The Age newspaper,
August 8th 1998

HENRI BOURCE has "nearly stepped off the perch a couple of times". But the 63 year?old saxophonist is determined to keep on playing in a rock 'n' roll band. He told his oncologist that, despite leukemia, he's got a show to do, "so I'm not going yet". If not by much, Bource is the oldest of five players in a pioneering Australian rock band, the Thunderbirds. They have been rehearsing for a performance this month that will mark an almost forgotten milestone in the emergence of Australian rock 'n' roll.

Ten children and eight grandchildren on, the Thunderbirds have released a new album and will return to one of their early venues, Preston Town Hall, to celebrate the 41st anniversary of their "first ever appearance".

Once they were among the biggest stars in a fledgling industry. Wild Weekend, New Orleans Beat and Machine Gun were just a few of the top?10 hits they enjoyed in their heyday in the late 1950s and early '60x. They toured with visiting artists including Dion, Fabian, Jack Scott, Ray Peterson and Roy Orbison.

Drummer Harold Frith, 61, founded the band when he placed a newspaper ad for players in 1957.

He remembers the stars, and says the more talented were always the more obliging. "The people who've got a big ego and not much talent, they're the trouble makers. They're the ones who are hard to get on with."

Among the most difficult was the young Helen Shapiro. Roy Orbison, on the other hand, was courteous, less sophisticated than some. "We did his first tour around Australia, and he was that impressed with the backing that he wanted to take the whole group with him to America," Bource says. "But the problem was we wouldn't have been able to get green cards. That's why the whole thing came to grief."

Frith adds: "Roy Orbison was a wonderful person. A real gentleman. Over here, there's pictures of us with Roy Orbison. Later on that year, there `were pictures of the Beatles with Roy Orbison.They (the Beatles) have done rather better than we have. But back then, we weren't all that far apart."

They credit Melbourne DJ Stan Rofe with helping them secure a recording contract, with W&G Records, by promising airplay at a time when the music industry was reluctant to gamble on local artists.

The Thunderbirds backed Johnny Chester, Johnny O'Keefe, Merv Benton, Betty McQuade, Noel Watson and Normie Rowe. They have fond memories of O'Keefe, who died in the late 1970s. "He wasn't such a great singer, but what he was was a hell of a showman," Frith says. "When the Americans used to come, he'd wipe the floor with them . . . "

Touring with him was "tremendously hectic," says Bource. "He'd turn up late for rehearsal and say, 'Well, it doesn't matter, I'm Johnny O'Keefe'. He had a great opinion of himself."

The band made its first TV appearance in September 1959 on The Swallows Show, hosted by Bert Newton. A Dutch migrant, who came to Melbourne from the Hague in his teens, Bource remembers the days when the Thunderbirds were regularly featured with Ian Turpie on The Go Shaw and Teen Scene, compered by Johnny Chester.