Coburg never had it so good

The Thumpin’ Tum, Sebastians, Catcher, Berties, Garrison, The Biting Eye, Opus… when I read about the legendary live music venues of 1960s Melbourne and the boss-bitchin’ bands they hosted, I can’t help thinking that the city’s current claim to be some kind of live-music paradise is a tad delusional. Yeah, so we may have more venues per capita than Austin, Texas – and we’ve sure got a surplus of bands -- but how many of them (venues or bands) will be remembered in 50 years time?

But while information about most of the aforementioned venues is easily available with the most cursory of Google searches (and they’ll no doubt find their way into this blog at some point), there is one Saturday-night dance about which I simply cannot find any details, save what I posted earlier this year. Yep, we’re talking ‘Swinger’ at the Coburg City Hall: home to those bodacious Batgirls.

Go-Set, August 20 1967: the Batgirls seen around the scene (Adam West would flip his wig)

Now before you get any inappropriate ideas, let me clarify: it’s not the name of the night that's piqued my interest so much (which is a shame, really, because Google spits out plenty of search results of that nature).

What originally began as curiosity about Swinger's Batgirls has since cranked up several notches thanks to the following series of advertisements I came across in old, microfiched copies of Go-Set magazine at the State Library of Victoria when I was researching an article I was writing. They're just so evocative of the time...so eye-catching...so damn hyperbolic!

Amazing to think that wild nights like this….

From Go-Set, early August, 1967. So we can at least establish that the night started on August 12. of that year

...and this....

Go-Set, early August 1967

…were going down every Saturday evening here, in the stately surrounds of Coburg City Hall!



Of course, these days, instead of embracing the ‘Batman fantasy of gigantic sounds’ (oh how my mind is boggling!), the neighbours would complain about the noise.

Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs and the Chants? Wowsers

Northside was where it was at, baby!

Apologies for the wonky scans -- I was caught up in the fantastic mind-bending moment!

Although all the adverts featured here are from 1967, I believe Swinger lasted a good few years -- until at least 1969, when it played host to US band The Platters on one particular night, and The Easybeats on another. The Easybeats in 1969? That would have been a weird one, right at the tail-end of their career, when disillusionment and debt were dogging them, undermining all the brilliance that had gone before. 

From Go-Set, October 1967. 

From Go-Set, November 1967

Which brings me to the end of the small amount I know about Saturday nights at Swinger. By the way...anyone else agree that the two ads above look like lurid psychotronic movie posters?

There goes the neighbourhood! Billy Thorpe moves to East Melbourne

Wandering the wide, leafy streets of East Melbourne the other day, I was reminded what a civilised part of town it is. As if all its towering Victorian townhouses, Deco dazzlers and historic mansions weren’t enough, it’s got the picnic paradise of Fitzroy Gardens within cooee, and seems magically buffered from the incessant traffic noise that plagues most of the inner city. An oasis of gentility, a haven of refinement… And yet…

One of Australia’s rowdiest rock’n’rollers once lived — and partied hard — in these very streets! 

Banchory Cottage, Gipps St, East Melbourne: someone was inside, watching me from the front left window when I took this, so I didn't hang around trying to take a magnificent photo!

Yep, this unassuming little cottage in Gipps Street was once home to Billy Thorpe — at the height of his pub-rockin’, ‘sink-more-piss’ phase, no less. It was in this ‘house of lunacy’ that ‘a million brain cells died and the Sunbury Aztecs were born,’ recalls Thorpie in his second autobiography, Most People I Know (think that I’m crazy). Judging by his detailed descriptions of the nocturnal festivities that went down there, I’d say that was more like a trillion.

Joining Thorpie in this den of debauchery were his girlfriend Jackie and two of his bandmates, Paul Wheeler and Jimmy Thompson. They hit town from Sydney in December 1968, and within no time, a constant flow of freaks and friends was beating a path to their front door. 

After a few months of this madness, the desperately sleep-deprived singer resorted to a drastic measure. He nailed a big sign to the front door, emblazoned with the following hand-painted message:

To those about to knock. About every 8 minutes DAY and NIGHT some arsehole knocks on this door and I’m going fucking insane! My bedroom is the front window to your right and I haven’t slept in 6 fucking months. Regardless of what you’ve been told this is not the Melbourne Salvation Army, the Hilton or the Thumping Tum East, IT’S OUR HOUSE. We don’t save souls, take confessions, serve breakfast, arrange marriages, sell cars, arbitrate disputes, find lost dogs, supply inspiration, give spiritual guidance, sell drugs, bust virgins, counsel lost teenagers, or need your stimulating conversation. Therefore:-

• If you’re not bleeding from every orifice and about to die.

• If your gear hasn’t blown up and you need to borrow an amp.

• If you didn’t leave your clothes here last night and you’re naked in the street.

• If you’re not a philanthropist with a million dollars to give away.

• If you’re not a record company that wants to give us a deal.

• If you’re a debt collector.

• If you haven’t called so we know you’re coming.

• Or if you’re a copper without a legal search warrant then;

FUCK OFF!!!!

                        Peace and love

The sign wasn’t up for long. An outraged old lady called the cops, who made Thorpie take it down. 

Don’t you just love it that little gems of rock’n’roll history like this still exist in the most unexpected places? 

Another view

Postscript:

Personally I much prefer the early, Sydney-era Aztecs (not to mention Thorpie’s rollicking account of those years, Sex and Thugs and Rock’n’Roll), but Most People I Know is well worth a read for its vivid, bawdy depiction of Melbourne in the late 1960s.