I’m glad you said that because that’s what I was going to lead with as well. I have to admit I hadn’t listened to ‘Tying One On’ for a long time before I got your invitation to chat on this episode. And I went back and listened to it and to the whole Future Spa album again. And I was reminded again how much I loved it when it first came out. It’s one of the many songs on the album that have stuck with me. I think Future Spa is a remarkable album if you compare it to The Young Need Discipline. Not that one is better than the other, but it’s really quite radically different. It’s basically, from start to finish, power pop. And this is an example of a song that seems to have been created effortlessly, that is played with a real kind of sense of energy. It’s funny, it’s quirky, it’s talking about social culture in a way that many of the songs on the previous releases didn’t. I guess, a humanistic or a human album. And we get a sense that Coxy in particular, has really hit his strides as a songwriter and as a lyricist. So I think it’s a fantastic song and I can talk about it on and on, but that’s my hot take. And maybe we can do a lukewarm take, you know, over the next few minutes, depending on how probing you want to be in your questions.

JB: Did you see the band in 96? I think last time you were on, we spoke about the early 90s with the EPs. But did you catch the Fauves live in 96 when this album came out originally? Were you on board? Were you going to, you know, Big Day Outs and Livids and all that sort of stuff and catching them at their
prime?

DP: I wasn’t at the Big Day Out during that time. I was lucky enough to see them at the Sydney Big Day Out in 92. But I did see them live at the Annandale shortly after this album came out in 1996. And it’s funny because I, well, it’s a little bit of a sad sack story. I’d actually asked this girl out on a date and I said, “Hey, do you want to come to this Fauves gig with me?” I’d just met her and thought I’d, you know, try it on. And, she agreed. And then she turned up to the gig. I couldn’t go there by myself. I was there with some friends. And she walked into the room and she had dyed her hair bright blue. And she just had this massive entrance into the room. And all of my friends were all falling over themselves, going, oh my God, who is this girl?

JB: Hmm.

DP: It never really worked out between the two of us, but I specifically remember being at that gig and hoping the Fauves would play ‘Tying One On’ because in my nervousness, I was literally tying one on that night. And they played the song and I just absolutely loved the fact that they played it. I couldn’t really have cared less about the other songs on the album at that time. So I was tying one on and perhaps we can talk about this a little bit when we get to the lyrics, but I was hoping that I would have an experience like what is recounted in the third verse of the song where Coxy says that he wants to wake up in the morning and look across and there’s this person lying next to him and he has no idea where they came from. In my case, I would have known where this person came from, hopefully, but alas, it was not to happen. Yeah, so that’s my personal connection to this song and to the Fauves at that time. I do remember, though, the gig at the Annandale wasn’t very well attended, actually, it wasn’t like a packed crowd. So when I see the footage on the documentary where they’re playing to this audience of grunge heads it just strikes me as not really related to how they were still struggling to fill venues as a band in their non-festival touring days. I remember feeling a little bit sad about that, but at the same time, I also felt this is my band, you know? I don’t need a thousand other people in the way. I just want to keep them all to myself, so . . . yeah.

JB: I don’t know if you want to talk about the music first or the lyrics or . . .

DP: Yeah, I’d be happy to talk about the music. I think the one thing that I would say to follow up on what I said before is that, you know, it’s 15 songs, the album, and most of them are under three minutes long, or at least most of Coxy’s songs are under three minutes. And I think this goes to prove how much they had sharpened their songwriting skills. In that power pop vein, that pretty much every one of Coxie’s songs on the album could have been a single. I think they could have released–or a lesser band would have released–‘Skateboard World Record’ as a single. Maybe I’m speculating too much here and getting into my own fanfic ideas, but this could have been a single too. In many ways, it sort of reminds me of an album like The Hummingbirds’ first album, LoveBUZZ. It was like 15 singles, you know? Like they were all real power pop gems. And I think the same is true of this album. And it’s quite remarkable that this is track 10 on the album and they’re still putting catchy songs there, like ‘Skateboard World Record’, on what would be classically deemed side two of the album as well. So, yeah, that is what I would say about the music.

JB: Do you want to go on to lyrics now?

DP: Yeah, I do. And I think we should talk for a brief moment about the phrase, ‘tying one on’. Because I had to look it up and I assumed it was an Australian larrikin slang, because I’ve lived most of my life in Australia and that’s the only place where I’ve ever heard it. But from what I understand, to tie one on has been a phrase that’s been in common usage both in the States and in the UK for many decades. And there is some debate about where the idea of tying one on comes from. According to this article that I found in Gizmodo, which, you know . . . Do you go there often?

JB: Not necessarily . . .

DP: Gizmodo. I just . . . The first time I’ve ever looked at this website. Wow, so much stuff. And I’ll just read out what they say here:

“This is an odd one, tying one on, and the exact definition is the subject of some debate. There’s some consensus, though, that the one being tied on refers to a bun. ‘Tie one on’ is an abbreviated version of the British expression to tie a bun on.”

I didn’t know this, and it sounds ludicrous to me, but maybe it’s true.

“Indeed, for 100 years or so before the 1970s, a bun was slang for getting drunk. And the problem is that nobody knows how buns got into the equation in the first place. The best theory going is that it was a part of an old school sobriety test, as in walk while balancing this bun on your head to prove you’re sober. If the person was really drunk, they’d have to tie a bun on in order to pass the test.”

Now, I think we can take this with an almighty pinch of salt. But the key point about tying one on is that it’s about going out and deliberately getting as drunk as you possibly can. It’s not about going out for a social drink with your mates and having a chat and some dinner. It’s like you have the sole purpose of getting absolutely shitfaced. And I think that’s the key to understanding this song, because as Coxy himself admits in the second verse, “I don’t drink”. So this is coming from a person who doesn’t drink at all, but he’s determined to tie one on. And we don’t really know why, but there are a few hints in the lyrics that tell us a little bit about why he might want to. But the key is that he wants to. “This time next week, I’m going out”. He’s planning it. “Baby, I plan to”.

JB: Yeah.

DP: And I think he’s really making a quite sharp comment about this practice of getting drunk deliberately and excessively as a way of playing with this idea of himself as a debauched rock star. But also there’s an edge to it because it’s almost violent. He wants to get his “pants ripped off by someone wild”. If you think about 90s guys in faded blue jeans, I don’t know how easy it would be to rip off someone’s jeans like that. They’re probably quite tight. They’re not necessarily very easy to tear. So this idea that he wants someone to rip off his pants, it’s quite extraordinary when you sit and think about it for a minute, as I’ve done.

This is an extract from my contribution to Episode 101 of Fauves Are the Best People, which you can listen to on Spotify (see below) or wherever you get your podcasts.