| Ronnie Burns
includingThe
Flies
Melbourne 1964 – |
[PERSONNEL] [BIOGRAPHY] [DISCOGRAPHY] [REFERENCES] [LINKS] [FEEEDBACK]
| Personnel |
The Flies
Themi Adams [bs]
Ronnie Burns [gtr, vcls]
1964
- 65
Peter Nicol [gtr,vcls)
1965
- 66
John Thomas [gtr]
Hank Wallis [dr]
| Biography |
Ronnie Burns has always been an honest, likeable, no-frills, boy-next-door Aussie pop star and entertainer – nothing more, nothing less. He began his musical career as a folk singer in Melbourne before catching the ‘Beatle bug’ in 1964, whereapon he became a founding member of The Flies. The group was one of the very first in Melbourne to catch on to the new 'beat' style and gained attention as "Victoria’s top Beatle-alikes", even down to their matching suits and very long mop-top hair. A shambolic, noisy bunch at the best of times, the quartet achieved considerable popularity on Melbourne’s burgeoning dance circuit with a repertoire of Brit-invasion standards from the catalogues of The Searchers, The Hollies and Herman’s Hermits and others, along with some of the ‘bluesier’, more raucous Beatles numbers like When I Get Home and You Can’t Do That.
The Flies toured interstate during late-64, early-65 under the guidance of manager Gary Spry, and had one of their brightest moments supporting The Rolling Stones on their first Australian tour in January 1965. But when Spry heard the real "Aussie Beatle-alikes", The Twilights at the Oxford Club in Adelaide, he dropped his former clients like the proverbial hot brick and took up with The Twilights instead ... a good move for Spry & the ‘Lights, but not such a good omen for The Flies. Ronnie quit the band in August 1965 to go solo, to be replaced by Peter Nicol. The Flies lasted only a few months longer and are now sadly relegated to being a footnote in the story of Burns’ solo career.
Another twist of fate played a prominent part in the story, because Ronnie was a childhood friend of future music journalist, pop guru and producer, Ian "Molly" Meldrum. Some of the outrageous stories Ronnie is able to tell, including the one about Meldrum being ejected from The Beatles’ 1964 Festival Hall concert, have become the stuff of OzRock folklore, and there’s sure to be a good book lurking in the wings!
Ronnie's clean-cut image, appealing, dimpled good looks and impeccable sartorial presentation immediately made him a favoured TV and pin-up star when he launched his solo career under the aegis of leading Melbourne impresario Jeff Joseph. (In the recent THIS IS YOUR LIFE profile, Russell Morris revealed that seeing Ronnie's solo success first-hand was the direct impetus for him to leave Somebody's Image and go solo himself.) Ronnie was often to be seen on pop TV shows like The Go!! Show and Uptight, as well as in the pages of Everybody’sand Go-Setmagazines -– and his Go-Set 'cred' would certainly not have been hurt by his close friendship with Meldrum!
While Ronnie perhaps never quite inspired heights of frantic fan adulation as, say, Normie Rowe, he was extremely popular, and enjoyed a series of strong chart hits, many written and/or produced by the cream of Aussie pop composers and backed by some of our top musicians. And he was voted Australia’s most popular male performer, or "King Of Pop", on more than one occasion.
Ronnie's was consistently successful in his hometown of Melbourne, and his popularity gradually spread thanks to regular TV and concert appearances. He signed a solo recording contract with the Spin label, and his debut solo single for them was Very Last Day (b/w Let It Be Me); Very Last Day was written by Paul Stookey and Peter Yarrow, of Peter Paul & Mary fame. It made the Top 20 in Melbourne (June 1966), as did the follow-up, True True Lovin' / Too Many People (#17 in September). Both Very Last Day and Too Many People had also been performed by The Hollies on their third album Hollies (Oct 1965) which was the probable source of the songs.
At this point Ronnie linked up with illustrious label-mates The Bee Gees. They wrote his third single Coalman / All The King's Horses specially for him, the first of many of their songs that he covered. The single made both the Sydney and Melbourne Top 10 in January 1967. A catchy, Beatle-esque ditty, Coalman became a significant national hit, and it opens with one of the earliest examples of reverse tape effects on an Australian recording. Both tracks were all-star cuts featuring the three Gibb brothers on harmony vocals, backed by top instrumental band The Strangers, whose guitarist John Farrar arranged it. Farrar later became the arranger for many of Olivia Newton-John's American hits. Coalman was followed by another brisk, hard-beat Gibb number, In The Morning/Exit Stage Right, (#17, June '67) - another big hit - and We Had A Good Thing Going (#36, Oct. '67). At the end of the year Ronnie was voted Most Popular Australian Male Vocalist in the Go-Set Pop Poll, and ABC TV even filmed a documentary about him called The Life Of Ronnie Burns.
(Incidentally, the original Bee Gees demos of the songs covered by Ronnie Burns are now available on the 1998 Festival compilation CD Brilliant From Birth. It's somewhat ironic that Ronnie was able to score significant hits with Bee Gees songs when the brothers themselves were becoming increasingly disenchanted with their lack of recognition here; in fact at the start of 1967 they returned to England, where they had immense success. These songs were among the last that the Bee Gees wrote and recorded in Australia, and they also mark the first time that Bee Gees compositions were jointly credited to all three brothers. According to Bee Gees expert Joseph Brennan, the songs were used as demos for other artists, although they are well above average demo quality and may in fact have been intended as tracks for a planned Bee Gees LP which was never completed. Unfortunately the original tapes are no longer extant and the CD was prepared from surviving reference laquers.)
Meanwhile, Ronnie continued his run of success with a fine set of top-selling singles; his growing popularity was certainly assisted by the fact that his main competitor, Normie Rowe, had been taken out of the local scene, first by his trips to Europe and America in 1967, and then finally by his call up for National Service in early 1968. The Groop’s songwriting team of Brian Cadd and Max Ross, provided When I Was 6 Years Old, a big hit for Ronnie in Australia (#28, Mar. '68), as it was in England when former Manfred Mann vocalist Paul Jones covered it. The magnificent Age Of Consent (#16, Mar. '68) was a lush, emotive ballad penned by The Twilights’ Terry Britten, and featuring most of that band as backing musicians. Britten wrote quite a few other songs for Burns, as did Johnny Young. By then a fading teen-pop sensation himself, Young embarked on a hugely successful songwriting career in the late 60s, and Ronnie was the recipient of many of his best songs. (As the story goes, Young had earmarked one of favourites songs for Ronnie, but when Molly Meldrum heard Johnny playing it in the Uptight dressing room in late 1968, he pulled out all the stops to secure the song for his new protege, Russell Morris. The song was of course The Real Thing, and one can only speculate on the outcome for both singers if the song had gone to Burns rather than Morris).
Ronnie toured the land extensively over the next few years, one notable appearance being as part of the 1969 "Operation Starlift" extravaganza, alongside Johnny Young and Johnny Farnham and top groups of the day like The Masters Apprentices, Zoot, Doug Parkinson In Focus and The Valentines. Although he had arguably peaked in popularity by this time, Ronnie acquitted himself well and was warmly received by punters.
Among other hit placings for the likes of Russell Morris and Ross D. Wylie, Johnny Young produced a full album’s worth of solid material in 1969’s Smiley. The LP’s wistful title track was an enormous hit for Ronnie in December 1969, only just missing out on the #1 spot. It was one of the few Australian hits of the '60s to directly address the issues of the Vietnam war, although it was not the first, as is often asserted -- that honour goes to The Masters Apprentices' Wars Or Hands Of Time. The song itself is a fascinating piece of 'intertextualisation': the name Smiley refers to the larrikin farm-boy character in the two famous Smiley movies made in Australia in the 1956 and 1958, starring Aussie icon Chips Rafferty -- films which did much to shape the popular images of rural and outback Australia. The poignant conceit of the song is that young Smiley, the carefree country boy of the 50s, has now grown to manhood and is being conscripted to fight in Vietnam (which also calls up an ironic reference to the title of the second film - Smiley Gets A Gun.) In another ironic twist, Johnny Young later revealed that the direct inspiration for the song was Normie Rowe's National Service call-up. Further introspective Young-penned songs for Burns’ singles, like The Prophet and If I Die helped to prolong Ronnie’s turn in the spotlight.
After a couple more polished pop albums that featured well-chosen material from notable singer-songwriters of the day (Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Diamond, Neil Sedaka, Paul Williams and Andy Kim – alongside prominent input from Aussie writers like Britten, Cadd and the Gibb brothers), Burns retreated from the major glare of the pop music machine for some time, revelling instead in marital bliss with his wife, former Go!! Show go-go dancer, Maggie (the ’71 b-side Maggie Mine that Ronnie co-wrote with Young, was directly about her). Ronnie continued to ply a career on the club and cabaret circuit, as well as making regular appearances on TV variety shows. In the early 1980s he branched out into a career in interior design, and was quite successful for time, but unfortunately the 1988 stock market crash led to the collapse of his business.
In the '90s Ronnie and family moved to Tasmania, and for much of the decade he performing in the highly-successful hits showcase Cotton, Morris & Burns, with old muckers Darryl Cotton and Russell Morris.In 1998 he hosted a TV special dealing with "predictions and prophecies" on commerical TV, which copped a good deal of flak from skeptics but was very popular with audiences. In 2000 Ronnie retired from live performance to concentrate on setting up an alternative lifetyles centre near his home in Tasmania. The Burns family hit the news again in a big way later in the year when Ronnie and Maggie's daughter Lauren won the gold medal in Tae Kwon Do at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. In October 2001, Lauren, Ronnie, Mike and Maggie featured in "Unbreakable", an episode of AUSTRALIAN STORY on ABC-TV that looked at Lauren's career. On the same night Ronnie was guest of honour in an episode of the Nine Network's THIS IS YOUR LIFE, which also featured Johnny Young, Darryl Cotton, Russell Morris, Molly Meldrum, Marcie Jones and Ronnie's family, including a classic appearance by Mike Burns, who cheekily sent up his dad by miming to Coalman while wearing some of Ronnie's 60s gear -- including a rather groovy coat that Ronnie revealed he had bought in London while shopping in Carnaby St with Barry Gibb!
Ronnie's enduring popularity with audiences demonstrates the affection and esteem that he still commands, as an example of those simpler, more innocent times, when a guy with a hip haircut, dimpled cheeks, an appealing voice and a swag of great tunes could reduce teenage girls (and in some cases, boys alike), to delirium. Long live Ronnie Burns, one of our truest pop heroes!
Paul Culnane.
| Discography |
Singles
| The
Flies
6/64 I'll Be In Love With You / Tell Her That [RCA 101586] 6/65 Doin' The Mod / Ain't That Just Like Me [RCA 101618] 9/65 Can't You Feel? / I'll Pass On By [RCA 101633]
Ronnie Burns solo 6/66 Very Last Day / Let It Be Me [Spin EK 1346] 8/66 True True Lovin / Too Many People [Spin EK 1447] 1/67 Coalman / All The King's Horses [Spin EK 1578] 6/67 Exit Stage Right / In The Morning [Spin EK 1789] 8/67 We Had A Good Thing Going / Can't You Feel? [Spin EK 1942] 1/68 When I Was 6 Years Old / So Good [Spin EK 2149] 12/68 Age Of Consent / Piccadilly Pages [Spin EK 2627] 3/69 Harry The Happy Hooligan / How'd We Ever Get This Way? [Spin EK 2877] 11/69 Smiley / Jodie [Spin EK 3380] 1/71 Prophet / Maggie Mine [Spin EK 4112] 7/71 1000 Years / One Bad Thing [Festival FK 4337] 1/72 If I Die / Such A Girl [Spin EK 4522] 5/74 Changes / Mix Me Another Drink [L&Y K5488] |
| EPs |
| The
Flies
The Flies featuring Ronnie Burns [RCA 20467] [no tracklisting available] Ronnie
Burns solo
?/67 Coalman [Spin EX 11314]
Exit Stage Right [Spin EX 11319]
We Had A Good Thing Goin’ [Spin EX 11383]
When I Was 6 Years Old [Spin EX 11454]
Age Of Consent [Spin EX 11594]
Smiley [Spin EX 11693]
The Prophet [Spin EX 11780]
|
Albums
|
| References |
| Links |
The Brothers Gibb website
Token Records Website
This page last updated 18 November 1999