Carry On Touring: when The Who and The Small Faces hit town

The Who and The Small Faces on the same bill: it’s almost too monumental a concept for my brain to process. And in 1968, no less! A pretty exciting year for both bands, now past their mod heyday and on the verge of mind-bending new musical explorations, such as Tommy (still taking shape in Pete Townshend’s fevered brain at that point) and Ogdens’ Nutgone Flake.

How could such a line-up go wrong? Well, by all accounts, it could — and did — when both groups headed Down Under for a ‘Big Show’ tour of Australia and New Zealand along with Paul Jones (ex-Manfred Mann). Having recently read A Fortnight of Furore, a book by Andrew Neill about this infamous tour, I was surprised to learn what a complete and utter schmozzle it was. 

It seems Australia just wasn’t ready for The Who and The Small Faces: our media and police treated them as a threat to public decency rather than visiting artists, and our venues were woefully under-equipped for their rock’n’roll onslaught. Throw in a highly strung air-hostess with an axe to grind, and it’s no wonder Pete Townshend vowed never to return.

The build-up

By the time the Big Show rolled into Melbourne after legs in Brisbane and Sydney, the madness was well entrenched. The local gutter press had been in attack mode from the moment the bands touched down on Aussie soil, accusing them of being dirty drug-taking Poms here to corrupt the nation’s teenagers and panning the concerts with great relish. 

Among other things, The Who and The Small Faces were dubbed ‘pouting princes of popdom,’ ‘scruffy, guitar-twanging urchins,’ and ‘pop show louts’. Some journalistic bright spark even nicknamed The Small Faces ‘The Small Faeces’! Strangely enough, neither band responded well to this kind of treatment, and press conferences tended to be fraught affairs. (The more wholesome Paul Jones didn’t seem to evoke such an extreme reaction)

Page from tour program

And another page from tour program

Tour program again: yep, you could take this one home to meet your gran

Then there were the technical malfunctions. In Brisbane, The Who requested a 1000-watt sound system and received a 100-watt system; in Sydney, the rotating stage got stuck mid-concert and The Small Faces (who made no attempts to hide their irritation) were pelted with coins by disgruntled punters. What’s more, Pete Townshend managed to spear one of The Small Faces’ Marshall amps with his guitar in Sydney, damaging a speaker and causing temporary friction between the two bands.

Add to this a taste for hotel hell-raising that – surprise, surprise – usually involved Keith Moon, and the scene was set for the Melbourne leg of the tour to be every bit as controversial as what had come before. And so it was, starting with Pete Townshend punching out an obnoxious journalist at their airport press conference, and Keith Moon chucking a snare drum through the window of his room at the Southern Cross Hotel soon after arriving!

From the tour program: check out this jaw-droppingly dorky ad for the Southern Cross Hotel!!

The concerts

Compered by legendary radio DJ Stan Rofe, the Melbourne concerts took place at Festival Hall on Thursday 25 and Friday 26 January, with performances at 6pm and 8.45pm both nights. As well as Sydney band The Questions (who’d been on the bill from the beginning, in their own right and as backing band to Paul Jones), local act The Dream joined proceedings, having beat out the cream of Melbourne’s rock bands in a ten-pin bowling tournament for the honour. From all accounts, they didn’t set the world on fire. 

Stan Rofe, sometimes known as the 'rocky jockey'

In fact, if you believe the reviews, the whole shebang was a bit… umm… forgettable. In a review entitled ‘Desecration in my generation’, one journo described The Who’s equipment-smashing finale as ‘oh, so predictable and really so dull’, and the evening as ‘boring, amateurish and altogether wasted.’ His waspish conclusion? ‘Britain has more than economic problems’.

Even Rofe, usually a passionate supporter of young bands, wrote in Go-Set that the audiences were ‘unenthusiastic’ and went so far as to suggest that The Small Faces were a fraud. ‘Tunes like “Itchycoo Park” and “Tin Soldier” bore little resemblance to the real thing. So different did they sound, it made me believe that a bunch of studio musicians were used on their records’. Meanwhile, The Who’s destructo antics left him ‘with a feeling of nausea, if not sudden longing for the smallest room in the stadium.’ Ouch.

But reports from fans themselves paint a far different picture. On an odd, unofficial Who website I stumbled across while researching this post, a certain John Moon (yes) recalls being an impressionable 14-year-old at his first ever concert: “Fuck…what an introduction … I remember seeing a row of MARSHALL stacks (I think there were 4 of these (at the time) giants across the stage...could have been 6) on stage and for those days it looked quite awesome...”

While Moon says The Small Faces were “great” and played all their hits, he saves his most lavish praise for The Who…

“Finally on came THE WHO.....they were absolutely AWESOME!!!! The birdman was doing his windmills, Daltrey was swinging his mic, Moon was just goin' for it on the kit and John Entwistle was a rock of Gibraltar holdin’ it all together. 

“Townshend was playing a blue Fender Stratocaster with a white scratch plate and during SHAKIN' ALL OVER the guitar neck snapped off midway thru the song and he just threw it across the floor backstage and was given STEVE MARRIOTT'S black Les Paul to play. When the song finished, Townshend explained to the audience that his roadies loosen the bolts at the back of the neck/guitar body join so he won’t hurt his hands when he smashes it at the end of the show. The crowd were calling out to him to smash the Les Paul but he said he couldn’t cos it was Steve Marriott's guitar. The road crew then came back with his Strat bolted back together again. 

“Finally at the end of the show all hell broke loose on stage, the amps had smoke rising out of the top of the boxes and thinking of it now, it was obviously some special effect that was planned to go off cos the smoke was uniform from all amps and they all ‘smoked’ at precisely the same time....but it was very effective, no one had ever seen anything like this before.”

Another punter, Ian Clothier, adds that "‘awesome’ just doesn't seem enough to describe the effect this show had on us teenagers.” Apparently, one of his mates managed to nab a piece of Stratocaster scrap that flew into the audience when Pete smashed it, only to have it confiscated by a bouncer on the way out! The roadies would later rebuild the guitar as best they could, as the mounting costs of equipment damaged by The Who were getting out of hand.

Who was who (no pun intended) behind the scenes of The Big Show

Best tour poster ever! Designed by Go-Set's own Ian McCausland

High-altitude hi-jinx

Next stop was Adelaide, scene of the tour’s final Australian concert (on Saturday 27th January) before heading to New Zealand. As far as they were all concerned, Melbourne was behind them.

Despite knowing that their flight out of Adelaide departed early the next morning, the bands partied typically hard in their hotel that night, and were feeling a tad worse for wear when they boarded their Ansett plane at 7am. The tone was set when none of them returned the air hostesses’ cheery greetings upon entering the aircraft (with the exception of the ever-perky Paul Jones); and got steadily worse when the hosties blatantly overlooked them while serving tea and coffee to other passengers.

An ad for Ansett from the tour program. Let's hope Susan Jones wasn't the air hostess behind the dramas...

What happened next remains unclear, with conflicting accounts of the incident depending on who’s telling it. Tour manager Ron Blackmore; Production Manager for The Who, John “Wiggy” Wolff; Doug Parkinson (singer of The Questions), and Paul Jones all recall it slightly differently in A Fortnight of Furore. The general consensus seems to be that the grumpy, bedraggled and unwashed touring party offended the delicate sensibilities of one of the air hostesses, who not only refused to serve them, but gave them a right old ear-bashing before dragging the captain into it. The fact that members of The Questions were passing around a stubbie of beer they’d smuggled on board didn’t exactly help matters either.

The captain radioed ahead to Essendon Airport, where the bands and their entourage were informed they were under arrest and escorted to a VIP lounge by a posse of federal police to be interviewed.

 Slap-stick gold or what? Ronnie Lane recalled, “When we landed, there were all these police and television cameras there, and we were carted off. The television cameras were on the plane, so I said to everyone, ‘Go out with your hands on your head, and it’ll look like the plane was hijacked, it’ll look really good on TV,’ so we did!”

Kenney Jones adds: “They lined us all up on the tarmac, with our hands on our heads, and we’re saying ‘You can’t do this, we’re British!’ It was hilarious.”

Hello again, Melbourne!

Needless to say, the local media went into a feeding frenzy. So what if nobody (including those directly involved) knew exactly why the arrest had been made? These creative journos weren’t about to let facts get in the way of a good story. Reports of foul language, bare-arsed shenanigans, violence and public drunkenness were thrown about with merry abandon until a press conference was finally held, with Paul Jones acting as spokesperson. While he couldn’t shed much light on the situation, he confessed that beer was involved, as well as some colourful language — but “only the same bad language as you’ll find in practically any conversation.”

Eventually, after Big Show promoter Kenn Brodziak (who was spending a leisurely Sunday arvo at his mum’s house) was enlisted to pull some strings with airline owner Reg Ansett, the touring party was released without charge to catch a connecting flight to Sydney and from there on to Auckland.

No love lost

Interviewed about the incident in New Zealand, Pete Townshend explained as only he could:

“I don’t think the hostess fancied us much – she obviously didn’t like our long hair and appearance… when she saw the [beer] bottle, she refused to serve us coffee. The crew acted as if we were not there. We were victims. The crew set out to humiliate us and they succeeded. They ignored us as if there was something wrong with us. After all, we are young public figures and expect a bit of attention.”

But even after the tour was over and the bands were safely back in Blighty, Australia wasn't about to let matters drop. On February 17, 1968, a letter from Go-Set reporter Ed Nimmervoll was published in English magazine Melody Maker claiming the Small Faces’ shows were “disinterested” and “the Who’s much-vaunted stage act wasn’t much better.” (Before signing off, he helpfully suggested that these “British artists should have realised their vulnerability to knockers and with a little thought … steered clear of trouble. Just how masochistic is British pop?”)

Meanwhile, Victorian Premier Henry Bolte called them “a bunch of crummy hooligans” who fell far short of the “magnificent example” set by Australian folkies The Seekers.

Not a fan: Prime Minister John Gorton

But the cherry on top came courtesy of then-Aussie PM John Gorton, in the form of a telegram he sent to The Who. Wiggy Wolff recalls it as being along the lines of “Dear Who’s [sic]. We never wanted you to come to Australia. You have behaved atrociously while you’ve been here and we hope you never come back!”

Naturally, Pete Townshend shot off a reply, saying they’d never wanted to come to Australia, they’d had a terrible time here, and they would not be coming back.

As we all know, he kept his promise for a very long time…

A swingin’ summer: groovy Lorne

Of all the towns I’ve visited along the Great Ocean Road, Lorne has always struck me as the most similar to Melbourne. With its upmarket vibe, bustling main drag and manicured foreshore, it comes across like a well-heeled city suburb. Admittedly, I’ve never holidayed there, so my impressions could be way off the mark…

What I do know, however, is that during the 1950s and 1960s, Lorne was about as hip’n’happening as a Victorian holiday spot could be. Come summer, every man and his dog descended upon Lorne: from surfers to beach-babes; beatniks and rock'n'rollers to families on holiday. Hell, the only folks missing were Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon!

Not only did Lorne have sensational surf and idyllic beaches…

Loungin' around on the sand at Lorne. Photo: Trevor Lemke (via Wild on the Beach)

…it had a bohemian coffee house boasting one of the state’s first-ever cappuccino machines….

The Arab, Mountjoy Parade, Lorne. Photo: Trevor Lemke

…AND a jumping live music venue that hosted all the coolest Melbourne bands and hippest punters!

The Spinning Wheels in action at Lorne's Wild Colonial Club. Photo Trevor Lemke (via Wild on the Beach)

Why so serious? An unsmiling quartet of Wild Colonial Club-goers, 1960s. Photo: Trevor Lemke

Wild Colonials on the dancefloor. Photo: Trevor Lemke (via Wild on the Beach)

 Arabs and Wild Colonials

It’s hard to imagine what the town’s residents must have thought when local brothers Graham, Robin and Alistair Smith opened their coffee house The Arab in 1956. After all, this wasn’t moody Greenwich Village or downtown Paris, it was the sun-drenched Australian coast. But somehow, it worked. In his poem, “The Arab”, Lorne poet Hayden Rickey reminisces:

This is where in ‘58
In a summertime of fun
We scattered cushions on the floor
Then sat upon our bum
This is where the action was
The coffee strong, the best
Where plans were hatched for conning birds
Then practised with much zest.

Those little devils.

Caffeine kicks at The Arab (which still exists today, incidentally). Photo: Trevor Lemke (via Wild on the Beach)

By 1958, The Arab was so popular that the enterprising brothers decided to open a larger, live-music venue in an old hall down on the beach’s edge: The Wild Colonial Club. Starting out as a jazzer/beatnik haunt, it hit its rock’n’roll stride once surf culture took off in the early 60s.

Over the course of the decade, bands such as The Spinning Wheels, Max Merrit and the Meteors and The Loved Ones played to high-spirited crowds still buzzing from a day on the beach. (For more Lorne beach action, check out my post on Rennie Ellis’s immortal photos of the time)

Summer means fun: goin' off at the Wild Colonial Club. Photo: Trevor Lemke (via Wild on the Beach)

And if the wild tunes weren’t enough, likely lads such as Hayden Rickey (he of the ‘conning birds’ remark) and surfer Murray Walding (a surfing memorabilia nut who waxes nostalgic about the era here), were never short of a foxy chick to twist, stomp and flirt the night away with...

Lorne lassie. Photo: Trevor Lemke (via Wild on the Beach)

Far-out and fabulous! I want those earrings. Photo: Trevor Lemke (via Wild on the Beach)

Beach blanket bingo, baby! No doubt about it, Lorne was where it was at.

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. 

Holy go-go boots, Batgirl!

Stumbling upon this mind-blowingly groovy quartet of Bat-babes during my cyber-wanderings recently, I thought all my blogmases had come at once. Not only did the photo date back to 60s Melbourne, but it had a Batman theme - could the planets align any more perfectly?

But there's always a catch, isn't there?

Much like Jan Stewart, the mystery model I posted about last year (a helpful reader informed me that she ended up marrying Ian Turpie!), I encountered a big fat dead end when I tried to investigate these gorgeous Bat-chicks further. But here's the little that I do know...

This photo appeared in the 27 September 1967 issue of Go Set magazine, and was taken at the Coburg Town Hall, at a Saturday-night dance called 'Swinger'. Can't you just imagine the search results that Google threw at me when I tried to look into that?!

The Coburg Town Hall was a popular live music venue during the 60s, hosting everyone from The Strangers to Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs and The Masters Apprentices. And sometimes the occasion would be Swinger...

I don't know how long Swinger lasted, but if the advert above is any indication, it was Melbourne's own 'big established fun centre'. Indeed.

And the Batgirls? I have a suspicion they were go-go dancers and seem to remember once seeing a photo of Denise Drysdale shakin' it with some Batgirls (that's not her on the left of the image above, is it? There's a certain likeness but I'm not convinced), but can't find anything to either support or refute this notion.

I do know that the character of Batgirl was introduced in season three of the original Batman TV series, which went to air in - you guessed it - 1967. 

If there's anyone out there who knows anything else about this photo (including the name of the photographer and who the chicks are), the Swinger dance, or even just what it was like going to gigs at the Coburg Town Hall, please get in touch and put me out of my misery!

Petrol fumes: an old revhead remembers Riverside Dragway

Boy racers are so tedious. Arrogant little louts in their foul plastic-looking cars, with outsized spoilers and peanut-sized – ahem – brains, driving way too fast, drag-racing down public thoroughfares and endangering other motorists and pedestrians as they go. I bet none of them have ever heard of the old Riverside Dragway in Fishermans Bend.

My colleague Norm, who’s always boasting about what fun it was to grow up in 1960s Melbourne, used to go and watch the Riverside drags as a teenager. As its name suggests, Riverside Dragway was by the Yarra, on the airstrip of the Commowealth Aircraft Factories behind the GMH engine plant. No sign of it remains today – it’s just some industrial estates (and a go-karting complex) in the shadow of the Westgate Bridge. But between the late-50s and late 1966, it was the epicentre of Aussie drag-racing. 

Cool and cooler: Riverside draggin'. Still taken from this video 

Now on the other side of 65, Norm’s memories of the races can be kinda …impressionistic. But piece them together and you get some idea of what it must’ve been like down there by the river, amid the smoke and noise, watching a bunch of petrolheads burning down the quarter-mile with minimal safety regulations and the occasional visiting pop star...

"Whacky hillbilly sorts"

When asked what the drivers were like, whether they were a bunch of bodgies or what, Norm says, “You had to be a bit of a hoon. But even now dragster guys are different from the circuit racers. They’re a different breed —whacky hillbilly sorts, revving ‘er up— compared to, say, Nascar, where they speed around in one direction until their head falls off.” Umm, right – thanks for clarifying that.

One driver Norm recalls is Ash Marshall, a Sydney car dealer specialising in luxury Yank tanks (doesn’t sound very hillbilly to me!), who brought down “Australia’s first top-fuel dragster, you know the big American-style car”. 

Ash Marshall (front) and Jack 'Fizzball' Collins (far lane), at the Riverside Drags, 1965.
Photo: courtesy www.moondog.net.au

However, young Norm wasn’t impressed. “He couldn’t even get one run out of it! It was so high-powered, he couldn’t get it started. I’d been really looking forward to seeing him blast down the track in his supercharger, but it just made a few banging noises. Someone in a car like that [see below] ended up winning, I reckon in 11.1 seconds."

“There was no money in drag-racing. Not like circuit racing where you had the likes of Norm Beechey, Bob Jane and Jim McKeown. Drags never attract the same crowds; I don’t think we’ve had any heroes in Australian drag-racing like Don Garlits in America, say … Drag-racing is always the poor cousin." 

Who needs safety precautions when there's no speed? 

Victoria hasn’t always been the nanny state it is today, and Norm tells me the safety standards at Riverside were what you might call relaxed. 

“At Riverside, I don’t remember any barriers around the crowd. If someone wandered onto the track, it didn’t really matter. As to who they’d let race, there weren’t the scrutineers they have today.” He adds, “There wasn’t all the safety, but there wasn’t all the speed either … we’re just talking fun.”

Driver Darryl Harvey on the grid, Riverside Drags, 1960s. Photo: Clive Windley

An FC Holden, waiting to start, Riverside, 1964. Photo: Clive Windley.
You can check out a whole series of amazing drag-racing photos by Mr Windley here.

A very Australian kind of fun, at that. “It wasn’t like the American dragstrips, where they pretend they’ve got a Ford but it’s really made out of fibreglass and has 5000 horse power. There was none of that silliness; it was just blokes in their cars, maybe with an extra-big carby or something like that. I remember one Morris Minor that was fast off the mark: I it had a Holden engine in it. The guy practically sat out the windscreen, he was perched so high up."

“In drag racing these days they’re hitting 500k/h in the quarter mile, but things were very slow then.”

Not sure if this Ford Zephyr is a participant or an observer, but it's pretty damn sweet! Photo: Clive Windley

Nervous breakdown on a flat-bed truck

Everyone knows drag-racing’s better with a rockin’ soundtrack, and Norm was lucky enough to catch Melbourne’s own Merv Benton performing at the Riverside between races.

“You’ve got to remember, he was a bit of a pop star at the time. He performed on the back of an open-tray truck; he did “Nervous Breakdown”. That was pretty cool, I hadn’t seen a dude like him before. Bit of a change from Bing Crosby!”



Sadly, Norm can’t recall seeing any other entertainers down at the drags. “You’re stretching my brains a bit! I don’t even remember how often they had a meeting.” I think it’s safe to assume that only Merv made an impression. 

Any final words, Norman? “I was down at the docks the other day, and was thinking how ironic it is that on one side we’ve got General Motors, which has stopped making cars, and right nearby, we’ve got 1100 cars a day arriving from overseas.” Ain’t that the truth. 

News flash: in a remarkable piece of serendipity, Norm has just told me he used to live across the road to Tom Cowburn from The Spinning Wheels (see my previous post) back in the day. Apparently, when the band got successful, Tom went out and bought himself a Jag, which he took to the same mechanic that Norm used for his Morris. The mechanic would complain to Norm about the Jag, saying, "Why didn't he just get a car like yours?", and whinging how hard parts were to get for it. Small world or what?!

Melbourne song of the month: "Shame, Shame, Shame"/The Spinning Wheels (September 1965)

A band’s name can tell you a lot about them, even before you hear their music. Take The Spinning Wheels. Even my old Aunty Lil, with her Vera Lynn records and True Detective magazines, would’ve been able to make the Rolling Stones connection. But unlike so many Melbourne groups of the time with aspirations to be our own Mick, Keef and co, The Spinning Wheels got there first. 

Early line-up of The Spinning Wheels. L-R: Glen Sievers, Don Hirst, Graham Lord, Rod Turnbull, Mike Perrin.

When The Spinning Wheels formed in early 1964, the Stones hadn’t quite taken off in Australia and Melbourne’s live music scene still had a strong rocker element. But the screaming tidal wave of Beatlemania had already landed; and the floodgates opened pretty fast after that. 

But where the Fab Four were loveably pop, many of the other British groups that emerged in their mop-topped wake were tougher, heavily influenced by black American blues and r’n’b. The Stones, The Pretty Things, The Animals and The Yardbirds (to name a few) — these were the bands that inspired guitarists Don Hirst and Michael Perrin, and drummer Graeme Lord, to blow the folk/skiffle scene they’d been hanging round in and embrace the beat explosion.

The band playing at daytime CBD venue The Bowl in 1964

Add singer Rod Turnbull and bassplayer Glen Sievers (lead guitarist Tom Cowburn came a bit later) to the equation, and The Spinning Wheels were born. Not everyone welcomed them with open arms: in their early days, they were occasionally beaten up by rockers who didn't dig their rootsy sound or mod aesthetic. They also copped a tongue-lashing from the judges of the talent show, "New Faces", who thought they were filthy reprobates! 

Fortunately, music promoter Brian de Courcy had better taste, and invited the Wheels to play at a popular weekly dance he ran in Mentone. Then Stones hysteria kicked off like a herd of stampeding wildebeest and suddenly every booker in town (and Lorne, but that’s a story for a different post) wanted a sound-alike. 

No prizes for guessing who they called. While most other local wannabe Stones combos were still getting their act together, The Spinning Wheels were already firing on all cylinders.

Anyone know what that cool guitar with the Florentine cut-outs is in the background?

The song

Not surprisingly, the band was snapped up by HMV, with whom they released four singles. Their high-spirited version of Jimmy Reed’s classic, “Shame, Shame, Shame” was the B-side of their third single, “You Can’t Catch Me” (the Chuck Berry number), and was recorded at St Kilda’s Telefil Studios with sound engineer Roger Savage (whose name has popped up in this blog more than once).

Where the original is cool and soulful and swingin’, The Spinning Wheels rendition is gritty and over-driven and struttin’. Rod Turnbull’s vocals are a world away from Reed’s southern tones, being closer to the snotty style of someone like Jim Sohn (Shadows of Knight).

In place of the bluesy harmonica solo that distinguishes the original, the Wheels let rip instead with a wild guitar rave-up, leaving the harmonica in the background. As close to fuzz as guitar got in those days, Tom Cowburn’s blistering sound was achieved when Savage split the cone in Cowburn’s little practice amp, cranked up the volume, and miked it up from behind — a trick he’d learnt back in London, where he'd worked with the Stones themselves.

A scorchin’ slice of r’n’b in the best blue-eyed British style, “Shame, Shame, Shame” doesn’t possess that indefinable ‘Aussie sound’ evident in some of the other songs featured on this blog, but it’s still a Melbourne classic… 

Time-tripping in the 1966 Lincoln Continental that belonged to Ford Australia’s head honcho

So apparently the GM of Ford Australia in the 1960s drove a 1966 Lincoln Continental – a right-hand drive model that was hand-built shipped over from the US especially for him. There doesn't appear to be any documented evidence to support this claim – but trust me, it’s the truth. How do I know? Well, because I was a passenger in this very car over the Christmas break!

And here it is. Holy Yank tanks, Batman, would you get an eyeful of that?

Stylin'.

Check out that rectangular beastliness: if that doesn’t look 70s, I don’t know what does. But no, this rumbling road-hog is definitely from 1966. Supposedly the 60s Lincolns were a deliberate departure from the fins and chrome-plated flamboyance of the 50s models.

Can’t you just imagine this thing cruising the mean streets of Geelong all those years ago? Personally I find it a bit odd that the top dog of Ford Australia didn’t support the national product by driving a Falcon XP, but hey, when you’re the boss, you can do what you damn well please. 

Imagine parallel parking this thing!

The Continental is currently owned by a Wollongong-based motoring enthusiast named Rob (let's just say it's one of his many two- and four-wheeled vehicles). Rob bought it off an old bloke called Kevin in Bathurst, who told him that Mr Ford Australia drove it until 1968 or 1969. Then he sold it to his mate, who subsequently sold it to Kev in 1981. But because the car's history started in 1960s Gee-troit, it more than qualifies for this blog.

Effortlessly outshining the ugly modern cars in the background

So what was it like to ride in? Smooooth, baby. We were driving through downtown Albury so there was no opportunity for hooning, but the sense of coiled power just waiting to be unleashed was palpable. Rob says the fastest he’s driven it was about 110 miles an hour:
"Whilst is it still amazingly smooth at that speed (approx 170kph), you are aware that you're moving a 5.6-metre and 2.5-ton object with only 1966 combination disk (front)/drum (rear) brakes to avoid Armageddon. I lack that bravery, I must say."

Inside, it’s super-flash, with all sorts of controls and fancy details. Some of them may be commonplace today but would've seemed positively space-age back in 1966.

Dash detail

Take a deep breath and repeat after me: ashtrays and cigarette lighters for every passenger (and the driver, of course), eight-way electric seat settings, cruise control, an eight-track player (Cosmo’s Factory by CCR was our motoring soundtrack) and separate AM/FM radio (with a foot switch to change the station!), air con and power windows (including power quarter vents). If you’d asked me whether power windows even existed in 60s Australia, I would’ve said hell no.

Inside door detail 

But wait, there's more! (Minimalism clearly was not a word in Lincoln's vocabulary).
Individual interior light switches for each passenger, vacuum-operated door locks on the driver's side to lock your passengers in, a foot-operated handbrake, hazard lights, variable-speed windscreen wipers, automatic boot release from inside the car... all topped off by a gas-guzzling, 462 cubic inch (7.6L) engine that Rob admits is "obscene and quasi-unspeakable by today's standards! Fuel consumption? Of no significance in 1966!"

No wonder the Lincoln Continental was the car preferred by US Presidents (although as Rob points out, "it didn't do JFK any favours -- a roof may have helped.")

Suicidal!

It was also a hit among US mobsters, thanks to probably its most noteworthy feature: rear-hinged ‘suicide’ doors. Yep, the back doors open backwards! Rob explains that suicide doors "allowed their dames to gracefully alight from the vehicle when draped in classy evening frocks (which was pretty much all the time). This, along with the car's vacuum locks and a trunk big enough to fit three bodies made it a firm gangster favourite."

Could that be why Ford Australia didn’t introduce them into any of their locally manufactured vehicles?