ARE YOU JOHN LAWS EXPERIENCED? TRUCK YEAH! SAYS WIND BACK WEDNESDAY

And so it’s come to pass that broadcaster and bully, poet and sexist, ad man and antediluvian, trucking songs singer and fan of The Princess, John Laws, has turned off the golden microphone and been sent to hell or heaven by the usual wave of high praise, and a few voices looking to correct the gushing record.

Here at the home of Wind Back Wednesday the closest we came to this giant of radio – from the days when big egos, big ad revenue and big audiences didn’t require you always be the kind of dick that K. Sandilands has perfected or being entirely an arsehole like A. Jones made a malignant artform – was sitting at his favourite table at a harbourside restaurant. He wasn’t there. Obviously.

However, vicarious contact came via a musical duo who in 2011 thought it a wheeze to put a musical purpose to the poetical works of J. Laws. I kid you not. And while this yarn has made a Wind Back Wednesday appearance before, it would be a tragedy not to mark the death of the man a few days ago with a last kiss of life.

After all, he hated Alan Jones, and that’s got to be a good mark.

Step away from my table pissant! John Laws guarding lunch from certain journalists.

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HERE IS A fair question anyone might ask of musicians Keith Glass and Mick Hamilton: is it genius or madness to resurrect the poetry of John Laws after 30 or 40 years and put them in songs?

"I don't know," Hamilton chuckles. "Let me put up front, it's certainly not an endorsement of his political beliefs by either of us."

Or his endorsement of certain engine oils?

"I don't know much about engine oils," he says. Though presumably he knows what I mean. "But I'm not sure I know much about poetry either."

What Hamilton and his fellow Melburnian Glass, who is currently sojourning in Alabama, do know is how to write and play music. Both have been doing it for decades and with the 15 songs on the album The John Laws Experience there would be no quibble about the musicianship.

The lyrics? Well, that's where some might have problems. After all, the never knowingly understated Helen Razer once described the great communicator’s poetry as "somewhere in between a particularly hormonal e.e. cummings and the smell of sick". And she liked the man.

However, the scary thing about the album for many people may be that with the most egregiously misogynist examples of the oeuvre left out, some of these poems/lyrics sound just fine. "You might be surprised to hear that a few people have listened to the album and have commented on the lyrics, saying, well, he can write a lyric can't he," says Hamilton.

The John Laws Experience started a few years ago when on a trip in United States, Glass found a copy of Love Is An Expensive Way To Die, a collection of scribblings by the man who in the early 1970s was apparently the highest selling poet in Australia as well as being a radio and occasional TV star.

Maybe it was the shock of finding the book somewhere other than a Shell restaurant on the Hume Highway or a surfeit of high sugar drinks, but Glass began to see some of these poems as lyrics, their rhythm more suited to singing than reading. Like a sore he couldn’t stop picking at, the idea wouldn’t let Glass go and he enlisted his friend Hamilton.

"It was Keith's idea originally and I wasn't particularly sold on it, I thought he was nuts," explains Hamilton. "But he sent me some demos he had done and I thought, hmm, at worst we could have a bit of fun with this. But the more I got into it with him the more I thought it would make a good project and more than a bit of fun."

The musical choices were driven by the origins of the poems in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, so there's some psychedelia and even hints of hard rock in there but not surprisingly, the most common style is country and country rock. After all Laws recorded a number of country albums himself, "singing" over backing from local musicians (in one of those strange quirks of fate, one of those was a young Mick Hamilton who happily admits that "I was trucking with John back in those days") and legend has it that every long-haul truck driver had at least one John Laws cassette in the cabin.

More of the waxing poetical works of Mr John Laws. You can feel the heat emanating can't you?

In any case, lines such as this from You’re Too Late, "Your daddy bought you this and that/a poodle dog, a Siamese cat/vintage wine, fillet steak/But he could not buy you heartbreak/that's bad", or the tale of loveless motel sex, Box Of Loneliness (With A John), seem tailor-made for country music don’t you think?

Had there been any concern about Laws not liking what they were doing?

"In a strange way we were almost hoping he wouldn't like it. We thought that might garner us some attention we wouldn't get otherwise,” Hamilton laughs. “But he hasn't said anything.”

When approached by the Herald, a spokeswoman for Mr Laws said he had no comment to make.

One thing Laws couldn't object to is the surprising respect shown his words. This is neither a parody album nor a comedy record. If it had been, the joke would have worn thin within a couple of songs instead of sounding like a perfectly good retro/country rock album.

"I think the more we got into it, the more we forgot it was John Laws and we were trying to lovingly recreate some music vaguely of the time," says Hamilton, who admits there may well be some strains of Stockholm Syndrome for the two men after living with the pick of 80 to 100 Laws poems so intensely.

Now though, having started at the very top of Australian poetry, it may be difficult for the men to repeat with lesser lights like Les Murray or Judith Wright.

"It's crossed our minds,” admits Hamilton. “I did suggest we could do the Max Walker Experience."

Oh, yes, How To Hypnotise Chooks. Now that is genius.

The world awaits the next transformation from mere words to more music.