Max Merritt – The Legend
 |
|
1969 saw the group reach their peak. They were now firmly based in Melbourne and Max even had his own club called Max's Place, a reminder of the earlier days when he had the Teenage Club in Christchurch. With the escalation of the Vietnam war, there were a lot more American troops passing through Australia, and Max gained the same level of respect now, that he had previously had with the Deep Freeze servicemen. The guys started writing some songs and with quite a few under their belts, they started hassling the record companies again. RCA signed them up and in 1969 they released their first single for nearly two and a half years, a cover of a Jerry Butler song "Hey Western Union Man", backed with Max's own "Home Is Where The Heart Is". The single reached number 17 on the Australian National charts in November. In early 1970 there long awaited third album was released. Simply called "Max Merritt and the Meteors", it contained six originals along with some superb covers. It was most definitely Max's finest work and fans bought up the album in large enough quantities to send it to number 8 on the National albums chart. In January 1970, the Meteors were the headlining act at the Ourimbah Festival and continued to be popular during 1970, but were no longer the dominant rock band in the country. They did however receive a nod of approval when the ABC contracted them to do a four-part television series titled "Max Merritt and the Meteors In Concert". It was the first time an Australian pop series had been performed live in front of a studio audience. The first two shows were just the regular line-up, the third was augmented with a three-piece brass section and the last show had them backed with an entire big band. Late in 1970, they recorded another album called "Stray Cats". Compared to the previous album, it was quite a dismal effort. From it RCA released two singles in 1971, "Good Feelin' "/"I Can't Wait" and "Hello LA Bye Bye Birmingham"/"Live Levis". With the failure of these two singles, RCA did not renew their contract. They did release one final single in 1972 called "Let It Slide"/"Dedicated To A Friend". In January 1971, deciding that they had now probably done their dash in Australia, Max decided to make the trip to England that he had always wanted to do, but had been delayed by the accident. So he added two saxophone players and a trumpet player to the line-up and did a National farewell tour, taking in theatres only. The group stopped over for a few gigs in Singapore and then flew on to London. In England, the group played the British pub circuit, slowly building up a solid following. As their popularity grew, they secured support roles for leading British bands, including Slade and the Moody Blues. Max Merritt and the Meteors returned to Australia in January 1972 to headline the first Sunbury Festival, after which they went on a national pub tour. They came back again in 1973 to do the Sunbury Festival again and then returned to England to concentrate on the British market. Once again by 1974 it looked like Max was starting to make headway in England when another major problem occurred. His then manager, Peter Raphael, departed, leaving the group with no money and a pile of debts. They were forced to sell their transport to survive, and as a result the band basically fell apart. Dave Russell returned to New Zealand, Bob Bertles accepted a position with top UK jazz band Nucleus and Stewie Speer toured Europe with Alexis Korner. Max was forced to go back to his original trade of laying bricks for a while. Max, always the determined fighter, never gave up and by the end of 1974 had put together another five-piece band. After Stewie finished the tour he joined back up with Max and together they added Barry Dugan on saxophone, John Gourd on guitar and piano, and Howard 'Fuzz' Deniz on bass guitar. Max also found a new manager, Bill Utley. Throughout 1975 they continued to build on the pub rock reputation they had developed over the previous couple of years. Later in the year Barry was replaced by Lance Dixon, who was a keyboard player as well as a saxophonist. With his keyboards and Gourd's slide guitar, the new sound emanating from the Meteors was a long way removed from the sounds they were best remembered for in Australia. The soul had gone and they were far less jazz orientated. In May 1975 Clive Davis, head of Arista Records arrived in London to establish a British branch of the US-based company. Following a recommendation to check out the Meteors on their pub circuit, he liked what he saw and contracted them as his first 'British' signing. A single was recorded and released in July called "A Little Easier"/"Long Time Gone". The single was ignored by most people, but Arista pressed on releasing an album also called "A Little Easier" in September. Released at the same time was another single from the album called "Slippin' Away"/"I Keep Forgetting". "Slippin' Away" caught the attention of radio programme directors in both Australia and New Zealand and with constant playing over the summer of 1975/76 it climbed to number 2 on the Australian national charts becoming their biggest Australian hit ever. The song was also well received in New Zealand where it climbed to number 5 and stayed on the charts for 6 months. The song should have been an international hit, but Arista were still in their set-up stages in England and that made distribution difficult. As a result interested people couldn't get a copy so sales soon tapered off. Meanwhile the album, buoyed by the success of the single in Australia, peaked at number 4 on the Australian charts, but interestingly failed to chart in New Zealand. The Meteors returned to Australia in June 1976 for a triumphant tour, coinciding with the release of their second Arista album "Out Of The Blue". From it came a re-recorded version of "Let It Slide" and this followed "Slippin' Away" into the charts in Australia. The single was released with "Whisper In My Ear" and "Coming Back" on the B-side, while in New Zealand it had "Gotta Have Your Love" as the flip-side. Their tour over three weeks was once again performed at only larger theatres and was seen by more than 30,000 people. The first concerts at Melbourne's Dallas Brooks Hall were recorded and later released as an album in 1977 as "Back Home Live", their third and final Arista album. A final single for Arista also came in 1976 called "Blame It On The Reggae". Once again differing B-sides, "Whisper In My Ear" in New Zealand and "Take Part Of Me" in Australia. If was hard for Max, because he was once again receiving superstar status in Australia, but in England, where he wanted to be, it was still tough going, trying to make it on the pub scene. But it wasn't Max's inability that failed him there, it was the onslaught of punk music that killed the pub rock scene in Britain. At the end of 1976, Max Merritt and the Meteors broke up as a working band. In 1977 Max relocated to America and signed a solo deal with Polydor Records. His first album release for Polydor was in 1978 called "Keeping In Touch". From it came the single "Wish You'd Never Come Into My Life"/"Draggin' Chains". Another two singles were also released in 1979 from the album, called "Dirty Work"/"Fat Man" and "It's Over"/"Keeping In Touch". In 1979 came a new single, "Trying Too Hard"/"Rock 'n Roll Mole", released from the second Polydor album called "Black Plastic Max" which came out in 1980. Max returned to Australia for a couple of tours in 1979 and 1980, on the second occasion he put together a band for the tour with comprised Stewie, Paul Grant on guitar, John Williams on keyboards, Martin Jenner on guitar and Phil Lawson on bass. This was Max and Stewie's last major tour together. Stewie had settled back in Sydney, but suffered increasingly from the injuries sustained in the 1967 road accident and, in between periods of hospitalisation, gigged only sparingly. He died of a heart attack on September 16 1986. Bob Bertles became a highly respected jazzman in Britain before returning to Australia where he remains active on the local music scene. Max released only two more singles in his career, "Growing Pains"/"Prove It" in 1982 and "Mean Green Fighting Machine"/"My Best Friend" in 1986, the second a promotional single for the Canberra Raiders Rugby League team. In 1986 Raven released a best of album called "17 Trax Of Max". It contained mainly his Australian releases and was re-released on CD as "23 Trax Of Max" in 1991, adding six extra songs. In 2001 EMI released the CD that everyone has been waiting for. "The Very Best Of Max Merritt and the Meteors" contains some of the early New Zealand singles and tracks from his first album, re-mastered from the best possible sources available. |