This time we made a pact that we’d only give out our address to the ‘more mature’ girls – on the condition it was viewed as privileged information and not to be shared.
Our next address, in Alexandra Street, East St Kilda, was a different dynamic. After sleeping in single beds and sharing the same bedroom in Tiuna Grove – which we both agreed seemed highly incompatible to our idea of a proper ‘Rock Star’ lifestyle – we decided in our wisdom that this next abode would see us in our very own separate bedrooms. Every weekend, and sometimes during the week, the parties would start and we’d arrive home after playing our gigs to find things already in full swing. Musicians, entertainers, roadies and others would get word that there was always a party at Beeb and Barry’s. It was a wonderful time to be a red-blooded young man in the entertainment industry.
Leading Australian music magazine Go-Set ran an annual Pop Poll and bands such as Zoot, The Town Criers, The Masters Apprentices, Doug Parkinson in Focus and The Valentines, featuring Bon Scott on lead vocals, shared similar popularity. In ’69, ’70 and ’71, Zoot and The Town Criers polled in the top 10 most popular acts. The competition between bands was friendly but strong and it wasn’t a pleasant pill to swallow whilst flatting with Beeb to discover Zoot polled No. 1 in the ’69 poll, with The Town Criers coming in at No. 6. You can’t imagine my relief the following year when Zoot polled No. 5, with the Criers at No. 4! Pride, ego and dignity simply won’t allow me to print the top 10 positions for ’71!
Vince Lovegrove, who shared the singing duties with Bon Scott in The Valentines, became a part-time journalist with Go-Set and it wasn’t long before the opinionated singer ruffled the feathers of many a fellow musician/entertainer. Zoot found themselves on the end of some of his barbed comments, as did the Criers, and I remember walking into the kitchen and finding a Go-Set mag featuring a photo of Vince – complete with daggers, sketched in ballpoint pen, protruding from all parts of his body. Signed, Beeb!
A number of years later, after hearing Vince was struggling financially when his wife, Suzi, and their young son, Troy, were diagnosed with AIDS, Beeb and his wife, Donna, sent him $1000.
Even though Beeb was prone to the occasional mood swing – and you were never quite sure if you were directly responsible for it or not – living with him was generally a delight. Anyone who’s spent a reasonable amount of time with Beeb will most likely have had the pleasure of him entertaining them with his extraordinary, uncanny and hilarious chimpanzee impersonations. One could be excused for thinking they gave credence to Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species.
When not rehearsing, touring or playing gigs around the country, Beeb and I spent many days and nights sharing a brandy and dry, smoking cigarettes and listening intensely to records. We had very similar music tastes, often exclaiming to each other, ‘Listen to this!’, as we mimicked on ‘air instrument’ a beautiful Herbie Flowers bass line or a Roger Pope drum fill from the Tumbleweed Connection album, or a harmony at the end of a Crosby, Stills & Nash vocal line that seemed to linger forever.
We were listening to music by: Three Dog Night, Humble Pie, Jack Bruce, The Beach Boys, Spooky Tooth, Neil Young, Poco, The Rascals, Small Faces, The Who, Free, Chicago, Traffic, Nina Simone, Sam Cooke and many, many other artists.
Beeb would sit there listening intensely and absorbing the music like a sponge, frequently alerting me to a subtle vocal or musical lick in a song that impressed him and that I might not have noticed. I have no doubt that what he listened to and soaked up musically during these days became a major influence on his songwriting development in the years to come, particularly with the Little River Band (LRB).
Beeb was developing musically with Zoot as well, and, ironically, the gimmick of wearing pink, which helped launch Zoot so effectively, came back to bite them firmly on the arse. Music was getting heavier, more serious and, for better or worse, more self-indulgent. Beeb and Zoot wanted desperately to be taken more seriously and wearing pink was not conducive to that, especially amongst the male members of their audience.
I recall arriving home late one night, shortly after Beeb. We’d both been gigging and he was in a foul mood. Dianne, Pam and I asked him what was wrong and he explained how he and Zoot had been pelted with tomatoes and other assorted extremely ripe fruit, and he was ‘over it!’ I tried my best to lend him a sympathetic ear, before turning on my heels, scuttling to my room, closing the door behind me and almost vomiting with laughter.
Our last year or so of living together was in a house in Westbury Street, Balaclava, and while I was still partying and contemplating my future, Beeb tended to opt for more ‘alone’ time in his new, larger room. This became the embryonic stage of his songwriting career and a time where he practised and developed his guitar skills as he was rapidly tiring of playing bass. He would play us pieces of songs he’d been working on, during and after completion. There weren’t many, but he was only just starting.
After submitting a few of these songs to Zoot in the hope of them playing and/or recording them, he came home dejected and extremely pissed off.
“What’s up, lad?” I asked.
“Rick Springfield rejected my songs!”
I believe this only served to make him more determined and fuelled his desire to work harder.I can only imagine the enormous sense of satisfaction he must have felt when he provided LRB with their first single, ‘Curiosity (Killed The Cat)’. To quote one of Australia’s finest ever rock journalists, the late Ed Nimmervoll:
“LRB were the first Oz act to achieve gold status [in the US]. Beeb was the heartbeat, integrity and intangible glue to LRB, more interested in making an essential contribution than dominating the spotlight…”
He adds:
“Beeb’s songs had, and have, heart. If you knew Beeb, you knew how true his songs were to his own life experience.”
I couldn’t have expressed it better. Beeb does have more integrity than most people I’ve met, which is not extremely common in the entertainment industry, and he’s also one of the most decent human beings I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.
Last year whilst holidaying in Thailand, I was conned and ripped off badly by someone who I was lending support to, who I thought was a dying friend. Beeb recorded several CDs of artists we listened to during our years of living together. He sent them to me with a card attached: ‘Hi Baz, I’m sending you these CDs to cheer you up.’
This display of thoughtfulness, compassion and kindness from Beeb was not uncommon.
Apart from the fact that from all our years flatting together, sadly, neither of us has a single photograph taken together, I probably have two other regrets: One is we never sat down with a guitar and said: “Hey, let’s see if we can put some ideas together and come up with something.” The second regret is that in all the years we’ve known each other we’ve never performed together. But I’m pleased to say that this might soon change. At the time of writing this foreword, Beeb and I have been informed that we are about to be inducted into the South Australian Music Hall of Fame. I’m sure there’d be those who might question my induction, but nobody on this planet would question Beeb’s. His words to me were: “Hey, I’d love us to perform together on the night … wouldn’t that be fun?”
I feel thrilled, flattered and honored by this induction, particularly as it’s from our hometown, but no more thrilled, flattered and honored as I am to have been asked to write this foreword and finally get to perform with my dearest friend, Beeb Birtles.
Barry Smith
2017
BEEB BIRTLES BIOGRAPHY
The world knows Beeb Birtles through his association with Little River Band – the Australian-based group that conquered the international music scene on stage and on record for a decade from 1975 – the first Australian act to achieve gold record status in the USA.
In Australian terms Little River Band was a “supergroup”, made up of band members who came into the