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February 10, 2025 12 mins

A man of many stage names, Mark Lizotte, better known as Diesel, joined John MacDonald live from Australia for a chat. 

He’ll be taking to the stage in a couple of week’s time as a part of the line up for Selwyn Sounds. 

He and John talked about his career and it continuing to flourish with the release of new music and his pre-show habit of weather forecasting. Plus, John learned about his famous musical family connection! 

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Canterbury Mornings podcast with John McDonald
from News Talk ZBA.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Of course that is Diesel who's coming to seven Sounds
on the first of March and Diesels with no mate.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
We thought there was something wrong wrong with the line.
But have you just finished a performance?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
I was, I'm on the I'm on the trot this week.
Where are you coming over to see you guys? So
I'm on the Yeah, I'm on the promo trot. So
a minute. I'm actually at a at a big radio
station in Sydney right now.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
All right, what's the radio station? Brilliant? So you've just
you've just done a song, a song live on air.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah, it was one of the whole office too, is nice?

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Do you know that I was working at a radio
station in Auckland years ago and has got nothing to
do with you. It was kind of hairs and shown
a lang I've done if you know her New Zealand
singer and she sung with Manfred Man. I think she
was worth the way back in the day. But she
came in for an interview. It was morning and she

(01:29):
refused to sing. She said, I don't sing in the mornings.
You're obviously, not that you're not that fussy.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
I totally relate to that. I think I remember Nick Barker,
he's a great Australian artist, and we're doing shows together
and I didn't sehim for a bit and then I
made the solo album and he bumped into me. He said, oh, mate,
that song tipped my tongue. He goes, that'll be good
for you. I said, why because it's not. Because it
is a little bit of the lower range and what

(01:58):
we're most of the songs that I choose to write
like above, quite a bit above, and I wasn't intentional.
It's just it's just one of those it's like a
classic seft rock thing. I suppose because I think I
guess my Doug except for the guitar, so I had
made sure that that wasn't self rock. But yeah, and
it's this kind of the song that I and sure
enough I was singing it at five am in the

(02:18):
morning on radio stations and stuff and it was like,
damn you neck you all right. Glen was like, well,
he can do it, he can he can do it
in the morning. That's what the record company would sort
of say, you know, And then the word spreads. This
guy can do early morning radio.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
And there you are at Tripolean right now.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
I ruined any chance of being on the pull that
that diva stunt.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Tell me, So you're I've been belling you. I mean,
I'm as Diesel, but also was as Jimmy Barnes's brother
in law. Am I spot on.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
There to me? And I have been brother in law
since eighty nine. I played in his band and I
met I met his wife's sister through working in the
in the band. He actually started up doing these rehearsals
and my brother had just come back from being overseas
and he was a catering, hotel management blah blah blah

(03:10):
chef and all of that, and he met Jane's sister, Jep,
and they kind of actually started a catering business and
they started catering. This is before I got to even
know Jep. And they started this catering business and they
were catering for the whole music industry for quite a
few years, doing like there was no good catering for
the music industry and in this in Australia at that time.
And so yeah, I got to know her a lot

(03:32):
because she was coming to rehearsals and bringing us food
and then then we did a video. He asked me
to be in a video for one of the singles
and I was in. I had my own band at
that point as well, I have to say, so I
was straddling two jobs. And that's how I going to
go and get to know. I got my brother to
think too, I think for kind of kind of coming
back from os and and putting this catering business which

(03:54):
was called More than a Morsel. And then yeah, the
rest is history, as they say, because we became buddies
and then and then marital problem marital partners, I use
that word when you speak of problems. Thankfully. Yeah, we've
just had an incredible life together. And yeah kids followed
and all that and blah blah blah. So it is

(04:16):
a big family, and yeah, I'm really really I'm very
grateful to have lots of musical people in my family,
which Jimmy definitely. Between my family and his family and everything,
there's just so much music going on all the time.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Just while we were waiting for you to finish your
performance here, I was telling telling story about when I
met Jimmy in a small town in central Otago here
in New Zealand, and it was almost like he was
as pleased to meet me as I was as pleased
to meet him. He's is he like that all the time?

Speaker 3 (04:45):
He is. He's a very affable person, and you know,
until he's not.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Oh you were like that, aren't we like that?

Speaker 3 (04:53):
Well, I mean, look, he's yeah, exactly. I mean, he
has an incredible amount of energy, and it's it's you know,
when he's on stage and when it comes off stage.
He's been known to like put fifth through walls, and
it's it's in line between anger and excitement with him
when he comes off stage. Most of the time, I
feel it's it's just more excitement these days because it's

(05:14):
you know, the substances. That's why. I mean, I haven't
drunk or taken anything for that matter. It's very boring,
I know, but I figured out that, you know, how
many jobs in the world that you can go to
work and have a big bucket full of alcoholic drinks.
It just doesn't exist. So I cut that out of
my workplace and I realized that, Wow, adrenaline just on
its own is actually pretty amazing and also probably enough

(05:39):
channel mixed with anything is just like it's it's it's
rocket fuel.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
You're right, the rock and Rolls of health and safety
nightmare with that whole you know, go to work and
drink and do.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
You want to talk a whole hour about that? The
caveat in You know, you've got this scene called responsible
service of alcohol in their venue and then in this
room where the band congregate, the dressing room, so be it.
There is no such thing. It's kind of bizarre.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
So can I go back to because I remember when
you were Johnny Diesel and the Inject I've got the
name right.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
It did. We came to and we toured. We did Dneden,
so we didn't get to in Chicago, but we did
pretty much the whistlestop tour of New Zealand and it
was great. I remember it vividly, just thinking, wow, that
is so different. It's so different.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
I'll tell you what, if you've gone in Vcago, you
would have thought in the cargo, you would have thought
it was even more different. But I don't want to
get in trouble.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Was like it, you know, like it just didn't feel
like another part of the of the Australia Terror. Australis
and when we got to tour Europe shortly after that.
It was like it reminded me of that. We felt
more European, but with the Polynesian sort of you know,
Hawaiian almost, you know, the flora and fauna and everything felt. Yeah,

(06:53):
the absence of harsh kind of terrain and gum trees
and everything makes a massive difference. That's all I can say.
And then to know that there's nothing that can really
kill you is it's also a nice feeling.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
It's quit. That's quite that's quite handy. So your name
is your real names? How did you choose Johnny Diesel?
They don't want to know why you John.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
I tell you what happened. I chose the name of
the bands as literally something you put in the paper,
because we had a bass player and Johnny Diesel and
the injectors, and his name was John Delzell. And I
think you feel I think you know where this is going.
But we had no name. We were in like a
nameless band because we'd all come from another band that
we were in where I was. I wasn't the singer songwriter.
I was the guitar player who sang a little bit.

(07:35):
And one gig we did and the thing of that
had kind of taken me under his wing and songwriter, great,
great songwriter. I just decided to pull the pin and
wanted to make the record that we were all leading
up to, was all leading up to this, making this
first record. It was no, I want to make the
record of session players. So he pulled a pin on

(07:55):
the band and the next day was like, well, what
are we going to do? And they all wanted to
start a band with me, and that was that seemed
like an obvious thing. So we did. And we just
didn't even care about a name. We were just playing
one night a week, trying to, you know, stay alive.
And then someone called up and this lovely woman that
booked the room, she's like, you guys, you know you're
pulling like two people in a cockroach. If you've got

(08:16):
a name, you know, maybe that might help people might
see you know who you are or whatever. And I
was like, and I just found out the bass player
for sharing house with John, it's his wife would fall
and pregnant again. And this this big friend of ours,
Murray Steve we called him because he was big and
he was Maray and he was just the sweetest man.
He used to help us with with all kinds of
stuff and do lights. And he said, oh, little Johnny

(08:39):
Diesel and as little injected as meaning his burgeoning family.
And I was just thought, that's so cute, that's that's funny.
And when she called back later on that afternoon, because
I had nothing to give her it with the first
phone call, I said, yeah, I've got a name, Johnny
Diesel and the injectors. And it was just to go
on the paper as a joke to a humor John
who'd just be flaud that he was going to be
a father again. And then it just didn't. It just

(08:59):
didn't like after those weeks that followed, no one bothered
to say, hey, don't you know, get rid of that
now we've got the name or whatever. And it was
one of those the stakes were so low that we
didn't care. We were playing in a gig where people
would go down this corridor to find the toilets because
it was at the back of a very large nightclub,
but they had you know, DJ playing or whatever, and

(09:20):
when they get lost trying to find the toilets, they
go through these doors and there was like a little
bar with a band playing. So we were like the
band that played at the catchment area for the people
who got lost on the.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Way to the toilet, the Toilet bands.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
I think, yeah, I think it gives you an idea
of how we're far fast we were going nowhere. So yeah.
Then Brent Eccles, who sure New Zealand is no. He
was touring with the band of the Angels and like
a lot of touring bands would end up at this
little place because it was kind of like a Musos
sort of after hours club, and he saw us, unlike

(09:53):
many other people that had saw us, and would you know,
say I'm going to call you or I'm going to
come around your house, and a few people actually did that,
but then they just didn't follow through. He was the
first guy that was like, you guys have got something,
but you need to get you need to come into Sydney.
And he made that happen. He put his money down,
he just got us over and we slept. I slept
on his couch for the first month, maybe even more.

(10:14):
And that's how I met Jimmy actually, because Brant was
playing drummers on some studio sessions with him finishing off
freight train high and he said, I've got this guitar
player from Perth on my couch. Can I bring him in?
Jimmy said, yeah, bring him in. I'm always interested in
guitar players as a surf surf couch surfing. I've actually
got Brent to saying for that, the very sort of

(10:35):
the serendipity of that couch and the yeah, the auspicious
nature of sleeping on a couch when the drummers are about
to go and do a session. As you know, the
universe was there all there, so yeah. And then at
some point he sat us down, sat me down. He goes, look,
we're about to like try to sign a record deal.

(10:55):
You know, you're doing gigs around Sydney, doing nine shows
a week under this name John Like, you know, as
things get bigger, the people are going to ask it's
just you. And I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever, I just
didn't and then tweaked me that I'm going to have
to go along with this scene. And then of course
when the record came out and I saw my name
on there as Johnny Diesel was like, okay, this is real.
Yeah naivety, you know, and here you are.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
That's a big deal, and here you are twenty twenty
five and you're coming to sell and so what are
we going to see on the show on March the first.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
Well, I've got this and that is so cracking hot.
It's I've had them for like over twenty years now
and they're just amazing. Richie and Lee and my brother's
going to join us on trombone, which is he just
happens to be holidaying in New Zealand. He's actually going
to see island, great great Barrier Island yep, to unplug
from do a tech detox, so you'll be in good form.

(11:50):
So yeah, it's going to be it's just going to
be awesome to do outdoor stages with quite an amazing girl.
And of course you know to see to see my
friend John Stevens play is always like he just blows
me away every time. What a what a man, what
a set of cords and you know his band just
nothing short of incredible. Sod I've only had good things

(12:11):
and yeah, massive songs.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Absolutely. Hey, wonderful to talk to you. Can you bring
some of the Australian weather with you we could do
with it.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Well, I've been looking at the weather. I'm a bit
of a weather or not and it looks like we're
going to get a decent sort of partner while we're there.
Might be a bit but dodgy now, but I think
there's something good coming.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
I can't believe I'm talking about. I can't believe I'm
talking to Diesel and you're giving me a Wether fullcast,
long range with a forecast. Brilliant.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
I always start looking at where I'm going, like weeks ahead.
Oh yeah, it's a mental thing.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, hey, brilliant to talk to you about.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Okay, there's Diesel on his way to sell and sounds
on the first of March seven Sounds dot co dot
in z.

Speaker 1 (12:52):
For more from Category Mornings with John McDonald. Listen live
to news Talks It'd be christ Church from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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