Counting the beat

A subtle but insistent beat tracks through the life of Peter Beilharz. The tap is, like Peter, just a little ahead of the time, an improvised jazz rhythm played with brushes, underpinning the ensemble while avoiding solos.

Music has been there since the start – still at school in Croydon, Peter haunted the venues of Melbourne, drumming for blues bands, rubbing shoulders with a handful of players who would become famous, and the many for whom music would remain a passion but not a profession.

Peter too settled on a life beyond pub rock, but those skills acquired laying down a tempo, holding the band together, would long endure. He taught in schools, completed a doctorate on Trotskyism and began a long journey through sociology and related disciplines, from Marxism to modernism, in Australian universities, in the United States and, latterly, Chengdu, China.

And all the time an ear to the pulse of the moment, juxtaposing the familiar and the new in search for fresh sense and tempo.

I recall a first encounter – not with Peter but with his work, when an early issue of Thesis Eleven found its way to the Department of Political Science at the Australian National University. Here was a local journal engaging confidently with the world. Consternation followed among us postgraduates. While we lived with limited access to European journals, the Thesis Eleven editors seemed comfortable in a contemporary intellectual world impossibly remote from Canberra yet clearly inhabited by our peers in Melbourne.

‘Yes, yes, of course’, we mumbled as we flicked through the pages, feigning calm to hide the shock. Agnes Heller was familiar from La Trobe (Peter would eventually take her place at the University), but who were these post-Marxists, critical theorists and European iconoclasts discussed issue after issue? We could only read and learn.

Peter Beilharz was key to the collective that founded and nurtured Thesis Eleven, but he was known to us only from the editorial page. Trotsky, Trotskyism and the Transition to Socialism (Beilharz, 1987), his first book, would appear a few years later, and establish for him an even more prominent place in Australian intellectual life. For the moment, we could only ponder this group, with its apparently effortless reach into global discussions, an ability to anticipate emerging debates around colonialism, ecology, equality, historical materialism. How did they know so much? And how did they entice such eminent authors into their pages?

We would finally hear from Peter in issue 2, writing on Marxism and History, in a journal that addressed prospects, deep fissures and potential successors to the tradition. Peter’s voice would flow through many future issues, often as a reviewer drawing attention to significant new works. Thesis Eleven quickly embraced debates from phenomenology to existentialism, offering the international alongside local work by students and emerging scholars.

So there was much interest when Peter was listed to speak at a nearby conference. We expected a rather distant observer, a fierce intellectual, of course, steeped in European thought. This assumption turned out to be only partly accurate. Bright, engaged and knowledgeable certainly but also, unexpectedly approachable and modest, keen to expand the conversation, to seek out the new and incorporate it into a network of interesting people doing interesting work. Peter could hear a distant beat from the future and draw it into the present.

We learned in time something of the backstory – the German immigrant family landing in the suburbs of Melbourne, the love of music shared with a brother, the bands and then the young team that created the journal and remained both constant and ever-changing over the decades, like the journal balancing tradition and the new.

A gentle friendship slowly emerged, nurtured by occasional conversations but as much by reading Peter’s work, his writing from art history to books on Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Academic interests can ossify over a career, but Peter embraced early a different approach, a deep attachment to his intellectual origins yet a focus constantly renewed through new ideas. He used the critical theory explored in Thesis Eleven to test his own assumptions, identify the next project.

As friend to many, mentor, too, Peter nurtures and encourages, cajoles and publishes, nudging forward many debates simultaneously. This, it turned out, is how Peter secured all those important contributions, even as a founding editor aged just 27 – by reaching out, by daring to ask.

Later in life, Peter and I found ourselves living and working in the same city, his beloved Melbourne. Here was a chance for sustained discussions, and some glimpses into the extraordinary networks that nurture Peter. I learned about the long conversations with Bauman, the visits to his household in the United Kingdom, the close links with the wider family documented in Peter’s recollection of friendship, Intimacy in Postmodern Times (Beilharz, 2020). The association endures – after Bauman’s death, Peter worked with Janet Wolff to document and explore Bauman’s long fascination with photography. The resulting book reflects the timbre of the bond – warm but intellectually engaged, a shared interest with a sharp focus.

Life in Melbourne allowed a shared return to music. It never disappeared for Peter of course – the wedding to Sian held in a city blues dive, The Three Kings on hand to play in the union. But now a piccolo drum, long used as a side table, could be rescued, along with bits of the drum kit scattered among friends and family, sticks reclaimed from bookcases and cupboards as Peter resumed drumming. He joined friends and me in Five Grey Hairs, a band of academics tackling a weekend repertoire of jazz and blues standards with occasional originals.

As bass player Nick Reynolds observes, Peter is a sensitive drummer, always keen to be part of the ensemble rather than dominate it. A deft touch, and remarkable range from the simplest of drum kits. In breaks, Peter shares his remarkable knowledge of Australian music. Whenever someone mentions a song or musician, Peter has an insight to share – never boastful, just joyful in sharing information about a mutual interest.

Each weekend saw shared car trips to the Tinning Street rehearsal studios, or a performance in some dusty church hall. Peter plays drums as he edits – intelligent and often unexpected rhythms to drive forward the song, highlighting other players while rarely straying from his kit in the back of the stage. A collaborative player, with a finely attuned sense of what each song needs. And, when required, amazing discipline to sustain a demanding pattern (‘you need how many triplets in 12/8 time?’)

And then, on the drive back, a conversation about the latest issue of the journal, new books and music, and perhaps a cup of tea with Sian in their beautiful city apartment, corridors of packed book shelves marking out the different living areas.

Forty-three years on, Thesis Eleven changes with the world, embracing the Anthropocene, accentuating cultural studies, yet still worrying away at Althusser. The team has worked hard at generational change, encouraging new editors to shape the journal as the times require.

And Peter remains that polymath who can teach Marxism in the People’s Republic of China, then devote evenings to Toward the Blues, the first album by Chain, a Melbourne band Peter knew as a young man. The fun of sitting around his kitchen table, talking about the guitar technique Phil Manning brings to each track as Peter completed his study of Chain for the 33 1/3 series. And how fortunate, for me as so many others, that an early copy of Thesis Eleven opened a door to new worlds and an enduring friendship.

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Glyn Davis, left, Peter on drums with the band, Melbourne, 2022