| MILESAGO - Groups & Solo
Artists |
| The
Dave Miller Set |
Sydney 1967-70, 1973
A
1968 publicity shot of the DMS, which was also used on the cover
of the Hope EP
L-R John Robinson, Ray Mulholland, Dave Miller, Bob Thompson
Harry
Brus
[bass] 1967
Leith Corbett [bass] 1969-70
Mick Gibbons [guitar] 1967
Greg Hook [keyboards] 1967
Mike McCormack [drums] 1969-70
Dave Miller [vocals, guitar] 1966-70
Ray Mulholland [drums] 1967-69
John Robinson [lead guitar] 1967-70
Bob Thompson [bass] 1967-69
The Dave Miller Set is an important group
in the history Australasian music and one that has been long
overlooked for much too long. They were one of the most popular
and hard-working live bands on the east coast scene in the late
'60s. They are still fondly remembered for their classic psychedelic
single Mr Guy Fawkes, which was Go-Set's Single
of the Year for 1969, but they are significant for several other
reasons, not least the emergence of guitarist and composer John
Robinson, one of Sydney's original 'guitar heroes', who went
on to further fame with Blackfeather and also became
an influential guitar teacher.
Most importantly,
the DMS was a key chapter the career of New Zealand-born singer-songwriter
Dave Miller, a performer as remarkable in his own right
as was his group. Dave is a crucial link between the formative
music industries of Australia and New Zealand. He honed his craft
in thriving Christchurch scene and since they were teenagers
he has been a close friend and colleague ofmost of the top New
Zealand acts of the era including Max Merritt, Ray
Columbus and Dinah Lee.
The DMS career
spans the fascinating transitional period from the end of the
"scream era" in 1967 to the start of the infamous Radio
Ban in 1970. They were one of the first Australian acts to pick
up on the heavy rock/progressive rock trend pioneered by overseas
acts like Cream, Hendrix, Free and Led Zeppelin, a direction
which was developed after 1970 by groups like Kahvas Jute, the La De Das and Blackfeather.Their style was
forged on Sydney's university and college circuit, and in the
thriving inner-city club scene that was fulled by the influx
of American servicemen on "R&R" leave -- just as
Dave's hometown of Christchurch had been 'revved up' several
years earlier by the arrival of American personnel as part of
"Operation Deep Freeze". The DMS and the other groups
that played around Sydney at that time are not well remembered
today, but their various members went on to form some of the most
notable bands of the early 70s -- Mecca became Kahvas Jute, Gus & The Nomads evolved into Pirana, Levi Smith's Clefs
spawned no less that three bands Fraternity, Tully and SCRA, and the DMS itself of
course became Blackfeather. Despite a solid following throughout
NSW and in Queensland, the DMS were victims of the infamous Sydney-Melbourne
rivalry and they were almost completely ignored in Victoria --
Stan Rofe was the only Melbourne DJ who played them -- and unfortunately
they never managed to establish a national presence.
As with his
first band Dave Miller & The Byrds, Dave handled virtually
every aspect of the DMS business affairs, and his entrepreneurial
skills guided them to considerable success in Sydney, in New
Zealand and even as far afield as Fiji, and it would be
difficult to name another local self-managed act of the period
that achieved anything like the same success. As somoene with
considerable experience and ability in this area, Dave's first-hand
observations on the management (at that time or the lack thereof)
are also of great interest. Another important thread is Dave's association/collaboration
with influential industry figures -- Eldred Stebbings, Ivan Dayman, Graham Dent, Nat Kipner and Pat Aulton. Dave moved easily in industry circles,
had a good rapport with the media, was a tireless promoter and
organiser on behalf of his band, and his collaboration with Festival
house producer Pat Aulton created some classic recordings.
The five
records that The Dave Miller Set recorded for the Spin label
are among the freshest and most enjoyable Australian pop-rock
singles of the late '60s. Little-known, and too long out of print
(come one, Festival, what's the story?) they are genuine classics
of their kind. All were produced, arranged and included vocal
and instrumental contributions by the great Pat Aulton,
one of the most prolific, influential and talented producers
of the period. The development of the partnership between Pat
and the band is engagingly snapped in the sequence of records
-- their 'Animalistic' debut Why, Why Why, the confident,
optimistic strut of Buddy Beui's Hope (their first hit
single), a superb version of The Youngbloods' Get Together,
their psychedelic masterpicece Mr Guy Fawkes, and the
lost piece of the puzzle, their ill-fated cover of Chicago's
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? It might otherwise
have been a transitional single, but which disappeared into the
black hole of the Radio Ban, effectively marking the end of the
group's career.
These ten
sides are also a testament to the band's professionalism, creativity
and efficiency as a performing unit. All were done in one or
two takes, and Dave reckons that they would typically knock off
both sides of a single in a single three-hour session. Dave's
bright, clear tenor voice suited a wide range of material, and
the variety of styles in which he could perform is a tribute
to his versatility. They chose the A-sides well, playing to their
strengths, and the arrangements feature plenty of invention and
just plain good fun. There's a freshness and sincerity, the essence
of the good-time spirit of the DMS, in all of them. They are
also a great illustration of one of our recurring MILESAGO themes
-- how Australian bands recorded cover versions of lesser-known
overseas songs that were in most cases far better than the originals.
The B-sides offer a glimpse into other facets of the band's repertoire,
and in the absence of live recordings, No Need To Cry
(the B-side of their last single) is about as close as we're
likely to get to what the DMS actually sounded like at their
peak as a live band, as well as chronicling two of Dave's earliest
songwriting efforts.
We hope this
account will go some way to rectify the previous lack of information
about Dave's career before, during and after the DMS and to correct
some of the misnomers abut the band. For more detail about Dave
Miller and the DMS we exhort readers to read transcript of the
excellent Dave Miller interview by our friend Steve Kernohan.
We are profoundly grateful to Dave Miller, John Robinson and
Pat Aulton for their generous cooperation over many conversations
and interviews.
Well before he came to Australia, New
Zealand-born Dave Miller was already a significant figure in Kiwi
music, fronting one of the best NZ 'beat' outfits of the period,
Dave Miller & The Byrds. Dave grew up and began his
career in the fertile musical scene of Christchurch in the late
50s and early 60s, the city that also gave birth to Max Merritt & the Meteors,
Ray Columbus & The Invaders, Dinah Lee and more recently singer Bic Runga and pop heartthrobs ZED.
In his teens Dave became close friends
with both Ray Columbus and Dinah Lee, and like so many young hopefuls
in the City of Churches, he and his friends all looked up to the
example of Christchurch's No.1 musical son, the great Max Merritt.
With teenagers everywhere, they were smitten by the first wave
of rock'n'roll -- Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck
Berry, Buddy Holly and The Everly Brothers, whom Dave as a teenager
saw when they toured New Zealand ca. 1960. Dave also nominates
Cliff Richard & The Shadows as a crucial influence
on almost every local band of the time, and in that pre-Beatles
period, "The Shads" were for quite some time the
model of how a group should look, sound and act. But most of their
early first-hand experiences of rock came from the pioneering
"downunder" rockers -- Australia's Johnny O'Keefe, New
Zealand's Johnny Devlin, and of course Max, whom Dave counts as
one of the best performers ever to emerge from the local scene.
A feature unique to Christchurch in the early '60s was the
influx of American personnel who passed through the city as part
of "Operation Deep Freeze", the establishment of the
American Antarctic base. Christchurch was chosen because it had
the only airfield in the region big enough to accomodate the huge
US military transport planes that ferried staff and equipment
to and from the base. The American influx gave the Christchurch
scene a special "leg up" and it many respects it became
the "Liverpool of the south", thanks to the infusion
of original blues, R&B and rock'n'roll records brought in
by the Yanks, as well as the Fender guitars that were so highly
prized at the time (thanks to The Shadows) and so hard to come
by in other places. Another more personal musical influence was
Dave's friend Hoghton Hughes who worked in a local record
shop and whose access to rare import singles introduced Dave to
many classic records of the period by original artists like Jimmy
Reed and Chuck Berry.
The credit for Dave's start in music
actually belongs to his younger brother Graeme Miller,
who also developed a passionate interest in rock'n'roll and took
up drums in the early '60s.
Dave: My brother went out one day
and came home with a drum kit - as simple as that! Set it up
in the lounge room... and taught himself to play drums. Quite
quickly, in point of fact.
Graeme joined his first band The Numonics
in early 1962. They often supported another popular local group
led by Maori singer-guitarist Pat Nehoneho, The Saints,
which was fronted by dual vocalists Phil Garland and Diane
Jacobs. Pat liked Graeme's playing and he recommended him
to Phil and Diane when they put together their own band after
The Saints broke up. This was The Playboys, with Graeme
on drums, bassist John O'Neill, lead guitarist Brian
Ringrose (who had just left Ray Columbus & The Invaders),
Mark Graham on rhythm guitar, Phil and Diane -- who was soon
to be famous in her own right as "Dynamic" Dinah
Lee.
The Playboys often rehearsed at the Miller
house, and Dave sat in and sang with them on many occasions, although
he was yet to perform publicly. By this time that Dave was already
good friends with Ray Columbus, whose with his band The
Invaders were already one of New Zealand's hottest bands and would
soon to set the Australian charts on fire with their classic hit
She's A Mod. Original Invaders lead guitarist Brian Ringrose
was classically trained and already a well-rounded musician, but
he had left the Invaders when they moved up to Auckland (at the
same time as Max Merritt) preferring to stay behind in Christchurch
and complete his tertiary entrance certifcate.
The Playboys quickly built up a solid
following in the Christchurch area. In late 1962 they were invited
up to Auckland for six weeks to deputise for The Meteors at Auckland's
Top Twenty club while Max and the band were away on a national
tour (just before their first trip to Australia). This was not
uncommon practice, Dave says -- resident bands in Auckland would
often bring in a "locum" group from a regional city
like Wellington or Christchurch while they were away on tour,
and the substitutes could then be packed off home when they returned,
without the risk of losing their spot. But while The Playboys
were in Auckland, Dinah was spotted by leading NZ guitarist Peter
Posa. He came back the next night with Ron Dalton
of Viking Records, New Zealand's major independent label. Dalton
immediately offered Phil and Dinah solo contracts and even before
the Top Twenty gig had finished they had announced their intention
to leave the band.
Obviously The Playboys were going to
need a new singer fast, but the solution was close at hand: Dave
had sat in with the band at many rehearsals, he was familiar with
the repertoire ... and he could sing. Dave's "call-up"
into music came in the form of a classic telegram from his brother
in Auckland, which read:
GIVE UP SMOKING. START
LEARNING SONGS. YOU'RE OUR NEW SINGER.
The Playboys/Dave
MIller & The Byrds
Dave's debut with The Playboys in early 1963 was a baptism of
fire -- he had to follow "Dynamic" Dinah onstage at
her farewell gig in Christchurch:
Dinah did her farewell, and I followed her
immediately onstage and did about four numbers at this big venue
called The Caledonian Hall. ... it was a huge, big crowd, and
I can tell you, I hardly slept for the week prior, I was that
damn nervous!
Luckily, Dave proved to be a natural
showman and a great addition to the group. This new lineup comprised
two sets of brothers -- Dave and Graeme Miller, John O'Neill and
his younger brother Kevin-- plus Brian Ringrose. Kevin O'Neill
had replaced Mark Graham, who gave up performing to work in his
parents' hotel business shortly after Dave joined.
It was not long after this that Dave's
friend Hoghton Hughes gave The Playboys their first break:
We did all the various gigs around, and I
was very closely friendly with a chap called Hoghton Hughes.
Now Hoghton, if you don't know, is the brains trust behind the
MusicWorld conglomerate out of New Zealand and Australasia
-- the budget music label. When I first met Hoghton, he was working
in an electrical shop that had record sales -- the predominance
of course was the little old 45s -- and I found he was the most
hip bloke in town, so I used to buy my records there, and and
as a consequence of that we got very friendly.
The reason we took off so significantly in
Christchurch -- and when I say took off, it just absolutely skyrocketed
-- was the fact that there was an elderly gentleman, his name
was Ridings, and he ran a very old-fashioned dance hall and it
was called The Latimer. Christchurch has a number of squares
and boulevards, and this place in Latimer Square had been going
for years. But he decided, on the advent of Merseybeat, that
he might try and embrace something a bit more modern. They'd
built a new big hall in the centre part of town, just beside
the Avon River, the Horticultural Society Hall and he got the
licence to be able to put live entertainment in there, dancing,
etc, ... and he called it The Laredo. And he used to buy
his records from Hoghton Hughes, and he said to Hoghton: "Who
would be the best band in Christchurch to put in a venue like
that?" And Hoghton, knowing me and knowing what we were
all about and liking the band also, said there's only one to
even contemplate and that was The Playboys. So this bloke got
in touch with me, and we did it, and we pulled capacity crowds
into that place -- they used to queue on the street.
The Playboys settled into a hugely successful
residency at The Laredo, which ran from late 1963 to late 1964.
It was a heady period for the young musos, who by that time were
earning as much eight pounds per week each from gigging-- pretty
impressive, considering that the average weekly wage back then
was only around ten pounds!
In June '64 Beatlemania took Australia
and New Zealand by storm, and Dave and the group were among the
thousands who flocked to see the Fab Four play in Christchurch.
After seeing the matinee show, The Playboys played their regular
gig that night at The Laredo. Dave revealed that, in one of those
great "couldabeen" moments, they managed to contact
to members of the Fabs and their entourage by phone at their hotel
after The Beatles' second show. Things even got to the stage where
a couple of the Beatles agreed to come over to the Laredo to join
the Playboys onstage for a jam, but the plan was foiled because
the Christchurch police would not provide security for the trip
between hotel and venue!
The Playboys might have remained a local
attraction but they got a crucial break in late 1964, which soon
set them on the road to national prominence, when they were spotted
by Howard
Morrison. Howard is part of a famous
New Zealand family -- his father Tem was an All-Black, Howard
himself (now Sir Howard) is an elder statesmen of New Zealand
music and one of the country's best-loved entertainers, and his
son is actor Temuera Morrison of Once Were Warriors
fame.
At the time that they met, Howard was
the leader of the hugely popular vocal group The Howard
Morrison Quartet which had been one
of New Zealand's top attractions for almost a decade. Howard and his agent Benny Levin caught a Playboys
gig one night when they were in Christchurch, and they were impressed
enough to invite them to be the Morrisons' backing group on their
upcoming summer tour of NZ holiday resorts.
This was to be a special event, and the engagement of the Playboys
-- a typically generous act by Howard -- was
the turning point in their career. Although Harry M. Miller was
keen to take them overseas, Howard was reluctant to leave home
and family so he had decided to break up the goup. They were about
to embark on their farewell tour, the last of the hugely popular
"Summer Spectacular" concerts, promoted by their manager,
Harry M. Miller, that had played to hundreds of thousands
of new Zealand holidaymakers in previous years. It was, as Dave
aptly puts it, "big bikkies to a little band like us!".
The tour contract was purely verbal,
but Howard was as good as his word in every respect. His example
inspired Dave in his own career and he still speaks of Howard
in glowing terms:
We were taking a risk of a lifetime, bearing
in mind that the average age of the band was only about 18 at
that time, and we had the families absolutely shaking in their
boots about what we were doing. We could have been left high,
dry and stranded, and it be the archetypal rip-off.. Howard's
one of those people whom I have a great admiration for, because
all the terms he nominated to me were all spoken, and they were
sealed with a handshake, but he never, ever once
let me down in any capacity. Paid everything, did everything
-- his word was his bond, and I admire that implicitly.
The Playboys went first to Auckland,
where they were provided with a house, then on to Roturua for
pre-tour rehearsals. Just before they set out they decided to
change their name to The Byrds, to avoid confusion with
other acts like America's Gary Lewis & The Playboys, and Normie Rowe's backing
band of the same name. According to Dave, the change came
some time before the famous American band of the same name had
their first hit. That in turn necessitated the later addition
of "Dave Miller & .." prefix.
Over that summer the Byrds and the Morrison
Quartet played to literally tens of thousands of people, an experience
which thoroughly honed their playing and showmanship. The Morrisons'
had broad family appeal and performed a commensurately wide range
of material, which The Playboys had to learn quickly and throroughly;
the repertoire for the tour comprised at least 50-60 songs, according
to Dave, on top of their own material. Bolstered by Brian Ringrose's
classical training, they rose to the task. Morrison was a consummate
showman who demanded the best from them, and the band all learned
a great deal from the experience. A double live album was recorded
during the tour, which climaxed with a New Year's Eve concert
in Howard's home town of Rotorua.
When the tour finished and Dave &
the Byrds hit the Auckland club circuit in early 1965 they were
red hot, one of the most polished and entertaining pop acts in
the country. They quickly snared the residency at the poular Shiralee
(later The Galaxie), a slot that had just been vacated by Dave's
old mate Ray Columbus, and they were soon pulling in big crowds.
In another typically generous gesture,
Howard and Benny Levin recommended the Byrds to Eldred Stebbings,
owner of the Zodiac label. The association with Stebbings
was not a particularly congenial one, although the singles themselves
are fine recordings, given the primitive facilities available
to Zodiac, and much of the credit for this is due to Zodiac's
engineer, John Hawkins (who also did some great work with
The La De Das).
Dave and The Byrds scored a major hit
in Auckland 1965 with their debut single, a strong cover of Jimmy
Reed's Bright Lights Big City, a favourite song that he
had discovered back in Christchurch via his friend Hoghton Hughes.
It was Top Five hit back home in Christchurch and in Wellington,
and peaked at a very creditable #13 nationally. It was backed
by a cover of Little Lover, a Graham Nash song originally
cut by by The Hollies, who were a major influence in NZ
at the time, as they were in Australia on groups.
They also charted in several cities with
their follow-up, How You've Changed. It was backed
by a rocky cover of Wake Up Little Suzie, by Dave's old
faves The Everly Brothers.
Because Bright Lights, Big City had
done so well, I beleived that I was right being in blues territory.
I was comfortable with that. So for the second single I chose
a song called How You've Changed. Now we've been credited
with borrowing that from The Animals, or from The Yardbirds --
and that is rubbish as well. I have an album to this day, which
I got from Hoghton Hughes in the late Fifites, called One
Dozen Berrys, by Chuck Berry, and it's on that.
The flip side was a very rocked-up version
of The Everly Brothers' Wake Up Little Suzie. A strange
sort of coupling, in retrospect, but we gave it that sort of
Jimmie Reed/Chuck Berry 'chunka-chunka' rhythmic feel, as opposed
to country. And we belted the hell out of it, and it was a major
hit in places like Rotorua. It hit the Top Ten there, and they
didn't want to know about the other side.
The breakthrough success of Bright
Lights had enabled the band to work outside Auckland, and
they made regular trips to neighbouring towns like Hastings, Gisborne
and Napier. It was also in this period that Dave began to blossom
as a self-managed performer:
The smart turkey in me had realised -- why
was I hanging around Auckland for twenty quid a week? Why didn't
I run my own shows? And I burned the candle at both ends, out
in the middle of the night, 2, 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning
pasting up posters, being at newspaper offices the next day pestering
away for press, being at radio stations and sitting in on the
radio stations making sure they played the single twice. All
of those things. That's why I didn't end up finding a manager
in Australia either...
Not long after the second single came
out in mid-'65 the O'Neill brothers decided to leave for personal
reasons. Dave replaced them with rhythm guitarist Al Dunster
from leading Auckland group The Dallas Four, and Liverpool-born
bassist Chris Collier, who had come from a band in Napier.
This last lineup cut one more single, the rather gimmicky
No Time backed with another Everly's number, Love is
All I Need:
I was listening to a pile of import things
at Eldred Stebbings' place, and I heard this thing -- No Time,
it's called, and it was by Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich,
and it was their very first single, before they broke through.
It was in 3/4 time, and it's based around the chimes of a clock.
And I thought "There it is -- it's got it's selling feature"
And in pockets it did good things for us as well.
Their final recordings were released as a self-titled five
track EP that is now a prized NZ collector's item. Dave describes
the five tracks as a pretty representative slice of the sound
and style of their sets at that time. It was recorded completely
live in the studio, warts and all.
There's the old blues standard Help Me,
based around the "Green Onions" thing; Ain't Got
You which The Yardbirds and The Animals covered, and I think
we might have been inspired more by The Animals. There was an
old Johnny Otis standard, called Tough Enough -- we did
a very good version of it but we originally got it from Cliff
Richard & The Shadows. We went down their standard arrangment
route, but that time it had become such a workhorse it was much
more 'lead-booted' than they would have done it. And then there
was a verison of Buddy Holly's That'll Be The Day, that
had been inspired more by the Everly Brothers, off that Rock'n'Soul
album that I told you about. And then we did what I suppose would
best be described as "Pretty Things" type arrangement
of the old Fats Domino standard Let The Four Winds Blow.
Dave and Brian had also begun writing together around this
time, and they made some private demos of the songs they wrote
but it wasn't until he moved to Australia that Dave's original
material began to be recorded. Happily these first demos still
exist (along with some other exceedingly rare and important NZ
recordings) in the possession of Brian Ringrose.
Dave is nothing if not a realist, and
by 1966 he could see that even though the NZ scene was booming
and The Byrds were doing extremely well, any further local success
would be limited, and that they'd soon be going over old ground.
By this time The Invaders, Dinah Lee and The Meteors had all crossed
the pond and were enjoying varying degress of success. Australia
was the obvious next step for The Byrds, as it was for any ambitious
NZ band -- although Dave says he was seriously considering trying
his luck in Hamburg. Al Dunster, who had already crossed the Tasman
with The Dallas Four, was keen to try Australia again (and his
girlfriend was there too). But the rest of the group were reluctant
to move and start all over again -- Brian Ringrose, for one, had
been performing since he was a child, and he didn't relish the
prospect of having to start all over again in a new country. He
stayed at home and is today one of the most respected musicians
on the NZ scene.
The Byrds honoured their outsanding commitments
and went their separate ways in early 1966. Dave is insistent
on one point -- the Byrds did not go to Australia and become
the Dave Miller Set, as most accounts have stated. Only Al and
Dave went over and while they remained friends, they never worked
together again professionally after the Byrds.
Dave did a few final solo gigs, then
he prepared to go over to Sydney. He naturally wanted to further
his career, but there was another especially compelling personal
reason for the trip -- his fiance Corinne (whom he had met in
Christchurch two years earlier while performing at the Laredo)
had just moved to Sydney with her family.
Australia and The Dave Miller Set
Al Dunster travelled to Australia first, soon followed by Dave who arrived in Sydney in April 1966. Through
Al's friendship with the manager there, Dave scored a job at the Sydney CBD venue The Bowl in Castlereagh St, part of the pop empire run by influential manager-promoter Ivan Dayman, whose Sunshine agency and record label was home to many leading
mid-60s acts and whose roster included Normie Rowe, Peter Doyle,
Mike Furber and Tony Worsley and Blue Jays. Sunshine also ran
venues like The Bowl (where The Easybeats had one of their first
residencies) and Brisbane's famed Cloudland
Ballroom. The manager of The Bowl, Graham
Dent, was himself an Kiwi expat and when Dave arrived in Sydney Graham's main job was as the manager of Dave's old mates Max Merritt & The Meteors. Needless to say, Graham knew of Dave's achievements in New
Zealand and hired him on the spot.
Dave worked for several months at The
Bowl and other venues as MC, introducing Sunshine acts like Normie
and Peter Doyle, and performing as a DJ and solo singer. While
not as cretively fulfilling as his previous work with the Byrds,
this period proved important for Dave in making connections on
the Sydney music scene, particularly Spin
Records boss Nat
Kipner.
In that fluid period at the end of the
"scream era" Dave says he seriously considered the idea
of leavng the pop scene and moving into the lucrative club circuit:
I wasn't sure which way to go, because even
people like a youthful Doug Parkinson, at that stage ... they
were sort of flailing around doing all sorts of semi-clubby type
things ... none of us competely knew exactly what to do...there
were lots of other people, like Digger Revell, they were making
a real living out of it. I nearly got caught up in it. I kept
thinking "I owe it to my fiance, I owe it to myself'.
What drew him back into the pop scene
in late 1966 was Dayman and Dent's decision to revamp The Bowl
as a discotheque and rename it the Op-Pop Disco. Dave was
asked to put together a house band, so he contacted an old friend
from New Zealand, drummer Ray Mulholland, (ex- The
Rayders) who was keen to come over and
work in Sydney. Dave then recruited a promising young bass player,
Harry Brus (ex-Amazons) who went on to become a longtime
backing player for Renee Geyer and one of Australia's most respected musicians.
The lineup was completed by guitarist Mick Gibbons (ex-The
Bluebeats) and keyboard player Greg Hook (who later worked
with Respect, Odyssey, Stevie Wright and Lindsay Bjerre), thus
creating the first lineup of The Dave Miller Set.
Unfortunately, by the time Dave had put
the new group together Dayman and Dent had changed their minds
about the house band, and a rather disgruntled Dave had to scratch
around for other opportunties. The Set's first major gig proved
to be an important showcase, and the turning point for the new
band's future. They were hired as part of a package show headed
by Johnny Young &
Kompany and Ronnie Burns, at the Sydney
Royal Easter Show in March 1967. The DMS (minus Dave) backed Ronnie
Burns and Dave rejoined them for their own sets. Because Greg
Hook was unavailable for the gig (he had a day job) Dave decided
to add a friend of Harry's as second guitarist for the duration
of the Show -- teenage guitarist John Robinson, formerly
with Sydney outfits The Lonely Ones and Monday's Children.
Harry (who was already becoming something
of a favourite with the girls) acquired his own small 'fan club'
at the Show, who followed him around and called out his name during
the sets. At one point they started up their chant of "We
want Harry!" during Johnny Young's set, prompting "Mr
Nice Guy" Johnny to yell back: "Who the f*** is Harry?"!
Harry also has a precious segment of Super-8
footage that was taken the group (without Dave unfortunately) were playing with Ronnie Burns, which is probably the only remaining visual record of this original lineup.
After the Easter Show gigs, the band
broke up for short time while Dave went back to New Zealand to
marry Corinne. He felt he had discharged his obligations to the
members of the group, and now married, he knew that he could make
far more money as a solo artist on the club circuit. He had no
definite plans when he got back to Sydney, but he had no chance
to make any -- the rest of the band approached him almost immediately,
anxious to reform and keep going.
So Dave reconstituted the group, but
Mick Gibbons and Greg Hook didn't rejoin. Having one fewer mouth
to feed made life a little easier financially, so he kept the
Mark II DMS as a four-piece with Harry, John and Ray. This second
lineup was shortlived though -- John was keen to work with his
former Monday's Children bandmate, English-born bassist Bob
Thompson, and it wasn't long before Bob was brought in to
replace Harry.
When the DMS first formed they played
much the same repertoire as The Byrds including covers of The
Yardbirds, The Kinks, The Animals and other poular favourites.
The first lineup made no commercial recordings, although they
did tape three demo tracks (which Dave still has) at a studio
in Manly Vale run by Bruce Brown, with the late Duncan
McGuire engineering. Brown became the house engineer at Albert's
Studios in Sydney in the '70s and '80s, and McGuire the renowned
bassist in Doug Parkinson In Focus, Friends, Ayers Rock and the Southern Star Band among others.
By the time Bob Thompson came on board
in late '67, there were big changes happening in music overseas,
especially the emerging UK acts like Cream and The Jimi Hendrix
Experience. As John found his feet
in the band they gradually adopted this "heavier" style,
becoming one of the first Australian bands to do so, although
this transition was made technically possible by Dave's entrepreneurial
skills.
John was already a proficient player
-- his original ambition was to be a jazz guitarist -- but he
was yet to develop into the guitar wizard he would soon become,
and Dave worked assiduously on developing John's stagecraft and
showmanship. Over the next three years Dave provided John with
the space and scope to develop into one of the most powerful and
innovative electric guitarists on the scene, in the tradition
of players like Clapton and Peter Green. It's certainly not unreasonable
to suggest that Dave can be considered as an Autralasian equivalent
to John Mayall.
One immediate and important effect of
John's arrival was to help change the musical direction of the
DMS at this crucial time in rock music:
John: I happened
to be at Nicholson's Music Store one afternoon and picked up
two new releases: Strange Brew by Cream and Hey Joe
by Jimi Hendrix. Cream were good and I'd heard Clapton before
with John Mayall and the Yardbirds, but Jimi was another thing
altogether. Stone Free, the B-side was a good example
of what a small group could do, and after playing both records
to the guys, we all agreed that this was the direction to go
in. By the New
Zealand tour of Xmas '67, we had most of the Hendrix and Cream
releases covered.
Dave too was always on the lookout for
new sounds (he would later introduce the band to Led Zeppelin)
and clearly these records had a big effect. Their significance
to the band and the period was immortalised by Dave when he namechecked
both Strange Brew and Stone Free on their version
of Sam Cooke's Havin' A Party, the B-side of their second
single Hope.
The Bowl period proved frustrating in
some respects, but it paid off in other ways. As mentioned previously,
it enabled Dave to make connections with important people on the
Sydney music scene, and the friendship that developed between
Dave and Spin Records boss Nat Kipner, (father of Steve
& The Board's Steve Kipner) led directly to the DMS
being signed to the label. Kipner teamed them with Pat
Aulton, who is justly famous for
the many classic discs he produced for Normie Rowe, Kahvas Jute,
Neil Sedaka and many others. It was a to be happy and productive
partnership, and Pat produced and arranged all of the band's singles
was well as contributing backing vocals and additional instruments.
As with Howard Morrison, Dave is unequivocal in his admiration
and respect for Pat, whom he compares to George Martin:
Pat was one of the most complete and comprehensive
people I've ever met. In the beginning perhaps he wasnt so sure
of me, but by the time we got through No Need To Cry and
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is, we were very
close friends. We'd socialise together and do all sorts of things.
The admiration built over time, but my admiration for him was
profound right from the very beginning.
He was very interesting. He fascinated me.
It found it a bit daunting at first, being a totally self-taught person. He could play keybords ... he'd been on television and played keyboards and sung .. he could really sing. He
was great with harmony, he knew how to arrange, he could orchestrate, he could do all those sorts of things. If Pat was in control, a good job was going to be done. I've been in the studio and they'd be putting down backing tracks and he'd say "Hang on, John -- the G-strings's gone flat". He was able to hear all those things, all those nuances.
MILESAGO was also privleged to talk to
Pat recently about his work with the DMS. His comments about them
echo Dave's admiration for his former producer, and he
also offered some fascinating insights about the DMS recording
sessions and his working methods at the time.
Dave was a very diligent young
man, very enthusiastic. He had a very good ear. We got on extremely
well, extremely well. They were all very fine players, very efficient
in the studio. I just kept them in tune (laughs). They were quite
a joy to work with.
I don't believe in doing things over and over,
like a lot of people do -- you just end up losing the plot. It's
all about art and design. If you're designing a piece of music,
you've got to get everything right before you roll the tape.
We always worked very hard, setting things up, rehearsing, getting
the sound and making sure everyone was right in the spirit of
the thing. If you prepare thoroughly, you can usually capture
it pretty quickly. Dave and the band were good at that and you
can hear the results on those records -- they have a lot of sponteneity.
I can be a taskmaster, and perhaps someof
them found it bit frustrating sometimes, but ultimately it paid
off. I took a lot of time getting the sound just right. With
the drums, for example, I used to tune them myself. I'd tune
them in key, to the first the third and the fifth, and I'd always
be calling for "more dampening, more dampening" on
the snare or on the toms, to get a 'thicker 'sound. Another thing
I remember was that I never had to do much with Bob Thompson's
sound -- he always had that pretty right himself, he knew how
it should be.
We were always listening to new things from
overseas, always experimenting, trying to work out how they got
a certain sound or effect, and then try to reproduce it. I used
to listen particularly the English groups -- I felt they had
a bit more 'heart' than some of the American things, which could
be a bit 'flowery', as it were.
I personally supervised the entire installation
of the four-track and the desk at Festival when we moved to the
new premises [in mid 1967]. I was there day and night, every
day for about two weeks. Once it was in, I said to the chief
technician, the fellow who'd designed it all "Well, nobody
else knows this like I do" -- which was perfectly true --
"so I'm going to do all the engineering". And they
said "OK".
I did all my own engineering. The 'flanging'
on Guy Fawkes I did myself.. I held my finger on the rim
of the tape reel to control the effect -- that was all done in
one go. We didn't have a lot of equipment, like compressors and
things like that. The only major thing we used was the Pultec*,
but that was great, it really gave the sound a lot of 'bite'.
[*Pultec was a brand of audio
equaliser made by Pulse Technololgy P/L of New Jersey. They were
a staple of many top studios in the '60s (e.g. Motown) and are
now a highly prized piece of vintage studio gear.]
Of course this was in the days before things
like fuzz boxes. Do you know how we got fuzz tone on the guitars
back then? We used to go down to Allens music store from time
to time, and we'd a few second hand Fender amps, little ones
that had been traded in for bigger models. We'd take them back
to the studio and take a razor blade to the speaker cones. It
would give you a wonderful distorted sound. We used to have great
fun with that!
I remember it being a very happy working relationship.
We worked very, very hard but we got results and we had a lot
of fun. It was a fabulous time.
The debut DMS single, released in October
1967, was Why Why Why, a cover of a Paul Revere
& The Raiders song, written by their bass player Philip Volk.
The B-side, Hard Hard Year was actually the first DMS recording,
and was cut some time before the A-side. It was produced by Robert
Iredale, who worked on many famous early recordings for Festival
including The Bee Gees, Col Joye, Johnny O'Keefe and Dig Richards
& the R'Jays.
According to Dave, Hard Hard Year
was primarily a test to see how well they worked in the studio.
Spin were obviously happy with the result, so Nat Kipner teamed
them up with producer Pat Aulton, who had just become Festival's
house producer, for the recording of what became the A-side. At
Pat's suggestion they flattened the song out from 3/4 to 4/4,
because Hard Hard Year was in 3/4 time. Dave's delivery
showed a definite Eric Burdon influence, but it's a very creditable
effort.
The single had only limited exposure
in NSW, but remarkably, it charted in NZ when they toured there
at the end of 1967, thanks to support from pioneering Auckland
pirate radio station Radio Hauraki. It was also anthologised
on the 1968 Spin various artists compilation So Good Together
... The Stars of Spin.
To get back to New Zealand, Dave had
taken a typically ingenious step -- he approached the P&O
cruise line and worked out a deal to to provide 10 hours of entertainment
per week in return for passage to New Zealand and back on the
liner Himalaya during one of its Pacific cruises. It was
a roaring success, as Dave recalls, and the cruises became an
annual fixture:
It was one of the happiest boats I've ever
been on, one of the most absolutely ecsatatic, fun times of my
life, and the band's life. And the very first night we started
playing at 8 o'clock and we were still playing at eight the next
morning. We'd honoured our commitment in one night!
With typical aplomb, Dave also arranged
a special party performance for the crew, and this too was a great
success. The staff decorated the mess room specially and togged
up in fancy dress for the occasion. It paid off handsomely in
goodwill between the band and the crew -- as Dave's says, "I
never even had to lift a guitar pick after that!"
The success of the record was gratifying,
but the trip to New Zealand had another vital outcome. They were
low on cash and had been struggling with woefully inadequate equipment,
so Dave tackled the problem with his usual creative flair:
When John brought Bob Thompson into the band
he had a horrible little el-cheapo bass guitar, and virtually
no equipment, and I was running around trying to provide him
with bits and pieces. It really was difficult, and the band was
desperately short of equipment, and on that first trip back to
New Zealand, I could see the desperation that I was going to
be faced with. So I went to company in Auckland that Brian Ringrose
and I had dealt with quite a lot, called Jansen. They were an instrument manufacturing company, they
made amplifiers, all sorts of electronic accoutrements, and they
also made a range of electric guitars and basses and acoustic
guitars ... in terms of New Zealand I suppose they were the equivalent
of the Fender factory, they covered the whole gamut. I knew these
people from the days of The Byrds of course. We'd moved into
Jansen equipment and we used to promote that on stage. So in
desperation I went to the factory and spoke to the people, cos
they remembered me of course, and said "Can you do us deal?"
And they did us a deal for a range of photographs, etc, by which
we bought the stuff at cost. But that also posed me huge headache,
because we didn't have too much money ... the truth is I borrowed
the money from my father."
That put us really on the rails, because
Bob had a Telecaster-type bass copy, a 150 watt amp with four
cabinets with two twelves in each. John had two cabinets with
four twelves in each, and I think he had a 100-watt head. So, all of a sudden we'd gone
from being 'Mickey Mouse' in terms of equipment, to being a very
professional band. We were quite the envy of many contemporaries
of ours when we got back, for the very simple reason we went
away being rather pathetic and puny, and we came back looking
thoroughly professional. There were a lot of people really not
sure how and why all this had come about, but that really did
help, because we needed that equipment.
Acquiring the new gear was timely --
by '68 the influence of Cream, Hendrix and The Who were reverberating
around the world and the combination of their own keen ears and
the powerful new gear sound enabled DMS to become the first local
groups to pick up on this trend and develop it convincingly in
the local context. When the group returned to Sydney in early
1968 they scored a residency at the Op-Pop disco in Sydney, where
they shared a bill with The Twilights -- "definitely a class
act" recalls John -- one of many top Aussie acts with whom
the DMS regularly shared the bill, including The Masters Apprentices,
Tamam Shud, Doug Parkinson and Jeff St John.
Their next single, appropriately entitled
Hope, had a particularly interesting background. The original
version came from the 1967 debut album by The Candymen, and it
was co-written by Buddy
Buie and Candymen lead guitarist John Rainey Adams. They started out in the '50s in Dothan, Alabama
as members of The Webs, the group that launched the career of
singer Bobby Goldsboro, a childhood friend of Buie's. When they
backed Roy Orbison on a visist to Dothan he was so impressed that
he hired them on the spot as his permanent band, and and Buie
became his tour manager. Renamed The Candymen, they worked with
Roy for seven years, touring the world, and Adkins played lead
on many 'Big O' classics including Oh Pretty Woman. After they left Roy they cut two albums under their own name for ABC and Buie became a successful songwriter-producer, with credits including the Classics Four's Windy and Spooky, as well as hits for Billy Joe Royal and BJ Thomas. In the '70s he set up his own studio in Atlanta, where he put together the
session band that became The Atlanta Rhythm Section.
Released in April 1968, Hope was
a quantum leap in the band's studio work. Dave cites it as one
of his favourite recordings, and its not hard to see why -- it's
a psych-pop classic, a tremendously strong and hugely enjoyable
record that brims with confidence and optimism. Dave's vocal is
spot-on and the infectious backing, in a brisk march tempo, skips
along with some great ensemble playing by the group. It's topped
off by Pat's sparkling arrangement for horns, piccolos and strings
(with contributions from Sven Libaek, who scored the horns
and piccolos). The B-side is a swinging, good-time version of
Sam Cooke's Havin' A Party, a perennial stage favourite
that Dave often performed with The Byrds which he updated with
the namechecks of Stone Free and Strange Brew. The
single did quite well in Sydney, peaking at #27, largely thanks
to Ward Austin of 2UW who liked the song and was instrumental
in breaking it into the chart with regular airings on his afternoon
shift.
In another example of Dave's inventive
entrepreneurial skills, the group signed a promotional deal with
the AMCO jeans company, which paid off in many ways -- not least
in the form of free clothes! They made appearances providing music
for Amco promotions in shopping centres and other venues, and
this brought them into contact with 2UW's Ward "Pally"
Austin, Sydney's leading pop DJ, who MC-ed the shows. Ward
loved Hope, picked it up immediately, helped it become
a Top 10 hit in Sydney, and became a long-term supporter.
The powerful Jansen gear gave them an edge over most other
Sydney groups, and their act was now starting to included longer
songs, extended solos from John, and improvised jams. Their gigging
range also expanding to include Newcastle and Wollongong, and
they soon developed a very strong following in both those cities.
By the middle of the year Hope had been picked up by 2UW
and was in the charts and DMS came in at No. 7 in the Go-Set
National popularity poll. As John observes: "Not bad for
a band that had not yet visited that Holy Grail of Oz Rock, Melbourne."
Later in 1968 Hope was also included on the Calendar compilaton
Australia's Star Showcase '68.
Late in the year there was another important
musical development, thanks to Dave's keen ear and his industry
connections:
John: Dave brought
along a pre-release copy of Led Zeppelin 1 to rehearsals
one day, and we proceeded to cover every viable tune on it. By
the time it was released here, we had been performing most of
it on stage for over five months! This added to our credibility
to no end with the punters.
The third single, released in October
1968 was a truly superb cover of The Youngbloods' peace-and-love
anthem Get Together , a song was recommended to Dave by
Pat Aulton. It should not be confused with Let's Get Together,
the saccharine Hayley Mills hit from 1961, a mistake that is often
made in references to the DMS. Their version of Get
Together is a real gem -- miles stronger than the original,
which sounds rather anaemic by comparison. (It's a great pity
that the DMS version was not used in favour of the original on
the soundtrack of the hit Australian movie The Dish.) Pat
Aulton's producton is typically brilliant, dynamic and beautifully
balanced; the rather fey and folky style of the original has been
transformed into driving 'west-coast' psych-pop and given some
classic '60s spice by the addition of John's newly-acquired and
highly-prized sitar, "a beautiful instrument" Dave remembers,
specially made for John by a leading firm in India.
The b-side Bread and Butter
Day is a driving slice of heavy-soul which gives a clearer
hint of what the band were delivering live. It was also an important
advance for the group -- Dave's first original song to be commerically
released, and John's first opportunity to really stretch out as a lead guitarist on record. He spikes the track with some scorching licks, climaxing
in a wailing, Hendrix-like solo. Lyrically, it convincingly explores
the "life is tough" theme, similar to that of Hard
Hard Year and for any working muso of the time, the phrase
"bread and butter day" was certainly an apt description
for their often hand-to-mouth existence.
After another round of local touring to promote the new single,
there was a second Pacific cruise at the end of 1968, which again
had important outcomes. In Wellington, John Robinson went to the
movies and caught Sergio Leone's spaghetti western For A Few
Dollars More. He had developed a keen interest in film music
after seeing Kubrick's SPARTACUS when he
was young, and he was captivated by the Ennio Morricone's classic
soundtrack. Because there was no soundtrack available John went
to see the film over and over to memorise the music; soon he was
lobbying the band to include some of his Morricone-inspired instrumentals
into the set list, and these were well-received by audiences.
They also went to Fiji with the cruise, and while in Suva they
picked up Jeff Beck's Truth album, which Dave cites
as another big influence on their repertoire. A remarkable outcome
of the visit was that Get Together became a local hit in
Fiji. Dave has flippantly suggested that this might have been
due to the fact the arrangement featured John's sitar, which (pardon
the pun) struck a chord with the locals, many of whom were of
Indian descent. But in a seroius tone but he does say that the
crucial factor was that a new civic auditorium had just been opened
in Suva. The DMS were the first non-Fijian group to play there,
performing a sold-out matinee that was packed into the aisles.
It was followed by a well-received nightclub gig that evening.
This made a very favourable inpression on the Suvans and firmly
established the DMS name there, and certainly they would have
heard few bands like them in previous years.
By the time of the Xmas '68-69 cruise, Bob Thompson was homesick
and keen to return to the UK. John convinced him to stay until
the cruise was over, afte which Bob departed in March 1969. (Much
to Dave's chagrin, he sold his Jansen bass rig to pay for his
ticket home). He was replaced by bassist Leith Corbett,
who had just left Sydney club band Heart'n'Soul.
Leith was already a friend, since the two groups were both handled
by the Nova
booking agency and often played the same venues, like the popular
Here Disco in North Sydney. Leith was actually not Dave's
first choice -- he originally approached Mecca bassist Bob
Daisley, who later joined Kahvas Jute.
But Leith's fluid bass style was right in line with their new
direction, and his flamboyant stage presence and flying mane of
hair also added signficantly to the group's stage presence.
By the start of 1969 the Set had become one of the most popular
live draws in the Sydney-Newcastle-Wollongong region, and each
new single had gained successively greater attention. Yet throughout
their career Melbourne was more or less a "closed shop"
for them, and despite several visits there they were unable to
crack the scene. They made a number of visits there after Hope
came out, playing venues like Berties and Sebastians, and even
appearing on UPTIGHT, but although they were well received in
concert they never manage to overcome industry resistance, especially
in radio -- Stan "The Man" Rofe was the only Melbourne
DJ who supported them and played their records, according to Dave.
In late January 1969 the DMS joined 9 other top bands at the
annual Moomba concert at the Myer Music Bowl, headlined that year
by the Masters Apprentices. The huge crowd, estimated at well
over 100,000, was second only to the crowd record of 200,000 set
by The Seekers at the 1967 Moomba concert. By all accounts it
was a wild event -- fifty people were injured, including three
police, "countless" others had to be treated for hysteria,
and twelve were arrested after fights broke out in various sections
of the crowd. During the DMS set a group of youths climbed the
cables onto the roof of the Bowl and started pelting police and
the crowd with bottles and other objects and concert promoters
Amco and 3UZ eventually had to stop the show for half an hour
while police regained control. At another point mounted police
were called in to disperse a group of about 400 brawling youths.
A contemporary newpaper about the show can be seen on page 168
of Jim Keays' book His Masters Voice, including a photo
of the Masters onstage, incorrectly captioned as being The Dave
Miller Set.
The band worked relentlessly but on the recording side, there
was a long gap -- almost a year -- between Get Together
and their next (and best) single. In early '69, around the time
that Leith joined, a friend at Polydor Records (David Kent, best
remembered of "Kent Report" pop charts fame) loaned Dave an advance copy of Sunrise, the debut album by Eire Apparent. Formed in Ireland, the band included guitarist Henry McCullough (later of Wings). Their album was produced and featured guitar contributions by Jimi Hendrix, whom the band had supported on tour in America in 1968. Dave was immediately captivated by two songs from the LP, Mr Guy Fawkes, written by lead guitarist Mick Cox (to whom Hendrix had given his famous hand-painted Gibson Flying V guitar) and Someone Is
Sure To, by lead singer Ernie Graham. Mr Guy Fawkes immediately inspired him and
he set to work remodelling the song to suit the DMS and convincing
the rest of the band and Pat Aulton that this had to be
the next single. Using his mother-in-law's reel-to-reel tape recorder,
Dave taped the song and then did a primitive editing job, literally
cutting the tape with scissors and splicing it with cellotape!
He cut it down from its original seven minutes length to something
around 3 minutes and over the next few months Dave and Leith worked
closely together on the arrangement and eventually they were able
to realise their plans thanks to Pat Aulton.
The result was a tour de force and its enduring quality
is a tribute to both band and producer. There are similarities
between Mr Guy Fawkes and The Real Thing, which
came out around the same time, but each evolved totally separately,
and Dave's clear, cinematic conception for his record shines through.
John Robinson's strummed guitar intro is every bit as evocative
and recognisable as that of The Real Thing. Leith's restless
and lyrical bass lines, the framework of the arrangement, are
eloquent without being intrusive; Dave's eerie, filtered vocal
gives it the perfect sense of strangeness, and the whole package
is beautifully realised by Pat Aulton's superb production, with
rich phasing, sound effects, an evocative neo-classical string
arrangement by Pat, performed by members of the Sydney Symphony
Orchestra. The explosion (also part of the original) Dave located
after a extensive search in the sound effects library at the ABC.
There is a restraint, a coherence, and a filmic sense to the song
that is absent from The Real Thing, which pretty well throws
in everything including the kitchen sink, production-wise.
And like its predecessor, Guy Fawkes continued the great
tradition of Aussie bands covering obscure overseas tracks and
coming up with versions that far surpassed the originals.
The energy-packed B-side, Someone Is Sure To, is a treat.
It makes very interesting listening now, sounding remarkably like
the choppy "new wave soul" stylings of the The Jam --
only about 10 years earlier! The double-tracked-guitar line that
closes the song is another innovative feature that makes it a
real discovery.
Mr Guy Fawkes it is now counted alongside The Real
Thing as one of the classics of Australasian psychedelia,
but the ironic twist to the story is that we almost didn't get
to hear it:
Dave: The guy
that was running the Spin record company -- it was based in North
Sydney in those days -- was called Tom Miller. I liked Tom immensely,
but the day that the promotional copies of Guy Fawkes
came out he called me on the telephone and said, "Can you
get down to the office?". I said, "Yeah".
Got to the office ... and I was pasted.
I was berated for "the worst piece of trash that the
Spin record company has ever been involved with", "an
absolute disgrgace". And I was
told that if it hadn't been for the fact that they trusted Pat
with this particular project, had they heard it at any stage
prior to this, it would never have been released. It was
the fact that it had already been pressed that meant they had
to go through with it. And they didn't want to know it. I was
told in no uncertain terms that it was the worst record that
the Spin record company had ever been associated with!
Of course, the result vindicated Dave entirely -- within weeks
of its release in July it was a Top Ten hit in NSW and at year's
end, Ed Nimmervol named it Go-Set's "Single Of The Year"
for 1969, an accolade of which Dave is justly proud. It was also
included on the Calendar compilation Australia's Top Talent,
one of the first local pop LPs to be released in stereo. Things
were really starting to look up for the group and the success
of Mr Guy Fawkes opened many doors for them.
At the session that produced the backing tracks for the Guy
Fawkes single, the DMS (sans Dave) also cut another
recording that Pat Aulton was producing -- the single Year
of War by Sydney singer Frank Lewis, with its melody lifted
from the famous Barcarolle from Offenbach's Tales
of Hoffmann. It too became a Top Ten hit in Sydney around
the same time as Guy Fawkes, and this created a unique
chart achievement for Leith, whose former band Heart'n'Soul
were also enjoying a hit with Lazy Life, a track cut just
before Leith quit and joined the DMS:
Dave: Leith
was in the charts with three records at one time, and this is
not a known fact for most people. He was in the charts with Lazy
Life, he was in the charts with Guy Fawkes and he
was in the charts with Frank Lewis and Year of War, which
was the Dave Miller Set, with Frank singing.
Another remarkable but little-known episode in the DMS story
took place in mid-1969, and we are very grateful to Dave for sharing
his recollections of this hair-raising affair, which he has never
before spoken about publicly. Through the middle of 1969, Dave
and John had been heavily involved in promoting Mr Guy Fawkes,
particularly with a popular 2SM DJ of the time, Mad Mel.
Mel and 2SM were organising a large inner-city concert, "Mad
Mel's Giant Stir", staged in The Rocks, on the grassed area
under the southern approach to the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
A few weeks before the Stir, the group was booked to play a
tour of Indonesia. It was a triple bill headlined by the DMS with
singers Mike Furber and Nikki Bradley,
whom they backed. The DMS went to Indonesia on a ten-day visa,
to play seven venues, 3 in Jakarta, two in Bali and one in an
another location. On arrival there was no proper itinerary waiting;
the schedule, such as it was, was to come back and play the seventh
gig in Jakarta and then back to Australia.
The tour played the first three nights in Jakarta in roofed
stadiums (built by the Dutch) -- where they were billed as "Beatles
dari Australia"! These were very large stadiums -- Dave
reckons the halls had a capacity of about 50-60,000 people --
much larger than anything the DMS had played before, except outdoor
gigs in Australia, and even then several times larger than the
biggest of those. All of the first three shows were sold out,
and at each gig many more people outside turned away. The DMS
sound relied on powerful amplification but the promoters only
provded them with puny Fender amps to play a huge outdoor sports
arena and the band had to try and play without the amps even being
miked and fed into the PA! Dave and John John both have rueful
memories of the sound:
John: It was
something like mosquitos buzzing around in a large public toilet.
Dave: The equipment
was pretty awful, we were trying to fill a huge auditorium,
and it was practially impossible. It was in the days before PAs,
mixing consoles, all that sort of thing.
Despite the technical shortcomings, the Jakarta gigs were a
success, the musicians were treated royally, and parties were
held in their honour. But after the third gig things suddenly
went "extremely wrong". The trickle of information suddenly
dried up, questions were not being answered, but Dave eventually
managed to discover that the scheduled gigs outside Jakarta had
been cancelled. Dave later found out -- to his dismay -- that
the promoters had also telephoned Sydney and fed both the Nova
agency and Dave's wife in Sydney a story (presumably also given
to the local press) that Dave was seriously ill, had been hospitalised,
and was unable to leave.
The full story, as Dave gradually pieced it together, was that
they were pawns in a rather shady game. Tickets for all the venues
had been pre-sold well in advance, but for some reason the promoters
had neglected to book the venues outside Jakarta. Unfortunately,
by the time the DMS and friends arrived, a major inter-Asian sports
event was in full swing. Needless to say, Indonesia was the host
nation, and the venues that would have been used for the concerts
were now all occupied. Presumably to avoid paying refunds, the
organisers had evidently decided to fabricate the illness story,
and hold Dave and the band incommunicado in Jakarta until
the sports festival was over and the concerts could be held.
Dave believes that the problems could have been easily solved
by negotiation between the promoters, the Indonesian authorities
and the Australian embassy, but in the event the promoters opted
to hush the whole thing up. In another time and place, this would
have been a problem rather than a crisis. But this was Jakarta
in 1969, and there was good reason to be very apprehensive.
Dave: "The
problem that I had was that we had a ten-day visa that was running
out at a very, very rapid rate, and I knew that in a country
like Indonesia ... which was extremely miltary in 1969
... if we did not have a permit to be in that country we could
be in dire strife. I could not get proper answers, and I could
not get authorities to assist me in any way, so they fabricated
the thing that I was ill."
We were being kept there to accomodate them,
so that they could save face, but no-one had taken into account
the precarious situation that we were placed in. ... I was extremely
uncomfortable with the predicament we were in. I have to tell
you -- it wasn't easy, and it was extremely dangerous
for Ray Mulholland and myself ... "
Marshalling all his considerable negotiation skills, Dave did
what he could to extricate the group from the situation. Through
contacts he had made, he was able to get in touch with one a senior
Indonesian police officer -- who by luck was an amateur jazz musician
and an avid fan of Western popular music. The contacts who arranged
the meeting did so, says Dave, at the risk of their own lives.
In the middle of the night, Dave and Ray went to the officer's
home, and although there was a family dinner in progress at the
time, he generously came out and listened to Dave's story. The
officer was very sympathetic, expressing great embarrrassment
over what had happened. He immediately organised a motorcade and
the band was ferried straight to the Jakarta airport, onto a QANTAS
plane and home forthwith. There was a happy postscript, however
-- on the plane home, the DMS was spotted by two Australian musos
who were on the same flight. They invited the DMS up to first
class where a raging party was in progress -- it was Johnny O'Keefe
and his entourage on their way home from entertaining the troops
in Vietnam!
Dave: "It
was champagne flight back for us after that, which was a nice
footnote to something extremely tense, extremely difficult."
Dave shielded the rest of the band, who were mostly unaware
of the dramas, but it was an unnerving experience for him, and
one that he has only recently felt comfortable to speak of.
By the time they arrived back in Sydney there was good news
waiting -- Mr Guy Fawkes had reached the Top Ten. Their
first major return gig after the Indonesian debacle was Mad Mel's
Giant Stir in August 1969, with a host of top Australian acts,
as well as visiting US singer Ray Stevens:
Dave: The profound
memory I have of the event was performing Mr Guy Fawkes.
I've never forgotten this. When it came to the explosion segment,
there were two trains approaching the bridge -- one to the south,
one to the north -- and right at the time of the explosion, both
those trains went across the bridge and crossed in the middle,
and the cacophony was quite incredible. It all fitted
into the texture of what was happening at the time, and I can
remember the crowd simply stoood and cheered. You couldn't have
planned it better. It was quite a magical moment.
Shortly after the Stir, Ray Mulholland left the group and he
was replaced by Mike McCormack (ex-Sect). The hard-hitting
drummer completed the Set's transition to a fully fledged heavy-rock
outfit, and in this final phase Dave also began playing rhythm
guitar onstage to bolster the sound during John's solos.
Dave: Mike was
I think one of the best heavy drummers in the country, in a 'John
Bonham' sort of fashion. Ray, having come through the Shadows
era was very "wristy" and I actually loved that part
of Ray's playing. He was very, very fluent with his hands on
the top part of the kit. Mike on the other hand was very dynamic
on the bottom part of the kit. If we could have been an Allman
Brothers sort of band, I would have had them both! (laughs)
It's regrettable that this lineup never really had the chance
to prove its mettle outside the live arena, and liewise it's a
real shame that the DMS never had the chance to record a full
album with Pat. Dave reckons they reached their peak as a performing
unit in the latter half of 1969, which was also probably the busiest
period of their career. They played countless city and country
gigs, and thanks to Dave's friendship with Sydney TV producer/host
John Collins they made numerous appearances on Collins'
late night music-and-talk show on Channel 10. They also recorded
a performance segment for the ABC's new nightly music show, GTK,
although it's know whether the tapes of this appearance have survived.
John Robinson was by now gaining a considerable following for
his guitar work, and he was also beginning to compose. Indeed,
he recalls that many musical ideas that began life in jams and
improvisations with DMS later became parts of Blackfeather's material
-- Seasons Of Change was one such song, born during an
onstage jam between Leith and John at Coffs Harbour in 1969.
The DMS played a lot of university gigs, and as Dave points
out, the music included longer arangements, with a lot of jamming,
extended improvistion and guitar pyrotechnics, simply because
that was what those audiences demanded. Still, Dave says that,
like most other acts of the day, they were a somewhat "schizo"
band, in that they could also adapt to a more commercial format
when playing to younger audiences. They could and did perform
a wide range of material, as he recalls, but the progressive material
was really the core of their music by this time and the ting that
set them apart from most other bands in the country.
Dave: By that
stage we were well and truly ensconced in that the progressive/underground
direction of music we were taking. The band had expanded so much
beyind the concept of a three-minute record that our live performances
were up in the echelon of Zeppelin, Who, Cream, whatever type
of band that you like to nominate. I don't want to be likened
to any or all of them, but there was an attitude to music and
its thinking and its style at that stage, and we were at the
forefront of that. If you look through my scrapbook, you'll find
there were many complimentary things written about the Dave Miller
Set as being as good as or better than some of the biggest interntional
names of the time.
We used to do a very very good version onstage
of The Weight, but we had to choose our material very
carefully, and we couldn't choose over-orchestrated stuff --
in the final analysis, we were just guitar bass and drums. It
was one of the reasons why I started to filter in on rhythm guitar,
to give John the space to become the "legendary lead guitarist"
and anchor the rhythm section a bit more.
Dave also recalled some of the hazards of life on the road
in the late '60s and gives a revealing insight into the reason
behind some of those long jams!
Dave: We travelled
a tremendous amount. We worked a lot. We did the country
gigs, we did the industrial centres, and we were constantly out
of Sydney as well as being in Sydney. When we were on the road
-- we lived in a time before mobile phones -- I was doing all
the bookings for us. We did have an agency; we worked thrugh
the Nova agency. I used them as a telephone answering system
for the most part. I couldn't be contacted because I was on the
road so extensively. But being on the road, I kept a schedule
of gigs and I created all the re-bookings in these places on
a cycle basis. I did the agency work and
in some places where I was encountering people for the very first
time, in fairly out-of-the-way places, I learned very quickly
there were "characters". I had heard from other people,
and I could see that this could unfold for me if I didn't keep
control over it.
A lot of people would use a powerful name,
get the country folk in from a large surrounding disctrict, and
the person repsonsible for operating this 'one night stand' would
often do a moonlight flit around 11:30 or so, in the half-hour
before the band finished. You'd come to the end of the night
and no-one was around with any money to pay anybody, and many
bands got ripped off by this absolutely uncouth way of doing
business. Nice as pie to your face at the beginning of the night,
but gone with the proceeds by the end. And of course everybody
that was left in charge of the place was told that the agencies
would be 'accomodated' in due course, and that's how it would
be.
When you're on the road, of course, you need
readies. And I found that I had to adopt a 'Chuck Berry' stance
with fly-by-nights like that. What I would do, knowing that there
were lots of people outside the venue, was that we would set
up and do a soundcheck, ostensibly -- and we would play BLOODY
LOUD so that everybody from around the township would know damned
well we were there. We'd do that and then shut down. Then I would
discreetly go to the namangement, go to the office and say to
them straight up: "Money NOW or we don't play." It
was that simple -- money up front, or we didn't play.
That's how I survived, but there were often
difficult situations and things that were rather untoward, and
there'd be many occasions where I'd just have to say to the guys
onstage: 'Play it out - I've gotta sort something out.' And I
used to have to -- as their manager, as their agent -- disappear
from the stage often -- and thus some of the protracted jams.
It was not me tiring of the thing, it was no me tiring of being
an artist. It was the fact that circumstances often made it that
I actually had to do some these things to keep on top of it for
the sanctity and well-being of the band. Thus
John's references to things coming out of jams that ended up
as Blackfeather material. They were sometimes thrust into doing
that while I was off sorting out some of the other problems!"
As the year drew to a close, Dave became aware that trouble
was looming for the music industry -- a smouldering "pay
for play" dispute between commercial radio and the record
companies that was about to break out into open warfare as the
infamous 1970 Radio Ban. He had his ear to ground, as always,
and Dave knew that they had to move quickly to get a follow-up
out before the dispute worsened. First came the song that ended
up as the B-side of their next single, No Need To Cry,
a powerhouse original that Dave reckons is about as close as we're
likely get to what the DMS actually sounded like at the
time, capturing the kind of extended heavy-metal instrumental
workouts they they were famed for onstage. That track had been
recorded in a fairly leisurely fashion, and the sound is a huge
improvement on previous efforts -- the production is very heavy,
and shows the improvements and certainly a direct precursor to
Pat's work on the Kahvas Jute LP Wide Open the following
year.
The track eventually selected and recorded for the A-side was
a spirited cover of Chicago's Does Anybody Really Know What
Time It Is?, which Dave says was recorded "at a gallop"
and rush-released in November 1969. (Dave confirms that this was
an official DMS recording, not a solo single, as is often
stated). It had one brief outing into the charts, making the Top
20 at Gold Coast station 4GG for a couple of weeks, but that was
as far as it got. It's a shame it failed,
because it's as good in its own way as contemporary tracks like
Jeff St John's Big Time Operator or Max Merritt's Western
Union Man. While obviously not as inventive as Fawkes,
it shows what adaptable and assured performers the DMS were, and
their ability to tackle a wide range of material and still give
it their own individual stamp. It was no doubt recorded in one
take and there is the odd glitch, but it has lots of charm and
energy and there's plenty the "have a go" spirit and
sense of entertainment that typifies all their work. It's further
evidence of Dave's ear for a good song -- Chicago of course became
one of the biggest groups of the early 70s -- and certainly miles
better than some of the other cover versions that local bands
were being done at the time, like The Pushbike Song, or
the lugubrious Yellow River. The other very notable feature
of their last single is that it clearly illustrates the dramatic
changes in the music scene, and the huge gap between what was
then considered 'commercial' material, and the heavy rock that
the DMS were playing live.
As the new year progressed the radio dispute hotted up, and
many acts on major labels -- including the DMS -- would soon find
themslves unable to get airplay. The single sank more or less
sank without trace, a very disappointing result after the Top
Ten sucess of Guy Fawkes, and without another charting
record to keep them in the public ear, the momentum they had built
up began to dissipate. They were also tired from almost three
years of incessant travel and gigging and constantly living in
each others pockets, and by now Dave could
see the writing on the wall. Rather than slog it out for ever-diminishing
returns, he bravely decided to end the group and move on to new
challenges.
In May 1970, just as the Radio Ban was officially declared, Dave announced that he was leaving the Dave Miller Set. He was also keen to allow the other members to pursue other options, and the split was certainly not because he was unhappy with their musicianship, as was reported in Go-Set
at the time.
Dave: At that stage I accepted no more bookings, and we played out the full diary of engagements, concluding with a major concert for 4BC Brisbane at the Town Hall, with a huge bill of prominent names, with the Masters Apprentices [also on their farewell tour before leaving for the
UK], Doug Parkinson in
Focus, many of the big names of the time. That same night we did a final appearance at the Chevron Hotel in Surfer's Paradise. The 4BC show was a bit anticlimactic, 'cos everyone would have preferred to hang around and have the big after-show party but we had to beetle down to the Chevron and do the last gig we ever did together.
I remember those shows very
specifically because, going to Brisbane, Mike McCormack had never
been in an aeroplane before -- it was his first flight and he
loved the sensation of speed and all that -- and I can remember
him doing the most outrageous"whoop!" when this thing
first took off from Sydney. The passengers must have wondered
what sort of maniac was on board with them!
After The Dave Miller Set
After the breakup, Dave had a short holiday on the Gold Coast,
where his wife's parents owned a holiday house, and he began working
on new songs.
John, Leith and Mike stayed together
and in April 1970 they recruited Neale Johns as their new lead
singer. According to John, he followed the example he had learned
from Dave when negotiating a contract with Festival for an album
on their newly established Infinity imprint. Renamed Blackfeather, they became (albeit briefly) one of the most
successful and celebrated Aussie bands of the early 70s with their
classic single Seasons Of Change (also successfully recorded
by Fraternity) and their debut album At The Mountains
Of Madness. With Blackfeather, John continued the heavy/progressive
direction of the Dave Miller Set and as mentioned earlier, some of the major musical ideas that wound up in the Blackfeather songs -- notably the chord sequence of Seasons Of Change
-- originated in jams and improvisations from the latter days of the Dave Miller Set.
Leith and Mike both left Blackfeather shortly after it formed, but Leith and Dave had remained close. Leith was a regular visitor at the Miller home in Eastwood, and
it wasn't long before the pair had developed the idea for an album. Through the winter months of 1970 they wrote the songs -- Dave wrote nine of the 11 tracks that ended up on the LP -- and then
recorded the backing tracks, playing all the instruments except the drums and producing themselves. It is surely the first duo
project of its kind in Australian rock. It's a very individual and innovative work, blending influences from heavy rock, folk, progressive, psychedelia and country. Even if it's not entirely
perfect, it still has a lot of value and it's a very creditable effort for both musicians, given that it was their first venture into the album format, and their first major outing as songwriters.
The fact that the album was self-produced is also very impressive, and considering that the DMS spent so little time in the studio it shows what a quick study Dave must have been. Leith was instrumental in organising the various drummers for the recording, including Mike McCormack and a young Alan Sandow, who had just joined
Sherbet.
Dave: "I enjoyed working with Leith. It was very
concentrated, very tiring, very high energy, but the pair of
us bounced off each other. To this day it's one of the happiest
musical projects I've ever been involved with, and for that I'm
grateful to him ... it was just fun to do!"
The LP was released in around September
1970 with the evocative title Reflections Of A Pioneer,
from Dave's song of the same name which was in part a tribute
to his grandfather, who had died not long before in New Zealand.
The title track was also lifted for a single, backed by Leith's
rocky 323527 Charles. For many years the album has been
one of the most sought-after collector's items of the period,
but happily it was remastered and re-released on CD in 2000 by
Vicious Sloth.
An unexpected opportunity opened up for
Dave at the press reception for Reflections -- he
was approached by Soundblast magazine to write for
them, and within a short time he became one of their regular writers.
His work for Soundblast also led him to meet many visiting
overseas stars including the members of Led Zeppelin and
Yes.
In 1971 Dave formed a new group, 2000, which played around
Sydney with considerable success until early 1973. They built
up a strong following on the Sydney circuit, but the popularity
of the DMS was still a force to be reckoned with, and a reunion
jam with John Robinson at a 2000 gig in late 1972 led to a DMS
revival in January 1973 with a new version of the band featuring
Dave, John, bassist Steve Hogg (ex-Bakery) and drummer
Steve Webb (ex-Blackfeather). This lasted only a short
time however -- Dave never intended it to be a long-term arrangement
-- and it ended somewhat acrimoniously when Dave decided to move
to England.
After the messy demise of the original
Blackfeather in 1972, John briefly joined soul band Hunger, the resident
band at Jonathan's Disco in Sydney. After the DMS reunion he joined
the supergroup Duck
with Bobbi Marchini
and Bobby Gebert in mid-1973. They cut one self-titled album before
folding, but most of Duck also appeared on John's only solo album,
the superb Pity For The Victim [Festival] in 1974.
John continued playing into the 80s with projects like The Guitar
Orchestra and although he gradually gave up regular live work,
he has continued to write and record prolifically, and he exerted
a continuing influence on the music scene through his work as
a guitar teacher. His pupils include many prominent names like
Mondo Rock's Eric McCusker, Men At Work's Colin Hay
and The Wiggles' Murray Cook.
Dave and Corinne -- who were by now starting
a family -- established themselves in the UK, and Leith went over
around the same time. Dave continued writing for the music press
and became friends with top British musicians like Rick Wakeman,
Jon Anderson and Steve Howe of Yes, Rory Gallagher and Tony Ashton,
of Ashton Gardner & Dyke fame. Dave was stilll writing and
playing music, and thanks to Ashton, who was an old friend of
the group from Liverpool, Dave had another close Beatles enounter
when he had the good fortune to visit and do some recording at
Ringo Starr's house, "Tittenhurst Park", the former
home of John and Yoko, and he even got to use one of the Beatles'
concert amps, which was still stored there!
The Millers remained in the UK until
1980. Leith worked in various places around Europe -- including
a spell in a Spanish pop band -- before returning to Australia
and settling on the south coast of NSW, where he still lives.
Dave did not return to music professionally
when he came back to Australia, although he continued to write,
record and play at home.
Over the years, most of the rcordings
of Dave Miller & The Byrds and The Dave Miller Set fell into
obscurity, although Mr Guy Fawkes took on a life of its
own and has been anthologised on several various artists albums,
including Festival's essential 1974 compilation So You Wanna
Be A Rock'n'Roll Star, put together by Glenn A. Baker
in 1974 and reissued on CD with bonus tracks in 1998. Dave's very
first single with The Byrds, Bright Lights, Big City was
also reissued on the New Zealand 60s beat compilation How
Was The Air Up There?, issued on LP in the late 80s and
reissued on CD in 2001.
The happy postscript to the story is
that in March 2001 three of the founding members of the Dave Miller
Set -- Dave, Harry Brus and John Robinson -- were reunited at
George Crotty's Sixties Reunion party in Sydney. It was the first
time Dave had seen Harry and John since the early 70s. John and
Leith had always kept in touch, and since the reunion the three
have renewed their friendship, and we're delighted to report that
they are working hard on new musical projects.
Dave Miller & The Byrds
45
?/1965 Bright Lights, Big City (Reed-Reed)
/ Little Lover (Nash)
[Zodiac Z45 1204]
?/1965 How You've Changed (Berry)
/ Wake Up LIttle Suzie (B. Bryant-F.Bryant)
[Zodiac Z45 1220]
?/1965 No Time (Howard Blackley)
/ Love Is All I Need (B. Bryant-F.Bryant)
[Zodiac Z45 1225]
EP
?/1966 Dave Miller & The Byrds
[ Zodiac EPZ 131]
Help Me (Carreras-Farver-Ward) / Ain't Got You (Arnold)
/ Tough Enough (Otis) / That'll Be The Day (Allison-Holly-Petty)
/ Let The Four Winds Blow (Bartholemew-Domino)
LP
(late 1980s?) How Was The
Air Up There? - Various Artists
[KTEL NZ 747 ]
One track only - Bright Lights, Big City
CD
?/2001 How Was The Air Up There? - Various Artists
[EMI 5332912]
(reissue of KTEL LP)
The Dave Miller
Set
45
10/1967
Why Why Why (P. Volk) / Hard, Hard Year (Ransford)
[Spin EK 2064]
4/1968
Hope (Buie-Adkins) / Havin' a Party (Cooke)
[Spin EK 2277]
10/968
Get Together (Powers) / A Bread & Butter Day
(D. Miller)
[Spin EK 3160]
7/1969
Mr Guy Fawkes (Cox) / Someone Is Sure To (Graham)
[Spin EK 3160]
11/1969
Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? (Lamm) / No Need
To Cry (D. Miller)
[Spin EK 3571]
EP
?/1968
The Dave Miller Set [Spin EX 11530]
Hope / Havin' A Party // Why Why Why / Hard Hard Year
?/1969
Mr Guy Fawkes [Spin EX 11608]
Mr Guy Fawkes / Someone Is Sure To // Get Together / A Bread
& Butter Day
Compilations featuring
The Dave Miller Set
LP
?/1968
Australian Star Showcase '68 - Various Artists
Festival FL 978
one DMS track - Hope
?/1968
So Good Together - The Stars of Spin - Various Artists
[Spin EL 32 907]
two DMS tracks - Why Why Why and Hard Hard Year
?/1969
Australia's Top Talent - Various Artists
[Calendar R66-687 mono; SR6609687 stereo]
one DMS track - Mr Guy Fawkes
?/1974
So You Wanna Be A Rock'n'Roll Star? Volume II (The Psychedelic
Years of Australian Rock)
[Festival L45705/6] 2LP set
one DMS track - Mr Guy Fawkes
CD
?/1998
Sixties Downunder Vol. 3 (28 Oz Rock Classics) -
Various Artists
Raven RCD 81
one DMS track - Mr Guy Fawkes
So You Wanna Be A Rock'n'Roll Star?
[Spin/Festival D89931]
3CD set compiling both 1970s 2LP sets plus additional tracks
one DMS track - Mr Guy Fawkes
Dave Miller / Leith
Corbett & Friends
45
?/1970
Reflections of a Pioneer (D.Miller) / 353527 Charles
(L. Corbett)
[Spin EK 4002]
LP
9/1970
Reflections of a Pioneer
[Spin SEL 934008]
Reflections of a Pioneer (Miller)
Don't You Think It's Time? (Miller)
I'll Be Laughing (Miller)
The Loner (Miller)
Somehow (Miller)
Good Pschology (Miller)
353527 Charles (Corbett)
I Don't Believe It (Miller)
Your Own Motor Car (Miller)
In Your Mind (Miller)
It's Great To Get Up In The Morning, But Better To Stay In
Bed (Corbett)
CD
?/1998
Reflections of a Pioneer
Vicious Sloth Collectibles VSC 008
CD reissue
- John Dix - Stranded in Paradise
(1988)
- Ian McFarlane - Australian Encyclopedia
of Rock & Pop (1999)
- Chris Spencer & Zbig Nowara - Who's
Who Of Australian Rock (1994)
- Dave Miller - Interview with author,
April 2001; Interview with Steve
Kernohan on For What It's Worth, Stereo 974 Melbourne,
November 2000
- John Robinson - Blackfeather Productions
website
- Bruce Sergent - New Zealand Music of
the 60s and 70s
Our sincere thanks to Dave and Corinne
Miller, John Robinson, Leith Corbett, Harry
Brus and Pat Aulton for their invaluable assistance
and cooperation in the preparation of this article, thanks also
to Steve Kernohan for getting the ball rolling.
VERY special thanks to Dave for his patience.
It took a while but we finally got there!
John Robinson's Blackfeather
Music Productions
http://www.oocities.org/~blackfeathermp/