If baby boomers had Countdown with Molly Meldrum, gen X had Recovery with Dylan Lewis. Every Saturday morning from 1996 to 2000, right after Rage, Recovery would take over the ABC for three hours of music videos, live performances and pop culture segments. It burned fast but it burned bright.
Lewis is now back on air for the ABC – as the host of Double J Mornings, where he’s again tasked with playing the best new music (and some older hits as well).
He got into music via his late brother Quinn, whose guitar Lewis considers his most prized possession. Here he tells us about that cherished instrument and the stories of other important belongings.
What I’d save from my house in a fire
I am the custodian of my brother’s Ibanez steel-string acoustic guitar. It’s really lovely to play and fun to be able to get right up the neck because of the cutaway.
It’s the guitar on which Quinn taught me Wish You Were Here. Every time I play it, I wish he was here. I think of his beautiful artist’s hands on the fretboard and his nicotine-stained fingers strumming away effortlessly on the strings. And that makes me happy. I can feel the history in the wood. I can hear the stories in the strings. I can see the shape of his fingers when I look at mine – making shapes to make music.
My brother is the reason I’m into music and have made it my life and my career. The guitar is my greatest connection to him. I especially love when my kids play it. They never got to know their uncle since he passed away before they were born – but I feel like there’s a bit of a magic connection when they play Uncle Q’s guitar.
My most useful object
Slides. That sounds silly. But I’ve thought about it long and hard and can’t think of a better answer! I mean those slipper things normally reserved for the pool shower so you don’t get tinea. Like the boxer shorts of thongs. Slides … but with socks. Always with socks. If you know, you know.
When I first slid into slides in 2018 I thought it was funny. Then I realised it’s not just funny. It feels safe. It feels secure. It’s naughty. It’s like a gentle embrace for your foot from a friend’s hot mum.
Soon after I saw some youths – like pre-eshays – wearing socks and slides in a rural shopping centre. As soon as I saw them, I realised this was not just some funny comfort. This was a farshun. I could rock this shiznay out and about in public – like a rock star. As soon as the pre-eshay youths were far enough away to not see an old man copy their style, I popped into the nearest surf shop and got myself some red slides and black socks. Sick combo.
Since 2018 I’ve requested Kenzo slides for every birthday, Father’s Day and Christmas, and no one thinks I’m being serious. I am.
The item I most regret losing
A gold Machine Man I won in the 80s. I used to collect Machine Men. They were like Transformers, but less successful. They were better quality than Transformers (not many loose bits that could be lost) and a better design (more metal). But somehow Transformers lasted and Machine Men didn’t.
The pièce de résistance in my collection was a gold Porsche Machine Man. The only way to get one was to win it, and this was in the pre-internet days of the mid-80s. I had to collect a bunch of barcodes from the toy packaging and send them to Japan. And I won. It was the greatest feeling ever: I possessed a rare Machine Man! I took it carefully through my childhood, always putting it on display. And I took it carefully through every sharehouse I lived in and every house we’ve owned (someone’s doing well).
And then one day it was gone. Along with all my Machine Men, except one. I don’t know if they were left in a removal van or accidentally chucked out with some boxes or taken by faeries? But I reckon I think about my gold Porsche every day. And I still hold out hope for his return some day.
Dylan Lewis hosts Double J Mornings from 9am Monday to Thursday
