Long Way to the Top

It's the early 1950s and Australia is enjoying a period of post-war calm. On the wireless, amongst the radio-plays, variety shows and deep-voiced announcers are the sounds of Nat King Cole, Benny Goodman or perhaps Tex Morton... lurking beneath this idyllic newsreel exterior was something far more rebellious... the cult of the 'teenager', looking for something to hang their angst upon. The hook was rock and roll! The years were 1956–1964. From rock and roll films to the race to be first, from the recording studio to the crazes that swept the nation. One craze that stayed was Surf Culture. These were wild times indeed.[6]

In the early sixties a new wave of rhythm and blues arrived in Australia with a Liverpool accent, imported in the cardboard suitcases of young British migrants. These pale, skinny kids in tight suits performed strange tribal dances to a sound born in the Mississippi delta.[7]

Australia took some strange turns in the late 1960s. Something happened for which our convict past had not prepared us: the hippy movement landed and took root. Music was the chosen vehicle for an alternative lifestyle which landed like an extra terrestrial invasion. Suddenly everything was 'out there'. Even 1960s pop bands like the Masters embraced the new voice: 'Do what you want to do, be what you want to be, yeah!'[8]

Australia in the 1970s took the larrikin image to new extremes, including our own native youth – the sharpies. This was the sort of crowd musicians of the time might have to entertain. Some tried explosives, some tried school uniforms, some tried makeup, whatever it took as bands did battle in every pub and living room across the nation. The new wave of Australian hard rock started deep behind the walls of an unassuming concrete bunker in the Sydney suburb of Burwood. Holed up inside were three Scottish brothers.[9]

In 1983, Comedian Austen Tayshus made the country's biggest selling single ever "Australiana". Everything in the 1980s in Australia had to be big. For the followers of a small new movement called Punk the challenge was to be heard at all, over the din of excessive self-promotion. This generation of musicians would ask themselves the question: excess or exile? This was the decade when Australians realised they had something of which to be proud. Just like the tourist commission, the local music industry was proud of Australia and ready for the biggest challenge of all: selling Australia's bands to the Americans. It was a group of survivors from the sixties who devised the initial marketing strategy: give the Americans something they could relate to – more American music. Little River Band's world was mellow. A southern comfort zone stuck somewhere in the recent past. But not everyone was into it.[10]

The history of Australian rock has one recurring theme – it's the story of music described as 'alternative' becoming the 'mainstream'. As the century ended, new technology allowed more people than ever before to make their own music and to get it heard. Suddenly, there were many forms of popular music and the notion of a music mainstream began to disappear. For rock and roll artists, the biggest challenge was to breathe life into an old dog – before they were swamped by an enormous tide of beats – dance music. When three brothers strutted down a Miami street in 1977 they started the whole world dancing – and most of Australia with it.[11]