24
MORE BS &
TEARS
What goes up, must come down
Spinning Wheel got to go ‘round
Spinning Wheel - by Blood Sweat
& Tears
1970 saw another full year at
the Brighton Hotel punctuated by Sunday trips to Shellharbour and the
occasional gig with Sandy Scott and Johnny Farnham. After his early success as
a pop star with Sadie The Cleaning Lady
(1967), Johnny Farnham always felt a little awkward playing in clubs. His
manager Daryl brought him up from
After checking his face for
pimples, Daryl would push Johnny on to the stage. John had no act at all and
his patter was sometimes embarrassing. Fortunately, it didn’t matter all that
much because no matter what he did, his voice and personality always shone
through and the club crowds loved him. We always had fun on the gigs and I
started to write a few charts for him to use in his new club show. Johnny
Farnham was also booked for a week with the Chant at the
The Chant was roaring and the place was packed nearly every night
with up to a thousand people. The weekly acts at the
TONI WILLIAMS, JULIE LEWIS, GREG BONHAM, RICKY MAY, THE THIN MEN, THE RHYTHMAIRES, MIKE FURBER, LUCKY STARR, BOBBY & LAURIE, ROBERT GENNARI, THE KINSMEN, CHRIS KIRBY, MARIA DALLAS, BILL & BOYD, NICO, JOHNNY FARNHAM, STAN BOURNE, JOHNNY YOUNG, FRANKIE PRICE, SEAN & SONJA, GENE PIERSON, MIKE FOSTER, THE PLATTERS, MULTIPLE BALLOON, JONNE SANDS, CHARADE, HELEN DRIESSEN TRIO, DEL JULIANA, DAWN DIXON, RUSSELL MORRIS, THE CARRONS, FRANKIE DAVIDSON, RON BARRY, DAVID C. NELSON, THE AMBASSADORS, JOHNNY HOLMES, THE QUINTIKIS, KERRY & ALLEN, CHRISTINE ROBERTS, JOY TAYLOR, MARIA VENUTTI, KERRY DYER and TUFFY MCFRIGG.
A week at the
When Mick Leyton introduced
him we played his usual till-ready chaser and Ricky came on still wiping the
grease from his hands. He then went amongst the Saturday afternoon audience and
prompted them to clap along to the chaser. When he succeeded to get them all
clapping in time, he ran through the audience and disappeared out the front
door. We continued on with the chaser for about ten minutes until
Followed by a few boos, we
slunk back into the bandroom only to find Ricky sitting there with his feet up
on the chair, gorging himself on fish and chips. Ricky smiled broadly and threw
up his hands. “I’m sorry guys, I was so hungry I went round the block and came
in the back door. I had to come back and finish my lunch,” said Rick. There was
a slight pause. “By the way
After the show that night,
Ricky took Mick Kenny and me to the Cheetah Room, which was the new name for
Sammy Lee’s old
For no particular reason JO’K
came to visit me at the Brighton Hotel in April and he wasn’t impressed. Johnny
Farnham was the act for the night. That night the brass section made a feature
in the middle of his version of Raindrops
Keep Falling On My Head and it sounded great.
After we finished our band
set, I went down to see JO’K who was sitting on his own in the corner looking
worried. “What’s all this bloody circus music,
“Oh we always do a big brass
send up at the end of Spinning Wheel
when it goes into three four. It’s a really good fun band…” JO’K cut me short. “It doesn’t sound like
rock’n’roll to me,” said Jok as if I appeared to be letting the side down. I
tried to convince him that it really was a rock’n’roll band playing the latest
stuff but he wouldn’t have it. We talked about where all the rest of the Rajahs
were and when I went back to play he disappeared into the night shaking his
head in disgust.
In the middle of the year our
bass player, John Bartlett took a better paying job at the Motor Club and Wayne
Ford joined the Chant as the new bass player on
Just for fun, Mick Kenny and I
would often write a couple of bars for John that we thought would be impossible
to play. The joke never worked. John would adjust his glasses and play the
lines perfectly. Then he would apologise for slightly rushing one of the
semiquavers.
We had already auditioned a
couple of bass players that couldn’t cut the charts and Wayne Ford agreed to
take them home and study them for a couple of weeks before he joined the band.
One Chicago Medley we did lasted for a complete twenty-five minute set
and the bass part was about twenty pages. There was no time to turn the pages
so poor
Although we still didn’t have
time to do anything much outside the
TAMAM SHUD, MECCA, THE ZOOT,
FLYING CIRCUS, GENESIS, SPECTRUM, TOWN CRIERS, HEART & SOUL, BOOTLEG, BILLY
THORPE & THE AZTECS, LA DE DAS, MAX MERRITT & THE METEORS, AUTUMN,
CLIMAX, BLACK FEATHER, PIRANHA, JEFF CROZIER’S MAGIC BAND, WENDY &
COPPERWINE, CLEVES, KING HARVEST, FLAKE and THE MASTER’S APPRENTICES – Jan. 6,
1971.
Of course, Wayne and I never
got to see all of the guest bands. We had a weekly invitation from two of our
fans who lived across the road from the hotel. If the guest band wasn’t that
great, Wayne and I would dash across the road for a Wednesday night quickie.
Because their beds were so close together,
Wayne Ford had an equally
talented twin brother, Warren, who played the piano and often filled in for
John Pickworth at Shellharbour. Having both twins in the band was fraught with
danger. Apart from their constant bickering most of the acts were totally
confused as to who was who.
The manager’s wife also wasn’t
impressed when KERRY DYER appeared on stage with a see-through blouse. She
would have gotten away with it, except the guy on the lights was so excited
that he pin-spotted her breasts throughout her entire show.
“It was the drummer in the
band,” she told the manager’s wife. “He told me that the blouse would look
better without a bra.”
Another comedian, STAN BOURNE,
was terrified at the thought of playing to such a young audience. His opening
lines were: “I suppose you’re all wondering what the little old fat bastard is
going to do.” They all loved him after that.
While I was at the
The most astounding part of
this front page was a tiny paragraph tucked away at the bottom corner, which
read: “Jimi Hendrix dies from drug overdose.” This, of course, was Jon’s subtle
way of telling me that in
A few weeks later one of the
“MIKE LAWLER SCRATCHES HIS
BALLS!” said Michael with a straight face. For a brief moment the reporter actually
considered Michael’s suggestion until he suddenly looked up from his notepad
and smiled. “Ahh… You Australian lock stars, very funny.” I finally got around
to writing back to Jon and his wife Wendy to boast that my wife, Lizzie had
given birth to a baby boy on
Towards the end of 1970 the
Another great guitarist named
PETER MARTIN had just arrived home from a two-year guitar study trip in
Our only consolation was that
Mike Cleary also got the shove when the place died in the arse soon after. He
later went on to become a politician in the State Labor government, with the
portfolio of Minister for Sport – a great loss to the entertainment industry!?
Meanwhile, Wayne Ford and I
went straight into the
A SMALL CHANT
Some of our fans followed us
from the
“Stop here!” she said suddenly
as we came to
All this time at the Bronte
Charles we were playing a waiting game for Mike Cleary to disappear from the
scene so we could get the complete band back into the Millers’ Oceanic Hotel.
This was the only other Millers’ hotel that could afford a band of that size.
At the Oceanic, Ian Saxon was fronting a band called Ian Saxon & the Sounds
and he would welcome a great band like the Chant with Peter Martin, as long as
he could stay on as the singer/compere. Peter was hoping to re-invent the band
and call it SCRA, which stood for the Southern Contemporary Rock Assembly.
While all this was going on,
Jimmy Taylor finally went ‘round the twist’ after playing bass with Terry King
at the
ANOTHER DELLTONE
Shellharbour continued into
1971 (great as always) and, as well as a few gigs with Johnny Farnham, I
started to do a few gigs with the Delltones and write their arrangements. The Dellies
had only recently returned from
By mid-year Peter Martin had
finally secured the job at the Oceanic, but by that time I had committed myself
with the Delltones. Peter’s band went in with the old line-up of the Chant plus
a few changes.
The week after the Small Chant
finished at the Bronte Charles I started my gigs with the Dellies. We flew down
to Queanbeyan and followed up with a week at Canterbury Bankstown Leagues Club.
Meanwhile, Michael Lawler and Jimmy Doyle asked me if I would like to join
WINIFRED ATWELL.
It didn’t sound like the sort
of thing I would like to do, but they assured me that Winnie’s show was great
and it would sound even better if we were all playing together again. At the
time I wondered how I was going to fit the Dellies and Winifred Atwell in at
the same time, but I agreed to have a little rehearsal with Winnie at Studio
20.
Winnie was very charming and
gracious and the following night I was invited to see her show at North Sydney
Leagues Club. Jimmy and Michael weren’t kidding when they said Winnie always
killed them. I watched in amazement as Winnie finished her show with three
standing ovations that went on for about twenty minutes. All the time the band
was raging away like a Led Zeppelin concert. It was nothing like I had
imagined. I expected a bit of Black and
White Rag and
After the show I was taken
backstage to meet Winnie’s husband and manager, LEW LEVISOHN. Lew was a rather
large retired English comedian who looked a bit like Charles Laughton. When he
made me an offer that was hard to refuse, I worried about it for the next few
days. Joining Winnie would be a full time commitment as opposed to the fairly
loose arrangement I had with the Delltones. If I couldn’t make one of the
Dellies’ gigs it wasn’t the end of the world because they could always go on
without me. Maybe I could get Russell Dunlop to fill in for me? I had a month
to think about it.
While the Dellies were having
a week off in August, Barrie Heidenreich asked me if I would like to do a
little tour down the coast with David Whitfield. “Who’s David Whitfield?” I
asked.
DAVID
WHITFIELD turned
out to be a wonderful old tenor in his very late sixties who was a huge pop
star in
Every night, even when he was
half pissed, David would jump up on the front table and sing, “I kiss your little hand Madame, and then I
kiss your lips.” Without fail, this would always be followed by at least a
dozen old ladies swooning and fainting to the floor. And we always thought that
we started all the squealing girls with the rock’n’roll. Not so! While we were all
in short pants, this guy was doing it back in the early fifties, before
rock’n’roll had even started.
Nico, the Spanish guitarist,
was actually an Italian and was revered by the local fishermen at Ulladulla.
They took us all out on a fishing boat and treated us to catch-of-the-day
Italian-style fish soup. As each fish was caught it was dumped into a giant
soup pot with tomatoes and spices and served with homemade Italian bread. For
those of us that weren’t sea sick or drunk, it was delicious.
It was good to play with
Barrie and Mr. Muckle again and the tour was a howling success. David Whitfield
was ecstatic with our three-piece band. Each night he would acknowledge us in
his loud theatrical tenor voice. “My boys! My boys!”
He was also very concerned about
Michael’s re-occurring trick knee. David Whitfield was a star and a true
English gentleman.
To Chapter 25 Behind The Piano
**** 3917w