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Maybe Bruce Springsteen says it best.

‘…On through the houses of the dead past those fallen in their tracks Always movin’ ahead and never lookin’ back….
But the stars are burnin’ bright like some mystery uncovered
I’ll keep movin’ through the dark with you in my heart
My blood brother.’

Hours become days, days years, and years decades. What can you say about a man that you have spent more time with than your own partner, parents or siblings? Someone who you knew even better than yourself. What do you call them? Blood brother, that’s what.

To be in a band you rely on others, it doesn’t work unless you’re all present and accounted for. There’s so much love, co-dependency, brotherly friction, shared knowledge, so many storms weathered.

Terror Australia was written by Pete and Bones a long time ago. Pete remembered it and exhumed it from a cassette from the Capricornia era because it fitted the Makarrata theme perfectly.

We demoed it last year in the studio, and there were all sorts of instruments on it, none of which were helping. When I played the changes on the piano, a good way of getting to the heart of a song by clearing the air, Bones quietly said ‘that’s the way it should be, just the voice and the piano.’ I knew in an instant he was right, he said the same thing about ‘In the Valley’ years ago too. It didn’t need the cavalry charging in on it either.

When Alice Skye sang it, there wasn’t a dry eye in the control room. She gave it the necessary gravitas, and it sounded haunted and beautiful. Now you knew exactly what the song was all about, sung by someone who knew just what it meant.

Bones wouldn’t want anyone to be sad, but the tears flow regardless, despite his best intentions. I always suspected, though he didn’t wear robes (apart from hotel bathrobes) he was very Zen, living for the moment, for the wisecrack, the perfect note hit, for the smile that went on forever. Or nearly forever.

Rest In Power: Bones Hillman