Commentating a soccer game he didn't see
It was while he was hovering around the corridors at triple j, talking the leg off someone no doubt, that his career as a football commentator emerged from nowhere.
Someone realised the World Youth Cup was about to start at the Sydney Football Stadium that afternoon and Lovelock was asked if he knew anything about soccer. Of course he did … Before he knew it, he was at the stadium, but there was no accreditation waiting for him. He walked up to Oxford Street to see if any of the pubs were showing the game. No such luck. He found a payphone, dialled the triple j studio number and started his high wire act.
"I launched into a monologue about a football game I hadn't seen and didn't know the score of, using the Tibetan book of the Dead and the 49-day journey of the spirit and all these parallels and just went on and on," he told the Weekend Australian.
"When I finally stopped there was dead silence down the phone. Finally, the producer came back and I thought he'd say, 'Thanks mate, don't call us, we'll call you', but he was weeping with laughter — and that was it. My soccer reporting [career] was born."
PHOTO Damien Lovelock (right) spoke about his good mate Les Murray at the legendary soccer commentator's state funeral in 2017.
AAP: DEAN LEWINS
Lovelock went on to publish two books about football, have his own segment called Fan's Corner on The World Game on SBS and covered countless World Cups for ABC Radio.
Just as music had led to football, football then led to yoga.
Soccer injury led to yoga
His unforeseen emergence as a commentator revived his interest in the global game and he started playing park football again.
In 1995, he injured his neck during a match and nothing he tried could alleviate the pain.
An old World War II digger in the steam room at Manly Leagues club told him: "Oh mate, you've got to try that yoga business." Lovelock went to the next available class at the club and was hooked for life.
The yoga classes sorted out his debilitating neck injury and he embraced the practice to such a degree that he took a year off to learn how to teach it. He would end up helping others to recover from injury like he had himself.
A Lovelock yoga class was no place to empty the mind or reach union with a supreme spirit. In between poses Damien would give hilarious monologues about what was on his mind or happening in his own unique world.
One of his students described him as the Keith Richards of yoga. He was such a good teacher he was hired by professional football teams like the Central Coast Mariners, Sydney FC and the NSW State of Origin team.
Damien was at all times a man who ran his own race, spoke his own mind and to hell with the consequences.
At school he boycotted compulsory cadets and was dropped from the rugby team for his troubles.
Once, in the 1990s, a highly influential ABC radio manager was giving him some unsolicited advice about how he could improve his regular segment on triple j.
"In my experience as a producer…" he began.
Damien did not like what he was hearing and cut him off mid-stream.
"Mate," he said in that distinctive drawl, "I don't think you could produce a turd with a bowl of All-Bran."
PHOTO Damien Lovelock was once described by one of his students as "the Keith Richards of yoga".
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It was that kind of unfiltered comment that ended up doing him no favours in landing the high-profile gigs that others with less talent so easily fell into. But that was Damo. He instead relied on his late mother's advice: "Speak your own mind, absorb the beating, and carry on."
His door would always be open, literally
Damien loved the beach and it was a part of his daily ritual to walk up and down the sand at Newport and finish off with a bodysurf. He was not a slip, slop, slap kind of guy. His skin was like a cross between crocodile leather and a Burt Reynolds man tan.
I once stupidly asked him if he ever used sunscreen. "Mate," he said, looking at me as if I was a moron, "when you've been clinically dead three times, you don't worry about dying from kicking back."
He was that rare breed who always had the perfect comeback to any comment or question. During the Sydney Olympics, when locals were overly exuberant about welcoming visitors to our shores, he was somehow mistaken for a tourist. While on the escalator at Warringah Mall he was asked innocently: "So, what do you think of Sydney?" He turned around and deadpanned: "The first 46 years have been great, thanks."
Damien in many ways was a man at odds with the modern era. Money, materialism and social media were of little interest to him. As long as he could talk, play music, teach yoga, watch sport, walk along the beach and bodysurf he was happy.
PHOTO Damien Lovelock with one of his pet pugs.
FACEBOOK: DAMIEN LOVELOCK YOGA
He was furious when the 2G network was shut down and he could no longer use his silver Sharp flip-phone. He couldn't understand why you would need a phone for anything other than phone calls or text messages.
He took a curious disregard to having things stolen. Whether he was at home or not, the front door of his house in Bilgola Plateau would always be flung open, with the television on and the sound of football games blaring out into the street. Thankfully no-one ever stole his prized guitars.
He was similarly cavalier with his car. If you met him for a bodysurf at Newport Beach, the first thing you would see would be his Tarago in the north end of the car park, unlocked, windows down, a pair of sluggos hanging over the wing mirror, with his keys placed on the top of the front tyre.
His attitude to money and worldly goods was best summed up by his lyric in the Celibate Rifles's 1989 song O Salvation:
We're getting older but no more wise
I'm looking but I don't believe my eyes
Kids with machine guns selling crack
I've never seen a hearse with a luggage rack
One thing baby I know is true
You make it but you can't take it with you
Despite the harsh realities of living with late-stage cancer, he was playing gigs and teaching yoga right up until his last weeks. He was cracking jokes and telling stories right until the end.
He is survived by his son Luke, his pugs Alvis and Zoki, and countless friends and fans.
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