The Spinning Wheels, 1965

The Spinning Wheels, as their name suggests, fashioned themselves as the Australian answer to the Rolling Stones. As one of the first bands to take on the British R&B sound and style they copped a lot of flak (and the odd beating) in 1964 from 50s rock bound audiences. By 1965 Beat music had completely swamped Australia however and the band rode the wave, releasing one of the first R&B singles in the country. Iain McIntyre talked to original guitarist and backing vocalist Donald Hirst about the pleasures and pitfalls of being a musical pioneer.

WILD ABOUT YOU: So how did the band start out?

DONALD HIRST: In the early 60s there was a local folk and skiffle scene based on the one that had originally emerged overseas in the late 50s and which people like The Beatles and Clapton had come out of. I had a similar group with Graeme Lord (drums) and Michael Perrin (guitar, vocals) and then I met up with Rod Turnbull (vocals, harmonica, percussion) and we started doing Beatles stuff as they had just hit.

      Rod’s mother lived in Britain and she sent him an EP of the Rolling Stones whom no one had heard of in this country at that time. His mum was reasonably young so had picked up on this stuff and said “This is the way to go”. When we heard that record we were blown away. It was totally different to anything else that was around. Then we picked up on the Yardbirds and The Pretty Things. Glen Sievers came in on bass and we got the jump on everybody else.

WAY: What was the reaction of people to this sound given that it was so new?

DH: Everything was run like a variety circuit in those days. You had to go through agents and were booked into these dancehall shows from mid week through to Friday and Saturday nights. It was very much a public entertainment period, people went out on week nights to dances at Town Halls and so forth.

      There was a huge rock circuit when we started in 1964 with the emphasis on 50s style rock which generally appealed to a rough crowd. So we arrived in our neat clothes, our corduroy and with long hair for the period doing I’m a King Bee and so forth. The crowds didn’t know how to handle it. In some places like at the Essendon Town Hall they attacked us. We had chairs thrown at us and the rockers tried to get at us backstage.

      Soon after in late 1964 the Stones got released here and people quickly picked up on it. We were lucky to be doing this sound with an inverted Stones name to boot. (laughs) The name was given to us by our manager Ian Oschlak who also ran The Pink Finks.

Howling the blues at The Mentone Town hall, 1964

WAY: You played in a heat of ‘New Faces’ (the long running Australian talent show) in 1964. How did that go?

DH: Ian Oschlak arranged it. It was a live talent contest that started at 7-30am on a Saturday morning and was sponsored by a shonky used car dealer. The judging panel were all these old guys from the dance band era and theatre. We came on in our black skivvies and the bass player had shoulder length hair at the time. He worked for the Railways and they had no regulations about hair length. To have shoulder length hair in mid 1964 was really freaky.

      We did a nice acid version of I Want To Be Your Man. The judges were just horrified and got stuck right into us about how we were disgusting and filthy and should wear nice uniforms. They had no concept of what we were doing. When they said we were Beatles clones we got stuck into them saying “What would you know? We do R&B.”

      The sponsor was standing off camera freaking out because this was all live and we were supposed to go to an ad break and we’re just raving on “And another thing, if you listen to this break down here you’ll note…” (laughs) So we came third in the contest after a nine year old girl who tap danced and a child ventriloquist.

      Thankfully (promoter) Brian DeCourcey was watching us. He had a dance out at Mentone and he loved it. So we began playing two or three spots a night there on a Saturday and really got our show together. From there other work came in and really snowballed because everyone wanted a Stones type band and while the others were struggling to get it going we were already there. As time went on we had numerous television appearances on the ‘Go Show’ and others and these were somewhat better received.

WAY: You were mainly doing cover material?

DH: The British bands were our main source. Few American bands were being played here and certainly none of the originals from whom the blues had been lifted. We’d see on a record I Got My Mojo Working (Morgenfield)”. That name meant nothing to us, but years later you realised that this was Muddy Waters. I’d come out of folk and skiffle and brought in some straight out early blues tunes too, which we R&Bed, so to speak. There was also a guy out here called Trevor Lucas who went on to play in Lindisfarne (the UK Folk band). He played 12 string guitar and owned records by Big Bill Broonzy, Leadbelly and others who were just totally unknown in Australia. People would go round to his house just to hear them.

Live at The Bowl, 1965

WAY: Once the sound became more popular and you had some records out you must have been kept busy with live work?

DH: We were young and didn’t mind the punishing schedule. When you think about it today the amount of work that was there was incredible. When clubs like The Fat Black Pussycat, The Thumpin’ Tum and the Winston Charles began they’d be operating bands all through the week and still be full. Then when we started to get into the charts we’d be doing guest spots across Melbourne. You’d start at Coburg Town Hall and end up down at Sandringham (about a 40 km drive) running on doing these 15 minute spots at venues all through the city. You’d run out of the car onto the stage, use whatever gear was there and then rush back out to get to the next one. We also went down to Lorne (a seaside town outside of Melbourne) to play there two years running over the whole summer. That was six nights a week, 8 to 12pm. Only four hours, but we didn’t stop.

WAY: What was the reaction of the crowds like?

DH: Fantastic, it really was. We just hit a spot. 1965 was amazing for us and especially down at Lorne. Everywhere we played was packed and people understood what we were doing. The winter of 1964, in which we got established, was fun as well, but we had to create an audience and were still playing rock dances with people who hated us. In 1965 all these trad jazz dances across Melbourne, especially on the eastern side, converted to R&B. They’d be in a hall that had been called The Memphis Jazz Dance and would reopen as Stonehenge or whatever. (laughs)

WAY: When did the band shift to being a six piece?

DH: We got offered this summer job in Lorne and Michael said “I can’t go because I have this day job”. So we got in Tom Cowburn (guitar, harmonica, vocals) and then Michael decided he wanted to come after all. So we kept Tom in and went on as a six piece.

WAY: In December 1964 you played the Myer Music Bowl with Billy Thorpe who was then at the height of his pop success. How was that?

DH: It was full on. There were 25 or 30 000 people there. There was no foldback and only speakers on the side of the stage so you couldn’t hear yourself too well to begin with. It was the age of the scream. When you have all these thousands of screams hitting you it’s like a raging wind. It was really eerie because all I could hear was the guitar acoustically. This wind would subside only to pick up and hit you in the face again. Really odd. After the gig we were swamped by all these fans, but had to get Tom back to his work at Myers (the department store). A couple of the guys were chased around the store and Tom later had to explain to his boss why all these screaming girls had been swamping the Jewellery Department all afternoon. (laughs)

WAY: What were your country tours like?

DH: Well the organisers would get it all wrong. We’d do one show somewhere and then have to travel miles to the next one only to have to turn around and go back in the other direction for the next one and so on. The reaction was mixed at the best of times. The girls liked it more than the guys, most of whom were real hicks in those days. The shows would be well attended with all the girls screaming.

      There was one show where we were on with a local band and they turned out to be a 12 piece jazz band in dinner jackets. We were on a revolving stage. (laughs) The guy who organised it said “Now as they finish you begin your set and I’ll turn the stage on”. So they playing something by Fats Waller and we come roaring out with an E major and everyone there was sort of dumbfounded.

      What was nice though was that most of these country towns hadn’t changed in the previous 60 years. There were beautiful old hotels we’d stay in. A lot of places weren’t that far away from Melbourne, but they were totally isolated as the roads were really bad and it would take hours to get anywhere.

WAY: You used to do daytime gigs in the centre of Melbourne didn’t you?

DH: There was a place called The Bowl where we’d do lunch time gigs in a converted basement in the city. It was aping The Cavern and would be packed. We’d do a show for the noon to 1pm lunch crowd and then one for the 1pm to 2pm one. There was full employment in those days plus a youthful population boom so there was enough interest to keep 3 or 4 of these joints going around the city with the crowds jam packed in.

WAY: You did various recordings. What were the studios like at the time?

DH: We were signed to HMV/EMI and were one of the first Australian R&B acts in the Stones mould to get signed. Our early stuff like the single Got my Mojo Working, which reached number 3 on the Melbourne charts, was recorded at the company’s studios.

      With our later stuff they didn’t want to fly us up to Sydney and told us to find somewhere local. So we went to Telefilm studios which was great because Roger Savage was working there. He had been working with the Stones and knew the whole London sound. He’d worked at Olympia studios in London before marrying an Australian and coming out here.

      We wanted this nice edge that Keith Richards used to get on his guitar and Roger said “I know how to get that”. Tom Cowburn had a little practice amp that was about 10 watts and he took that and split the cone with a razor blade and then turned the volume up to 10 before miking it from the other side. That way we got the fuzz sound which you can hear on our version of Shame, Shame, Shame. This was possibly the first time a fuzz sound had been recorded in Australia.

      Roger knew where we were coming from whilst up at EMI studios in Sydney they had this one sound that everyone got lumped with. Whether it was Slim Dusty, us or The Sydney Symphony Orchestra everyone wound up with the same mid, treble and volume. (laughs) You certainly weren’t allowed to go into the red. We walked into the studio, they had four mics and just said put your amps there and away we went. We weren’t even allowed into the control booth to hear what we’d recorded.                     

      There was an A&R guy there who was in his 60s just waiting for retirement and all they cared about was making sure the needles didn’t go into the red. (laughs) So as you can imagine when we got the tracks back they were just clinical and flat. Some of the early demo sessions we did at East records in East Melbourne were rough, but at least they had a feel about them.

WAY: How did the deal with HMV come about?

DH: Well (model) Carol Boyd and (quiz show compere) Malcolm Searle took over our management from Ian Oschlak. Their Come On In Enterprises put it together. Unfortunately it was a fairly poor deal and we saw very little money from it.

WAY: How was it working with Carol?

DH: As a former model she was very glamorous, had her own maid and all that, but despite getting us a lot of work her financial management left much to be desired. After she signed (15 year old hairdresser) Lynne Randall she seemed to lose interest in us to the point of demanding we become Lynne’s backing band. That wasn’t likely to happen so we went our own way and Tom Cowburn took over the management side of things.

WAY: Why did you eventually break up?

DH: The Army stuffed us up forever as Michael Perrin got drafted. Six months later we lost Tom Cowburn. We’d been together as friends since the late 50s and couldn’t just drag in somebody new so that was the end of that. We were just on the verge of beginning to do our own stuff too. A lot of bands in Australia didn’t survive because of conscription. In 1960 Britain scrapped conscription and some reckon that had it still been going there would have been no British Invasion because people wouldn’t have been free to remain in their bands.

Recommended Listening:

All five of The Purple Hearts singles can be found on the Punkville (Canetoad Records) CD compilation. Just A Little Bit also appears on the Ugly Things (Raven) compilation CD, I’m Gonna Try on the Hot Generation (Big Beat) compilation CD and Of Hopes And Dreams And Tombstones on the Big Beat CD of the same name.

Picture Credits:
All photograps from the collection of former Spinning Wheels member Donald Hirst. Reproduced with permission.