a new lease on life when they attracted a hot new talent to their ranks in Rick Springfield, a Sydney guitarist/songwriter who had toured Vietnam with Mike Brady’s MPD Ltd and, under the name of Wickedy Wak, released a single written by Johnny Young and produced by Meldrum, the rousing ‘Billie’s Bikey Boys’. Springfield attempted to extract Zoot from pink stigma by means of riff-rock, beginning with a single, ‘Mr. Songwriter’/’Flying’, the latter having all the elements that characterised the classic sound of his international hit career in the 80s. Zoot’s next single, ‘Hey Pinky’, was accompanied by a ritual burning of their pink clothes on the show Happening ’70; the visceral effect of which was presumably somewhat muted by the fact that it took place on black-and-white television. ‘We keep telling people our musical style has changed,’ whined an unidentified Zoot member to Go-Set’s Jean Gollan, adding that ‘more people are listening to us and agreeing. They’re realizing that we’re not quite the pink poofters that they thought.’156
Springfield was the first Zoot member to maintain a strong songwriting presence, and the group’s sound shifted radically. He also initiated the band’s cover of the Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’,157 which sounded more like Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’. This was the sum total of its genius, unfortunately; it is almost a novelty record, and whatever novelty it had was somewhat undermined by the fact that Doug Parkinson In Focus had done something very similar, though slightly better, the previous year. It is a shame, considering the high quality of the other material released by Zoot at this time – for instance, the epic ‘Turn Your Head’, or the show-business psychodrama of ‘The Freak’ – that, like Parkinson’s band, they are generally remembered not for their excellent original material but for a tossed-off and ineffectual Beatles cover.
Zoot split in mid 1971. Springfield went on to become a star in the US, as an actor and performer; Rick Brewer was to see major chart success again in the Ferrets; while Birtles and Cotton remained together as a duo under the name Frieze, discussed below.
Zoot’s career ran parallel to – and, in some respects, in competition with – that of Perth’s Valentines; indeed, the Valentines’ break up (on 1 Aug 1970)158 occurred shortly after they were embroiled in a brief public argument with Zoot (and the Masters Apprentices) about which of the bands was the first to wear a specially designed band uniform.
The Valentines brought joint vocalists Bon Scott and Vince Lovegrove to Australia’s attention. The group had come together in 1966 as a merger of Perth’s two top acts, the Spektors and the Winztons (Scott was from the former, Lovegrove the latter). Scott would go on to sing in Fraternity and AC/DC; Lovegrove would become known as a manager, promoter and journalist. Other members would have extensive careers in a number of top groups, drummer Doug Lavery for instance, would become a member of Axiom.
Whatever qualities the Valentines may have possessed, like Zoot before Springfield (or, for that matter, the Masters Apprentices between Mick Bower and Doug Ford, as we shall see below), the group lacked a songwriter. Although rhythm guitarist Ted Ward provided some strong material, the fact that three of the Valentines’ seven singles came via the Easybeats is testament to this deficiency. They also lacked focus, as they were well aware. Scott admitted late in the group’s career: ‘We can do anything from heavy rock to bubblegum, but there’s nothing that could be called distinctively the Valentines. But when we find our bag, baby, we’ll be sticking to it!’159
Like Johnny Young, they became Clarion recording artists; their most interesting single was a cover of the Soft Machine’s brilliant ‘Love Makes Sweet Music’; like the original, it was not a hit. (There is no evidence that Soft Machine founder Daevid Allen’s Australian origins played any part in the decision to cover this song.) In late 1967 the Valentines moved to Melbourne, which they made their base for the next three years. They also switched labels, from Clarion to Philips, at the instigation of Ron Tudor, formerly of W&G and soon to launch his own Fable label. Their 1969 single ‘My Old Man’s a Groovy Old Man’ – a genuine bubblegum record, though nowhere near Vanda and Young’s best work – was a top-forty hit. In March of that year members of the group were prosecuted for marijuana possession, an event which Go-Set claimed ‘shook the pop world’, but far from adversely affecting their status, this seemed to have boosted it: ‘They even gained in popularity.’ The Valentines subsequently came out in favour of pot legalisation. Go-Set asked: ‘Was this when they first realised that they could be honest with their fans?’160
Late in the Valentines’ career, their music was reported to be ‘getting heavier (and better) all the time – now with their own arrangements of Jeff Beck and Chicago’s plus their own compositions.’161 Their last single, ‘Juliette’, was probably their best, but they split four months after its release.
Other practitioners of bubblegum in Australia found it expedient to move into fresh fields. Sydney group Flying Circus had two hits written by the American song writing duo, Buzz Cason and Mac Gayden: ‘Hayride’ and ‘La La’. They toured with the Valentines (and Johnny Farnham and Mike Furber), whom they considered ‘gas guys’, saying: ‘They really turned us on to the simple things in life, picnics on the roadside and such. We really dig that group.’ Flying Circus’s live set included some country rock songs,162 and this was to become their stock in trade. In the early 70s they relocated to Canada, where they achieved no little success in a larger market.
MASTER KEAYS
In chapter 2 we briefly encountered the Mustangs as they ambivalently accepted a vocalist in the form of Jim Keays. The group had auditioned Keays in late 1965 at their rehearsal space in an old stables;163 Keays had just given up on learning the bass; his tutor had been the Twilights’ John Bywaters.164 The augmented line-up became the Masters Apprentices. ‘The Masters and the Easybeats,’ David Day and Tim Parker write in their 1987 history of Adelaide rock and pop, ‘were probably the two major bands to actually start what has now become known as the Australian sound’, adding rather needlessly that ‘the Masters were really a band that created their own sound . . . It was an Australian sound.’165
The new group covered Adelaide in advertising stickers166 and had a residency in a café over a fish and chip shop in Glenelg. They then found a venue that was arguably more appropriate: the Beat Basement, a club with a ‘rounded ceiling, so it was much like a tunnel.’167 Other bands playing there – according to Keays – included a slew of intriguingly named outfits such as the Others, Blues Rags ’N’ Hollers, Dust and Ashes, Y?4, 5 Sided Circle, and the Syssys.168 The next major venue for the Masters was the Octagon in Elizabeth, where they became the ‘biggest drawcard.’169 They would then move on to regional tours in South Australia, including the industrial town of Whyalla and the ‘Cornwall of the south’, the Yorke Peninsula.170
In 1966 the Masters’ Mick Bower and Rick Morrison made up a song in the studio, possibly at the suggestion of engineer/producer Max Pepper. They called it ‘Undecided’, and it brought together all the tricks they’d learned as an R&B pop band. Pepper, an Adelaide personality, was remembered decades later for having sold posters of James Dean’s mangled car at rock and roll parties171 and for his Gamba studio, which included a Moog synthesiser and became a ‘centre for experimentation’172 at night. Pepper achieved the echo effect on Keays’s vocal from what he called the ‘government garage across the road’ from his studio;173 the crickets that can be heard on the song were, however, unintentional. In a story that seems quite common amongst groups at this time (the same thing supposedly happened to Zoot), however extraordinary it may seem, the band were unaware that ‘Undecided’ had been released until they heard it on the radio.
The Masters moved to Melbourne, living at first in an unromantic caravan park in Sunshine.174 ‘When we went to Melbourne eventually,’ Keays recalled in Parker and Day’s book, ‘we were branded a new wave sort of band because of our looks.’175 Their record label, Astor, sent them to Armstrong’s in Albert Park Road to record:176 amongst his other achievements, house