Shorrock’s retirement from performance was extremely temporary. Ian Meldrum had a knack for being on the spot when major splits were announced; he appears to have been the first journalist to be told the Beatles were breaking up, though it didn’t really register with him until he read the transcript of his interview in Go-Set. He was in the studio with the Groop (their ‘Woman You’re Breaking Me’, an early Brian Cadd songwriting venture, was a huge hit in 1967, kept out of the top spot only by Procol Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and the Beatles’ ‘All You Need is Love’),198 when he was told by Ronnie Charles that the band were ‘splitting up for all time and that Brian and Donnie were forming a new group.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous’, I said.
‘It’s true,’ said Ronnie.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.
‘Well I haven’t had much time to think about it,’ said Ron, ‘considering I only found out about it an hour ago.’199
Meldrum goes on to say that he has heard from the manager of Melbourne band the Iguana that Shorrock has quit as manager of the Brisbane Avengers, and from Vince Lovegrove that Doug Lavery is leaving the Valentines ‘to join a supergroup.’ Allegations then flew thick and fast – that Don Mudie and Brian Cadd had facilitated the breakup of the Groop to form Axiom, drawing members from the Valentines and Cam-Pact, and ‘immediately hailed as a supergroup’. The shake-up that led to the creation of Axiom was so intense that Go-Set created a table for its readers showing what the ramifications would be.200
For his part, Doug Lavery claimed he hadn’t enjoyed being in the Valentines because he didn’t like the music. Cam-Pact’s Chris Stockley stated that ‘Keith Glass and I had already decided to leave the Cam-Pact long before I heard from Brian. We were on the verge of forming a new group with Paddy from the Twilights – we still needed an organist. But that fell through when Keith went to Sydney to do Hair.’
Cadd announced that the scene needed ‘more groups working together, supergroups . . . intergroup performances’ and in one rumination he virtually wrote the Fable label/Bootleg family band manifesto:
There should be pop festivals. One thing I’ve noticed – there’s very little pop world social life. In Sydney they try, at places like Caesar’s and the Here, but all you end up [with] is a conglomeration of new groups . . . There’s so much unexploited talent around. Australia is probably the most talented country in the world . . . The best thing that would help Australia would be radio stations playing 90 percent Australian records, regardless of their quality . . . It’d be bad at first, but the standard would have to improve.201
Axiom retreated to the northern Victorian town of Nathalia, where Don Mudie’s family lived, and rehearsed in the local football club’s changing rooms for two weeks.202 They were initially uncertain whether to record or not, because they didn’t want to be tied into a contract that would spoil their international chances. If they were able to get a one-record deal, they were looking to record two songs. One of these would be a signature hit – Cadd’s lilting, hippie-ish ‘A Little Ray of Sunshine’.203
Shorrock’s departure from the Avengers’ management seemed a fait accompli; he had almost joined the group Ram Jam, ‘but they weren’t after the international acclaim and prestige so I decided against it’. Axiom’s attraction was ‘the fact that they wanted to go to England as much as I did.’
Plus, of course, the fact that they’re all known in their own right. I wouldn’t have been prepared to go through all that getting known again. I mean why should I? – I’ve been through enough of it.204
In hindsight it seems amusing that Go-Set felt the 26-year-old Shorrock was too old for the ‘limelight’.205
If Axiom’s Australian contemporaries Mississippi had an American name, Axiom had a contentiously ‘American’ song as their debut single: ‘Arkansas Grass’, a veiled critique of the Vietnam War in the guise of an American Civil War story. Its follow-up, the top-five hit ‘A Little Ray of Sunshine’, remains an Australian classic, and its quality was apparent even in 1970, when Jean Gollan wrote in Go-Set that ‘If ever a single seemed aimed at number one, this is it.’206 Ed Nimmervoll concurred, lauding Shorrock’s rendition of ‘a plaintive, caressing lyric to just bass and a growing string arrangement which builds into a full, thumping climax, only to grow soft again. Everything is just SO right.’207 Shorrock brought an element of comedic performance to Axiom’s live shows, just as he had done for the Twilights, and the band claimed ‘the progressive groups criticize them for the comedy aspect of their stage act’, which a Go-Set reporter described as ‘nearly always hilariously funny.’208 Shorrock was still playing Superdroop onstage (in fact, he won a talent contest during Axiom’s sea voyage to Britain).209
With his time as hit writer for the Groop under his belt, Cadd in particular was a name to be reckoned with at this time, and big things were expected of Axiom. Go-Set reported that ‘Axiom intend to play the whole English scene very cool – they regard it as the first step in their real ambition, which is to get to America with some sort of name behind them, and perhaps a couple of English records.’210 Their album Fools Gold was accompanied by a 20-minute colour film ‘made for the overseas market’.211
There were two warning signs, though neither seemed terribly ominous at the time. One was the lone dissenting voice of critic Ed Nimmervoll, who wrote that ‘Axiom lack just one thing – a something which is pure, unmistakable Axiom.’212 The other was the insistence by Sitmar, the shipping line which took them to Britain, that they strike a nautical pose on the cover of their album: for Cadd the cover ‘remains one of the truly great mockeries of a rock band.’213 The group lasted long enough to return to Australia once, but their second trip to London saw them break up almost immediately, in March 1971.214
Axiom’s story was that of the Twilights and the Groop all over again. Cadd returned to Australia and produced a vast and impressive body of work in the early to mid 70s, including advertisements, hit singles, television themes and film soundtracks: he was immortalized in 1974 after writing the theme song to the film Alvin Purple – but also by being discussed in the film itself, which was at the time the most commercially successful Australian movie ever released.215
Shorrock remained in Britain after Axiom’s demise and joined a British-Belgian orchestral jazz-rock outfit called Esperanto, which released three albums; this band recorded at least one Shorrock song (‘Statue of Liberty’) which would also be released by the Little River Band, and reputedly also performed (but did not release) Shorrock songs that are now seen as LRB standards, including ‘Help Is on Its Way’ and ‘Emma’. He also released solo singles, including the strangely meta ‘Let’s Get the Band Together’.
Shorrock’s star would not shine in the USA the way he hoped until an unusual combination of celebrity musicians came together in Little River Band in the early 70s; this process is described in chapter 8. In the meantime, future bandmate Beeb Birtles was suffering the indignity of being sponsored by the Frieze clothing company. After the breakup of Zoot, Birtles and Darryl Cotton formed a duo that was forced to take the name Frieze, and the company – perhaps unable to get over the Think Pink days – insisted they adopt silly, clothing-related names, though of course only Birtles needed to do so. ‘Darryl Cotton was okay, he was Cotton, right?’ Birtles told Parker and Day in 1987. ‘But they wanted to call me something like Terry Lene. and I was supposed to have a brother called Crepe Lene . . . ’216 The duo played shows in department stores to a pre-recorded backing track; they had a genuinely grotesque song, ‘Why Do Little Kids Have To Die’. Not long after their album was issued, credited to both ‘Frieze’ and ‘Birtles and Cotton’, Birtles joined up with