A DIFFERENT DRUM

You and I travel to the beat of a different drum

Oh can’t you see by the way I run

Different Drum - Mike Nesmith

Although the gig at the Coogee Bay looked a little shaky at the beginning of 1969, it was time for me to start building a house on my block of land at Allambie Heights while I still had a permanent job. Trying to get a house loan without a permanent job was almost impossible. Our job security looked ominous when Mrs Munro brought in a new dress code after a few fights at the Bay. Most of the fights were outside the front door and Tommy the bouncer was working overtime. Guys now had to be accompanied by a girl and wear a coat and tie, and the crowd dropped off dramatically. The band battled on with Dave until we were sacked at the end of March. Lots of gigs were in the offering, but they all fell through one by one.

The only one that came through was a gig at the Motor Club every Sunday afternoon and night and the band was augmented to back the floorshows with front line - Col Loughnan (tenor) & Dieter Vogt (trumpet). This only lasted for a while, and by May we were out of work and it was every-man-for-himself.

These were desperate times. I had just put all my money into the new house and I couldn’t afford to be out of work for even one week. Everyone else seemed to be working except for Dave Taylor who gave up the music business altogether.

Jon Hayton took a gig back down at Smiggin Holes after the manager forgave him. Billy Hucker got married and was now off playing a tour with Johnnie Ray. Even Michael Lawler and Jimmy Doyle were having a huge success when their new band, Aesop's Fables, won the 1969 Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds at the Stadium.

The house at Allambie Heights was nearly finished and the final payment to the builder was due. In desperation I bit the bullet and did the unthinkable. I took a day job on the council at Concord. I hadn’t had a day job since I was 16 and after a week of shovelling and mowing I felt very proud of myself. The engineers were also very impressed and the next week I was promoted to working on the Golf Course. This was a brand new experience for me. Every morning at 5am Lizzie would wake me with a bowl of porridge with brown sugar and cream. I had never realised that there was more than one 5 o’clock in a day – unless I was really late home from a gig. Off I’d go to the Golf Course at what seemed like the middle of the night. The mist would hover over the course until morning tea at 8 am. It was like another world. Tending the course was a specialised job conducted by the greenkeeper, and as his assistant I was required to attend the sprinklers, change the holes and mow the fairways and greens. By three in the afternoon it was all over. The only trouble was that a week’s work only paid about the same as I was used to getting in one night. I was beginning to think that I would never play the drums again. My career as a professional musician was over.

Unfortunately, one of my co-workers at the council was a dedicated Bee Gees’ fan and he drove me crazy. It reminded me of all the songs that Barry Gibb gave me for the Rajahs to record and I turned them all down. There were so many of them on a giant reel-to-reel tape that after a while they all started to sound the same. The Bee Gees were interested in my home movies in 1963 and Lonnie Lee and I went over to visit them at their house at Lakemba. “Here’s a good one for you guys,” said Barry, strumming on his guitar… “And the lights all went out in Massachusetts…” “No that’s no good,” I interrupted with my obvious ear for a hit song. “Let’s get back to the home movies.” Finally, in desperation Barry said, “Well, let’s look at the top 40 and you show me a song that you like.” We perused the top 40. “What about Glad All Over by the Dave Clark Five?” I said. “Right!” said Barry, “I’ll go and write one just like it while you show Maurice and Robin how to use the stop-motion on the movie camera.” Sure enough, Barry returned a little while after with a new song that sounded just like Glad All Over. I was most impressed and then we forgot all about it and went back to the home-movie techniques.

Meanwhile, here I am working at Concord Council six years later – and every day my Pommie council co-worker continues to pester me with stories of adoration for his favourite band, the Bee Gees. A couple of times I was almost tempted to say “Yes, I used to be in the music business, once” … but I didn’t.

Well, I was half-right about my music career being over. While I was contemplating a proposal to go to night school and get an engineering degree, a guitarist friend of mine called Tony Styche finally came to my rescue. He told me that he wanted me to join his band playing 6 nights a week at the Bexley North Hotel. The only trouble was that he said he already had a drummer and he wanted me to play the organ. “I can’t play the bloody organ,” I protested.

Tony insisted. “Look, it’s alright. I know you can write arrangements and play a few chords … that’s all we need.”

With nothing to lose but my self-respect I arrived at Tony’s place for a Sunday rehearsal. “What if somebody sees me? They’ll know I’m not a real organ player,” I pleaded. “Don’t worry about it, Zack. You’re just being paranoid,” said Tony, looking pleased with the line-up of the band. Tony had also managed to con my old mate from the Rajahs – the famous Nosmo King, who would be playing electric bass. Nosmo greeted me with the usual couple of well-timed farts and Little Ivan set up his drums in the corner. Tony presented me with his keyboard and a big homemade Leslie type speaker box that was made from a washing machine motor. Tony reckoned it sounded great and he handed me a few scrappy chord charts. “That’s it! I’ll hide behind the music stand on the keyboard,” I thought to myself. Nosmo reassured me. “Don’t worry too much about your left hand, I’ll take care of that,” he said as we plowed through the repertoire.

JUNE 2, 1969: I was terrified on our first night. But as I looked around at the small Monday night crowd, nobody seemed to notice. Little Ivan the drummer was a great singer and they were all bopping along to the sound of the band. After a while I started getting the hang of not having to thump away through every bar of the song. With Tony’s washing machine pounding away behind me I actually began to enjoy myself. The only song that gave me grief was Sunny. Just when I’d get the chord changes down in one key, the song would modulate up a semitone for every chorus. There were a lot of new challenges playing the organ 'live' and my clumsy hamburgers-in-the-fingers style didn’t help me any.

Billy Hucker finished his tour with Johnnie Ray and he called in to see the band at the end of the week. “Fancy having a real organ player in the audience. Now I’ll really get found out,” I thought to myself. Bill just nodded in his typical casual manner, and to my relief he said, “Sounds alright to me, Leon. I don’t know what you’re worried about.”

Two weeks later, just when I was starting to feel confident on the organ I received a call from piano player, Barrie Heidenreich. It’s amazing how one phone call can change your life. He wanted me to join a 7-piece band that had just started at the Miller’s Brighton Hotel – and he wanted me to play drums!

I felt terrible about giving Tony my notice, but he understood when I reminded him that I wasn’t really an organ player and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of doing what I did best. This time I was going to concentrate on my drums. No organ, no singing – just drums.

As it turned out, Tony’s band got the sack from the Bexley North a month later and they moved into the Bronte Charles.

A NEW CHANT

The Chant was a fabulous band and I really had my arse hanging out reading and playing some pretty tough charts. The main part of the repertoire consisted of “Blood Sweat & Tears” and “Chicago” arrangements, which was a fusion of jazz and rock. At the time it seemed like this was the natural evolutionary course that rock’n’roll would take. Every one in the band was an accomplished reader and player and we all pushed each other to the limit.

Barrie’s band had originated at the Motor Club with JOHN BARTLETT on bass, DAVE OWENS and DON WRIGHT on saxophones, MICK KENNY on trumpet, MICKEY LEYTON on vocals and BARRIE HEIDENREICH on piano and Hammond Organ. Dave Owens was the American sax player from Johnny O’Keefe’s original band the Dee Jays, and when he left soon after he was replaced with a friend of Mick Kenny’s from the “Con,” HERB CANNON on trombone. Both Herb and Mick were only 16 and 17 and as such, were not officially allowed into the Hotel. Age had nothing to do with it. They were both excellent players. Young Mick was almost bordering on genius. His father, Tom Kenny, often used Mick as a “dep” (deputy) for some of his trumpet gigs when he was even younger. When Barrie first saw Mick playing in the Henry Hess Band, he immediately stole him for the Motor Club gig.

Although we called him the “Fūhrer,” our bandleader Barrie Heidenreich had a dinky die Aussie accent and a dry sense of humour. With my rock’n’roll background, Barrie wasn’t sure if I could read or not, so my first week was really only a trial. Even when I thought I played something fantastic, I noticed that Barrie never ever cracked a smile. At one stage during my first week I thought he must have hated my playing, but Mickey Leyton assured me that he always looked like that. Barrie was a great bandleader. If ever there was a problem Barrie solved it immediately with his favourite phrase … “Aah, fuck ‘em!”

The Chant followed the normal hotel routine by playing six nights a week and Saturday afternoons, with a new floorshow act to back each week. I struggled on for a couple of weeks at the council but with such a heavy workload I finally said goodbye to the council forever.

Everything had worked out beautifully: I now had a permanent gig and a new house. We were all so excited. On July 1, Lizzie and our two children, David and Cherylee, moved in to our brand new beachcomber house at Allambie Heights. While the house was being built we had been living in pretty cramped conditions at Lizzie’s mothers’ place at Greenacre. Compared to the struggle of the last 6 months this was an absolute luxury and the kids were especially excited to have their very own rooms. Before they could start to build I was about $600 short and my Dad came to my rescue and loaned me the money. This was a big deal coming from my father because throughout most of his life he had been painfully poor and had never been able to give his three children much in the way of material things. The money was part of his compensation package for losing his hearing while working as a boilermaker all his life. The day after we moved into the house we were still bursting with joy when the news came through that my Dad had died. It certainly put a huge damper on our celebration of the house that he helped to buy - but never ever got to see.

Life goes on, and the kids started their new school at Allambie, Jon came back from the snow and moved to North Curl Curl, Michael moved to Harbord, Billy Hucker and Trish were married... and the first man landed on the moon.

Meanwhile Jimmy Taylor had returned to Vietnam and the girl singer with the band, Cathy Wayne was shot dead while they were performing on stage at an American Serviceman’s club in Danang. Cathy was a band singer that we once used with the Rajahs when we did a month at the Hume Hotel in June 1966. Jimmy was still visibly upset when he returned home. Apparently, when Cathy fell back onto Jim’s piano he first thought she had been electrocuted. It wasn’t until a few minutes later when Jim saw the blood that the full horror of the event was realised. She had been shot by one of the trigger-happy GIs in the audience.

The news soon got around about the Chant at the Brighton Hotel and it wasn’t long before we started packing the place out. On Saturday afternoons the place was full of musicians with their notebooks and we enjoyed running through all the difficult charts to impress them. Every Monday Barrie Heidenreich, Mick Kenny and I would bring in the new arrangements we wrote and we would rehearse the new act for the week.

Armed with only a flagon of wine, a tape recorder and a pencil, young Mick Kenny sat up most nights in his tiny flat up the Cross and arranged almost the entire repertoire of Blood Sweat & Tears and Chicago for the Chant band rehearsals every Monday. Without one musical instrument to refer to, Mick’s arrangements were perfectly transcribed by ear down to the last note. The only trouble was that by the time he got to copy out the individual instrument parts, the flagon of wine was almost empty and we spent most of the rehearsal trying to decipher Mick’s drunken scrawl.

Barrie and I couldn’t keep up with Mick’s prolific output. As well as all the Chicago type songs, Mick wrote a great arrangement of Jimmy Webb’s Macarthur Park, which became the favourite of one of our fans. He never failed to request it every week. “Can you guys play that Beatle song I like? You know the one, it’s called McCartney’s Park!!”

The crowd at the Brighton was mainly a discerning lot and they didn’t like their dance sets being interrupted by the act unless they were either pretty good or pretty funny. We were lucky enough to have a few good ones from the following list in 1969.

SKIP CUNNINGHAM, RAY & RENAY, VIKKI FORREST, THE FLANAGANS, JACK O’LEARY, LYN ROGERS, BILL & BOYD, THE NAPIER BROS., SANDY EDMONDS, RIM DE PAUL, SANDY CONTRERAS, THE COLLEAGUES, THE KINSMEN, WARREN WILLIAMS, CHRIS KIRBY, THE SHEVELLES, FRANK STEPHENS, GERALDINE FITZGERALD, GARY MARCHELL, KEVIN TODD, LYN BARNETT, THE SHERATONS and TONI WILLIAMS.

Besides the Hotel circuit, 1969 was turning out to be a boom for most of the Clubs in Sydney. There were 1500 clubs in NSW and 1100 of them took permanent entertainment. The darling of the clubs was SANDY SCOTT, and I managed to fit in quite a few gigs with “Scotty” during the year. Sandy had a big hit with Wallpaper Roses in 1966 and the audiences remembered him as a regular on Brian Henderson’s Bandstand. Scotty had a very polished act and he and his wife Carol (Jacobsen) were very fussy about his backing. Rather than use the entire house band, he felt more comfortable using his own rhythm section with wife Carol manning the lights and Andre Seagrove on sound.

Sandy and Carol were a lot of fun, and we mostly just dashed in and did Sandy’s spot and dashed out again - before any old ladies could capture him. All the ladies wanted to take Sandy home, but they’d have to get past Carol first. Not bloody likely!

GREAT AS ALWAYS

In October I was asked by agent, Jan Murphy to put a band together to back the shows at Shellharbour Workers Club every Sunday afternoon. They wanted a good reading band so the LEON ISACKSON QUINTET started with JOHN PICKWORTH on piano, JOHN BARTLETT on bass PAT CRICHTON on trumpet and COL LOUGHNAN on sax. Everyone in the band sight-read better than me so the job was a breeze. With three acts and a compere each week the Shellharbour crowd was wonderful and the band could do no wrong. At the end of each Sunday Concert the Entertainment Director, Lew Sullivan would always come up and say, “Leon … Great as always!”

When we moved to the new auditorium upstairs Pat Crichton left the band and Mick Kenny from the Chant replaced him on trumpet. The long drive down the coast and the long dinner after the show made for a long day but everyone in the band agreed that it was worth it.

I was surprised when JO’K arrived at the Shellharbour Workers in November with his new club show. He didn’t look as pleased to see me as he normally did and I thought he might be still mad at me because we couldn’t get the Rajahs back together. He appeared to be in a daze on downers and was surrounded by managers and minders. It wasn’t the happy-go-lucky Wild One of old. He looked up at me and said, “Leon… where are we again?”

“Shellharbour, John,” one of his minders was quick to reply.

The first half of the show that day featured singer, Joy Taylor, ventriloquist Barry Kraus and comedian, Buster Fiddess, backed by the “great as always” Leon Isackson Band.

When the new Johnny O’Keefe club show followed, it turned out to be a lot less than expected. The band was very ordinary and so was JO’K, but it was still well received by the very forgiving Shellharbour audience. Although I was a little disappointed, it was good to see him working again. We invited JO’K in for our free dinner and wine after the show, but he was quickly whisked away by his minders when he finished his spot.

Sundays were usually followed by a severe hang-over and then it was back to the Brighton Hotel on Monday. The only time the Chant found time to play outside of the Brighton Hotel was when we did a Sunday night concert at the Sydney Town Hall on November 16. The pot-smoking fans were blown away by the big sound of the CHANT, and after they had a few more joints MAX MERRITT and the METEORS followed us on stage. By the time the starring band TULLY played the last set, it seemed like the whole audience was even more stoned than the band.

The next day, splashed across the front page of the Daily Mirror was the headline – DRUGS IN TOWN HALL CONCERT. The Lord Mayor was shocked, and promised to launch an inquiry. And so ended the last Town Hall rock’n’roll concert for the sixties. It seemed that Jon Hayton was right when he warned about the danger of giving drugs to the general public.

When my old war buddy, LUCKY STARR, arrived at Shellharbour one Sunday, some fool gave him a joint just before he went on stage. This was the first and the last time that Lucky would ever try the dreaded weed. By the time Luck finished his opening song, he didn’t know where he was. He kept on laughing and forgetting what he was talking about. Lucky’s “automatic pilot” didn’t seem to be working at all, and looking around at the band for help was a further exercise in futility. When Lucky finally sang I’ve Been Everywhere, he completely forgot where he’d been. Lucky may not have enjoyed his first spot at Shellharbour, but we sure did – and so did the audience.

Meanwhile Billy Hucker scored a gig in Hong Kong and a few weeks later Jon Hayton joined him on guitar. Jon and Billy called the band THE NEW DIRECTION which when pronounced by the locals always sounded like the “nude erection.” Jon and Bill were treated like huge rock stars in Hong Kong and the plan was for Billy to gradually ease the mediocre Chinese players out of the band and fill their places with a few more Aussie Diggers – mainly Michael Lawler and Sheryl and possibly me. Michael was the next to go to Hong Kong and he created quite a storm when he arrived. It seems the inscrutable Chinese were on to the white man’s plan and they objected to him being there and putting the local Chinese musicians out of work. By the time I got the call from Billy and Jon to join the “Nude Erection” in Hong Kong, I was much too busy with the new house and the increased amount of work in 1969. In the last six months of 1969 I had done a total of 211 gigs and things were looking even busier as the new decade rolled around. The famous trio of Jon, Michael and Leon would have to be put on hold.

I had always thought that a band was not really complete without a guitarist and Barrie was still pushing to get Jimmy Doyle to join the Chant on guitar. This would make the band perfect in every sense. The only time we had a bit of guitar was when our trumpet player Mick Kenny spronged along in a few songs. He also doubled on his favourite instrument, the organ – the clever little bugger could play anything.

With the Chant packing them in with sometimes over a thousand people, Barrie decided it was time to ask the management at Millers to add a guitarist to the band. Unfortunately for Barrie, a footballer friend of owner Rod Miller was put in charge of the entertainment. Being an ex-star footballer, Mike Cleary was more concerned about the band having a regular uniform; so instead of a guitarist they decided that we needed a soubrette (a classy name for a chick singer) who just happened to be another close relation of the Millers’ management. With his newly acquired musical expertise, Cleary thought that instead of a good five eighth, we needed another winger for the team. Barrie was furious when he found out we’d been lumbered with a chick singer.

Brenda Dee joined the band in November. She had been previously working with Aesop’s Fables under her real name, Brenda Glover. Barrie told her that she couldn’t sing any songs with the band unless she had proper 7 piece band arrangements, which he said he was too busy to write. “I haven’t got time to write them and neither has Leon,” said Barrie. “You’ll have to pay Mick to write them otherwise you can’t sing with the band.”

After a week we all felt sorry for Brenda but with Mick Kenny’s help, Brenda eventually got some good songs together for a couple of months until she left the band in January 1970. Bill Watson later took over her personal management and changed her name from Brenda Dee to Brenda Kristen. The Chant was back to 7 faded blue Levi jackets (without numbers) and still no guitarist.

3961w

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