There’s a non-descript, red-brick youth centre in Braddon that’s not particularly remarkable, except for the fact that lead singer of The Church, Steve Kilbey, first found his voice there.

It was the early 1970s, and a 19-year-old Steve Kilbey was about to give his first public performance with his garage band, Precious Little. However, the front row was packed with college bullies.

“[The lead singer] and I both looked round the curtain and he said, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t sing because of all these guys are going to beat me up,’ and he wouldn’t be talked into it,” Steve said.

“They said ‘Well Steve, they’re your songs, why don’t you just sing them?’ And so it was a baptism of fire. I became a singer that night.”

Wise Street in Braddon should have a star etched in the pavement to mark where Steve Kilbey went from being just a bass player to a front man.

Mind you, Steve was just as terrified of the bullies because he was a self-described “bully magnet” at Daramalan College.

“I deserved it,” he said. “Yeah, I was mouthy. I was sort of saying stuff and then I’d get thumped. I probably deserved every thump I ever got, seriously.”

At 71, Steve still remembers this formative experience vividly, right down to the clothes he was wearing – satin pants (material his mum had purchased especially), make-up and dyed red hair to look like David Bowie.

“I walked on stage and every bully from Lyneham High and Daramalan, anybody who would have known me, they were all standing in the audience,” Steve said. “They all saw me and not only that, I was a glam rocker. I thought when I walked out to the car, they were all going to thump me and they didn’t. I never once got thumped for being a musician.”

Thankfully, Steve didn’t give up on music that night.

“I think it was ok. It obviously wasn’t bad enough for me to go home and give up forever but that gig is more of a memory for me than a thousand gigs doing Red Hot Summer tour, I’ve already forgotten that, but O’Donnell Youth Centre lives on in my mind forever.”

For better or worse, Canberra seems ingrained in Steve’s memory and if Nick Summers is reading this, Steve hasn’t forgotten your brief exchange at Monaro Mall in 1971.

“My early life in Canberra growing up, I remember those details far more than I do remember playing a six-month tour in America three years ago,” Steve said.

“Something somebody said to me in Civic at a record shop in 1971, I could probably regurgitate every word … when I was 16, there was a kid that went to Telopea High, I hope he’s reading this, called Nick Summers. What a f***ing cool name that is.

“He had long blonde hair and a pair of glasses and one day he came over and said, ‘You should try this one.’ It was Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma and on his recommendation, I shelled out for this double album. That memory, it sticks in my memory and is more important to me than winning an ARIA.”

Steve’s brief stint in the public service was not quite so memorable, and he admits he “did very little service”.

“I joined when I was 19 and I left when I was 23, so I did like four years, but I was mainly running out, buying records or being on the phone trying to organise my next band,” Steve said. “I did very little work and I held them all in contempt.”

Steve was quite pragmatic about Canberra’s small-town limitations, quitting his job and moving to Sydney.

“I knew I could never become anything in Canberra,” he said. “I threw it all away and people said, ‘you’ll regret that’, and I moved to Sydney and suddenly … I got caught up in the pub rock explosion and got a record deal and then in 1981 it all happened. I made the right decision leaving my well-paid job and my nice townhouse in Rivett.”

For all our short-comings, Canberra still sticks in Steve’s mind.

“The Monaro Mall and David Jones and Garema Place, these places were thriving and full of kids on a Friday night,” Steve said. “I still go searching for the ghosts of my past … if you’re really lucky on a warm Canberra night when there’s no wind and you find yourself in the right place, you can catch some echoes of the past. They’re the sort of things that I think about, I don’t think about playing a concert in Denmark to 80,000 people.”

The Church concert this Sunday is sold-out but an encore performance is scheduled for 5 February 2026 at The Canberra Theatre. Get in quick. Tickets: canberratheatrecentre.com.au/show/the-church-the-singles-tour-26