I also saved my money and bought my own pair of Beatle boots that I kept at my friend’s place.
Richard Trout and his sister, Charmaine, lived on the corner of Harvey Avenue and Beare Avenue. Whenever I went out, I swung by their house and swapped my shoes for my Beatle boots. I grew my hair as long as I could get away with at the front but the back remained short. It was my feeble attempt at looking cool. It was a ridiculous look when I see old photos of myself now!
Most of my friends were mods, not rockers, and we used to go to a shop in Rundle Street called Scott’s Menswear, where we could get tartan pants and bright-coloured silk shirts made – it was the happening look at the time. Scott’s was downstairs from a long narrow snack bar called J. Sigalas & Co., where we used to buy pop dogs. The owner took long bread rolls and slid them onto metal rods that heated the inside of the bread. When he removed the warm bread roll, he’d squirt tomato sauce or mustard into the bottom of the roll, followed by the hot dog. Those pop dogs were outrageously delicious!
My old friend and fellow music lover, Valda Rubio (née Valtenbergs), remembers this:
The cultural phenomenon of the mods (and later the sharpies) came straight out of the UK. Every weekend scores of young men would assemble outside The Scene in Pirie Street, until a suitably attired mod damsel would choose one, on the basis of his haircut, cravat and scooter (the Vespa was far more superior to the Lambretta), then to be whisked off to adventures unknown.
At the end of the night the summary of events could include driving twenty-abreast on Anzac Highway and gate-crashing parties. It was seen as an honour if a scooter gang discovered your 21st and demolished the food and drink. I was over the moon when they turned up at my party and parked their scooters all over my parents’ lawn in middle-class Beaumont.
For my fifteenth birthday, my parents bought me a Maton Alver acoustic guitar that was right-handed. It was cherry red, the kind that had F holes in it. Being left-handed I immediately turned the guitar over and tried to play it upside down. It was hopeless trying to form chords with my left hand so I flipped the strings over and tried to form chords with my right hand. That still didn’t work because the bridge was set at a slight angle to compensate for the thickness of each string. No matter how I tried I couldn’t get the guitar in tune so I gave up.
My parents’ friends Ary and Jan van Tielen had also chosen to live in Adelaide. However, Ary had returned to Holland after two years, which was the minimum period immigrants were required to live in their country of choice. Jan stayed for five years before moving to California in June 1964.
Because of the difference in voltage between Australia and the US, electrical appliances had to be left behind. When Jan left he sold his combination radio and record player to my parents who bought it for my sixteenth birthday in 1964. The bonus was that I also inherited Jan’s small record collection. I didn’t care that it was second-hand, I was thrilled to have my own record player and my ears became glued to the radio. This was by far the best birthday present my parents had ever given me!
Jan left behind 45s as well as long-playing records. A couple of albums I inherited were Rock Around The Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets and One Dozen Berrys by Chuck Berry. I also had an extended long play album by a singer called Dick Haymes, who was popular in the ’40s and ’50s in the US.
Some of the singles were ‘Shop Around’, with ‘Who’s Lovin’ You’ on the B-side, by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, ‘Mule Skinner Blues’ by Rusty Draper, and ‘Do Not Forsake Me: (The Ballad of High Noon)’ by Frankie Laine. I had a Teresa Brewer single, the name of which escapes me now, plus quite a few other records by popular artists of the day. The Kriesler record player awakened my passion for music.
I was already interested in the hit parade of the day. The most popular radio station in Adelaide was 5DN and every week in The News they printed the 5DN Big Sixty, the top sixty records of the week. This was before the term Top Forty was coined.
Printed in a little separate section underneath the chart they listed the five predictions of songs waiting to get in as the older songs slipped out. Every week I cut the charts out and kept them on a clipboard. And every week I would accurately predict which songs dropped out and which ones made it into the charts.
Once the British invasion was under way I bought the English music magazine Fab. Each issue was jammed with great photos of the latest English rock bands. Bands whose records we heard on the radio. My bedroom walls were covered with photos of them, from the floor to the ceiling.
We watched national television shows like Rock Around The Clock and Bandstand, which featured all the current pop stars and bands. The Easybeats were the most popular Australian band. They were made up of Dutch, English and Scottish migrants. I bought their very first album.
I could name dozens of artists who appeared on television around that time. The Bee Gees were regulars on Bandstand as were the duo of Olivia Newton-John and Pat Carroll. Little Pattie and The Delltones were also regular guests. Then there were The Atlantics with their instrumental surf music, and Rob E.G. playing his Hawaiian steel guitar.
Rob would later form Sparmac, the label that recorded that first incredible Daddy Cool album, Daddy Who? Daddy Cool! He also produced Rick Springfield’s first solo single, ‘Speak To The Sky’, and ‘Feelings’, the first single for Darryl Cotton and me when we were in a duo known as Frieze. But all that was a long way ahead of me — in Adelaide in the mid ’60s, I had just started becoming a huge music fan, I was obsessed.
PLYMPTON HIGH SCHOOL
All through Primary School I was known by my given name of Gerard but, as I entered into Plympton High School in 1963, that was about to change.
The Dick Tracy Show was a popular cartoon series on television during those days. Some of the characters had names like Mumbles, Pruneface, Flattop, Itchy, Joe Jitsu and B.B. Eyes. I have no explanation for why but my school friends – it may have been Bruce Minerds, he was always the class comedian – started calling me B.B. Eyes and that’s how my nickname started. The name stuck and was soon shortened to B.B. and for the rest of my high school years that’s what I was called.
In my first year at Plympton High I met Peter Grigorenko who turned me onto new music. I distinctly remember him playing me Van Morrison’s second solo album, which was jazz-influenced, and Bob Dylan’s very first album. Out of my group of school friends Peter was ahead of his time when it came to music.
In my second year at high school I became very good friends with John D’Arcy. John’s family came from Manchester and they lived at Glenelg Migrant Hostel. John was a huge fan of The Hollies, a vocal harmony group from his hometown. The Hollies were also becoming extremely popular in England following the success of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Their first chart single was a cover of the Coasters’ 1961 single ‘(Ain’t That) Just Like Me’ from their début album Stay With The Hollies.
John and I were also fans of the English group The Zombies, who had a gigantic hit with ‘She’s Not There’. I can’t tell you how many shillings I spent selecting that song in jukeboxes all over Adelaide. It was so electrifying to hear the intro.
After dinner, I rode my bike to either Tony de Vries’ house or John’s place, where we learned some of the popular songs of the day. John played guitar and was great at working out the chords and then teaching us our respective harmonies.
Tony was another friend from Plympton High whose family had migrated from Holland. I went to his house every chance I got because he had a really good-looking sister. She was typically Dutch-looking with beautiful fair skin, a round open face and white blonde hair.
Alas, Tony didn’t last long with us. I don’t know if it was because he didn’t have the same passion for music or the fact that John’s family moved from the Glenelg Migrant Hostel to Christies Beach.
Gordon Rawson, another good friend from high school, sent me this memory:
John D’Arcy introduced us to the Liverpool sound and guitars. We all went to the Sheff’s College of Music and paid for ten music lessons. It was in Glenelg.