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Post by halva on Feb 17, 2007 5:28:12 GMT -5
I am not indifferent to the “light” side of Gastronamus and I would like to tell a “memory-lane” story from a faraway and long-gone world that could hardly be more different from the world I live in now. It is the story of a band called “The Allusions”, a band on whose preserves in Sydney’s working class Western Suburbs my own teenage rock band poached for one memorable evening when The Allusions were at the height of their brief career.
Though entirely derivative themselves (Beatles clones), The Allusions were something like a model to us because of their musical skill and their moddish fashionability. We played several of their numbers and wanted to be like them. The story of The Allusions is the story of would-be escapees from the endless flat dusty expanse of Sydney’s Western suburbs, guys who for a short time looked as if they had indeed ‘made it’ but soon thereafter went into terminal decline, to be swallowed up again into the anonymity and stagnation that is the lot of so many of those, particularly of English-speaking origin, living on ‘the other side of the tracks’ (and of the Harbour) in Sydney, Australia.
What did they lack?
Here is the story. I will present it in instalments, as I get the time to put it up.
THE ALLUSIONS
It was early 1964.
Terry Hearne’s professional career was at its lowest ebb. After beginning with The Midnighters in 1958 as a fifteen-year-old, he joined The Dave Bridge Quartet in ’61, Terry went from a local pub band into a top instrumental group that toured interstate and appeared on national television.
When Terry Chapman left, it became The Dave Bridge Trio. They had their fair share of hit records as well, with songs like “Skip to My Lou”, “The Swan”, “Trailblazer” and “Bondi Stomp”. Their album, “Surfin’ Down Under”, sold well then and is a collectors; item some forty years later.
Between their own sessions and personal appearances, The Dave Bridge Trio supplied backing for other artists. “We did the original version of ‘The Lights on the Hill’ with Slim Dusty”, recalls Terry. However, trouble was brewing on the horizon.
“I came onboard with The Quartet as a paid sideman for David at five pounds a gig. We were working four to five times a week and so it was good money for a teenager. I guess the real problem was our age. When Dave was twenty-eight I was eighteen. That was a huge gap in those days.” While their popularity grew, Terry's wage didn’t . “I didn’t see any recording royalties. For the life of me, I can’t remember even being paid for the sessions. (laughs) If I was, it must have been very small change.
By early 1964 Terry left and hired himself out to local bands as a guitar for hire. One night at home, he received a phone call from Lonnie Lee. His group, the Leemen, had lost their lead guitarist. Was he interested? Terry accepted. By that time the wheel of fate had turned on Loniie Lee as well. The hits had stopped. His Leedon recording contract was gone. The only source of income was a three-night-a-week gig at The Stardust Hotel in Cabramatta. “Lonnie was going through his ‘Buck Owens’ period. He went around everywhere wearing a white cowboy hat,” recalls Terry. “It didn’t take long to get bored. You can only take so many ‘Starlight Starbright’ and ‘I’ve got a Tiger by the Tail’ in one lifetime.” The way he got through those long nights at The Stardust was to be mentally somewhere else. “As I picked the lead on yet another performance of ‘I Found a New Love’ and smiling away at the audience I was creatng another group in my head.” That mind game was to become The Allusions.
Michael Morris came into The Leemen as rhythm guitarist from Dennis Williams and the Delawares. “They were just another one of those clone bands of Cliff Richard and the Shadows on the circuit ,” recalls Terry. It was soon clear the new man could sing as well as harmonise behind Lonnie. Terry and Michael quickly formed a friendship and decided to create their own band. “I brought in Terry Chapman from the old Dave Bridge days on bass. Michael knew he could bring over Kevin Hughes from The Delawares on drums. We both knew if we wanted to do the circuit we had to have some kind of floor-show. Back in those days the standards was high because of all those Kiwi showbands that came across the Tasman.” That’s when a certain Mr. John Shaw filled a critical role in The Allusions. “I didn’t know John but Michael knew of him from somewhere. When we first met I thought he was crazy! They said he played piano and silly me, I believed them, until I heard him. (laughs) He was one hopeless piano player. He’d pound away on that keyboard as if he was smacking someone on the head. Anyway, he had a pleasant enough voice for a certain type of ballad We ended up finding him a small Vox organ, locked the volume onto low and hid him upstage behind the rest of us.”
By ’65 Australia was dominated by the English beat scene. The Americans were down and out for the count. Young Aussie musicians from the Sydney’s Western suburbs were talking with laughable English accents.
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Post by chickenlittle on Feb 17, 2007 9:05:52 GMT -5
Hey halva,interesting piece of info,you know it was the same here in Wa.state.There was this band in the first half of the eighties they won an MTV bit,in which they were bought a bunch of equipment and got a recording contract at the time. I thought they were one of the best bands I heard in the eighties and obviously just not enough cash to go on. They ended up doing Bar concerts in my town,which is only like 50,0000 people total so that gives you an idea of what happened to them,I mean our band played in this town too.So that is some indication of how far down they finally went (of course I do remember paying like 15 bucks for a ticket and back then that was a little bit of cash) Anyways they had a song called "Emma Peele" all about the lead character in the old series from the 60-70's "The Avengers" and another song called I think"I don't like your face"these guys were really good,their band name was "THE ALLIES" I don't know what ever happened to them though,a real loss in music.It is really too bad that some of these bands don't come back now when it is much easier to get your music OUT there with the help of the web,but you know back then it cost a pretty penny to go to a recording studio and then have to find someone who really believed that you were sellable cash wise,sadly enough. Thanks for the story and bringing to light some of my own old memeories,of bands that deserved more and were stomped out with less. Hey,take care chicky
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Post by halva on Feb 18, 2007 10:19:58 GMT -5
I've hardly started telling the story yet Chicky. The Allusions had a couple of hit records in Sydney and there has been a recent reissue of their collected works: twenty or so songs of which four or five are good.
They are a sociological phenomenon: a local spin-of the Beatlemania and pro-British mania of the mid-sixties. Perhaps I can try to put their best songs on-line.
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Post by halva on Feb 18, 2007 15:09:31 GMT -5
The Allusions (cont):
"People forget these days there were a lot of terrific groups besides The Beatles. I thought The Fortunes, Zombies and Gerry and the Pacemakers were fantastic." The new group rehearsed for over six months before they quit the old bands and played their first gig at the end of 1965. "We were strictly a cover band. We didn't learn one Beatles song. We had their whole albums down perfectly. The audience at our gigs got the latest English albums from the opening song to the closing track. We were very much a complete group except for John. It seems when he did his spots, we fell back into that old format of backing band and a front man. In hindsight he was out of place in the line-up.
That statement might be true today. However, it was John Shaw who dominated those early gigs of the Allusions. “He was one crazy guy, completely over the top. There were really two different sides to him. He could put over a song like ‘I Believe’ in a true Billy Eckstine fashion. The other side was his Screaming Lord Sutch or Boris Pickett impersonations. It amazes me to this day how well he would go over with an audience. He’d single out a couple of girls and then stalk them from the stage singing ‘Jack the Ripper’ or ‘The Monster Mash’ wearing a top hat and swirling around his huge black cape like Boris Karloff on dope. (laughs) You know in later years he became musical director at South Molle and Great Keppel resorts? He was known up there as ‘The Beast’ at one ‘The Animal’ at the other. Both names suited him down to the ground.”
After a couple of months gigging through the western suburbs, the Allusions began looking around for a recording contract. “We laid down a four-track demo on this old reel-to-reel tape deck and posted copies to every Sydney record company listed in the phone book. No original material. The songs were just covers of whatever was on the charts at the time. After doing that, we thought all we had to do was sort through the offers that came back.” There were no replies. The group even made sure there was someone to meet the postman every day at the letter box. “We eventually rang up a couple of the A&R departments but couldn’t get past the secretary. We were just kids at a complete loss of what to do next.”
A friend of Kevin Hughes worked for The Reg Grundy Organization on the North Shore. Feeling their disappointment, she offered to pass the demo around the office in the hope of finding somebody interested. They handed her a copy with little expectation. The Grundy Organization established itself in the early days of Australian television with quiz and game shows. The popularity of the hosts led them to launch their own record label. I’m sure everybody in the industry was surprised when Jimmy Hannan’s ‘Beach Ball’ went racing up the Top 40 charts. Honestly, it was only a Clayton’s label, not used by genuine musicians. However, the Allusions were past the point of caring about such a high point of principle.
A week later, Robert Iredale rang them from Grundy's. An audition was organized for the coming afternoon in his office. "We knew by then we had to come up with original material. Michael was always writing, with some songs sounding better than the others. I later realized he couldn't write quality songs when needed. I suppose he'd averaged three to four terrific songs a year with a lot of others somewhere in between. As for the rest of us, we couldn't write a shopping list. However, I would work out the chord structure for Michael and tell him whether they worked or not," recalls Terry.
On the day, the Allusions drove over to North Sydney and carried their gear up a steep flight of stairs. They then found they had to move the office furniture into the corner for space to play. Robert Iredale didn't have his own office but shared one with others.
The Allusions' normal set had two additions. The first was an original of Michael's "Fever (Burns my Brain}". The second was a re-working of 'Gypsy Woman'. Terry was listening to Ricky Nelson when he came across the song on the flipside of a Decca single. "His version was a country reading based around a one-chord structure . There was something about the song that caught my ear. It suddenly struck me: the arrangement of 'Walk, don't Run' would work behind it. Do you remember that song? It was an instrumental classic by The Ventures. Anyway, I tried it and the idea worked. You could have knocked me over with a feather."
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Post by halva on Feb 22, 2007 6:56:17 GMT -5
The audition, a mixture of instrumentals and Merseybeat songs, went well. Iredale told them he'd be in touch as they packed up their gear and moved the office furniture back into place. "Robert was a nice guy, our age too. He didn't speak down to us like older people. Respect, that's important. I'm not sure what he did at work, though. I'm pretty sure it wasn't anything important. He was probably just another office clerk looking for a way to get involved in the music industry."
Just over a week later, Robert told them he had a deal with EMI Records. The group was then called back to the office to sign the recording contracts. Because they were minors, their parents had to sign on their behalf. On the same day Michael Morris also signed a separate publishing deal. The Allusions were now the property of Leopold Production for the next five years who would lease their finished masters to EMI Records for release on the Parlophone label. If anyone noticed they weren't signed directly to EMI or even the Grundy label, they didn't raise the subject. "We were happy. Nobody cared about money in those days. We just knew our records were on the same label as The Beatles." So who controlled Leopold Productions. "I don't know. The only person we dealt with was Robert Iredale. Robert was only interested in production. Nobody signed us to a management deal." Whoever controlled the company, they controlled The Allusions.
The groups was locked into a contract where they couldn’t sneeze in a recording studio without the company’s permission. They controlled the money flow from EMI Recrods, further diluting the amount with invoices for services rendered. “We didn’t get EMI royalty statements. We got them from Leopold Productions. The amounts were always so small, it didn’t matter. In all the years I’ve recorded, the total amount I received wouldn’t be more than forty dollars (laughs). You’ve got to remember in those days the music industry was like the Wild West. There were a lot of rogues about.â€
The recording session for their debut single was logged for three hours. The songs chosen were “Gypsy Woman†and “Fever (Burns my Brain)â€, with Robert Iredale in the producer’s chair and David Mackay the engineer. The two tracks were finished and in the can in less than an hour on the clock. “We did the hard work in the rehearsal hall and so when we went into the studio, it only took three to four takes apiece. The first run through was strictly for the levels of the taping equipment. The third usually ended up as the master. We didn’t muck about. A few things stand out. The first. Robert was always open to suggestions and didn’t interfere with the music. He was only interested in producing what we had to offer. We thought that was great! Another thing. I remember we weren’t allowed in the control booth. That was strictly off-limits (laughs). They thought we were Frank Spencer. If they left us alone in there, we’d pour coffee all over the equipment. The engineering staff didn’t respect pop groups. Most of the time, they thought we were wasting their time.
The debut single “Gypsy Woman†b/w “Fever (Burns my Brain)†was released on Parlophone A-8196 in late January 1966. It made an immediate impact . “Gypsy Woman†enjoyed a nine-week run on the national charts, reaching number 9.
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Post by halva on Apr 26, 2007 15:33:09 GMT -5
The world of The Allusions changed overnight. "I don't beleve the station jocks realised we were a local band. There was no company promotions or details handed out. We weren't playing the fashionable venues of inner-Sydney. There were no promoters like Harrigan or Dent pushing our cause onto the music papers. By the time the disc jockeys discovered we weren't an overseas group, it was too late to lay off the song. "Gypsy Woman" had taken on a life of its own." That statement might appear strange to people who didn't live through the fifties and sixties in this country. But at that time, there was a definite bias against an Australian product. The old saying was you had to succeed overseas to be taken seriously here. A stupid attitude that would cause laughter today. However, you have to consider the first prize of our national music competition was a working passage out of the country on a cruise ship. The second prize a recording contract. The proof of that attitude was the Atlantics' "Bombora". They received initial radio exposure for that exciting and original song because the disc jockeys assumed they were another American group like The Surfaris or Chantays.
The national success of "Gypsy Woman" caught everybody by surprise. An unknown group from the Sydney's western suburbs suddenly had a Top 10 hit on their hands with little industry promotion. There weren't even any publicity photographs to distribute. Robert Iredale quickly phoned them to have some done. Even this task wasn't handled by the record company but handed back to the group. Since their parents didn't have telephones privately connected, The Allusions stood outside a public phone booth and flicked through the directory. A small Parramatta studio was chosen. Most of the photographs used in this booklet come from that session. An interesting fact is that their instruments are nowhere to be seen. The Allusions, heavily influenced by The Beatles with their music, were following the new English style of rock photography.
Overnight success can be a double-edged sword. The Allusions would soon feel the cruel twist of its blade. While their debut single would soon be regarded as one of the finest Australian releases of the period, its success undermined the group. They made a a decision to only record their own material. This could only work if they had several strong writers. The jostling to place songs would mean only the strongest material reached the recording studio. The Allusions only had Michael Morris. "Fever (Burns my Brain)" remains his finest song, a pop classic in anyone's language. Michael's problem was that he wrote early. The quality of his catalogue, with the exception of "The Dancer", falls away. Meanwhile, Terry Hearne, whose exciting new arrangement of "Gypsy Woman" established the group, rested on his laurels. It would be his only major involvement in the group's catalogue.
The group's unity was shattered when Terry Chapman left. This happened after the release of "Gypsy Woman" but before it reached the national charts. The decision would have sent cold shivers up the backbone of Leopold Productions, who sensed their fledgling company had a potential hit on their books. "Terry did this before. He left Dave Bridge in a huff and us the same way. He'd pick up his bat and ball and go home. At least, Terry had something to go back to. After he left Dave, Terry set up a signwriting business that became very successful," recalls Terry Hearne.
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Post by halva on May 3, 2007 15:36:31 GMT -5
Bruce Davis ex-lead guitarist of the Delawares joined their ranks. The Allusions' line-up was now Terry Hearne (lead). Michael Morris (rhythm), Bruce Davis (bass), John Shaw (keyboards) and Kevin Hughes (drums). While they all sang, Michael carried the heavier load. Bruce would become the forgotten Allusion to a certain extent. A second photo session was organized. Although he appeared on both the extended play and album cover, the original set of photographs with Terry Chapman were still being circulated within the industry.
The important second single, "The Dancer", b/w "Roller Coaster Man" was released in May 1966 on Parlophone A-8210. It peaked at number 8 on the national charts after a thirteen week run, making it their most successful single. Garry Aurisch's booklet partly describes it thus..."when Kevin Hughes tumbles into the first downbeat of 'The Dancer' the effect is like jumping onto a moving train. In other words the listener is yanked into a performance which seems to be already happening. Terry Chapman's bass parts never stand still for a moment and delightfully challenge the melody line every step of the way. The song is so riveting that ordinary folk may well mistake it for the Beatles." I'll accept those sentiments at their face value except for the comparison with the Beatles. The statement could be valid with them in '64. By May 1966 the Beatles had progressed by light years. There's no doubt The Dancer was an excellent pop song for its time. Meanwhile I can't say the same for the b-side. "Roller Coaster Man" was a disappointment.
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