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The Tea Party frontman joins Killer to talk Bowie, Blackstar, musical obsession, 42 guitar tunings and the songs that refuse to die.
Some interviews take a few weeks to organise. This one took me about 31 fucking years.
I was 15 when The Tea Party entered my world. I’d just started playing guitar, grunge was still rattling around inside my skull, and Fire in the Head became my personal Smoke on the Water.
Three decades later, I’m sitting down with Jeff Martin himself.
Life is a strange bastard and we live in interesting times.
Martin is heading across Australia alongside Kav Temperley and iOTA for Celebrating David Bowie, a show he insists isn’t your traditional tribute act. It’s three very different voices interpreting the music of one of the most extraordinary artists to ever walk the planet.
And Jeff’s bringing his guitar.
Naturally.
The bloke reckons he’s accumulated about 42 alternate tunings over the years, and he’s already planning to introduce a few of them into Bowie’s catalogue.
Mick Ronson probably didn’t see that coming.
But before we got too far into Bowie, I wanted to ask Jeff something that’s been rattling around in my head for years. What happens when you write a song, release it into the wild, and discover it’s been living an entirely different life inside somebody else’s head?
His answer went somewhere considerably heavier than I expected.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say that a lot of the songs that we’ve created have actually saved people’s lives.”
He spoke about the strange contradiction at the heart of The Tea Party’s music. Songs that appear dark on the surface can sometimes be the very things that help someone find their way towards the light.
Then we fell headfirst into David Bowie.
Martin traces his introduction to Bowie back to Let’s Dance, when he and Tea Party drummer Jeff Burrows were still kids playing high school dances. From there came the rabbit hole: Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane and the Berlin trilogy.
That last one left some serious fingerprints on The Tea Party.
Jeff explained how Bowie’s experiments with electronic music, alongside Brian Eno’s production work, helped influence Transmission. Think German electronic minimalism crashing into the enormous drums and hypnotic power of Led Zeppelin.
Somewhere in that beautiful collision, The Tea Party found another piece of its identity.
We also wandered into Blackstar, an album I’ve always considered one of the most beautiful, profoundly sad and wickedly funny records ever made. Possibly the darkest black comedy ever written.
Jeff understood exactly what I meant.
And because apparently neither of us knows how to stay on one musical planet for very long, we ended up discussing George Harrison, Indian classical music, Krishna chanting, Kashmir, and the almost hypnotic power of a single musical idea.
Eventually we made it back to Adelaide, where Jeff revealed a particular affection for the Central Market, the Adelaide Hills, good food and red wine.
The man compared the Central Market to Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar.
FUCK YES!
There’s also a detour through Soundgarden’s Superunknown, Jeff’s production work with Melbourne musician Gabriel Vargas, and his refusal to reveal which five Bowie songs he’s chosen for the tour.
Sneaky bastard.
Watch the full KillerTube interview below, where Jeff Martin talks David Bowie, The Tea Party, the music that shaped him and what happens when songs become something much bigger than the people who wrote them.
Celebrating David Bowie tours Australia throughout November 2026, including Adelaide’s The Gov on November 20.
Tour details: https://metropolistouring.com/celebrating-david-bowie/
This is the gospel.
I bite crowd surfers.
Killer.
