November that year they returned to Australia, released their debut album Prayers on Fire in April 1981, and were back in London by August. Pew wrote a track, "The Plague", for Prayers on Fire, but it did not make the cut; it later appeared on Drunk on the Pope's Blood (1991). The Birthday Party returned to the Crystal Ballroom. Ashley Crawford recalls "the only one who looked part of a more-or-less traditional rock'n'roll band was Tracy Pew, inevitably resplendent in fishnet singlet and ten-gallon Stetson, wielding a bass guitar like an AK47 and known to occasionally stuff his head into the centre of the bass drum as he flailed at his bass guitar". On 16 February 1982, Pew was imprisoned on charges relating to driving under the influence of alcohol and a series of accumulated fines; he was sentenced to ten weeks in HM Prison Won Wron, a minimum security prison farm near Yarram. In Rowland S. Howard's words, "I'd been in quite a few trips with Tracy where somewhere along the journey you'd find out the car was stolen. I remember we were driving around Melbourne and there were all these kids' pictures floating around in the back seat. He'd stolen some poor primary school teacher's car." During Pew's stretch at Won Wron, he was temporarily replaced in the band by Chris Walsh (of The Moodists) for the band's subsequent Melbourne shows, and Barry Adamson (of Magazine) and Harry Howard (Rowland's brother) for their UK shows. Pew returned to the band after his release with a gig in Hammersmith on 26 May 1982. In August the group relocated to Berlin. According to rock music historian Ian McFarlane, "Rivalries within the group had intensified, and the prodigious consumption of drugs and alcohol by various members began to undermine any sense of unity. Matters came to a head when Harvey refused to undertake a tour of Australia at the end of May 1983". Gerald Houghton found the group "was a jolly adventure in drugs, alcohol, and more drugs and even more alcohol. Here if you want them are the king-size fuck-ups of guitarist Roland S. Howard, Cave and particularly leather-trousered bassist Tracy Pew. Stories are rampant about the congenial, erudite Pew's excesses, of OD-ing offstage and collapsing on". Howard recalls that they had "spent the last 4 years not really making any money, living in each others' pockets, homeless. We just