Highway to Hell

by Clinton Walker

  The Valentines were delighted when “real musicians” like Billy Thorpe and Wendy Saddington started showing up at their gigs. They were invited to Billy’s pad in East Melbourne for spaghetti or a curry, and in doing so joined a quite exclusive little club. The Levi Smith Clefs came around and hung out at Toorak Road.

  But still the Valentines clung to their original teenage female fan base, playing dances as much as discos, if for financial reasons as much as any other. They would work every week from Tuesday or Wednesday through to Sunday, building up on Friday to Saturday night, which often entailed three or four gigs. They would get around in the Ford Thames van that Darcy drove, lugging increasingly large amounts of equipment. The aesthetic progression rock was making was directly related to the advancements in its technology, its gear. Bon even wrote an essay for Go-Set at the time, admonishing bands who might be cheating their fans by settling for second-rate PA systems.

  VINCE: “On a Saturday night, you’d do three shows: an early dance, a late dance, and then you’d do a club, a disco. Racing around all night, and you did it carrying all your own gear, so the thing was, you couldn’t possibly do all that without some kind of stimulant.”

  DARCY: “On a Saturday night, you might start off, say, at the Ringwood Town Hall, do the first spot there, about 8:30, and of course, you’d only play for half an hour, and then you’d throw the gear in the van, and tear down to Dandenong. You might do the Dandenong Town Hall in the second spot, then whip the gear out again and race down to the Frankston Mechanics Hall and do the feature spot there. That would finish at about 11:30 or so. We’d stay straight for those gigs. Then the last gig would be back in the city, at one of the clubs there, Berties or Sebastian’s, so on the way there, as soon as we’d loaded out of Frankston, we’d be tearing up the highway, and that’s when the joints would start coming out, and we’d get stuck into the cookies. We used to make these hash cookies, it was a real good blast, and we found we could eat them without all the smoke giving the game away, you know. Wyn would come out of his room with this big cookie jar; they looked like butternut snaps!”

  WYN: “We would undergo this transformation at midnight. We would literally change, we would take off our matching outfits and put on jeans. We’d stay straight up until then, if you like, then we’d let our hair down, and go to Berties and do what wasn’t the mainstream music—Led Zeppelin, guitar solos, percussion, all that. And that’s when Bon really came into his own.”

  DARCY: “We’d get so stoned we’d just be giggling and carrying on, but it was really harmless sort of stuff. Anyway, we’d end up back at Berties, and I’m sure people used to come there just to watch us set up. You’d be off your face, and they had this tiny little triangular stage there in the basement, at the bottom of this really narrow stairway, and you’d have to set up.

  “The signal was, they used to flick the light on and off when you were meant to start. Of course, we were always late, so it got so it was like a strobe! They’d have to keep the joint open just so we could play.”

  VINCE: “That’s when a lot of the best music came, you know.”

  DARCY: “We’d get home at maybe 3:30 in the morning, and we’d just get home and keep partying on. Barrie McAskill and the Levi Smith Clefs, any band that was around from interstate, they’d come back and party with you.

  “It was like a little world of our own, we could sit up there nice and stoned and just watch the world go by outside. But we were pretty well known by then, the flat was, so anyone who drove by at four in the morning could have looked up and thought, Oh, the Valentines are having another party.”

  WYN: “Then you’d have to be up at 7:00 to go out to Channel 0 at Nunawading to do Uptight. There’d be some pretty sick-looking people wandering around, wanting to get their make-up done.”

  When John Cooksey announced his intention to leave the band in September, the Vallies decided not to replace him, but rather have Ted Ward switch from second guitar to bass. It was in order to rehearse this new line-up that the band took off on September 15 for a two-week sojourn at the Jan Juc Surf Lifesaving Club near Torquay, on the western Victorian coast. And it was here they came a real cropper.

  “The pop world rocked last week,” read Go-Set on October 4, “when the police raided the practice hideaway of top pop group, the Valentines, and found them in possession of the drug, marijuana.”

  It was the first en masse bust of a band in Australia, and it caused a scandal, although within the rock world it only enhanced their credibility.

  It transpired that the band had been turned in by, to quote Go-Set, “a well-known member of one of our top pop groups,” who “informed [on the Valentines] to save his own neck on a similar charge.”

  Unbeknown to the band, they had been under police surveillance for some weeks. The cops followed them down to Jan Juc, where they were dividing their time rehearsing, smoking, listening to Led Zeppelin and smoking. It was too cold even for Bon to go in the water.

  Having watched the isolated clubhouse for five days, the cops simply knocked on the door with a search warrant on Saturday night, September 20. The band shat themselves. The cops found a pipe and a quantity of Moroccan powder.

  With a court hearing scheduled for October—though they would not eventually appear until the following February—the band either boldly or foolishly spoke out against drug laws. “We believe it should be legalized,” Vince told Go-Set. They even got onto the subject of police harassment. Bon had always been known as the joker in the band, but he was becoming more serious in his new, more frontal role, and on this occasion, came about as close as he ever would to making a directly political statement.

  “They should realize that what we do is right for us,” he protested. “We respect a lot of things about their job, but they shouldn’t persecute whole groups of people just for being different.” In another interview, he said, “The Australian government deserves a few ripples. They’ll be the last to legalize homosexuality, and pot will be the same.”

  In the aftermath of the bust, the band instituted a no-smoking rule, but it was doomed to failure, and in fact, all it did was create divisions.

  DARCY: “We made a pact, Okay, no more smoking, we’ve got to straighten out, for the good of the band. Well, Bon, Paddy and myself just sort of ignored it. Vince went off on his own trip too, I think. Wyn and Ted went along with the letter of the law, and that went on for a few months before they realized what we were doing. They were pretty cut, actually.”

  In late October, the band went to Sydney for the first time since the Op-Pop days. Sydney had regained some initiative, because it had taken so readily to the new dawning in rock. Bands like the La De Das, Flying Circus, Jeff St John and Copperwine, Chain, Max Merritt and the Meteors and Levi Smith Clefs boasted firm followings in licensed discos like the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, Caesar’s Palace, Here and Chequers, which catered as much to R&R’ing American servicemen as local hipsters. “Head” bands like Taman Shud and Tully were so far out they ran their own “stirs,” free gigs for freaks.

  VINCE: “Sydney and Melbourne were two totally different places then, in terms of the audience. Melbourne was a lot more teenybopper orientated, which we’d foolishly catered to because it was good for the ego. But it wasn’t really doing us much good musically.”

  The band was happy to be back in Sydney, where they hadn’t suffered so much from labeling. Playing a residency at Caesar’s, as Tony Johnston later reported in the Herald, “They didn’t wear their uniforms, because as Vince said, that age group aren’t really worried about a group’s image, they’re just interested in the music.” Bon described what the band was doing as “trying things, feeling around for a musical direction.”

  For two nights at Caesar’s, they supported the Easybeats, who, on the verge of folding in England, had been lured back to play a final tour of Australia. Yet though this was the band that had given the Valentines so many pointers, the Vallies were somewhat perplexed, because whilst everyone else in r
ock was launching off into the smoky stratosphere, the Easybeats had come full circle and gotten back to basics, playing straight-ahead rock’n’roll.

  Staying at a big house the promoter provided for them on the edge of the expansive Centennial Park in Sydney’s trendy eastern suburbs, the band was hanging loose. Bon and Vince became friendly with a couple of girls who were waitresses at Caesar’s, and so they spent much time at their Kings Cross flat, getting friendlier. They would drop acid and go tripping in Centennial Park. Bon was developing a taste for liquor too, becoming something of a bar fly.

  The Caesar’s gig was so successful that the band was booked back there for a fee reported “to be the second highest paid an Australian group,” whatever that meant.

  Although the rot was already setting in, the band’s demise would be a drawn-out process, simply because of its common bond. Vince, who had just turned down a part in the Australian production of Hair, told Go-Set: “We probably have more personality conflicts within the group than anyone else—Bon and I have often come really close to punching the shit out of each other. But with all of us the group is the most important thing—it always comes first, before personal arguments, before chicks, before smoking, everything.”

  In December, the band was lured to make its triumphant return to Perth; and, as it happened, this homecoming would appropriately serve as a virtual last hurrah. The band always said they wouldn’t go home until they could do it as stars, and certainly, they were welcomed back like prodigal sons. When they arrived at Perth airport, they had to run the gauntlet of a reported 4,000 screaming fans, to be sped away in waiting cars.

  The band played a big New Year’s Eve show for 6KY back in their old stamping grounds, the Supreme Court Gardens. Staying at Vince’s parents’ place in Applecross, they enjoyed the run of the Perth clubs.

  On the five-hour return flight to Melbourne, they kept up the bratty rock star routine, outraging fellow passengers with their obnoxious behavior, all to the tune of the tape they’d just acquired of the second Led Zeppelin album, which they blasted at full volume from the back of the cabin.

  When they finally appeared in court in Geelong, near Jan Juc, in February, the band pleaded guilty as charged. Counsel William Lennon argued, “The group have told me that under the influence of marijuana they become more perceptive to musical sounds,” and that “long-haired pop stars weren’t automatically louts and drug addicts, and that they had not encouraged other teenagers to follow their example.” The band each received a $150 fine and a good-behavior bond.

  With the dissolution of the Toorak Road flat, the Valentines’ end drew nearer. Rumors were rife that they were breaking up. Even Bill Joseph had to ring Go-Set to find out what was going on.

  DARCY: “We were like lost souls then. After having something going so strong for a while.”

  Only a sense of loyalty was holding the band together now. What would be their final single, “Juliette,” was released in April. A dead ringer for “Dear Prudence,” and written by the band collectively, it ran right into the so-called radio ban anyway, and barely scraped into the top 30.

  The radio ban was a strange episode in Australian pop history, in which the big record companies demanded payment from radio stations for the right to play their product, on the basis that it was providing radio with programming; a demand at which radio naturally scoffed, claiming that it was providing record companies with essential, free promotion. The result was a stand-off, during which time no major label records, locally-produced or otherwise, were heard on the airwaves. What happened, of course, was that independent labels, who could see the opportunity in refusing to side with their major big brothers, stepped into the breach and filled radio’s programming void for free, with a glut of local cover versions of American and English hits, plus even the occasional original Australian track. Yet though June Music boss Ron Tudor’s new Fable Label would be a big winner out of the ban, the Valentines, whose records still came out on Philips, lost out.

  The failure of “Juliette,” for whatever reason, was the last straw. The Valentines were on the road in Newcastle when the bullet was bitten. Talking later to Go-Set, Vince said it was because their opinions conflicted so much. “None of us were really happy in the group any more, but we didn’t say anything because we didn’t want to hurt the others.”

  Bon wrote to Maria, to whom he was speaking again, from Newcastle on June 2:Got some news for you. Guess what? The Valentines are breaking up on the 1st August. It’s been coming about for a while now and it came to a head last week when we found out that Vince was waiting for confirmation from a couple of jobs. Ted, Wyn and I decided we’d dig to split anyway and form a group of our own and run it the way we wanted to, so that was it . . . Vince is going to work for Go-Set and Paddy will get another group. We’re going to add an electric piano and organ and a new drummer and go into hiding for a couple of months. Then we’ll record an LP and a single and follow it up with a shit-hot group and make lots of money. The funny thing about it was that there were no arguments or hard feelings as everyone realized that a change was due.

  The band returned to Melbourne and played its last show with a distinct lack of fanfare, at Werribee, a desolate, far-flung suburb known only for its sewage treatment plant.

  DARCY: “The last job, it was a funny one, because no one . . . it didn’t sort of hit home, that we were doing the last job. I was sort of blown out, What, we’re doing the last job down at Werribee? It was like, it was a Sunday night, and so we were doing this job, and that was it. It was like, Shit, what are we going to do now?”

  But if Bon had plans, they ended up just that, best-laid plans. He was made a better offer, one that held great promise.

  Fraternity get back to nature, Aldgate, September 1971. Left to right: Mick Jurd, John Freeman, “Uncle” John Ayers, Bon, Bruce Howe, Sam See, John Bisset. (courtesy John Freeman)

  6. FRATERNITY

  Adelaide was probably the last place Bon would have expected to end up, but within six months of the Valentines’ dissolution, he found himself there, living the whole communal hippie trip as a member of the band Fraternity.

  Fraternity leader Bruce Howe asked Bon to come up to Sydney to join his band as soon as he heard the Valentines were breaking up. Bon leapt at the chance: Fraternity was the hottest new band in the land, even if they didn’t yet have a true lead singer.

  Fraternity had strong Adelaide connections from the start. The band had spun off from the hallowed Levi Smith Clefs, an Australian musical institution led by Adelaide legend Barrie McAskill. Bruce Howe himself was an Adelaide boy, as was drummer John Freeman. And Fraternity was already tied to Adelaide-based independent record company, Sweet Peach, as were the Levi Smith Clefs.

  But relocating to Adelaide, removing themselves from the center of things, would in fact quell Fraternity’s potential. Such was the naiveté and conceit that characterized the times, however, that Fraternity were convinced the world would come to them, and in the process establish Adelaide as an alternative music center—like an antipodean Nashville. It wouldn’t quite work out that way.

  Adelaide is a sleepy small town; not a city, many say, but a big country town, if a very sophisticated one. As Australia’s first free settlement (all the other major cities have convict roots), the capital of South Australia has always regarded itself as a bastion of liberalism and the arts. The biannual Adelaide Festival remains Australia’s premier arts event.

  Adelaide also has an extremely significant rock’n’roll tradition. As the city that spawned Cold Chisel, the Angels and the Little River Band in the seventies, it has proved a wellspring of talent. But Adelaide bands have always had to flee Adelaide to make it.

  Adelaide’s Clefs in Melbourne, 1966, before Barrie McAskill took over the band and it became the Levi Smith Clefs. L-R: drummer Gil Matthews (who later joined Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs), singer McAskill, bassist Bruce Howe, guitarist Les Tanner (kneeling), and original leader, organist “Tweed” Harris. (co
urtesy Doris Howe)

  Fraternity flew in the face of convention when they were lured back to Adelaide by an offer of support from a wealthy patron of the arts. They were immediately elevated to superstar status there, and it was this that blinded them to reality.

  But then, in the early seventies, reality was a concept seriously under siege.

  Adelaide had produced a disproportionate share of top groups during the sixties as well, among them the Twilights, the Vibrants, the Masters Apprentices, the Groove and the Zoot.

  In 1967, South Australia predicted the coming national sea change when Don Dunstan became state premier. Dunstan was a Labor Party man in a pastel-colored safari suit, who set a pace that even reformist Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was hard pressed to equal in the 1970s. South Australia was the first Australian state to legalize homosexuality, to decriminalize pot, and to recognize equal rights for women.

  When South Australian licensing laws were amended to allow late-night closing, rock’n’roll moved into pubs. The climate was thus perfect for a band that believed it could rewrite all the rules.

  Bruce Howe had only ever reluctantly left Adelaide in the past. Growing up in the rough and tumble docklands of Port Adelaide, Howe became a professional musician almost as soon as he left high school in 1964. He joined an outfit called the Clefs, a rock’n’roll revue led by Englishman Tweed (né Winston) Harris. Gigs were plentiful; the scene was exploding.

  When Scotsman Barrie McAskill joined the Clefs later in 1964, he was already something of a godfather of the Adelaide scene. With his band the Drifters, he had helped pioneer rock’n’roll in South Australia. The Clefs provided McAskill with a more contemporary vehicle, and gradually he took over the band from Tweed Harris. Moving to Melbourne in 1966, the Clefs established a reputation on the circuit there, cutting a couple of singles. But it wasn’t long before the young Bruce Howe returned to Adelaide. Tweed Harris himself would also eventually leave the Clefs when the band became a game of musical chairs revolving around McAskill as he moved on to Sydney.