The Masters Apprentices
Encyclopedia
The Masters Apprentices (or The Masters to fans) were an Australian rock
band
fronted by mainstay
Jim Keays
on lead vocals, which formed in 1965 in Adelaide
, South Australia
, relocated to Melbourne
in February 1967 and attempted to break into the United Kingdom market from 1970, before disbanding in 1972. Their popular Australian singles are "Undecided", "Living in a Child's Dream", "5:10 Man", "Think About Tomorrow Today", "Turn Up Your Radio" and "Because I Love You". The band launched the career of bass guitar
ist, Glenn Wheatley
, later a music industry entrepreneur and an artist manager for both Little River Band
and John Farnham
. The band reformed periodically, including in 1987–1988 and again subsequently; they were inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association
(ARIA) Hall of Fame
in 1998 alongside The Angels
. Both Keays, with His Master's Voice and Wheatley, with Paper Paradise, wrote memoir
s in 1999 which included their experiences with the band.
instrumental/dance band formed in Adelaide
in 1964 with Mick Bower on rhythm guitar
, Rick Morrison on lead guitar
, Brian Vaughton on drums
and Gavin Webb on bass guitar
. Initially they played covers of The Shadows
and The Ventures
songs. The band's output was profoundly influenced by the Australian tour of The Beatles
in June 1964, which had a particular impact in Adelaide, due to recent migrants from United Kingdom (UK). When The Beatles arrived in Adelaide they were greeted by the largest crowd ever seen in their touring career—estimates as high as 300,000 while Adelaide's population being less than 1 million—one-third of the city had turned out to greet them (see The Beatles' influence on popular culture
). Following The Beatles' chart breakthrough and tour, it was obvious that the surf/instrumental style was passé, The Mustangs changed style and took on a lead singer, Scottish
immigrant, Jim Keays
. The Mustangs rehearsed regularly in a shed behind a hotel owned by Vaughton's family. Their original manager, Graham Longley, made a tape recording of a rehearsal; it was rediscovered and released on CD in 2004 as Mustangs to Masters... First Year Apprentices. After Keays joined on lead vocals, the band produced more original songs in the beat
style.
The Mustangs established themselves on the thriving Adelaide dance circuit by playing in suburban halls and migrant hostels. They built a following with local teenagers, including migrants from the UK, which were an early influence on the band as they were directly in touch with current mod fashions, not as widely known in Australia.
, Bo Diddley
, Jimmy Reed
, Elmore James
and Robert Johnson". By early 1966 they were one of the most popular beat bands in Adelaide, regularly selling out concerts in the city, as well as making visits to outlying towns of Murray Bridge
, Mount Gambier
and Whyalla
. Their first TV appearance, on Good Friday
, was on a Channel 7
telethon hosted by Adelaide TV celebrity Ernie Sigley
. They entered the South Australian heat of Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds
and finished third behind The Twilights (eventual national winners).
Later in 1966, The Masters Apprentices shared a gig with pop star Bobby Bright of Melbourne duo Bobby & Laurie
, who was impressed and recommended them to his label, Astor Records
. A few weeks later, they were contacted by Astor, which requested a four-track demo
. The band went to a local two-track studio to record it, but realised that they had only three suitable songs to record. Needing a fourth track, guitarists Bower and Morrison wrote a new song, "Undecided", in about 15 minutes; the backing track was cut in about the same time. The title came from the fact that they were undecided about a name for the song when quizzed by the studio owner, Max Pepper. The biting fuzz-tone of Bower's guitar on the track was a fortunate accident; it was caused by a malfunctioning valve in his amplifier
, but the group liked the sound and kept the faulty valve in until after the session.
In August, the band made their first visit to Melbourne, which was at the time the centre of the burgeoning Australian pop scene. They made a strong impression with showcase performances at the city's leading discotheques, The Thumpin' Tum and The Biting Eye. Their debut single "Undecided" / "Wars or Hands Of Time" was released in October and gradually climbed the Adelaide charts, thanks to strong support from local DJs.
"Wars or Hands of Time", written by Bower, is the first Australian pop song to directly address the issue of the Vietnam War
, which was now affecting the lives of many young Australians because of the controversial introduction of conscription
in 1965. 20-year-old Keays was one of hundreds of potential conscripts whose birthday (9 September) was picked in a 1966 ballot. He was able to legally avoid the draft by signing with the Citizens Military Force
(CMF, later renamed the Army Reserve) and eluded a "short back and sides" haircut with the aid of his girlfriend, who pinned his long hair up under his slouch hat
whenever he attended CMF sessions.
During their second trip to Melbourne in late 1966, local radio DJ, Stan Rofe
, had picked up "Undecided" and was playing it regularly, their raw sound and wild stage act led him to state:
Rofe, also a columnist with pop magazine, Go-Set
, championed many Australian acts during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The band promoted "Undecided" on Melbourne TV series, Kommotion, where members met Ian Meldrum
who mime
d to "Winchester Cathedral
", Meldrum was also a staff writer for Go-Set and was later a record producer
, host of the influential TV pop show Countdown and a music commentator.
Returning to Adelaide, the band recorded more original songs, including Bower's "Buried & Dead", which became their second single, plus other tracks which were later on their debut LP album
. The success of the second trip made it obvious that they should turn professional and relocate to Melbourne. This led to the departure of original manager Longley and drummer Vaughton, both decided to remain in Adelaide.
to peak at #9 locally. Go-Set had published national singles charts since October 1966 and "Undecided" peaked at #13 in April. The group became established as one of Melbourne's top attractions, performing regularly at discos like Catcher, Sebastians, The Thumpin' Tum and The Biting Eye and at a multitude of suburban dances. Despite such popularity, they led a hand-to-mouth existence for the first year or so in Melbourne, often relying on the hospitality of fans and friends. In May 1967 "Buried and Dead" was released as their second single, and the band made a promotional film clip for TV (at their own expense), which is believed to be one of the first pop music video
s made in Australia. They also undertook their first trip to Sydney
, where they made a live appearance on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
(ABC) pop show Saturday Date, where they were chased by fans on their way to the studio and had their clothes partly ripped before appearing.
In June, Astor
released the group's self-titled debut LP, The Masters Apprentices (also styled as The Master's Apprentices), featuring earlier singles, several originals written by Bower, a cover
of Bo Diddley
's "Dancing Girl" and The Beatles
' "I Feel Fine
". Subsequent re-releases, including CD
in 1996, dropped The Beatles' "I Feel Fine" track and added two later singles, "Elevator Driver" and "Brigette".
By 1967 the group assimilated influences from the burgeoning psychedelic scene
; Keays maintains that it wasn't until some time after that they began to experiment with the drug LSD
. Nevertheless, their next single, Bower's "Living in a Child's Dream", is regarded as an early example of Australian psychedelic rock
and one of their greatest pop songs. It was recorded at the newly-opened Armstrong's Studios in South Melbourne
and like all their Astor cuts it was nominally produced by staff producer Dick Heming. According to Keays, Heming's input was limited and most of the production was by engineer Roger Savage with considerable input from Ian Meldrum. Released in August at the peak of the Summer of Love
, it reached Top Ten in most Australian capitals and peaked at #9 on Go-Sets Top 40. Both "Living in a Child's Dream" and "Undecided" ranked in the Top 5 Australian singles of 1967, and "Living in a Child's Dream" was voted Australian Song of the Year by Go-Set readers.
The success of the new single elevated the band as teen idol
s, but as pressures mounted lead guitarist Rick Morrison was forced to quit after passing out on stage during a concert in June, suffering a collapsed lung
. He was ordered to give up performing and was replaced by Tony Summers (ex-Johnny Young
's Kompany). Meanwhile concerts and tours continued, with the group playing up to fifteen shows per week. A tour of New South Wales
in July included some of the last pop shows staged at the Sydney Stadium
on 30 July, and at Sydney Trocadero
ballroom (both later demolished). Also in July, they made it to the national finals of Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds, representing South Australia, they finished second to Melbourne's The Groop
.
In September, while touring Tasmania
, the shy and sensitive Bower was found in his room in extreme distress, the promoter insisting they had to perform; faced with the prospect of going unpaid and being stranded in Hobart, they complied. Bower was dressed, taken to the concert and pushed on stage with his guitar around his neck; he stood motionless through the gig, arms hanging limp, and was hospitalised immediately after, suffering a severe nervous breakdown
, and was ordered to give up performing. He was sent home to Adelaide to recuperate, and only returned to live performance in the late 1970s.
The loss of Bower was a blow comparable to Pink Floyd
's loss of its early creative leader, Syd Barrett
, and threatened to end the band's career as it was taking off. Bower was central to their success, having written (or co-written) all their singles and all original tracks on their debut album. His forced departure left the group floundering, and they continued with de facto leadership passing to Keays. At the end of September, Keays and Webb chose Bower's replacement, guitarist Rick Harrison (ex-The Others) from Adelaide.
On 14 October, the band played a free concert in Sydney's Hyde Park
, as part of the Waratah Spring Festival. An estimated 50,000 fans packed into the park, but after only a few songs the concert degenerated into a riot. When the crowd surge threatened to crush audience members and topple the makeshift stage, police were forced to close the concert. Escaping band members were pursued by fans towards Kings Cross
. That same evening, still dazed by the afternoon's events, they headlined the Living in a Child's Dream Ball, organised by University of NSW students. Keays later described the event:
Newest member, Harrison quit immediately after these concerts and upon returning to Melbourne they recruited another lead guitarist, Peter Tilbrook from Adelaide band, The Bentbeaks. That band had released a single "Caught Red Handed", which had been banned by Melbourne radio in March for alleged obscenity. Not long after, Keays tried LSD for the first time. With Astor pressing for a new single, the band turned to their friend Brian Cadd
of The Groop, who had already written a number of songs for his own band and for other artists, including Johnny Farnham
. Cadd presented them with, "Silver People" co-written with The Groop's Max Ross, which was re-titled as "Elevator Driver" and released in February 1968 as their fourth single.
As 1967 ended the band's career reached a critical juncture. They still had no songwriter, and both drummer Steve Hopgood and lead guitarist Tony Sommers were becoming disenchanted with the band's erratic fortunes. Keays decided to replace them and also their second manager, Tony Dickstein. In Sydney, Keays met two brothers, bass guitarist and singer Denny Burgess, and drummer Colin Burgess
, both had played in a support band, The Haze, at a gig in suburban Ashfield
. Keays was impressed and considered them for possible new members.
, an innovative electric guitarist from the second lineup of Sydney garage rock
band The Missing Links and its offshoot Running Jumping Standing Still. The new recruits revitalised the band's career. Ford was a strong songwriter, a good singer and an accomplished electric guitarist who brought a new depth to the band's sound. He and Keays began working as a writing team. Ford's arrival filled the gap left by Bowers' departure and made possible their transition from pop band to rock group. "Elevator Driver" -- written for them by Brian Cadd
of The Groop -- was released in February, accompanied by another film clip and a full-colour promotional poster. The band had to pay for these as Astor Records refused to pay for 'extravagant' promotional items. "Elevator Driver" provided them with a Top 30 hit, and kept the momentum going as they rebuilt the band.
In April, bassist Gavin Webb—last of original line-up of The Mustangs—was forced to quit, suffering from stomach ulcers. Keays first choice for bass guitar was Beeb Birtles
of Adelaide band Zoot
and later of Little River Band
) but Birtles declined. On the flight home, Keays found himself seated next to artist manager
Darryl Sambell, who was then enjoying the success of his protégé Johnny Farnham with his #1 hit single, "Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)
". Keays and the flamboyant Sambell hit it off, and Sambell took over the band's management, which was a mixed blessing: he was a master networker and had a flair for getting publicity; he was also a partner in the newly-formed AMBO booking agency, which proved helpful for concert bookings; but in the long run Sambell was more interested in Farnham's career and the day-to-day management duties gradually fell to band members. Sambell's pop tastes were also were at odds with the developing progressive direction of the band's music.
Glenn Wheatley
(from Brisbane's blues group Bay City Union) joined on guitar just after Webb had left and Tilbrook switched to bass guitar. Upon Sambell's advice, they decided not to renew their contract with Astor and negotiated a new contract with EMI
. Their next single, "Brigette"—released in June was their last recording for Astor—marked the debut of the Ford/Keays writing partnership. It was inspired by Donovan
's "Mellow Yellow
" and bears a resemblance to some of The Move
's earlier singles. The quasi-baroque
arrangement
included a string section
scored by The Strangers' John Farrar
, and also took them into the Top 40. Mid-year, they topped the annual Go-Set Pop Poll as 'Most Original Group', and they came second to The Twilights as 'Most Popular Australian Group'. They entered the South Australian heats of the 1968 Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds, beating local rivals Zoot in a tense contest. They were runners-up in the national final, held in Melbourne in July, with The Groove
winning and Doug Parkinson In Focus
coming third. After the Hoadleys final, the manager of co-sponsor Sitmar cruise line, who had voted for them, offered the band a working trip to UK, with free passage in exchange for performances.
Keays was interviewed by Go-Set staff reporter, Lily Brett
and the 'expose' was printed on 17 July 1968, headlined "Sex is thrust upon us", the article and its follow-up, "Whose breasts are best?", revealed aspects of the bacchanalian groupie scene
:
The 'bad-boy' publicity also frustrated Sambell's plans to market them as a wholesome teen combo. Keays stated that there was a backlash from the interview, the roadway outside Keays' flat in East St Kilda
was daubed with the slogan "Band Moll's Paradise" in 3 foot (0.9144 m) letters, threats of physical beatings from male audience members and the press claiming they were "sex maniacs".
Live performances continued and in the second half of 1968 they went back into Armstrong's Studios to cut their first single for EMI, although this was not released until early 1969. Meanwhile, Astor released "But One Day", an old track from their debut LP, as a single in August, but the band urged fans not to buy it and it failed to chart. The band played hundreds of concerts during the year, touring around country Australia, visiting interstate capitals and dashing between dance venues around greater Melbourne. By this stage, Wheatley had taken on much of their day-to-day management. Their schedule was punishing—typically they would play three shows a night on Fridays and Saturdays at an average of about 45 minutes per gig, and often went to the Channel 0
TV studios on Saturday mornings for appearances on the leading pop show of the day, Uptight!.
In December 1968, Tilbrook left the band, so Wheatley moved to bass guitar. Soon after, Wheatley found a message from the cruise line Sitmar and returned the call, only to be roundly abused by Sitmar's furious entertainment manager; he then discovered that Sitmar had offered the band work on a London-bound cruise liner, which had left the previous week, while the band had been in Brisbane
. Unable to locate them, the liner had been delayed for an entire day while Sitmar found a group to replace them. The band confronted Sambell, who denied any knowledge, but a further check with Sitmar confirmed that the deal had been arranged, but that Sambell had been caught up with Farnham's affairs and had forgotten to tell them about it.
By the end of the year, finances and morale were low; despite constant performing, they were heavily in debt, and tensions within thew group were nearing breaking point. By the end of the year, friction between the group and Sambell had become intolerable. Their final show of the year was on New Year's Eve
, and between sets the band members talked through their problems, patched up their differences, and agreed that Sambell had to go. Wheatley offered to take on their day-to-day bookings and promotion work, leaving Ford and Keays free to concentrate on writing.
-born producer Howard Gable. The bubblegum pop
A-side, "Linda Linda" fell into the same faux-music hall
category as UK songs like "Winchester Cathedral" but the rocky
B-side
showed hints of how the group was developing. The single missed out on the Top 40 but gained radio airplay and helped to revive their waning popularity.
The band continued to tour across the country which helped weld them into a close-knit unit. Meanwhile articles, profiles, pinups and TV appearances proliferated; indeed they were overexposed, Keays claims, so they began to turn down TV appearances for fear of becoming too familiar. When they played at the annual Moomba
concert in March at the Myer Music Bowl, they drew a crowd of just under 200,000 people, second only to The Seekers
' record-breaking appearance there two years earlier. Their next single, the rocky "5:10 Man", released in July, which peaked at #16 on the Go-Set Singles Chart and initiated a string of Top 20 hits. It was a deliberate move towards a heavier sound, as the band were keen to move away from the current bubblegum craze that their manager and producer wanted.
Also in July, with "5:10 Man" climbing the charts, they had their next attempt at the Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds, and once again they were runners-up—although this time they ran such a close second to Doug Parkinson In Focus
that they were also offered the same prize, a trip to UK with the Sitmar line. According to Keays, his band won on points but the judges felt their 'bad boy' image did not make them suitable for first.
In August, the band headed off on the Operation Starlift Tour, an all-Australian concert series, which featured: The Masters Apprentices, Johnny Farnham, Ronnie Burns, Russell Morris
, Johnny Young, Zoot, and The Valentines
. Although the tour was apparently a financial disaster, it was a promotional success for the band. The Brisbane Festival Hall
concert was a highpoint of the tour and they drew a record crowd there, breaking The Beatles' 1964 attendance record. Wheatley was dragged offstage by the audience and had his pants and coat literally torn to shreds, with the result that one of the police on hand threatened to arrest him for indecent exposure
if they did not finish playing immediately.
After the Brisbane show, Wheatley calculated that the crowd had paid $5 per ticket—so box office gross must have been at least $30,000-$35,000—yet his band, like all other acts, were on a fixed fee. They received $200 for the concert, and the top-billed act, Farnham, was paid about $1000. Wheatley realised that the promoters had pocketed the lion's share of the takings. As a result, the group decided to manage and book themselves and over the closing months of 1969 Wheatley became more involved in choosing venues, booking shows and promoting the group with care to avoid over-exposure, cutting down on appearances and increasing their fee. They closed the year with the bluesy single "Think About Tomorrow Today", which provided another Top 20 hit nationally and went to #11 in Melbourne. It was later used by the Bank of New South Wales
in its youth-oriented TV ads.
About this time the band switched to wearing leather stage outfits. This fitted their 'bad-boy' image and had a more practical outcome—it was routine for the band to have their clothes and hair literally torn off by frantic fans, and the cost of buying expensive stage clothes which were being shredded nightly was sending them broke. But the leather gear—which resisted even the most ardent fans—provided them with their longest-wearing outfits in years, and Keays maintains it saved them thousands of dollars.
, Drum began by handling the band's own management but within a few months it was also booking and promoting gigs for The Sect, Ash, Lovers Dream, Big Daddies, Thursday's Children, Looking Glass, Daisy Clover, Nova Express, Company Caine
, Plastic Tears, Little Stevie, Tamam Shud
, Jeff St John, The Flying Circus
and fourteen other acts, as well as promoting tours by overseas acts The Four Tops and Paul Jones
(ex-Manfred Mann
).
The Masters Apprentices had been stockpiling tracks since they signed with EMI
, in February their long delayed second LP Masterpiece was finally issued. Although something of a hodgepodge—as Keays freely admits—it showed the band developing a much broader range. It included the singles "Linda Linda" and "5:10 Man" and album tracks, "A Dog, a Siren & Memories", and "How I Love You", although it omitted the excellent "Merry-Go-Round". By then they were coming to grips with the album format and emulated the current fad for concept album
s by linking the songs with a short guitar-and-string arrangement, crossfaded between tracks. The title track, a live recording, provides a vivid aural snapshot of their live show during 1968, complete with the deafening screams of fans. The album also includes their own version of "St John's Wood", a track Ford and Keays wrote for Brisbane band The Sect, who had released it as a single on Columbia
during the year.
In April, EMI released the group's popular single, "Turn Up Your Radio", produced by Gable, and engineered by John Sayers. It was recorded at a late-night session and Keays later recounted that he was so drunk when he recorded his vocals that he had to be held up to the microphone. The song was deliberately designed to be loud and offensive, and was intended as the final nail in the coffin to their ill-conceived teenybopper
image. It was released just before the start of the 1970 radio ban
—a major dispute between commercial radio stations and record companies—which resulted in the banning of many major-label releases. Despite little commercial radio airplay, the song raced up the charts and peaked at #7 nationally.
Since receiving their prize in the Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds in mid-1969, The Masters Apprentices were set on breaking into the UK market. They worked to save money for the effort with a national farewell tour in April–May. On 25 May, they boarded the Fairsky
for UK, their agency business was left in the hands of Adrian Barker. They were given a send-off by a crowd of fans and friends including Rofe, Sambell, Meldrum, Ross D. Wylie, Johnny Young and Ronnie Burns. The six-week ocean voyage provided a break after years of constant gigging. Without the pressure and distraction of touring, they wrote and rehearsed new material. They had a stopover in Panama
, where they were 'ripped off' while they bought some local marijuana. Arriving at the height of an English summer in July, the band entered a productive period. They moved into a hotel in Bayswater
, but it was too expensive, so they moved to a house in North Harrow
, London, where they continued to write and rehearse, and made contact with other Aussie expatriates. Freed from constant performing, they immersed themselves in the cultural life of London, going on shopping sprees for clothes in Kings Road
, Chelsea
, ploughing through scores of new records and doing the rounds of clubs and concerts, seeing the best music on offer. Wheatley continued work on a manuscript he had begun on the ocean voyage, "Who the Hell is Judy In Sydney?", which recounted his experiences with the group. His memoir
s were too hot for publishers at the time and were not printed until decades later when they became the basis for his autobiography
Paper Paradise.
A major problem was that they did not play live, lacking adequate equipment and a solid set of new material. Having only been advanced $500 by EMI Australia, Wheatley started knocking on doors in hopes of getting the band established in London and possibly securing a record deal. Wheatley contacted EMI in London, and met Trudy Green, secretary to staff producer Jeff Jarratt. Green was later an artist manager for Heart
, Janet Jackson
and Mick Jagger
. She liked the Australian band and got Jarratt interested, he agreed to produce them. EMI Australia agreed to pay for the album's recording, with EMI UK providing the artwork; the group were thrilled to record at the legendary Abbey Road Studios
with Jarratt and engineer Peter Bown. Jarratt had worked on some of The Beatles' later recordings, and Brown's credits included Pink Floyd
's A Saucerful of Secrets
, Ummagumma
and Atom Heart Mother
.
Just before the start of recording, Keays made a trip to mainland Europe, and was in Copenhagen
when he heard of the death of Jimi Hendrix
, one of his idols. Back in London, Ford and Keays penned "Song for a Lost Gypsy", which they added to their songlist. The band entered the studio in September to record Choice Cuts. The staff and facilities were superior to those in Australia, which allowed a greater range of expression. The songs they brought to the sessions—many written during the voyage—were original and distinctive, distilling their recent musical influences. This included the heavier sounds of Hendrix, King Crimson
and Free
, as well as the acoustic styles of Donovan
, the Small Faces and Van Morrison
(whose Astral Weeks
LP was on constant rotation at their North Harrow house). They brought in outside musicians to augment some tracks, and made use of Paul McCartney
's white grand piano on a few cuts, including "Because I Love You". During sessions they bumped into a Who's Who
of UK music: The Moody Blues
, Pink Floyd, Barclay James Harvest
, Ringo Starr
and Roy Harper
. Towards the end of recording, they found themselves one song short of the optimum LP length, so at Jarratt's suggestion they wrote a new song, built up from a Latin-flavoured instrumental shuffle that Ford had been playing with. Keays wrote lyrics for the piece overnight, they cut it the next day and it became the album's opening track "Rio de Camero".
The entire LP was recorded, mixed and mastered within a month, and the band were thrilled with the results. The choice of the first single was, "Because I Love You", a beautiful song of love, separation and independence, and became a popular and enduring recording. To promote it, they used Australian film-maker Timothy Fisher to make a music video
. The simple but effective clip was filmed on a chilly autumn morning on Hampstead Heath. Black-and-white prints were shown many times on Australian TV, where colour was not introduced until 1975, but it was shot in colour, as were several other clips for tracks from the LP, most were not screened.
The album's cover depicts an elegant, overstuffed chair in a panelled room, with a mysterious disembodied hand holding a cigarette floating above it. It was from the English design group Hipgnosis
, who were responsible for covers by Pink Floyd, 10cc
and Led Zeppelin
. Despite the prospects for their new LP, the band were caught by surprise after its completion when Wheatley revealed they were almost broke. They were determined to stay in London but desperately needed funds. A phone call to EMI Australia for financial assistance proved futile, so they planned an Australian tour. Wheatley headed home to organise it and secured a local soft drink company as a sponsor. The band returned to Australia at the end of December, just as "Because I Love You" was released. It was their fourth consecutive Top 20 hit, reaching #12 nationally, and became one of the key songs of the new era of Australian rock.
and Howard Gable joined them with portable four-track equipment and recorded their first show at the Nickelodeon Theatre. The band was tired and under-rehearsed, and were not satisfied with the results, these recordings became the live LP Nickelodeon, believed to be the second live rock album recorded in Australia. Two of its tracks—the brooding "Future of Our Nation" and the non-album cut "New Day"—were put out as a single in June 1971.
In their absence the band had been voted top group in the 1970 Go-Set Pop Poll, and both their 1970 singles had been hits. Nevertheless, the band and the music scene had changed by 1971, at first they struggled to regain their previous popularity. A breakthrough gig at Chequers in Sydney allowed the tour to gain momentum, helped by a lengthy profile in the magazine POL
, written by freelance journalist Howard Lindley. Lindley became an ardent supporter and started work on a film about the band: he shot several performances in the weeks before they returned to UK, but sadly the project foundered when Lindley committed suicide, only fragments of his material survived.
While touring Australia, the group received word that EMI UK were pleased with the new album, and in February the label released "I'm Your Satisfier" as the first UK single. In April Choice Cuts was released in Australia to widespread acclaim, reaching #11 on the Go-Set Top 20 Album Charts. They made numerous TV appearances, including a three-song live set for the ABC's GTK
which included a live-in-the-studio performance of "Future of Our Nation". In Melbourne they played a concert at the Town Hall
, supported by Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs
. When Choice Cuts was released in the UK it was well-received by critics, but the band were still in Australia and short of money, they could do little to exploit their opportunities. As the tour dragged on, they began to falter, and endured ripoffs by unscrupulous promoters. They had reached another low ebb, with the chances of returning to UK now reduced, the band reluctantly decided to split up. On the verge of the breakup, EMI's John Halsall called from London to inform them that Choice Cuts was receiving glowing notices in the English music press, including a rave review in Melody Maker
. He told them it was selling well in UK and starting to make an impression in Europe—the track "I'm Your Satisfier" had been released in France and had gone into the Top 10 there. Halsall urged them to return to London as soon as possible and that they would be able to record a new album there, so they hastily organised their return. They decided to take the boat rather than fly (to save money) so Wheatley again approached the Sitmar Line. To their delight, Sitmar offered them another complimentary trip and EMI agreed to finance another LP when they got to London.
They left for UK on 15 May 1971, this time aboard the Fairstar
and accompanied by Wheatley's girlfriend Alison, and Keays' wife Vicky and their baby son James. Unfortunately, by the time they arrived in the UK, almost three months had passed since Halsall's phone call and interest was waning. Resigning themselves to the inevitable, they contacted EMI and set up the promised new recording, for three months ahead. They employed an outside PR agent, Jim Haswell, who managed to get some small reviews for them, but Wheatley was unable to find an agency that would book them, and although Ford insisted on keeping up the regime of regular rehearsals, they had no live work. At this point a new UK label Bronze
—who had just signed Slade
and Uriah Heep
—made an approach to the band to become their third act. Although the group was hesitant, being still signed to EMI, they decided to use the offer as leverage in hopes of getting a better deal out of EMI. Wheatley delivered an ultimatum to EMI Australia, demanding that they either release the band from their contract or match Bronze's offer of £90,000 (or $180,000 in Australia). Predictably, EMI did neither, responding with an advance of $1000. Fearing legal repercussions, the band ruefully declined Bronze's offer, Keays' later opined that the best course of action would have been to "sign with Bronze and let the lawyers work it all out later."
Returning to Abbey Road in the autumn of 1971, the band were reunited with Jarratt and Brown, plus engineer (and Sgt Pepper's veteran) Richard Lush
. Most of the new LP was recorded in Studio Two at the same time that John Lennon
was making his John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band LP in Studio One and Keays vividly recalls the thrill of peeking in as Lennon was recording "Working Class Hero
". This is not possible: both my vinyl & CD copies of "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" state that album as Produced ["P" circled] and Copyright ["C" circled] "1970". This is confirmed by "The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Rock", text by Nick Logan & Bob Woffinden, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1977, p.139. So Keays must be confusing this with his trip to Abbey Road the previous year. John Lennon's "Imagine" album was being recorded in 1971.
According to Wheatley, one of The Masters Apprentices' tracks, "Games We Play", was recorded at George Martin
's Air Studios, with Martin himself conducting the children's choir which features on the second part of the track. The new album was titled A Toast to Panama Red, in homage to the Central American variety of marijuana. The LP was lauded as one of the best Australian progressive
releases, but it was largely ignored at the time. Sales were hindered by the lurid cover, which even Keays later admitted was not an ideal choice, being as garish as Choice Cuts was tasteful. Designed and painted by Keays, it was evidently a dig at the UK, and featured a grotesque psychedelic caricature of a bulldog's head wearing a Union Jack eye patch, its ears are skewered by an arrow from which dangles a tag, emblazoned with the album's title.
The band played sporadic shows to support the album, which was well-reviewed in UK, but EMI Australia did little to assist them. Without such backing, it was clear by the end of 1971 that they were not going to achieve the success they had dreamt of. Although Keays' recollections are more positive, Wheatley's own account of the album sessions is that they were an unhappy experience for him. He had a bad LSD trip
the night before they went into the studio and began the recording in a negative frame of mind. Tensions mounted steadily during the recording and Wheatley did not play on some of the tracks, with his parts covered by Ford. According to Keays, Wheatley had been working part-time at a management agency over the previous few months and had insufficient time to rehearse because of his day job.
' Hank B. Marvin. Without adequate support, both LP and single sank without trace in Australia, in spite of their high quality. The classic line-up's last recording was the album's delicate and poignant closing track, "Thyme To Rhyme". According to Ian McFarlane in his Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop
the album, A Toast to Panama Red is "one of the great lost treasures of the Australian progressive rock era".
Wheatley tried to convince the rest of the band that they should break up but they disagreed, so he announced he was leaving to work full-time for the management agency. Soon after, Keays announced his own departure and intention to return to Australia immediately. Ford and Burgess decided to keep going and they sent for Burgess' brother Denny, who took over on bass guitar. The final trio lineup soldiered on for a few months, and made one recording, "Freedom Seekers"—appearing on Jam It Up! in 1987—before finally splitting in mid-1972.
Returning to Australia, Keays undertook some final promotional duties for the "Love Is" single, including a TV appearance in which he performed alone, playing 12-string guitar. He then set about establishing himself as a solo artist, began composing songs, and also wrote for Go-Set magazine.
's rock opera
, Tommy. In 1974 he compiled tracks from the band's latter career and designed the cover for the collection
, entitled Now That's It's Over, with liner notes written by the late Howard Lindley. EMI released "Rio de Camero" / "Thyme to Rhyme" as a single in August 1974, the A-side garnered reasonable airplay but did not chart.
In late 1974 Keays embarked on his ambitious concept LP, Boy From The Stars, which was premiered at the final Sunbury Pop Festival in January 1975, where his all-star backing group was joined by Wheatley, recently returned from the UK, in their last performance together for over ten years. Ironically, after ripoffs endured as The Masters Apprentices, Keays and his band were the only group at Sunbury who were paid—Keays had wisely arranged an outside sponsor—low attendance and the huge $60,000 fee paid to headliner Deep Purple
meant that none of the other Australian acts were paid, and the festival organisers went into liquidation soon after. Keays continued his solo musical career, fronting Southern Cross, and from 2000 he has toured as a member of Cotton Keays & Morris
with 1960s artists Darryl Cotton
from Adelaide's Zoot
and Russell Morris
from Melbourne's Somebody's Image.
Wheatley moved into a career in management
, applying lessons learned and contacts made with his band to managing other bands. He spent several years in UK and America, on the eve of his return to Australia at the end of 1974, he was invited to manage the reformed version of Australian harmony-rock band Mississippi
, after a name change to Little River Band
they set about cracking the American market and Wheatley was instrumental guiding them to their historic American commercial breakthrough in 1976–1977. From 1980, Wheatley also managed, John Farnham
and oversaw his career revival, initially as a solo artist and then as a member of Little River Band. Eventually mortgaging his own house to finance Farnham's hugely successful solo album Whispering Jack
in 1986. Under Wheatley's guidance, Farnham staged a spectacular comeback as an adult pop
artist when Whispering Jack became the biggest-selling locally-produced album in Australian recording history.
In the early 1980s there was a revival of interest in The Masters Apprentices due partly to rock historian Glenn A. Baker
, who featured the band for his Rock & Roll Trivia Show on Sydney radio's Triple J
, which in turn led to the release of a definitive compilation LP, Hands of Time by Baker's Raven Records
in 1981. The classic Burgess, Ford, Keays and Wheatley lineup reformed in August 1987 for a "Back to the 1960s" special on the popular TV variety show Hey Hey It's Saturday
. It marked the first time all four had played together since Wheatley had left in late 1971. They undertook a reunion tour during 1988 and released an album, Do What You Wanna Do, featuring new material and new versions of their earlier songs, from which they lifted the single "Birth of the Beat". The perennial "Because I Love You" also gained new prominence around that time via its use in a series of advertisements for a well-known brand of jeans; the revamped version of "Because I Love You" peaked at #30 on the Australian Recording Industry Association
(ARIA) Singles Charts
.
The group minus Wheatley—who only participated in the TV reunion and a few early gigs—undertook occasional reunion concerts, and in September 1995 they released a new version of "Turn Up Your Radio", recorded with Hoodoo Gurus
. Ford, Keays and Wheatley subsequently reunited in Melbourne in 1999 to perform 'unplugged' at the launch of Keays' memoirs, His Master's Voice: The Masters Apprentices: The bad boys of sixties rock 'n' roll, in which he stated that he would not initiate any further reunions. Wheatley's own memoirs, Paper paradise: confessions of a rock 'n' roll survivor, was released later in the year.
Despite Keays' earlier announcement, the band reformed on subsequent occasions, including the Long Way to the Top
national concert tour during August–September 2002, which featured a host of the best Australian acts of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The tour was inspired by the ABC-TV series, Long Way to the Top broadcast in August 2001. Keays featured on "Episode 2: Ten Pound Rocker 1963–1968" where he discussed the UK migrant influence on their early work and "Undecided"; and in "Episode 3:Billy Killed the Fish 1968–1973" where he described pioneering pub rock
and the band's groupies. The classic line-up of Burgess, Ford, Keays and Wheatley reformed although Wheatley only performed for a couple of the concerts and was subbed by his son, Tim Wheatley. Performances of "Because I Love You" and "Turn Up Your Radio" at the final Sydney concert, as well as an interview with promoter, Amanda Pelman, feature on the associated DVD
, Long Way to the Top: Live in Concert released in 2002. They also performed at an all-star benefit concert
held to support 1970s star Ted Mulry
. They also appeared at the 9 October 2005 benefit concert in Melbourne for former Rose Tattoo
guitarist Peter Wells. Another performance was at the 2005 clipsal 500, along with Hoodoo Gurus.
and The Twilights
they tried to break into the UK music scene, and one of the later members of the band, Glenn Wheatley
, learned valuable lessons from their travails. After moving into artist management in the 1970s he played a major role in the Australian music industry and the media, most notably through his management of Little River Band
—who became the first Australian rock band to achieve major commercial success in the USA—and Australian vocalist John Farnham.
The Masters Apprentices were popular throughout Australia, scored a string of Top 20 chart hits and were consistently hailed as one of Australia's best live and recording acts. They started out as an instrumental band, rose to prominence during the mid-Sixties "Beat Boom", moved through psychedelia and bubblegum pop
, finally becoming one the first and best Australian progressive
/hard rock
groups of the early Seventies. They went through many lineup changes, with vocalist Jim Keays
being the only constant, and their membership also illustrates the intricate interconnections between many Australian bands of that era.
The group was notable in the Australian context in that they played mainly originals. One of their hits, "Undecided" (1967), was revived by Silverchair
in 1997, and their well known song "Because I Love You" has been revived many times, including its use in an Australian jeans commercial in the late 1980s. Swedish
progressive metal
band Opeth
named the track "Master's Apprentices" from their 2002 album Deliverance in honour of the band; Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt
is a fan.
In October 1998, The Masters Apprentices received formal recognition for their achievements when they were inducted, alongside The Angels
, into the ARIA Hall Of Fame
. The same year they were also honoured in Australia Post
's "Rock & Roll" series, with a stamp commemorating "Turn Up Your Radio".
Only a month after their ARIA induction, Colin and Denny Burgess narrowly escaped death after the car in which they were travelling was struck by a semi-trailer, both were severely injured—Colin suffered multiple fractures and internal injuries and as a result could not be moved from the wreck for some time. Denny also received serious injuries and had to undergo plastic surgery
. Both made a recovery and were the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary.
1999–2000 saw the long-awaited release of remastered editions of all The Masters Apprentices' original albums on CD, the publication of both Keays' and Wheatley's memoirs, and the establishment of official web sites for both Keays' and The Masters (see Links), and in June 2000 ABC-TV screened an edited version of the documentary Turn Up Your Video, which was accompanied by the release of the full-length home video. In October 2010, their 1967 debut album, Master's Apprentices, was listed in the top 40 in the book, 100 Best Australian Albums
.
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band
Musical ensemble
A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...
fronted by mainstay
Mainstay
Mainstay is a Christian rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota. The band was formed in 2003 and is signed to BEC Recordings. While a lot of the band's music has decidedly Christian lyrics and messages, their music appeals to a large secular fanbase as well. Their music style has been compared to...
Jim Keays
Jim Keays
James "Jim" Keays is an Australian musician who fronted rock band The Masters Apprentices as singer-songwriter, guitarist and harmonica-player during 1965–1972, and subsequently had a solo career including leading Jim Keays' Southern Cross...
on lead vocals, which formed in 1965 in Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
, South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
, relocated to Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
in February 1967 and attempted to break into the United Kingdom market from 1970, before disbanding in 1972. Their popular Australian singles are "Undecided", "Living in a Child's Dream", "5:10 Man", "Think About Tomorrow Today", "Turn Up Your Radio" and "Because I Love You". The band launched the career of bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
ist, Glenn Wheatley
Glenn Wheatley
Glenn Dawson Wheatley is an Australian artist manager and entertainment industry executive.Wheatley began his career as a musician in Brisbane in the mid-1960s and in the late 1960s became nationally famous as a member of leading pop-rock band The Masters Apprentices...
, later a music industry entrepreneur and an artist manager for both Little River Band
Little River Band
Little River Band is an Australian rock band, formed in Melbourne in early 1975.The group chose the name after passing a road sign leading to the Victorian township of Little River, near Geelong, on the way to a performance. Little River Band enjoyed sustained commercial success in not only...
and John Farnham
John Farnham
John Peter Farnham, AO, formerly billed as Johnny Farnham , is an English-born Australian pop singer. He was a teen pop idol from 1964 to 1979, and has since forged a career as an adult contemporary singer. His career has mostly been as a solo artist although he briefly replaced Glenn Shorrock as...
. The band reformed periodically, including in 1987–1988 and again subsequently; they were inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956...
(ARIA) Hall of Fame
ARIA Hall of Fame
Since 1988 the Australian Recording Industry Association has inducted artists into its ARIA Hall of Fame. While most have been recognised at the annual ARIA Music Awards, in 2005 ARIA sought to create a separate standalone "ARIA Icons: Hall of Fame" event as only one or two acts could be inducted...
in 1998 alongside The Angels
The Angels (Australian band)
The Angels are a hard rock band that formed in Adelaide, Australia in 1970. The band later relocated from Adelaide to Sydney and enjoyed huge local success until well into the 1990s. For the purposes of international release, their records were released under the names Angel City and later The...
. Both Keays, with His Master's Voice and Wheatley, with Paper Paradise, wrote memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
s in 1999 which included their experiences with the band.
The Mustangs 1964–1965
The Mustangs were a surf musicSurf music
Surf music is a genre of popular music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Orange County and other areas of Southern California. It was particularly popular between 1961 and 1965, has subsequently been revived and was highly influential on subsequent rock music...
instrumental/dance band formed in Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
in 1964 with Mick Bower on rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar
Rhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
, Rick Morrison on lead guitar
Lead guitar
Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...
, Brian Vaughton on drums
Drum kit
A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
and Gavin Webb on bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
. Initially they played covers of The Shadows
The Shadows
The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...
and The Ventures
The Ventures
The Ventures is an American instrumental rock band formed in 1958 in Tacoma, Washington. Founded by Don Wilson and Bob Bogle, the group in its various incarnations has had an enduring impact on the development of music worldwide. With over 100 million records sold, the group is the best-selling...
songs. The band's output was profoundly influenced by the Australian tour of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
in June 1964, which had a particular impact in Adelaide, due to recent migrants from United Kingdom (UK). When The Beatles arrived in Adelaide they were greeted by the largest crowd ever seen in their touring career—estimates as high as 300,000 while Adelaide's population being less than 1 million—one-third of the city had turned out to greet them (see The Beatles' influence on popular culture
The Beatles' influence on popular culture
The Beatles' influence on rock music and popular culture was—and remains—immense. Their commercial success started an almost immediate wave of changes—including a shift from US global dominance of rock and roll to UK acts, from soloists to groups, from professional songwriters to...
). Following The Beatles' chart breakthrough and tour, it was obvious that the surf/instrumental style was passé, The Mustangs changed style and took on a lead singer, Scottish
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
immigrant, Jim Keays
Jim Keays
James "Jim" Keays is an Australian musician who fronted rock band The Masters Apprentices as singer-songwriter, guitarist and harmonica-player during 1965–1972, and subsequently had a solo career including leading Jim Keays' Southern Cross...
. The Mustangs rehearsed regularly in a shed behind a hotel owned by Vaughton's family. Their original manager, Graham Longley, made a tape recording of a rehearsal; it was rediscovered and released on CD in 2004 as Mustangs to Masters... First Year Apprentices. After Keays joined on lead vocals, the band produced more original songs in the beat
Beat music
Beat music, British beat, or Merseybeat is a pop and rock music genre that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s. Beat music is a fusion of rock and roll, doo wop, skiffle, R&B and soul...
style.
The Mustangs established themselves on the thriving Adelaide dance circuit by playing in suburban halls and migrant hostels. They built a following with local teenagers, including migrants from the UK, which were an early influence on the band as they were directly in touch with current mod fashions, not as widely known in Australia.
Adelaide years: 1965–1967
In late 1965, The Mustangs renamed themselves as The Masters Apprentices (deliberately omitting the apostrophe), Bower supplied the name because "we are apprentices to the masters of the blues—Chuck BerryChuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...
, Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley
Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...
, Jimmy Reed
Jimmy Reed
Mathis James "Jimmy" Reed was an American blues musician and songwriter, notable for bringing his distinctive style of blues to mainstream audiences. Reed was a major player in the field of electric blues, as opposed to the more acoustic-based sound of many of his contemporaries...
, Elmore James
Elmore James
Elmore James was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter and band leader. He was known as "the King of the Slide Guitar" and had a unique guitar style, noted for his use of loud amplification and his stirring voice.-Biography:James was born Elmore Brooks in the old Richland community in...
and Robert Johnson". By early 1966 they were one of the most popular beat bands in Adelaide, regularly selling out concerts in the city, as well as making visits to outlying towns of Murray Bridge
Murray Bridge, South Australia
Murray Bridge is the fourth most populous city in South Australia after Adelaide, Mount Gambier and Whyalla. It is located east-southeast of Adelaide and north of Meningie....
, Mount Gambier
Mount Gambier, South Australia
Mount Gambier is the largest regional city in South Australia located approximately 450 kilometres south of the capital Adelaide and just 17 kilometres from the Victorian border....
and Whyalla
Whyalla, South Australia
-Demographics:According to the 2006 Census the population of the Whyalla census area was 21,122 people, making it the second largest urban area in the state outside of Adelaide...
. Their first TV appearance, on Good Friday
Good Friday
Good Friday , is a religious holiday observed primarily by Christians commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. The holiday is observed during Holy Week as part of the Paschal Triduum on the Friday preceding Easter Sunday, and may coincide with the Jewish observance of...
, was on a Channel 7
Seven Network
The Seven Network is an Australian television network owned by Seven West Media Limited. It dates back to 4 November 1956, when the first stations on the VHF7 frequency were established in Melbourne and Sydney.It is currently the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach...
telethon hosted by Adelaide TV celebrity Ernie Sigley
Ernie Sigley
Ernest William "Ernie" Sigley is an enduring Australian entertainment personality known for his square-rimmed spectacles, the gap between his front teeth and his slapstick approach to comedy.-Radio career:...
. They entered the South Australian heat of Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds
Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds
Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds was an annual national rock/pop band competition held in Australia from 1966 to 1972.-History:Australia's Battle of the Sounds was originally established by Australian tabloid magazine Everybody’s in 1965 as a talent quest for new unsigned bands in Sydney, Melbourne...
and finished third behind The Twilights (eventual national winners).
Later in 1966, The Masters Apprentices shared a gig with pop star Bobby Bright of Melbourne duo Bobby & Laurie
Bobby & Laurie
Bobby & Laurie were a popular Australian singing duo of the 1960s, featuring Laurie Allen and Bobby Bright . Their regular backing band were The Rondells...
, who was impressed and recommended them to his label, Astor Records
Astor Records
Astor Records was an Australian recording company that operated from the 1960s to the early 1980s. Astor was originally a trademark of the consumer electronics industries ltd. Radio Corporation Pty. Ltd., makers of Astor radios and radiograms and a range of electronic companies including gereral...
. A few weeks later, they were contacted by Astor, which requested a four-track demo
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...
. The band went to a local two-track studio to record it, but realised that they had only three suitable songs to record. Needing a fourth track, guitarists Bower and Morrison wrote a new song, "Undecided", in about 15 minutes; the backing track was cut in about the same time. The title came from the fact that they were undecided about a name for the song when quizzed by the studio owner, Max Pepper. The biting fuzz-tone of Bower's guitar on the track was a fortunate accident; it was caused by a malfunctioning valve in his amplifier
Guitar amplifier
A guitar amplifier is an electronic amplifier designed to make the signal of an electric or acoustic guitar louder so that it will produce sound through a loudspeaker...
, but the group liked the sound and kept the faulty valve in until after the session.
In August, the band made their first visit to Melbourne, which was at the time the centre of the burgeoning Australian pop scene. They made a strong impression with showcase performances at the city's leading discotheques, The Thumpin' Tum and The Biting Eye. Their debut single "Undecided" / "Wars or Hands Of Time" was released in October and gradually climbed the Adelaide charts, thanks to strong support from local DJs.
"Wars or Hands of Time", written by Bower, is the first Australian pop song to directly address the issue of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, which was now affecting the lives of many young Australians because of the controversial introduction of conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
in 1965. 20-year-old Keays was one of hundreds of potential conscripts whose birthday (9 September) was picked in a 1966 ballot. He was able to legally avoid the draft by signing with the Citizens Military Force
Australian Army Reserve
The Australian Army Reserve is a collective name given to the reserve units of the Australian Army. Since the Federation of Australia in 1901, the reserve military force has been known by many names, including the Citizens Forces, the Citizen Military Forces, the Militia and, unofficially, the...
(CMF, later renamed the Army Reserve) and eluded a "short back and sides" haircut with the aid of his girlfriend, who pinned his long hair up under his slouch hat
Slouch hat
A slouch hat is a wide-brimmed felt or cloth hat with a chinstrap, most commonly worn as part of a military uniform. It is a survivor of the felt hats worn by certain 18th century armies. Since then, the slouch hat has been worn by military personnel from many nations including Australia, Britain,...
whenever he attended CMF sessions.
During their second trip to Melbourne in late 1966, local radio DJ, Stan Rofe
Stan Rofe
Stan 'The Man' Rofe was Melbourne's first and most influential rock'n'roll disc jockey. He is remembered as playing the first rock and roll music on Melbourne radio 3KZ in 1956 and as a champion of Australian music, a pioneer who played songs other DJs were too scared to play.-Career:Stan Rofe...
, had picked up "Undecided" and was playing it regularly, their raw sound and wild stage act led him to state:
Rofe, also a columnist with pop magazine, Go-Set
Go-Set
Go-Set was the first Australian pop music newspaper, published weekly from 2 February 1966 to 24 August 1974, and was founded in Melbourne by Phillip Frazer, Peter Raphael and Tony Schauble...
, championed many Australian acts during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The band promoted "Undecided" on Melbourne TV series, Kommotion, where members met Ian Meldrum
Ian Meldrum
Ian Alexander "Molly" Meldrum AM is an Australian popular music critic, journalist, record producer , and musical entrepreneur...
who mime
Mime
The word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...
d to "Winchester Cathedral
Winchester Cathedral (song)
"Winchester Cathedral" is a song released in late 1966 by Fontana Records, whereupon it shot to the No. 1 spot in Canada on the RPM 100 national singles charts and shortly thereafter in the U.S. on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It was released by The New Vaudeville Band, a novelty group established...
", Meldrum was also a staff writer for Go-Set and was later a record producer
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, host of the influential TV pop show Countdown and a music commentator.
Returning to Adelaide, the band recorded more original songs, including Bower's "Buried & Dead", which became their second single, plus other tracks which were later on their debut LP album
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
. The success of the second trip made it obvious that they should turn professional and relocate to Melbourne. This led to the departure of original manager Longley and drummer Vaughton, both decided to remain in Adelaide.
Third year in Melbourne: 1967
The Masters Apprentices relocated to Melbourne in February 1967, and Vaughton, who remained in Adelaide was replaced on drums by Steve Hopgood. "Undecided" raced up the Melbourne chartsRecord chart
A record chart is a ranking of recorded music according to popularity during a given period of time. Examples of music charts are the Hit parade, Hot 100 or Top 40....
to peak at #9 locally. Go-Set had published national singles charts since October 1966 and "Undecided" peaked at #13 in April. The group became established as one of Melbourne's top attractions, performing regularly at discos like Catcher, Sebastians, The Thumpin' Tum and The Biting Eye and at a multitude of suburban dances. Despite such popularity, they led a hand-to-mouth existence for the first year or so in Melbourne, often relying on the hospitality of fans and friends. In May 1967 "Buried and Dead" was released as their second single, and the band made a promotional film clip for TV (at their own expense), which is believed to be one of the first pop music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
s made in Australia. They also undertook their first trip to Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, where they made a live appearance on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
(ABC) pop show Saturday Date, where they were chased by fans on their way to the studio and had their clothes partly ripped before appearing.
In June, Astor
Astor Records
Astor Records was an Australian recording company that operated from the 1960s to the early 1980s. Astor was originally a trademark of the consumer electronics industries ltd. Radio Corporation Pty. Ltd., makers of Astor radios and radiograms and a range of electronic companies including gereral...
released the group's self-titled debut LP, The Masters Apprentices (also styled as The Master's Apprentices), featuring earlier singles, several originals written by Bower, a cover
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
of Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley
Ellas Otha Bates , known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter , and inventor...
's "Dancing Girl" and The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' "I Feel Fine
I Feel Fine
"I Feel Fine" is a riff-driven rock song written by John Lennon and released in 1964 by The Beatles as the A-side of their eighth British single. The song is notable for the use of feedback on a recording for the first time by any musician...
". Subsequent re-releases, including CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
in 1996, dropped The Beatles' "I Feel Fine" track and added two later singles, "Elevator Driver" and "Brigette".
By 1967 the group assimilated influences from the burgeoning psychedelic scene
Psychedelic music
Psychedelic music covers a range of popular music styles and genres, which are inspired by or influenced by psychedelic culture and which attempt to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues-rock bands in the...
; Keays maintains that it wasn't until some time after that they began to experiment with the drug LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
. Nevertheless, their next single, Bower's "Living in a Child's Dream", is regarded as an early example of Australian psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
and one of their greatest pop songs. It was recorded at the newly-opened Armstrong's Studios in South Melbourne
South Melbourne, Victoria
South Melbourne is an inner city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area are the Cities of Port Phillip and Melbourne...
and like all their Astor cuts it was nominally produced by staff producer Dick Heming. According to Keays, Heming's input was limited and most of the production was by engineer Roger Savage with considerable input from Ian Meldrum. Released in August at the peak of the Summer of Love
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion...
, it reached Top Ten in most Australian capitals and peaked at #9 on Go-Sets Top 40. Both "Living in a Child's Dream" and "Undecided" ranked in the Top 5 Australian singles of 1967, and "Living in a Child's Dream" was voted Australian Song of the Year by Go-Set readers.
The success of the new single elevated the band as teen idol
Teen idol
A teen idol is a celebrity who is widely idolized by teenagers; he or she is often young but not necessarily teenaged. Often teen idols are actors or pop singers, but some sports figures have an appeal to teenagers. Some teen idols began their careers as child actors...
s, but as pressures mounted lead guitarist Rick Morrison was forced to quit after passing out on stage during a concert in June, suffering a collapsed lung
Pneumothorax
Pneumothorax is a collection of air or gas in the pleural cavity of the chest between the lung and the chest wall. It may occur spontaneously in people without chronic lung conditions as well as in those with lung disease , and many pneumothoraces occur after physical trauma to the chest, blast...
. He was ordered to give up performing and was replaced by Tony Summers (ex-Johnny Young
Johnny Young
Johnny Young is an Australian singer, composer, record producer, disc jockey, television producer and host. Originally from Netherlands, his family settled in Perth, Western Australia in the early 1950s...
's Kompany). Meanwhile concerts and tours continued, with the group playing up to fifteen shows per week. A tour of New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
in July included some of the last pop shows staged at the Sydney Stadium
Sydney Stadium
The Sydney Stadium was a sporting and entertainment venue in Sydney, New South Wales, which formerly stood on the corner of New South Head Road and Neild Avenue, Rushcutters Bay...
on 30 July, and at Sydney Trocadero
Sydney Trocadero
The Sydney Trocadero in Sydney, Australia, opened with a full-dress gala on 3 April 1936. It was the main venue of Big Band jazz orchestras, with the resident Trocadero Orchestra under the baton of Frank Coughlan, and the All Girl Trocadero Band....
ballroom (both later demolished). Also in July, they made it to the national finals of Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds, representing South Australia, they finished second to Melbourne's The Groop
The Groop
The Groop were an Australian folk, R&B and rock band formed in 1964 in Melbourne, Australia and had their greatest chart success with their second line-up of Max Ross on bass, Richard Wright on drums and vocals, Don Mudie on lead guitar, Brian Cadd on keyboards and vocals, and Ronnie Charles on...
.
In September, while touring Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
, the shy and sensitive Bower was found in his room in extreme distress, the promoter insisting they had to perform; faced with the prospect of going unpaid and being stranded in Hobart, they complied. Bower was dressed, taken to the concert and pushed on stage with his guitar around his neck; he stood motionless through the gig, arms hanging limp, and was hospitalised immediately after, suffering a severe nervous breakdown
Nervous breakdown
Mental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
, and was ordered to give up performing. He was sent home to Adelaide to recuperate, and only returned to live performance in the late 1970s.
The loss of Bower was a blow comparable to Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
's loss of its early creative leader, Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett , born Roger Keith Barrett, was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and painter, best remembered as a founding member of the band Pink Floyd. He was the lead vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter during the band's psychedelic years, providing major musical and stylistic...
, and threatened to end the band's career as it was taking off. Bower was central to their success, having written (or co-written) all their singles and all original tracks on their debut album. His forced departure left the group floundering, and they continued with de facto leadership passing to Keays. At the end of September, Keays and Webb chose Bower's replacement, guitarist Rick Harrison (ex-The Others) from Adelaide.
On 14 October, the band played a free concert in Sydney's Hyde Park
Hyde Park, Sydney
Hyde Park is a large park in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Hyde Park is on the eastern side of the Sydney central business district. It is the southernmost of a chain of parkland that extends north to the shore of Port Jackson . It is approximately rectangular in shape, being squared at the...
, as part of the Waratah Spring Festival. An estimated 50,000 fans packed into the park, but after only a few songs the concert degenerated into a riot. When the crowd surge threatened to crush audience members and topple the makeshift stage, police were forced to close the concert. Escaping band members were pursued by fans towards Kings Cross
Kings Cross, New South Wales
Kings Cross is an inner-city locality of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately 2 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Sydney...
. That same evening, still dazed by the afternoon's events, they headlined the Living in a Child's Dream Ball, organised by University of NSW students. Keays later described the event:
Newest member, Harrison quit immediately after these concerts and upon returning to Melbourne they recruited another lead guitarist, Peter Tilbrook from Adelaide band, The Bentbeaks. That band had released a single "Caught Red Handed", which had been banned by Melbourne radio in March for alleged obscenity. Not long after, Keays tried LSD for the first time. With Astor pressing for a new single, the band turned to their friend Brian Cadd
Brian Cadd
Brian George Cadd is an Australian singer-songwriter, keyboardist and producer who has performed as a member of The Groop, Axiom, Flying Burrito Brothers and solo...
of The Groop, who had already written a number of songs for his own band and for other artists, including Johnny Farnham
John Farnham
John Peter Farnham, AO, formerly billed as Johnny Farnham , is an English-born Australian pop singer. He was a teen pop idol from 1964 to 1979, and has since forged a career as an adult contemporary singer. His career has mostly been as a solo artist although he briefly replaced Glenn Shorrock as...
. Cadd presented them with, "Silver People" co-written with The Groop's Max Ross, which was re-titled as "Elevator Driver" and released in February 1968 as their fourth single.
As 1967 ended the band's career reached a critical juncture. They still had no songwriter, and both drummer Steve Hopgood and lead guitarist Tony Sommers were becoming disenchanted with the band's erratic fortunes. Keays decided to replace them and also their second manager, Tony Dickstein. In Sydney, Keays met two brothers, bass guitarist and singer Denny Burgess, and drummer Colin Burgess
Colin Burgess
Colin Burgess is an Australian musician who was the first drummer in The Masters Apprentices from 1968–72 and was the original drummer with the rock band AC/DC....
, both had played in a support band, The Haze, at a gig in suburban Ashfield
Ashfield, New South Wales
Ashfield is a suburb in the inner-west of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Ashfield is about 9 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government area of the Municipality of Ashfield.The official name for the...
. Keays was impressed and considered them for possible new members.
Classic line-up forms: 1968
In January 1968, Keays reorganised the band with Summers and Hopgood departing, and Colin Burgess being flown to Melbourne as the new drummer. Keays then approached Doug FordDoug Ford (musician)
Doug Ford is an Australian rock guitarist and songwriter since the 1960s. During 1968–1972, Ford was the lead guitarist in the Australian pop-rock band The Masters Apprentices and established a successful writing partnership with the group's lead singer Jim Keays.-Biography:Ford was born in Casino,...
, an innovative electric guitarist from the second lineup of Sydney garage rock
Garage rock
Garage rock is a raw form of rock and roll that was first popular in the United States and Canada from about 1963 to 1967. During the 1960s, it was not recognized as a separate music genre and had no specific name...
band The Missing Links and its offshoot Running Jumping Standing Still. The new recruits revitalised the band's career. Ford was a strong songwriter, a good singer and an accomplished electric guitarist who brought a new depth to the band's sound. He and Keays began working as a writing team. Ford's arrival filled the gap left by Bowers' departure and made possible their transition from pop band to rock group. "Elevator Driver" -- written for them by Brian Cadd
Brian Cadd
Brian George Cadd is an Australian singer-songwriter, keyboardist and producer who has performed as a member of The Groop, Axiom, Flying Burrito Brothers and solo...
of The Groop -- was released in February, accompanied by another film clip and a full-colour promotional poster. The band had to pay for these as Astor Records refused to pay for 'extravagant' promotional items. "Elevator Driver" provided them with a Top 30 hit, and kept the momentum going as they rebuilt the band.
In April, bassist Gavin Webb—last of original line-up of The Mustangs—was forced to quit, suffering from stomach ulcers. Keays first choice for bass guitar was Beeb Birtles
Beeb Birtles
Beeb Birtles , is a Dutch / Australian musician, one of the founding members of the Little River Band....
of Adelaide band Zoot
Zoot (band)
Zoot are a pop/rock band formed in Adelaide, South Australia in 1965 as Down the Line. They changed their name to Zoot in 1967 and by 1968 had relocated to Melbourne...
and later of Little River Band
Little River Band
Little River Band is an Australian rock band, formed in Melbourne in early 1975.The group chose the name after passing a road sign leading to the Victorian township of Little River, near Geelong, on the way to a performance. Little River Band enjoyed sustained commercial success in not only...
) but Birtles declined. On the flight home, Keays found himself seated next to artist manager
Talent manager
A talent manager, also known as an artist manager or band manager, is an individual or company who guides the professional career of artists in the entertainment industry...
Darryl Sambell, who was then enjoying the success of his protégé Johnny Farnham with his #1 hit single, "Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)
Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)
"Sadie " was Australian pop singer Johnny Farnham's first solo single. The novelty song was released in November 1967 and was #1 on the Go-Set National Singles Charts for five weeks in early 1968 . It was the largest selling single in Australia by an Australian artist in the 1960s...
". Keays and the flamboyant Sambell hit it off, and Sambell took over the band's management, which was a mixed blessing: he was a master networker and had a flair for getting publicity; he was also a partner in the newly-formed AMBO booking agency, which proved helpful for concert bookings; but in the long run Sambell was more interested in Farnham's career and the day-to-day management duties gradually fell to band members. Sambell's pop tastes were also were at odds with the developing progressive direction of the band's music.
Glenn Wheatley
Glenn Wheatley
Glenn Dawson Wheatley is an Australian artist manager and entertainment industry executive.Wheatley began his career as a musician in Brisbane in the mid-1960s and in the late 1960s became nationally famous as a member of leading pop-rock band The Masters Apprentices...
(from Brisbane's blues group Bay City Union) joined on guitar just after Webb had left and Tilbrook switched to bass guitar. Upon Sambell's advice, they decided not to renew their contract with Astor and negotiated a new contract with EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
. Their next single, "Brigette"—released in June was their last recording for Astor—marked the debut of the Ford/Keays writing partnership. It was inspired by Donovan
Donovan
Donovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...
's "Mellow Yellow
Mellow Yellow
"Mellow Yellow" is a song and single release by Donovan. It reached #2 on the Billboard charts in the U.S. in 1966 and #8 in the UK in early 1967....
" and bears a resemblance to some of The Move
The Move
The Move, from Birmingham, England, were one of the leading British rock bands of the 1960s. They scored nine Top 20 UK singles in five years, but were among the most popular British bands not to find any success in the United States....
's earlier singles. The quasi-baroque
Baroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
arrangement
Arrangement
The American Federation of Musicians defines arranging as "the art of preparing and adapting an already written composition for presentation in other than its original form. An arrangement may include reharmonization, paraphrasing, and/or development of a composition, so that it fully represents...
included a string section
String orchestra
A string orchestra is an orchestra composed solely or primarily of instruments from the string family. These instruments are the violin, the viola, the cello, the double bass , the piano, the harp, and sometimes percussion...
scored by The Strangers' John Farrar
John Farrar
John Farrar is a music producer, songwriter, music arranger, singer and guitarist who is best known for his work with Olivia Newton-John with whom he wrote and produced many hit songs....
, and also took them into the Top 40. Mid-year, they topped the annual Go-Set Pop Poll as 'Most Original Group', and they came second to The Twilights as 'Most Popular Australian Group'. They entered the South Australian heats of the 1968 Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds, beating local rivals Zoot in a tense contest. They were runners-up in the national final, held in Melbourne in July, with The Groove
The Groove (band)
Formed in mid 1967, The Groove are considered to be Australia's first "supergroup" in that all members had considerable experience behind them in a number of successful bands...
winning and Doug Parkinson In Focus
Doug Parkinson
Douglas "Doug" Parkinson is an Australian singer who first came to fame with his band, Doug Parkinson In Focus, in 1969. He has had numerous hits on the Australian Top 40 charts.-Career:...
coming third. After the Hoadleys final, the manager of co-sponsor Sitmar cruise line, who had voted for them, offered the band a working trip to UK, with free passage in exchange for performances.
Keays was interviewed by Go-Set staff reporter, Lily Brett
Lily Brett
Lily Brett is an award-winning Australian novelist, essayist and poet who now lives in New York City. Much of her writing deals with her Jewish family semi-biographically and with her feelings about the Holocaust....
and the 'expose' was printed on 17 July 1968, headlined "Sex is thrust upon us", the article and its follow-up, "Whose breasts are best?", revealed aspects of the bacchanalian groupie scene
Groupie
A groupie is a person who seeks emotional and sexual intimacy with a musician or other celebrity. "Groupie" is derived from group in reference to a musical group, but the word is also used in a more general sense, especially in casual conversation....
:
The 'bad-boy' publicity also frustrated Sambell's plans to market them as a wholesome teen combo. Keays stated that there was a backlash from the interview, the roadway outside Keays' flat in East St Kilda
St Kilda, Victoria
St Kilda is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Port Phillip...
was daubed with the slogan "Band Moll's Paradise" in 3 foot (0.9144 m) letters, threats of physical beatings from male audience members and the press claiming they were "sex maniacs".
Live performances continued and in the second half of 1968 they went back into Armstrong's Studios to cut their first single for EMI, although this was not released until early 1969. Meanwhile, Astor released "But One Day", an old track from their debut LP, as a single in August, but the band urged fans not to buy it and it failed to chart. The band played hundreds of concerts during the year, touring around country Australia, visiting interstate capitals and dashing between dance venues around greater Melbourne. By this stage, Wheatley had taken on much of their day-to-day management. Their schedule was punishing—typically they would play three shows a night on Fridays and Saturdays at an average of about 45 minutes per gig, and often went to the Channel 0
Network Ten
Network Ten , is one of Australia's three major commercial television networks. Owned-and-operated stations can be found in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, while affiliates extend the network to cover most of the country...
TV studios on Saturday mornings for appearances on the leading pop show of the day, Uptight!.
In December 1968, Tilbrook left the band, so Wheatley moved to bass guitar. Soon after, Wheatley found a message from the cruise line Sitmar and returned the call, only to be roundly abused by Sitmar's furious entertainment manager; he then discovered that Sitmar had offered the band work on a London-bound cruise liner, which had left the previous week, while the band had been in Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
. Unable to locate them, the liner had been delayed for an entire day while Sitmar found a group to replace them. The band confronted Sambell, who denied any knowledge, but a further check with Sitmar confirmed that the deal had been arranged, but that Sambell had been caught up with Farnham's affairs and had forgotten to tell them about it.
By the end of the year, finances and morale were low; despite constant performing, they were heavily in debt, and tensions within thew group were nearing breaking point. By the end of the year, friction between the group and Sambell had become intolerable. Their final show of the year was on New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...
, and between sets the band members talked through their problems, patched up their differences, and agreed that Sambell had to go. Wheatley offered to take on their day-to-day bookings and promotion work, leaving Ford and Keays free to concentrate on writing.
From pop to rock: 1969
1969 began with The Masters Apprentices settling their new lineup and the Ford/Keays writing team hitting its stride, the band now moved to its best-remembered and most successful phase. The long-awaited first EMI single was moderately successful, and even though it was something of a false start artistically, "Linda Linda" / "Merry-Go-Round" (March 1969) marked the beginning of a short but successful collaboration with New ZealandNew Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
-born producer Howard Gable. The bubblegum pop
Bubblegum pop
Bubblegum pop is a genre of pop music with an upbeat sound contrived and marketed to appeal to pre-teens and teenagers, produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers, often using unknown singers.Bubblegum's classic period ran from 1967 to 1972...
A-side, "Linda Linda" fell into the same faux-music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
category as UK songs like "Winchester Cathedral" but the rocky
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
B-side
A-side and B-side
A-side and B-side originally referred to the two sides of gramophone records on which singles were released beginning in the 1950s. The terms have come to refer to the types of song conventionally placed on each side of the record, with the A-side being the featured song , while the B-side, or...
showed hints of how the group was developing. The single missed out on the Top 40 but gained radio airplay and helped to revive their waning popularity.
The band continued to tour across the country which helped weld them into a close-knit unit. Meanwhile articles, profiles, pinups and TV appearances proliferated; indeed they were overexposed, Keays claims, so they began to turn down TV appearances for fear of becoming too familiar. When they played at the annual Moomba
Moomba
Moomba is Australia's largest free community festival and one of the longest running festivals in Australia. Held annually in the city of Melbourne, Australia, Moomba is celebrated during the Labour Day long weekend , and has been celebrated since 1955...
concert in March at the Myer Music Bowl, they drew a crowd of just under 200,000 people, second only to The Seekers
The Seekers
The Seekers are an Australian folk-influenced pop music group which were originally formed in 1962. They were the first Australian popular music group to achieve major chart and sales success in the United Kingdom and the United States...
' record-breaking appearance there two years earlier. Their next single, the rocky "5:10 Man", released in July, which peaked at #16 on the Go-Set Singles Chart and initiated a string of Top 20 hits. It was a deliberate move towards a heavier sound, as the band were keen to move away from the current bubblegum craze that their manager and producer wanted.
Also in July, with "5:10 Man" climbing the charts, they had their next attempt at the Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds, and once again they were runners-up—although this time they ran such a close second to Doug Parkinson In Focus
Doug Parkinson
Douglas "Doug" Parkinson is an Australian singer who first came to fame with his band, Doug Parkinson In Focus, in 1969. He has had numerous hits on the Australian Top 40 charts.-Career:...
that they were also offered the same prize, a trip to UK with the Sitmar line. According to Keays, his band won on points but the judges felt their 'bad boy' image did not make them suitable for first.
In August, the band headed off on the Operation Starlift Tour, an all-Australian concert series, which featured: The Masters Apprentices, Johnny Farnham, Ronnie Burns, Russell Morris
Russell Morris
Russell Norman Morris is an Australian singer-songwriter who had five Australian Top 10 singles during the late 1960s and early 1970s...
, Johnny Young, Zoot, and The Valentines
The Valentines
The Valentines may refer to:* The Valentines , an Australian rock 'n' roll band active from 1966-1970, chiefly noted for their lead singer, Bon Scott...
. Although the tour was apparently a financial disaster, it was a promotional success for the band. The Brisbane Festival Hall
Brisbane Festival Hall
Brisbane Festival Hall was an indoor arena, located in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.The Festival Hall was originally known as Brisbane Stadium, which was built in 1910. In 1958, the venue was demolished and a new building constructed, by then leading Queensland Construction Company E.J.Taylor &...
concert was a highpoint of the tour and they drew a record crowd there, breaking The Beatles' 1964 attendance record. Wheatley was dragged offstage by the audience and had his pants and coat literally torn to shreds, with the result that one of the police on hand threatened to arrest him for indecent exposure
Indecent exposure
Indecent exposure is the deliberate exposure in public or in view of the general public by a person of a portion or portions of his or her body, in circumstances where the exposure is contrary to local moral or other standards of appropriate behavior. Indecent exposure laws vary in different...
if they did not finish playing immediately.
After the Brisbane show, Wheatley calculated that the crowd had paid $5 per ticket—so box office gross must have been at least $30,000-$35,000—yet his band, like all other acts, were on a fixed fee. They received $200 for the concert, and the top-billed act, Farnham, was paid about $1000. Wheatley realised that the promoters had pocketed the lion's share of the takings. As a result, the group decided to manage and book themselves and over the closing months of 1969 Wheatley became more involved in choosing venues, booking shows and promoting the group with care to avoid over-exposure, cutting down on appearances and increasing their fee. They closed the year with the bluesy single "Think About Tomorrow Today", which provided another Top 20 hit nationally and went to #11 in Melbourne. It was later used by the Bank of New South Wales
Westpac
Westpac , is a multinational financial services, one of the Australian "big four" banks and the second-largest bank in New Zealand....
in its youth-oriented TV ads.
About this time the band switched to wearing leather stage outfits. This fitted their 'bad-boy' image and had a more practical outcome—it was routine for the band to have their clothes and hair literally torn off by frantic fans, and the cost of buying expensive stage clothes which were being shredded nightly was sending them broke. But the leather gear—which resisted even the most ardent fans—provided them with their longest-wearing outfits in years, and Keays maintains it saved them thousands of dollars.
United Kingdom first year: 1970
Early in 1970, the band officially parted with Sambell and set up their own booking agency, Drum. Based in a terrace house office in Drummond St CarltonCarlton, Victoria
Carlton is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 2 km north from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Melbourne...
, Drum began by handling the band's own management but within a few months it was also booking and promoting gigs for The Sect, Ash, Lovers Dream, Big Daddies, Thursday's Children, Looking Glass, Daisy Clover, Nova Express, Company Caine
Company Caine
Company Caine, also known as Co. Caine and Company Kane, is an Australian progressive rock band of the 1970s. The band was formed in Melbourne in 1970 with member as follows:* Gulliver Smith * Russell Smith * Jeremy Noone 1970-71, 1975...
, Plastic Tears, Little Stevie, Tamam Shud
Tamam Shud
Tamam Shud were an Australian psychedelic and progressive rock band, formed in Sydney in 1967, which released two albums, Evolution and Goolutionites and the Real People before disbanding in 1972...
, Jeff St John, The Flying Circus
The Flying Circus (band)
The Flying Circus was a pioneering Australian country rock band who had a number of pop hits in Australia from 1968 to 1971 and then re-located to Canada from 1971 to 1974 where they also achieved a degree of success.-Beginnings:...
and fourteen other acts, as well as promoting tours by overseas acts The Four Tops and Paul Jones
Paul Jones (singer)
Paul Jones is an English singer, actor, harmonica player, and radio personality and television presenter.-Career:As P. P...
(ex-Manfred Mann
Manfred Mann
Manfred Mann was a British beat, rhythm and blues and pop band of the 1960s, named after their South African keyboardist, Manfred Mann, who later led the successful 1970s group Manfred Mann's Earth Band...
).
The Masters Apprentices had been stockpiling tracks since they signed with EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
, in February their long delayed second LP Masterpiece was finally issued. Although something of a hodgepodge—as Keays freely admits—it showed the band developing a much broader range. It included the singles "Linda Linda" and "5:10 Man" and album tracks, "A Dog, a Siren & Memories", and "How I Love You", although it omitted the excellent "Merry-Go-Round". By then they were coming to grips with the album format and emulated the current fad for concept album
Concept album
In music, a concept album is an album that is "unified by a theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, narrative, or lyrical." Commonly, concept albums tend to incorporate preconceived musical or lyrical ideas rather than being improvised or composed in the studio, with all songs contributing...
s by linking the songs with a short guitar-and-string arrangement, crossfaded between tracks. The title track, a live recording, provides a vivid aural snapshot of their live show during 1968, complete with the deafening screams of fans. The album also includes their own version of "St John's Wood", a track Ford and Keays wrote for Brisbane band The Sect, who had released it as a single on Columbia
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
during the year.
In April, EMI released the group's popular single, "Turn Up Your Radio", produced by Gable, and engineered by John Sayers. It was recorded at a late-night session and Keays later recounted that he was so drunk when he recorded his vocals that he had to be held up to the microphone. The song was deliberately designed to be loud and offensive, and was intended as the final nail in the coffin to their ill-conceived teenybopper
Teenybopper
The term teenybopper was invented by marketing professionals and psychologists, later becoming a subculture of its own. The term describes a young teenager, particularly a girl, who follows adolescent trends in music, fashion and culture. The term was introduced in the 1950s to refer to teenagers...
image. It was released just before the start of the 1970 radio ban
1970 radio ban
The Australian 1970 Radio Ban or 1970 Record Ban was a "pay for play" dispute in the local music industry that lasted from May till October...
—a major dispute between commercial radio stations and record companies—which resulted in the banning of many major-label releases. Despite little commercial radio airplay, the song raced up the charts and peaked at #7 nationally.
Since receiving their prize in the Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds in mid-1969, The Masters Apprentices were set on breaking into the UK market. They worked to save money for the effort with a national farewell tour in April–May. On 25 May, they boarded the Fairsky
Fairsky
Fairsky was a passenger ship managed by the Sitmar Line, best known for her service on the migrant passenger route from Britain to Australia from 1958 to the early 1970s. In her later career, she operated out of Australia as a popular cruise ship, until striking an unmarked wreck in 1977 which...
for UK, their agency business was left in the hands of Adrian Barker. They were given a send-off by a crowd of fans and friends including Rofe, Sambell, Meldrum, Ross D. Wylie, Johnny Young and Ronnie Burns. The six-week ocean voyage provided a break after years of constant gigging. Without the pressure and distraction of touring, they wrote and rehearsed new material. They had a stopover in Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
, where they were 'ripped off' while they bought some local marijuana. Arriving at the height of an English summer in July, the band entered a productive period. They moved into a hotel in Bayswater
Bayswater
Bayswater is an area of west London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the west . It is a built-up district located 3 miles west-north-west of Charing Cross, bordering the north of Hyde Park over Kensington Gardens and having a population density of...
, but it was too expensive, so they moved to a house in North Harrow
North Harrow
North Harrow is a residential area of North West Outer London. Despite its name, it is actually to the north-west of central Harrow. It has grown outwards from the North Harrow tube station which is on the Metropolitan Line which runs from Aldgate to Watford. It is one stop away from Harrow town...
, London, where they continued to write and rehearse, and made contact with other Aussie expatriates. Freed from constant performing, they immersed themselves in the cultural life of London, going on shopping sprees for clothes in Kings Road
Kings Road
King's Road or Kings Road, known popularly as The King's Road or The KR, is a major, well-known street stretching through Chelsea and Fulham, both in west London, England...
, Chelsea
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an area of West London, England, bounded to the south by the River Thames, where its frontage runs from Chelsea Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Cheyne Walk, Lots Road and Chelsea Harbour. Its eastern boundary was once defined by the River Westbourne, which is now in a pipe above...
, ploughing through scores of new records and doing the rounds of clubs and concerts, seeing the best music on offer. Wheatley continued work on a manuscript he had begun on the ocean voyage, "Who the Hell is Judy In Sydney?", which recounted his experiences with the group. His memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
s were too hot for publishers at the time and were not printed until decades later when they became the basis for his autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
Paper Paradise.
A major problem was that they did not play live, lacking adequate equipment and a solid set of new material. Having only been advanced $500 by EMI Australia, Wheatley started knocking on doors in hopes of getting the band established in London and possibly securing a record deal. Wheatley contacted EMI in London, and met Trudy Green, secretary to staff producer Jeff Jarratt. Green was later an artist manager for Heart
Heart (band)
Heart is an American rock band who first found success in Canada. Throughout several lineup changes, the only two members remaining constant are sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson. The group rose to fame in the 1970s with their music being influenced by hard rock as well as folk music...
, Janet Jackson
Janet Jackson
Janet Damita Jo Jackson is an American recording artist and actress. Known for a series of sonically innovative, socially conscious and sexually provocative records, as well as elaborate stage shows, television and film roles, she has been a prominent figure in popular culture for over 25 years...
and Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
. She liked the Australian band and got Jarratt interested, he agreed to produce them. EMI Australia agreed to pay for the album's recording, with EMI UK providing the artwork; the group were thrilled to record at the legendary Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios
Abbey Road Studios is a recording studio located at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood, City of Westminster, London, England. It was established in November 1931 by the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of British music company EMI, its present owner...
with Jarratt and engineer Peter Bown. Jarratt had worked on some of The Beatles' later recordings, and Brown's credits included Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
's A Saucerful of Secrets
A Saucerful of Secrets
A Saucerful of Secrets is the second studio album by the English rock group Pink Floyd. It was recorded at EMI's Abbey Road Studios on various dates from August 1967 to April 1968...
, Ummagumma
Ummagumma
Ummagumma is a double album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in 1969 by Harvest and EMI in the United Kingdom and Harvest and Capitol in the United States...
and Atom Heart Mother
Atom Heart Mother
Atom Heart Mother is the fifth studio album by English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released in 1970 by Harvest and EMI Records in the United Kingdom and Harvest and Capitol in the United States. It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, London, England, and reached number one in the United...
.
Just before the start of recording, Keays made a trip to mainland Europe, and was in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
when he heard of the death of Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
, one of his idols. Back in London, Ford and Keays penned "Song for a Lost Gypsy", which they added to their songlist. The band entered the studio in September to record Choice Cuts. The staff and facilities were superior to those in Australia, which allowed a greater range of expression. The songs they brought to the sessions—many written during the voyage—were original and distinctive, distilling their recent musical influences. This included the heavier sounds of Hendrix, King Crimson
King Crimson
King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history...
and Free
Free (band)
Free were an English rock band, formed in London in 1968, best known for their 1970 signature song "All Right Now". They disbanded in 1973 and lead singer Paul Rodgers went on to become a frontman of the band Bad Company along with Simon Kirke on drums; lead guitarist Paul Kossoff died from a...
, as well as the acoustic styles of Donovan
Donovan
Donovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...
, the Small Faces and Van Morrison
Van Morrison
Van Morrison, OBE is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician. His live performances at their best are regarded as transcendental and inspired; while some of his recordings, such as the studio albums Astral Weeks and Moondance, and the live album It's Too Late to Stop Now, are widely...
(whose Astral Weeks
Astral Weeks
Astral Weeks is the second solo album by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, released in November 1968 on Warner Bros. Records. It was Morrison's first album after Warner Bros. had been able to free him from his contract with Bang Records...
LP was on constant rotation at their North Harrow house). They brought in outside musicians to augment some tracks, and made use of Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
's white grand piano on a few cuts, including "Because I Love You". During sessions they bumped into a Who's Who
Who's Who
Who's Who is the title of a number of reference publications, generally containing concise biographical information on a particular group of people...
of UK music: The Moody Blues
The Moody Blues
The Moody Blues are an English rock band. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their 1967 album Days of Future Passed....
, Pink Floyd, Barclay James Harvest
Barclay James Harvest
Barclay James Harvest are an English progressive rock band. They were founded in Saddleworth, Lancashire, in September 1966 by John Lees, Les Holroyd, Stuart "Woolly" Wolstenholme , and Mel Pritchard .-History:...
, Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
and Roy Harper
Roy Harper
Roy Harper is an English folk / rock singer-songwriter and guitarist who has been a professional musician since the mid 1960s...
. Towards the end of recording, they found themselves one song short of the optimum LP length, so at Jarratt's suggestion they wrote a new song, built up from a Latin-flavoured instrumental shuffle that Ford had been playing with. Keays wrote lyrics for the piece overnight, they cut it the next day and it became the album's opening track "Rio de Camero".
The entire LP was recorded, mixed and mastered within a month, and the band were thrilled with the results. The choice of the first single was, "Because I Love You", a beautiful song of love, separation and independence, and became a popular and enduring recording. To promote it, they used Australian film-maker Timothy Fisher to make a music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
. The simple but effective clip was filmed on a chilly autumn morning on Hampstead Heath. Black-and-white prints were shown many times on Australian TV, where colour was not introduced until 1975, but it was shot in colour, as were several other clips for tracks from the LP, most were not screened.
The album's cover depicts an elegant, overstuffed chair in a panelled room, with a mysterious disembodied hand holding a cigarette floating above it. It was from the English design group Hipgnosis
Hipgnosis
Hipgnosis was a British art design group that specialized in creating cover art for the albums of rock musicians and bands, most notably Pink Floyd, T.Rex, The Pretty Things, UFO, 10cc, Bad Company, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Scorpions, Yes, The Alan Parsons Project, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, ELO and XTC...
, who were responsible for covers by Pink Floyd, 10cc
10cc
10cc are an English art rock band who achieved their greatest commercial success in the 1970s. The band initially consisted of four musicians -- Graham Gouldman, Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, and Lol Creme -- who had written and recorded together for some three years, before assuming the "10cc" name...
and Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
. Despite the prospects for their new LP, the band were caught by surprise after its completion when Wheatley revealed they were almost broke. They were determined to stay in London but desperately needed funds. A phone call to EMI Australia for financial assistance proved futile, so they planned an Australian tour. Wheatley headed home to organise it and secured a local soft drink company as a sponsor. The band returned to Australia at the end of December, just as "Because I Love You" was released. It was their fourth consecutive Top 20 hit, reaching #12 nationally, and became one of the key songs of the new era of Australian rock.
Australian tour: 1971
The Masters Apprentices began their national tour in PerthPerth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
and Howard Gable joined them with portable four-track equipment and recorded their first show at the Nickelodeon Theatre. The band was tired and under-rehearsed, and were not satisfied with the results, these recordings became the live LP Nickelodeon, believed to be the second live rock album recorded in Australia. Two of its tracks—the brooding "Future of Our Nation" and the non-album cut "New Day"—were put out as a single in June 1971.
In their absence the band had been voted top group in the 1970 Go-Set Pop Poll, and both their 1970 singles had been hits. Nevertheless, the band and the music scene had changed by 1971, at first they struggled to regain their previous popularity. A breakthrough gig at Chequers in Sydney allowed the tour to gain momentum, helped by a lengthy profile in the magazine POL
POL magazine
POL Magazine was a monthly magazine published by Gareth Powell Publishing in Australia in the late 1960s. It is considered to have played an important role in raising awareness of the status of women, and established new standards in terms of content, design and photography.In March-May 2003, the...
, written by freelance journalist Howard Lindley. Lindley became an ardent supporter and started work on a film about the band: he shot several performances in the weeks before they returned to UK, but sadly the project foundered when Lindley committed suicide, only fragments of his material survived.
While touring Australia, the group received word that EMI UK were pleased with the new album, and in February the label released "I'm Your Satisfier" as the first UK single. In April Choice Cuts was released in Australia to widespread acclaim, reaching #11 on the Go-Set Top 20 Album Charts. They made numerous TV appearances, including a three-song live set for the ABC's GTK
GTK (TV show)
GTK was an Australian popular music TV series produced and broadcast by ABC Television.-History:The series title was an abbreviation of the phrase "Get To Know"...
which included a live-in-the-studio performance of "Future of Our Nation". In Melbourne they played a concert at the Town Hall
Melbourne Town Hall
Melbourne Town Hall is the central municipal building of the City of Melbourne, Australia, in the State of Victoria. It is located on the northeast corner of Swanston and Collins Streets, in the central business district. It is the seat of the Local Government Area of the City of Melbourne...
, supported by Billy Thorpe & The Aztecs
Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs
Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs were an Australian pop and rock group dating from the mid-sixties. The group enjoyed huge success in the mid-1960s, but split in 1967. They re-emerged in the early seventies to become one of the most popular Australian hard-rock bands of the period...
. When Choice Cuts was released in the UK it was well-received by critics, but the band were still in Australia and short of money, they could do little to exploit their opportunities. As the tour dragged on, they began to falter, and endured ripoffs by unscrupulous promoters. They had reached another low ebb, with the chances of returning to UK now reduced, the band reluctantly decided to split up. On the verge of the breakup, EMI's John Halsall called from London to inform them that Choice Cuts was receiving glowing notices in the English music press, including a rave review in Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...
. He told them it was selling well in UK and starting to make an impression in Europe—the track "I'm Your Satisfier" had been released in France and had gone into the Top 10 there. Halsall urged them to return to London as soon as possible and that they would be able to record a new album there, so they hastily organised their return. They decided to take the boat rather than fly (to save money) so Wheatley again approached the Sitmar Line. To their delight, Sitmar offered them another complimentary trip and EMI agreed to finance another LP when they got to London.
They left for UK on 15 May 1971, this time aboard the Fairstar
TSS Fairstar
The Twin Screw Steamer TSS Fairstar was a popular Australian based cruise ship operating out of Sydney for 22 years...
and accompanied by Wheatley's girlfriend Alison, and Keays' wife Vicky and their baby son James. Unfortunately, by the time they arrived in the UK, almost three months had passed since Halsall's phone call and interest was waning. Resigning themselves to the inevitable, they contacted EMI and set up the promised new recording, for three months ahead. They employed an outside PR agent, Jim Haswell, who managed to get some small reviews for them, but Wheatley was unable to find an agency that would book them, and although Ford insisted on keeping up the regime of regular rehearsals, they had no live work. At this point a new UK label Bronze
Bronze Records
Bronze Records is an independent English record label set up in 1971 by record producer Gerry Bron, and based in Chalk Farm, London.Bron had been producing Uriah Heep for Vertigo Records, and he set up this new label for future Uriah Heep releases, along with Juicy Lucy, Richard Barnes and Colosseum...
—who had just signed Slade
Slade
Slade are an English rock band from Wolverhampton, who rose to prominence during the glam rock era of the early 1970s. With 17 consecutive Top 20 hits and six number ones, the British Hit Singles & Albums names them as the most successful British group of the 1970s based on sales of singles...
and Uriah Heep
Uriah Heep (band)
Uriah Heep are an English rock band formed in London in 1969 and regarded as a seminal classic hard rock act of the 1970s. Uriah Heep's progressive/art rock/heavy metal fusion's distinctive features have always been massive keyboards sound, strong vocal harmonies and David Byron's operatic vocals...
—made an approach to the band to become their third act. Although the group was hesitant, being still signed to EMI, they decided to use the offer as leverage in hopes of getting a better deal out of EMI. Wheatley delivered an ultimatum to EMI Australia, demanding that they either release the band from their contract or match Bronze's offer of £90,000 (or $180,000 in Australia). Predictably, EMI did neither, responding with an advance of $1000. Fearing legal repercussions, the band ruefully declined Bronze's offer, Keays' later opined that the best course of action would have been to "sign with Bronze and let the lawyers work it all out later."
Returning to Abbey Road in the autumn of 1971, the band were reunited with Jarratt and Brown, plus engineer (and Sgt Pepper's veteran) Richard Lush
Richard Lush
Richard Lush is a British-born Australian recording engineer and producer. He began his career in the mid-1960s as an assistant engineer at the EMI Abbey Road Studios in London....
. Most of the new LP was recorded in Studio Two at the same time that John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
was making his John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band LP in Studio One and Keays vividly recalls the thrill of peeking in as Lennon was recording "Working Class Hero
Working Class Hero
"Working Class Hero" is a song from John Lennon's first post-Beatles solo album, 1970's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band.-Theme:The song is a take on the class split of the 1940s and 1950s, and of the 1960s in which he was famous. The song appears to tell the story of someone growing up in the working...
". This is not possible: both my vinyl & CD copies of "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" state that album as Produced ["P" circled] and Copyright ["C" circled] "1970". This is confirmed by "The Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Rock", text by Nick Logan & Bob Woffinden, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1977, p.139. So Keays must be confusing this with his trip to Abbey Road the previous year. John Lennon's "Imagine" album was being recorded in 1971.
According to Wheatley, one of The Masters Apprentices' tracks, "Games We Play", was recorded at George Martin
George Martin
Sir George Henry Martin CBE is an English record producer, arranger, composer and musician. He is sometimes referred to as "the Fifth Beatle"— a title that he often describes as "nonsense," but the fact remains that he served as producer on all but one of The Beatles' original albums...
's Air Studios, with Martin himself conducting the children's choir which features on the second part of the track. The new album was titled A Toast to Panama Red, in homage to the Central American variety of marijuana. The LP was lauded as one of the best Australian progressive
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
releases, but it was largely ignored at the time. Sales were hindered by the lurid cover, which even Keays later admitted was not an ideal choice, being as garish as Choice Cuts was tasteful. Designed and painted by Keays, it was evidently a dig at the UK, and featured a grotesque psychedelic caricature of a bulldog's head wearing a Union Jack eye patch, its ears are skewered by an arrow from which dangles a tag, emblazoned with the album's title.
The band played sporadic shows to support the album, which was well-reviewed in UK, but EMI Australia did little to assist them. Without such backing, it was clear by the end of 1971 that they were not going to achieve the success they had dreamt of. Although Keays' recollections are more positive, Wheatley's own account of the album sessions is that they were an unhappy experience for him. He had a bad LSD trip
Bad trip
Bad trip is a disturbing experience sometimes associated with use of a psychedelic drug such as LSD, Salvinorin A, DXM, mescaline, psilocybin, DMT and sometimes even other drugs including cannabis, alcohol and MDMA....
the night before they went into the studio and began the recording in a negative frame of mind. Tensions mounted steadily during the recording and Wheatley did not play on some of the tracks, with his parts covered by Ford. According to Keays, Wheatley had been working part-time at a management agency over the previous few months and had insufficient time to rehearse because of his day job.
Last year: 1972
In January 1972, EMI issued the new album, A Toast to Panama Red and in February they lifted a single from it, the anthemic "Love Is", which had been recorded using a twelve-string acoustic specially loaned to Ford for the occasion by one of his heroes, The ShadowsThe Shadows
The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as 'The Shadows' and 34 as 'Cliff Richard and the Shadows', from the 1950s to the 2000s. Cliff Richard in casual conversation with the British rock press frequently refers to the Shadows by their nickname: 'The Shads'...
' Hank B. Marvin. Without adequate support, both LP and single sank without trace in Australia, in spite of their high quality. The classic line-up's last recording was the album's delicate and poignant closing track, "Thyme To Rhyme". According to Ian McFarlane in his Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop
Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop
The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop or Rock and Pop by Australian music journalist Ian McFarlane is a guide to Australian popular music from the 1950s to the late 1990s...
the album, A Toast to Panama Red is "one of the great lost treasures of the Australian progressive rock era".
Wheatley tried to convince the rest of the band that they should break up but they disagreed, so he announced he was leaving to work full-time for the management agency. Soon after, Keays announced his own departure and intention to return to Australia immediately. Ford and Burgess decided to keep going and they sent for Burgess' brother Denny, who took over on bass guitar. The final trio lineup soldiered on for a few months, and made one recording, "Freedom Seekers"—appearing on Jam It Up! in 1987—before finally splitting in mid-1972.
Returning to Australia, Keays undertook some final promotional duties for the "Love Is" single, including a TV appearance in which he performed alone, playing 12-string guitar. He then set about establishing himself as a solo artist, began composing songs, and also wrote for Go-Set magazine.
Afterthoughts: 1973–present
In March 1973 Keays played the role of 'The Lover' in the Australian version of The WhoThe Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
's rock opera
Rock opera
A rock opera is a work of rock music that presents a storyline told over multiple parts, songs or sections in the manner of opera. A rock opera differs from a conventional rock album, which usually includes songs that are not unified by a common theme or narrative. More recent developments include...
, Tommy. In 1974 he compiled tracks from the band's latter career and designed the cover for the collection
Compilation album
A compilation album is an album featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, genre, source or subject matter...
, entitled Now That's It's Over, with liner notes written by the late Howard Lindley. EMI released "Rio de Camero" / "Thyme to Rhyme" as a single in August 1974, the A-side garnered reasonable airplay but did not chart.
In late 1974 Keays embarked on his ambitious concept LP, Boy From The Stars, which was premiered at the final Sunbury Pop Festival in January 1975, where his all-star backing group was joined by Wheatley, recently returned from the UK, in their last performance together for over ten years. Ironically, after ripoffs endured as The Masters Apprentices, Keays and his band were the only group at Sunbury who were paid—Keays had wisely arranged an outside sponsor—low attendance and the huge $60,000 fee paid to headliner Deep Purple
Deep Purple
Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968. Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although some band members believe that their music cannot be categorised as belonging to any one genre...
meant that none of the other Australian acts were paid, and the festival organisers went into liquidation soon after. Keays continued his solo musical career, fronting Southern Cross, and from 2000 he has toured as a member of Cotton Keays & Morris
Cotton Keays & Morris
Cotton Keays & Morris is an Australian rock band formed in 2000 consisting of singer-songwriters Darryl Cotton, Jim Keays and Russell Morris. Each has written and recorded numerous hit songs since the 1960s...
with 1960s artists Darryl Cotton
Darryl Cotton
Darryl Cotton is an Australian pop singer, television presenter and actor. Cotton is best known as a founding member of Australian rock group Zoot in 1968, along with Beeb Birtles, Rick Brewer and, later, Rick Springfield....
from Adelaide's Zoot
Zoot (band)
Zoot are a pop/rock band formed in Adelaide, South Australia in 1965 as Down the Line. They changed their name to Zoot in 1967 and by 1968 had relocated to Melbourne...
and Russell Morris
Russell Morris
Russell Norman Morris is an Australian singer-songwriter who had five Australian Top 10 singles during the late 1960s and early 1970s...
from Melbourne's Somebody's Image.
Wheatley moved into a career in management
Talent manager
A talent manager, also known as an artist manager or band manager, is an individual or company who guides the professional career of artists in the entertainment industry...
, applying lessons learned and contacts made with his band to managing other bands. He spent several years in UK and America, on the eve of his return to Australia at the end of 1974, he was invited to manage the reformed version of Australian harmony-rock band Mississippi
Mississippi (band)
Mississippi was an Australian band , which featured some big names in Australian rock music, Graeham Goble, Beeb Birtles and Kerryn Tolhurst...
, after a name change to Little River Band
Little River Band
Little River Band is an Australian rock band, formed in Melbourne in early 1975.The group chose the name after passing a road sign leading to the Victorian township of Little River, near Geelong, on the way to a performance. Little River Band enjoyed sustained commercial success in not only...
they set about cracking the American market and Wheatley was instrumental guiding them to their historic American commercial breakthrough in 1976–1977. From 1980, Wheatley also managed, John Farnham
John Farnham
John Peter Farnham, AO, formerly billed as Johnny Farnham , is an English-born Australian pop singer. He was a teen pop idol from 1964 to 1979, and has since forged a career as an adult contemporary singer. His career has mostly been as a solo artist although he briefly replaced Glenn Shorrock as...
and oversaw his career revival, initially as a solo artist and then as a member of Little River Band. Eventually mortgaging his own house to finance Farnham's hugely successful solo album Whispering Jack
Whispering Jack
Whispering Jack is the twelfth studio album by Australian adult contemporary pop singer John Farnham. It was produced by Ross Fraser, and released on 20 October 1986, which peaked at #1 on the Australian Kent Music Report Album Charts...
in 1986. Under Wheatley's guidance, Farnham staged a spectacular comeback as an adult pop
Adult contemporary music
Adult contemporary music is a broad style of popular music that ranges from lush 1950s and 1960s vocal music to predominantly ballad-heavy music with varying degrees of rock influence, as well as a radio format that plays such music....
artist when Whispering Jack became the biggest-selling locally-produced album in Australian recording history.
In the early 1980s there was a revival of interest in The Masters Apprentices due partly to rock historian Glenn A. Baker
Glenn A. Baker
Glenn A. Baker is an Australian journalist, commentator, and broadcaster well known in Australia for his vast knowledge of Rock music. He has written books and magazine articles on rock music and travel, interviewed celebrities, managed bands such as Ol' 55 and promoted tours of international stars...
, who featured the band for his Rock & Roll Trivia Show on Sydney radio's Triple J
Triple J
triple j is a nationally networked Australian radio station intended to appeal to listeners between the ages of 18 and 30. The government-funded station is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
, which in turn led to the release of a definitive compilation LP, Hands of Time by Baker's Raven Records
Raven Records
Raven Records is an Australian record label that specializes in retrospectives and reissues or recordings by American, British and Australian artists.Raven Records was established in 1979 by Glenn A. Baker, Kevin Mueller and Peter Shillito....
in 1981. The classic Burgess, Ford, Keays and Wheatley lineup reformed in August 1987 for a "Back to the 1960s" special on the popular TV variety show Hey Hey It's Saturday
Hey Hey It's Saturday
Hey Hey It's Saturday was a long-running variety television program on Australian television. It initially ran for 27 years , debuting on the Nine Network on 9 October 1971 and broadcasting its last episode on 20 November 1999. Its host throughout its entire run was Daryl Somers, who would later...
. It marked the first time all four had played together since Wheatley had left in late 1971. They undertook a reunion tour during 1988 and released an album, Do What You Wanna Do, featuring new material and new versions of their earlier songs, from which they lifted the single "Birth of the Beat". The perennial "Because I Love You" also gained new prominence around that time via its use in a series of advertisements for a well-known brand of jeans; the revamped version of "Because I Love You" peaked at #30 on the Australian Recording Industry Association
Australian Recording Industry Association
The Australian Recording Industry Association is a trade group representing the Australian recording industry which was established in 1983 by six major record companies, EMI, Festival, CBS, RCA, WEA and Universal replacing the Association of Australian Record Manufacturers which was formed in 1956...
(ARIA) Singles Charts
ARIA Charts
The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June...
.
The group minus Wheatley—who only participated in the TV reunion and a few early gigs—undertook occasional reunion concerts, and in September 1995 they released a new version of "Turn Up Your Radio", recorded with Hoodoo Gurus
Hoodoo Gurus
Hoodoo Gurus are an Australian rock band, formed in Sydney in 1981, by the mainstay Dave Faulkner and later joined by Richard Grossman , Mark Kingsmill , and Brad Shepherd...
. Ford, Keays and Wheatley subsequently reunited in Melbourne in 1999 to perform 'unplugged' at the launch of Keays' memoirs, His Master's Voice: The Masters Apprentices: The bad boys of sixties rock 'n' roll, in which he stated that he would not initiate any further reunions. Wheatley's own memoirs, Paper paradise: confessions of a rock 'n' roll survivor, was released later in the year.
Despite Keays' earlier announcement, the band reformed on subsequent occasions, including the Long Way to the Top
Long Way To The Top
Long Way To The Top was an Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary on the history of Australian rock and roll from 1956 to the modern era.-Production:...
national concert tour during August–September 2002, which featured a host of the best Australian acts of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The tour was inspired by the ABC-TV series, Long Way to the Top broadcast in August 2001. Keays featured on "Episode 2: Ten Pound Rocker 1963–1968" where he discussed the UK migrant influence on their early work and "Undecided"; and in "Episode 3:Billy Killed the Fish 1968–1973" where he described pioneering pub rock
Pub rock (Australia)
Pub rock is a style of Australian rock and roll popular throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and still influencing contemporary Australian music today....
and the band's groupies. The classic line-up of Burgess, Ford, Keays and Wheatley reformed although Wheatley only performed for a couple of the concerts and was subbed by his son, Tim Wheatley. Performances of "Because I Love You" and "Turn Up Your Radio" at the final Sydney concert, as well as an interview with promoter, Amanda Pelman, feature on the associated DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, Long Way to the Top: Live in Concert released in 2002. They also performed at an all-star benefit concert
Benefit concert
A benefit concert or charity concert is a concert, show or gala featuring musicians, comedians, or other performers that is held for a charitable purpose, often directed at a specific and immediate humanitarian crisis. Such events raise both funds and public awareness to address the cause at...
held to support 1970s star Ted Mulry
Ted Mulry
Ted Mulry was a singer, songwriter, bass player and guitarist. He was born in Oldham, Lancashire, England but achieved his success in Australia, firstly as a solo performer, and then leading his own band Ted Mulry Gang, sometimes officially credited as just TMG.-Solo:Ted Mulry first came to the...
. They also appeared at the 9 October 2005 benefit concert in Melbourne for former Rose Tattoo
Rose Tattoo
Rose Tattoo is an Australian rock and roll band, now led by Angry Anderson, that was formed in Sydney in 1976. Their sound is hard rock mixed with blues rock influences, with songs including "Bad Boy for Love", "Rock 'n' Roll Outlaw", "Nice Boys", "We Can't Be Beaten" and "Scarred for Life"...
guitarist Peter Wells. Another performance was at the 2005 clipsal 500, along with Hoodoo Gurus.
Legacy
The Masters Apprentices had continued under various line-ups from 1965 until 1972, reforming briefly in 1987 and on several subsequent occasions. Like their contemporaries The EasybeatsThe Easybeats
The Easybeats were an Australian rock and roll band. They formed in Sydney in late 1964 and broke up at the end of 1969. They are regarded as the greatest Australian pop band of the 1960s, and were the first Australian rock and roll act to score an international pop hit with their 1966 single...
and The Twilights
The Twilights (band)
The Twilights were an Australian rock music group of the mid to late 1960s. Alongside their own career successes, The Twilights are also notable for the inclusion of vocalist Glenn Shorrock, who later fronted Axiom, Esperanto and Little River Band, and guitarist Terry Britten who went on to become...
they tried to break into the UK music scene, and one of the later members of the band, Glenn Wheatley
Glenn Wheatley
Glenn Dawson Wheatley is an Australian artist manager and entertainment industry executive.Wheatley began his career as a musician in Brisbane in the mid-1960s and in the late 1960s became nationally famous as a member of leading pop-rock band The Masters Apprentices...
, learned valuable lessons from their travails. After moving into artist management in the 1970s he played a major role in the Australian music industry and the media, most notably through his management of Little River Band
Little River Band
Little River Band is an Australian rock band, formed in Melbourne in early 1975.The group chose the name after passing a road sign leading to the Victorian township of Little River, near Geelong, on the way to a performance. Little River Band enjoyed sustained commercial success in not only...
—who became the first Australian rock band to achieve major commercial success in the USA—and Australian vocalist John Farnham.
The Masters Apprentices were popular throughout Australia, scored a string of Top 20 chart hits and were consistently hailed as one of Australia's best live and recording acts. They started out as an instrumental band, rose to prominence during the mid-Sixties "Beat Boom", moved through psychedelia and bubblegum pop
Bubblegum pop
Bubblegum pop is a genre of pop music with an upbeat sound contrived and marketed to appeal to pre-teens and teenagers, produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers, often using unknown singers.Bubblegum's classic period ran from 1967 to 1972...
, finally becoming one the first and best Australian progressive
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
/hard rock
Hard rock
Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...
groups of the early Seventies. They went through many lineup changes, with vocalist Jim Keays
Jim Keays
James "Jim" Keays is an Australian musician who fronted rock band The Masters Apprentices as singer-songwriter, guitarist and harmonica-player during 1965–1972, and subsequently had a solo career including leading Jim Keays' Southern Cross...
being the only constant, and their membership also illustrates the intricate interconnections between many Australian bands of that era.
The group was notable in the Australian context in that they played mainly originals. One of their hits, "Undecided" (1967), was revived by Silverchair
Silverchair
Silverchair were an Australian rock band, which formed in 1992 as Innocent Criminals in Merewether, Newcastle with the line-up of Ben Gillies on drums, Chris Joannou on bass guitar and Daniel Johns on vocals and guitars. The group got their big break in mid-1994 when they won a national demo...
in 1997, and their well known song "Because I Love You" has been revived many times, including its use in an Australian jeans commercial in the late 1980s. Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
progressive metal
Progressive metal
Progressive metal is a subgenre of heavy metal originating in the United Kingdom and North America in the late 1980s...
band Opeth
Opeth
Opeth is a Swedish heavy metal band from Stockholm, formed in 1990. Though the group has been through several personnel changes, singer, guitarist, and songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has remained Opeth's driving force throughout the years...
named the track "Master's Apprentices" from their 2002 album Deliverance in honour of the band; Opeth frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt
Mikael Åkerfeldt
Lars Mikael Åkerfeldt is a Swedish musician who achieved fame as the lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter of progressive death metal band Opeth as well as the lead vocalist of death metal band Bloodbath. He was the vocalist and guitarist for the band Sörskogen and the guitarist of the band Steel...
is a fan.
In October 1998, The Masters Apprentices received formal recognition for their achievements when they were inducted, alongside The Angels
The Angels (Australian band)
The Angels are a hard rock band that formed in Adelaide, Australia in 1970. The band later relocated from Adelaide to Sydney and enjoyed huge local success until well into the 1990s. For the purposes of international release, their records were released under the names Angel City and later The...
, into the ARIA Hall Of Fame
ARIA Hall of Fame
Since 1988 the Australian Recording Industry Association has inducted artists into its ARIA Hall of Fame. While most have been recognised at the annual ARIA Music Awards, in 2005 ARIA sought to create a separate standalone "ARIA Icons: Hall of Fame" event as only one or two acts could be inducted...
. The same year they were also honoured in Australia Post
Australia Post
Australia Post is the trading name of the Australian Government-owned Australian Postal Corporation .-History:...
's "Rock & Roll" series, with a stamp commemorating "Turn Up Your Radio".
Only a month after their ARIA induction, Colin and Denny Burgess narrowly escaped death after the car in which they were travelling was struck by a semi-trailer, both were severely injured—Colin suffered multiple fractures and internal injuries and as a result could not be moved from the wreck for some time. Denny also received serious injuries and had to undergo plastic surgery
Plastic surgery
Plastic surgery is a medical specialty concerned with the correction or restoration of form and function. Though cosmetic or aesthetic surgery is the best-known kind of plastic surgery, most plastic surgery is not cosmetic: plastic surgery includes many types of reconstructive surgery, hand...
. Both made a recovery and were the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary.
1999–2000 saw the long-awaited release of remastered editions of all The Masters Apprentices' original albums on CD, the publication of both Keays' and Wheatley's memoirs, and the establishment of official web sites for both Keays' and The Masters (see Links), and in June 2000 ABC-TV screened an edited version of the documentary Turn Up Your Video, which was accompanied by the release of the full-length home video. In October 2010, their 1967 debut album, Master's Apprentices, was listed in the top 40 in the book, 100 Best Australian Albums
100 Best Australian Albums
100 Best Australian Albums is a compendium of rock and pop albums of the past 50 years as compiled by music journalists Toby Creswell, Craig Mathieson and John O'Donnell. The book was published on 25 October 2010 by Hardie Grant Books...
.
Personnel
Arranged chronologically:- Mick Bower – rhythm guitarRhythm guitarRhythm guitar is a technique and rôle that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with singers or other instruments; and to provide all or part of the harmony, ie. the chords, where a chord is a group of notes played together...
(1965–1967) - Jim KeaysJim KeaysJames "Jim" Keays is an Australian musician who fronted rock band The Masters Apprentices as singer-songwriter, guitarist and harmonica-player during 1965–1972, and subsequently had a solo career including leading Jim Keays' Southern Cross...
– vocals, harmonicaHarmonicaThe harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...
, guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
(1965–1972, 1987–1991, 1994–1995; 1997, 2001–2002) - Rick Morrison – lead guitarLead guitarLead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...
(1965–1967) - Brian Vaughton – drumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
(1965–1966) - Gavin Webb – bass guitarBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
(1965–1968) - Steve Hopgood – drums, replaced Vaughton (1967–1968)
- Tony Sommers – guitar, replaced Morrison (1967–1968)
- Rick Harrison – rhythm guitar, replaced Bower (1967)
- Peter Tilbrook – rhythm guitar, bass guitar, replaced Harrison (1967–1968)
- Doug FordDoug Ford (musician)Doug Ford is an Australian rock guitarist and songwriter since the 1960s. During 1968–1972, Ford was the lead guitarist in the Australian pop-rock band The Masters Apprentices and established a successful writing partnership with the group's lead singer Jim Keays.-Biography:Ford was born in Casino,...
– guitar, replaced Sommers (1968–1972 1987–1991, 1997, 2001–2002) - Colin BurgessColin BurgessColin Burgess is an Australian musician who was the first drummer in The Masters Apprentices from 1968–72 and was the original drummer with the rock band AC/DC....
– drums, replaced Hopgood (1968–1972, 1987–1991, 2001–2002) - Glenn WheatleyGlenn WheatleyGlenn Dawson Wheatley is an Australian artist manager and entertainment industry executive.Wheatley began his career as a musician in Brisbane in the mid-1960s and in the late 1960s became nationally famous as a member of leading pop-rock band The Masters Apprentices...
– rhythm guitar, bass guitar replaced Webb (1968–1971, 1987&1988, 2002) - Denny Burgess – bass guitar, replaced Wheatley (1972)
- Roger Faynes – guitar, keyboardsKeyboard instrumentA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
(1988–1991) - Wayne Mathews – bass guitar (1988–1991)
- Tony Day – drums (1997)
- Peter Farnan – keyboards, guitar (1997)
- John Favaro – bass guitar, backing vocals (1997)
- Tim Wheatley – bass guitar (2001–2002)
Albums
- Masters Apprentices - 1967 Astor ALP-1025 (reissued as Summit SRA-250.524)
- Masterpiece – 1970 Columbia SCXO-7915 (reissued as World Record Club WRC S/5141197)
- Choice Cuts - 1971 EMI
- Nicklelodeon - 1971
- A Toast to Panama Red - 1972
- Jam It Up (Rarities 1965-1973) - 1973 Raven Records
- Do What You Wanna Do - 1988
- Now That Its Over (Best Of) - EMI 1974
- Hands of Time - 1981 Raven Records 1981
- The Very Best of Masters Apprentices - 1988 Virgin RecordsVirgin RecordsVirgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny...
- 30th Anniversary Of - 1995 EMI
- Masterpiece/Choice Cuts - 1996
- Mustangs to Masters... First Year Apprentices (limited release of 500 numbered copies & 500 un-numbered copies)- 2004
- Fully Qualified - 2006
EPs
- The Masters Apprentices – Astor AEP-4012, 1967
- The Masters Apprentices Vol 2 – Astor AEP-4059, 1967
- Turn Up Your Radio – Columbia SEGO-70190, 1970.
Singles
External links
for Masters Apprentices & Jim Keays- The Masters Apprentices at MILESAGO
- The Masters Apprentices at Australian Rock DatabaseAustralian Rock DatabaseAustralian Rock Database is a website with a searchable online database that lists details of Australian rock music artists, albums, bands, producers and record labels. It was established in 2000 by Swedish national, Magnus Holmgren, who had developed an interest in Australian music when visiting...
- Nostalgia.com entry