The Atlantics and Johnny Rebb in 1966

Having originally met as schoolboys on their way back from the beach The Atlantics rapidly gelled as one of Sydney’s most exciting young bands. Propelled to the top of the international charts in 1963 with their wildly popular instrumental Bombora the band solidified around the line-up of Peter Hood (drums), Theo Penglis (Guitar/Organ), Jim Skiathitis/Adams (Guitar) and Bosco Bosonac (bass).  Tagged as the Australian doyens of the Surf Sound the band quickly racked up a further hit with The Crusher before the Mersey sound consigned non-vocal bands to the dustbin of history.                  

      Undaunted by the changing course of events and enthused by the promise of musical challenges to come, the band soldiered on for another seven years producing more than 40 singles in the process. Whilst they were never again to soar to the commercial heights of their early years The Atlantics nevertheless continued to innovate both on their own and in concert with 1950s shouter Johnny Rebb. Iain McIntyre caught up with Peter Hood to discuss the creation of such oft-covered Oz-punk classics as It’s A Hard Life and C’Mon.

WILD ABOUT YOU: How did the Atlantics go about  meeting the challenge of promoting and developing your vocal side when so many people had you forever stuck in the world of instrumentals?

PETER HOOD: When the instrumental thing died off we never considered giving up because we had always tried to be an all round band. We had the whole package going and instrumentals were just one part of it. It was one of those rare things in life where one aspect of what we were doing sky rocketed to the point where it totally dominated who we were perceived to be. Bombora became such a hit that we were branded purely as instrumentalists.

      The Crusher was also big, but by then The Beatles had hit and within a month or two they held the first four or five spots on the charts and no one could get in. The Crusher however did make it to #2, #3 and #4 on various charts across the country. War Of The Worlds also got released in the U.S. CBS thought it was good enough to be a big hit over there. Unfortunately they were wrong, but it’s remained a cult favourite.

      We never felt discouraged because we kept going through musical changes. We had some disappointments, but also a lot of satisfaction. Various songs we had tried out like A Little Bit Of Soul and Just Can’t Help Believing were later big hits for other people so we knew were hitting the right mark, that we could pick successful material. We kept trying for that massive vocal hit and we thought I Put A Spell On You or Lonely Guy might have been the one.

WAY: In joining forces with Johnny Rebb were you hoping to adapt to the changing times?

PH: Once again it’s ironic that we’ve always been tagged as an instrumental band because from the very beginning we had always been singing. We’d had a couple of vocalists over time. One was Harvey Foster, another was Eddie Moses and Kenny Shane was actually a full time singer for us early on. At other times the rest of us had made various attempts at singing as well. When we hooked up with John in 1965 however we decided to give it a proper go because he was a vocalist and we’d just been dabbling.

WAY: What was a typical show like with John?

PH: We’d usually play a bracket of instrumentals and then a bracket of the Mersey beat type songs that myself, Jim and the other boys could handle. Jim had a voice like John Lennon and could put it on a little bit hence our Beatles type of sound. Then when John came on we would do everything from Rolling Stones through to Cream and Hendrix. We did a lot of Rolling Stones stuff because John had a really good Stones style and could mimic Jagger pretty well. Later on when Creedence Clearwater Revival came out we’d do a lot of their songs because John had that Fogarty drawl down pat.

      Once John’s set was over we’d rotate it all again until the big finale when we’d pull out every song we could think of including Elvis, Neil Diamond and whatever else was happening. Some songs would be quite spellbinding. We’d do a song like Lonely Guy and the girls in the audience would be literally crying. We knew that whatever was in that song and whatever John was doing with it was working so we recorded it, but it didn’t get any airplay.

      John was amazing on stage. He never stood still, he’d do the splits, he’d jump, he’d move, he’d sweat, he’d strain. The girls loved him. He was a super performer on stage. We did our best for him, we would have walked over fire for him. He was a great friend.

The Atlantics

WAY: What about your own performance, would you trash your kit?

PH: Not me, I wasn’t that adventurous. It took too long to find a kit that sounded the way I wanted it to! The first kit I had was an Australian made one that my father bought me called a Dandy. I loved the sound of it, it was so unique. Bombora was recorded using those toms and to this day I still use the same Dandy toms. When I started to get more famous I was given a completely free top of the line Gretsch drum kit by one of the big music companies. I still use that too.

WAY: How did the audiences react to your shows?

PH: They were always very receptive, warm and enthusiastic. With some songs you would do the house would literally come down. Whenever things weren’t going so well we’d pull out War Of The Worlds with all the sound effects or a big drum solo or our instrumental version of the theme from Exodus. We did a really orchestral version of that. John would sing Lonely Guy or I Put A Spell On You and people would just stop and stare. John was an underrated singer in his lifetime. He had his moments and at times he could just hypnotise an audience.

      People usually got into whatever we did, instrumental or vocal, original or cover. Right up until the time that we quit in 1970 they were still enjoying our earlier instrumental stuff. It held up.

WAY: Did you have people tearing your clothes off and all the rest of that?

PH: I’m not going to pretend that we were like The Beatles where every female in the world would want to rip you apart, but there were a lot of times when people would try and drag John or Jim into the audience or tear their pants off. These were moments that ranged from relatively embarrassing to minorly scary. It was certainly better than people not responding at all. (laughs)

Jim Skiathitis on psychedelic guitar

WAY: Why did the band split from CBS in 1965?

PH: I think we just wanted more independence. When (CBS A&R man) Sven Liebaek was in control of our situation it was fantastic. He used to think like we did, he was one of us in that sense. Once he wasn’t so involved we decided to go it alone and do what we wanted, when we wanted. CBS really weren’t keen to release any of our vocal material and once again we felt stuck in the instrumental thing.

      To release our own records we formed RAMROD which stood for Rebb Atlantics McDonagh (Atlantics manager) Recording Organisation Division. Originally we had been managed by Joan King, but by this point we were with McDonagh.

      Occasionally you’ll also see JRA productions, which stood for Johnny Rebb Atlantics productions. Before RAMROD was born we licensed recordings to Festival, Sunshine, HMV and Leedon.

WAY: Did you find you had more control in the studio once you went out on your own?

PH: Of course. You only had to please yourself, but on the other hand if you screwed it up you only had yourself to blame. We recorded at EMI, at Eric Porter’s studios, United Sounds and other places.

      Usually we elected John as the key producer as we wanted to concentrate on our playing although all of us made contributions as far as arrangements, sound and feel went. Bosco and I got to do some great vocals. Very subtle stuff, usually mixed into the background.

      As the 1960s went on the new technology made things easier. It was good to go to EMI when they got the 4 track and know that, unlike with the 2 track recorders, if you made a mistake on the bass you wouldn’t all have to do the song again. You could just redo the bass part. That was a lot more relaxing, a lot less pressure to get it right first time.

WAY: Why did you choose the Eastlakes scout hut for the recording of C’Mon?

PH:  We were just getting a great sound in there. We wanted to have an absolute raw, thumping rock n roll sound. A big live sound, none of this sticking a microphone half an inch from the drums. If you’ve ever stuck your ear that close to a drum when someone hits it then you’ll know that it is not what a drum really sounds like. We only had a couple of mics on the drums and we were relying on the sound of the room to create the sound. The guitar also had a similar thing going where there was as much of the room sound as the amplifier spilling into the mic.  The old scouts hall being made of wood and tin and being very reflective, pardon the pun, reflected that live sound.

      The song itself came out of one of those moments where I was thinking “BANG BANG BANG BANG.” Kind of like what AC/DC achieved later. Obviously they weren’t around at that point, but that was the sound in my mind. I had heard the Vanda/Young stuff and it impressed me. I liked the simplicity of their sound. Once the other boys got involved and added some of their ideas it changed and became more like what you now know it as.

      When we played our come back shows in Melbourne a few years ago we played with a band (The Hands Of Time) who did do C’Mon with that AC/DC feel and I was blown away. It sounded exactly the way I had originally pictured it.

Johnny Rebb and Theo Penglis in 1967

WAY: Tell us about the choice of Screaming Jay Hawkins’ I Put A Spell On You as a single. Your interpretation is fairly unique.

PH: It was a crowd favourite. It just seemed to drive the audience so we had to record it. We certainly nailed that one. It took about fifty takes to get it right. We kept on getting the ending wrong as it has this little climbing keyboard piece which we kept screwing up.  We were using the 2 track and by the 46th take, I was counting them, I thought “If this goes one more time I’m going to kill myself.” (laughs) It was still happening and it was still great on the 50th take, but inside my brain it was no longer music, it was a dream world.

WAY: Another song that is a personal favourite is It’s A Hard Life. Who came up with that?

PH: That was one Jim wrote individually. It was a culmination of reaching for a Rolling Stones, Animals feel. That one was done in the Scouts hall as well. It wasn’t quite as alive as C’Mon, but it still had a good sound.

WAY: 1967 was a very busy year as amongst the 6 singles and EP you released you also produced a pair of psychedelic surf instrumentals (Take A Trip/Flowers) as Gift Of Love.

PH: That was an attempt to see what would happen if we put out a really odd instrumental that touched on the Flower Power thing. We spent a whole day trying to knock out a name and settled on that one for some reason. Another name we were going to choose was Burning Thoughts, which was equally dumb. (laughs) We just put it out there in the hope it might take off. It didn’t. (laughs)

WAY: Were there any drugs involved in the writing of those ones?

PH: Everyone thought we took stuff, but we didn’t smoke and we rarely drank. We used to be the idiots that carried honey, water, bananas, oranges and apples around. We didn’t think of it as clean living, that was just the way we were. We were all pretty healthy.

      Being young and energetic we could easily keep up the pace anyway. Lets face it, anyone who sleeps and eats well will have lots of energy. I enjoy a beer and a drink, but more so now than back then.  The music kept us energetic. There’s nothing like a good audience.  I’d look out and see the audience fired up and I could feel the adrenalin and I’d almost explode. There was so much energy you could almost do it without breathing.

WAY: The band also played and recorded with Johnny Rebb’s younger brother Russ Kruger. Was that Johnny’s idea?

PH: We all had a hand in it. Russ was a lot younger than John and had a real magnetism with young women. He was 17 going on 18. He probably wanted to sing, but without our motivation I think he would have stayed in the background.

      He had the blond hair and was tall and every time he walked by the girls would just stare. We figured we’d help him use that power and start his singing career. He nearly snuck through too with A Little Bit Of Soul. He got very close to cracking it.

      Everyone always asks the question, but there was never any competition between the brothers. John was John and Russ was Russ and when we got on stage we always tried to make everyone sound as good as possible. Russ toured with us for a number of years and we did a number of singles with him.

Johnny Rebb

WAY: A high percentage of the material you recorded was made up of your own songs. Whilst your live set obviously had its fair share of covers what drove you to largely stick to originals in the studio?

PH: There wasn’t any great plan involved. Those songs were happening in our heads and once we put them together we naturally wanted to record them. We couldn’t help ourselves. Sometimes we’d write collaboratively, but with the vocal material we were more scattered and individual. It wasn’t always easy to choose exactly whose song we were going to do, but we always worked it out even if there had to be a flip of the coin.

We were always experimenting.  Bombora is a good example. When Jim and I wrote it I knew that it needed a bigger drum sound than anything I had heard around so we spent six months trying all kinds of approaches. Once we got that right we decided that we needed to make the lead guitar sound different too so Jim just kept trying every which way until bang “That’s the one!” Once something stuck we kept with it. We never questioned whether it was good or bad, once that was it, that was it.

The Atlantics rock Lane Cove in 1964

WAY: Was the band mainly based in Sydney?

PH: Well we lived there, but we were constantly on tour. Melbourne was always good to us, we always had a fantastic time there. We played with The Strangers just as they were switching from Shadows type songs to Beatles harmonies. They were a fantastic band and we got to be good friends with some of them.

      Brisbane was great too. We’d play Festival Hall and a place called Starland or Dreamland. It had a really low roof.  same time. They packed them in. Barry Stanton was on the same bill as us one night and when he went to do a big jump he hit his head and nearly did himself in. (laughs)

WAY: What were your favourite places to play when you were at home?

PH: In Sydney my favourite at one stage was Surf City because I knew it always had a great sound on the mezzanine floor. I remember watching Max Merritt and Billy Thorpe and being really impressed by the sound. They used to get anything up to 6000 people circulating through there in one night.

      Some of my favourite shows were at the outdoor concerts at Lane Cove Park in 1963/4. They’d get up to 20 000 people and the sound was pretty good as well. It was very exciting. These were the forerunners of the truly great outdoor concerts.

The Atlantics rock Lane Cove in 1964

WAY: How did the gigs in the country contrast with the city shows? Were people into your music?

PH: The country audiences were sensational. It was a major event for them since they didn’t have much opportunity for entertainment. They would respond fantastically to anyone with a hit or a good reputation. People were always friendly and would invite you out to lunch. As soon as they’d find out that I liked cheese or milk then I’d be flooded with the stuff. When we did a trip to Grafton they gave us the key to the city and one of the councillors drove us all around the town. We would taste all the fresh produce. We were treated like kings.

      One show that didn’t go so well was still hilarious, probably the funniest thing that ever happened to us. We hit this town and there was a local band doing a concert at the same time. They packed them in with 800 people. We had just had a Number One single and only got 25. (laughs) We laughed so much that night that we all had cramps in our jaws. What went wrong I don’t know because the rest of the tour was very successful.

The Atlantics in 1964

WAY: The constant touring must have involved a lot of driving. Was that ever dangerous?

PH: There was one major smash that nearly took myself and Bosco out. We’d just done a shoot at Channel 10 and left Sydney at about 11-30pm to play a tour up in Brisbane. I was driving along and fell asleep. The next thing I knew I was driving through this huge ditch filled with water and mud. I felt like I was driving a boat! My brain was just struggling to figure out what I was doing in a boat. (laughs) Eventually the car rolled over a few times and landed on its roof. Some of the drum stands and other things shot to the front and could have speared us, but missed. Luckily we didn’t even have a scratch on us. Once we got the car out of the ditch it looked like a crab going sideways, but we still managed to get to Brisbane to do the concerts.  It was an eventful tour because one place we played the promoter had no money so he offered his wife as payment instead! (laughs)

Russ Kruger

WAY: Was non-payment a regular problem?

PH: It only happened now and then. We did one show for this guy and at the end of the night he put on a fantastic feast. Every kind of food you could imagine. Chicken, turkey, duck, all sorts of wine. That night however I was fasting and didn’t eat a thing, I just drank water. The next day we found out we weren’t getting paid and that the promoter had skipped town! (laughs) That came to be known as the Last Supper.

WAY: Tell us about your tour of New Zealand?

PH: I don’t remember too much beyond the fact that it was very cold and we got lots of proposals from New Zealand girls. They seemed to be hell bent on proposing marriage. One hotel that we stayed in was amazing. It was near the earthquake zone and the floors were really slanted. I hopped into this wrought iron bed with wheels on the bottom and nearly shot out the window! The place was made out of wood, but it was all distorted. It looked like something out of a Wild West film.

WAY: So after nearly a decade why did the band decide to split up?

PH: It was just a matter of settling down and wanting to get married. When you’re young nine or so years on the road feels like forever.  We started playing and recording again in 1999 and what surprises me is how much people want to hear the vocal stuff. We were in Spain recently and people were really hassling us to do C’Mon , It’s A Hard Life and all the rest, but we can’t do them any more. We’ve literally lost our voices!

Recommended Listening:
Canetoad records have released an excellent series of compilation CDs covering most of the band’s 1960s releases. One volume is entirely dedicated to their time with Johnny Rebb whilst all of the band’s recordings with Russ Kruger can be found on the label’s Punkville CD. The Atlantics have released three new albums in recent years. Details on these and the band’s busy touring schedule can be found at www.theatlantics.com

Picture Credits:
All Photographs from the collection of The Atlantics. Reproduced with permission from Peter Hood.