Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
Join Cheryl Lee That Radio Chick on Still Rockin' It for news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
What are they up to at the moment? Let's find out .......
Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
What's John Bywaters up to? OR Did the Twilights find that 'Needle In A Haystack'?
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
Today we speak with 76 year old AMC SA Music Hall Of Fame inductee, John Bywaters who credits playing bass for keeping him young.
We chat about when The Twilights were 'bigger than The Beatles', playing at Liverpool's legendary Cavern Club and recording at iconic Abbey Road Studios and he shares his memories of making the tv pilot for 'Once Upon a Twilight' with Mary Hardy and Ronnie Burns.
What's John up to at the moment? Let's find out .....
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
With Shirley that Radio Chick. Welcome to the Still Rocking at podcast, where we'll have news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. Today we chat two 76 year old South Australian Music Hall of Fame inductee, john Byrwaters, crediting music for keeping him young. We chat about when the twilight's were bigger than the Beatles, playing at Liverpool's legendary cabin club and recording at iconic Abbey Road Studios. He shares his memories of making the TV pilot for Once Upon a Twilight with Mary Hardy and Ronnie Boone. Watch John Byrwaters up to now. Let's find out. I'd like to welcome into the studio today John Byrwaters from the twilight. I've got here that he's 77. I don't believe that's true. John, have you discovered the fountain of youth?
Speaker 2:Get out of it. I'm not quite 77,. I won't be till December the 10th. If you want to give me a present or something, you don't look a day over 60. That's fantastic for you to say that.
Speaker 1:What's the secret?
Speaker 2:Well, it's no secret, rock and Roll does it for you. I mean, I'm still playing in rock bands and I think that's what keeps you young, honestly do.
Speaker 1:I absolutely agree with you. I've always said that Rock and Roll, or music in general, keeps you young.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:From 1964 to 69, the twilight. Hey, you guys were bigger than the Beatles.
Speaker 2:Well, we like to think so, but the passage of time sort of made us legends. You know All these stories I've heard about the twilight. I'm thinking that's not quite true, but it's what people think of us. You know All the stories about us playing Sergeant Pepper's track for track. Well, that is true, yeah. Well, they did tell the Beatles they couldn't play them live and they didn't ever attempt that. But nobody told us you're not supposed to be able to play these things live. Didn't worry us, we just did it and I think we did a pretty fair job of anything that we attempted.
Speaker 1:actually, your reputation does precede you. You were all fabulous musicians and alongside another Adelaide band formed at the time, the Masters Apprentices, you were considered one of the most significant Australian rock groups of the 60s. I've always said that all the best bands come out of Adelaide. So let's start at the very, very beginning. But first let's hear that song Needle in a Haystack Back with the bass player from the Twilightz. You'll be surely that radio chick. Did you always know, john, that you were going to be a bass player in a band?
Speaker 2:I might just tell you how I started playing music. I was in the St John's Amherst Cadets and then I joined the St John's Amherst Cadet Drum Corps and I played a tenor drum. There were no instruments apart from drums. There was bass drum, a couple of tenor drums and then side drums and we used to march. We'd do John Martin's pageant and things like that, and we hang around as a group and somebody invited us to a fancy dress party which was at Kevin Crease's house down in Mile N somewhere Saturday night. Everybody was supposed to dress up and we said what can we go as?
Speaker 2:and we went as a beatnik band because beatniks were all the rage. Then, hey man, you know, peter Gumb was on the television. You know, brothers go to mothers and mothers was the club and it was full of beatniks. So we made out we're a beatnik band. And I found a T-Chass bass somewhere. I'd never played an instrument up to that point. Now I'm not going to call a T-Chass bass an instrument, but it is per se.
Speaker 2:Somebody was learning trumpet. They brought that, somebody was learning piano chord here and they came along. We might have done one or two instrumentals. Anyway, we won it. We got some little prizes, you know nothing extravagant. We were really chuffed. And people came up and said you're a great band. You know well, we were making out. Actually, the next time we got together as a group, somebody said why don't we form a band? And I said yeah, I might go and buy a guitar. And I con my parents the next week, went to Corthorns and Rundle Street it was a street then, not a mall bought a guitar, had a lesson that very same day up in Gaze Arcade, got a guitar book. Then I went home and started to practice. Now that must have taken perhaps a year or so. My friends had come around, they'd say do you want to go?
Speaker 2:down the beach today or kick the footy. I say no, I'm gonna practice my guitar. I went to a dance at Clemsiq at the shed where the Gaze football club is. Yeah, used to have Johnny Mack and the Mack Men was one of the bands Used to go there and just sort of watch the band and look at the bass player, billy Pfeiffer, and sort of marvel at what he was doing. And there was a guy standing next to me down the front of the stage and he said what do you do? I said, oh, I'm learning guitar. He just said do you want to join a band? His name was Dean Burbeck. He was a drummer.
Speaker 2:Turned out that there was another guitarist called Ivan that he had and we were trio. We did one job, I think, and then I was asked to join another band called the Delters, who then changed their name very promptly to the 707s named after the large passenger aeroplane at the time. We played around, did a few gigs and I was playing rhythm guitar but we had no bass player. The guy that did start to play bass, he left. He had a double bass and he didn't keep it up. No bass, I missed the bass. You know I'm thinking something's missing here. It needs it. It needs bass. So I tried to play bass lines on the guitar and that didn't cut it and I thought I'm gonna buy a bass. So I went and bought a TS Go rhythm beat bass Used to plug into the Lee Guitars amplifier and blow the speakers up, by the way, and eventually I got my own amplifier.
Speaker 2:The band was sort of whole then. Then I was headhunted to a band called the Telstars, who were a better band. Now what happens in this industry? Darwin's theory of evolution you evolve going to better bands. People see you and they say well, I think you'd be good for our band. So I joined the Telstars and they had some good instrumentalists Dave Lewis on the guitar, bob Huxble on drums, tom Joy was the vocalist. We used to work around the clubs. We used to work at the beat basement down the end of Rundle Street there. It was there that two of the members of the Hurricanes came to see me, peter Brighto and Kevin Peake. They said they had a band and I don't know what made me think it was a better band. I just somehow knew I think. So I left the Telstars and joined the Hurricanes. The Hurricanes had more jobs. I guess that's how I knew they were a better band they were booking more and earning more.
Speaker 2:That's right, they were actually playing proper jobs and they had a few vocalists hang around the Hurricanes too. There was John Perry and Maria Vanzile and John Bradshaw all these solo vocalists that had no band, that hang around a band, you know, because they get a backing and then the Beatles hit and the whole world changed.
Speaker 2:It did change, you know and I remember thinking the Beatles, what a stupid name. But you could tell something was happening, of course, in June 64 when the Beatles came, that's when it changed forever. Yeah, just as it did in 56 when Bill Haley came to Adelaide. People started to say, well, we like this new sort of music. Who can play it? We adapted and started doing Beatles stuff Up to Elizabeth. There was a vocal group called the Twilight's. Our paths were going to cross and they crossed at the Beatles Soundalike competition at the Palais Royal. The Hurricanes entered. We sang A Little Child and the Twilight's entered and sang Please, mr Postman, they won it. I think the Hurricanes came second. The Twilight's were backed by the Vectorman also from.
Speaker 2:Elizabeth. We got a call not long afterward. Were we interested in backing the Twilight's three? We must have known something, because we said, yes, of course, we backed the Twilight's three and we worked the Oxford Club and the Salisbury Youth Centre and we got on so well and our voices blended beautifully. And somebody said why don't we just call the whole lot the Twilight's? Yeah, and we did, and that's how the Twilight's became a six piece and the rest is history.
Speaker 1:So they say. And good old Terry Britton came to be in the Twilight because Kevin Peake was the Hurricanes guitarist. One day came to rehearsal and brought Terry with him, announcing that he was leaving to join John E Broom and the Hand Elves and Terry was going to be his replacement. Simple as that. Some knew of Terry from his days playing at the Finsbury migrant hostel and he slotted in perfectly. This all happened not long after the Twilight and the Hurricanes merged.
Speaker 2:The lineup in the Hurricanes was myself, kevin Peake, peter Brideauke and Frank Barnard on drums. The Twilight was Glenn Shorrock, patty McCartney, mike Sykes. Sometimes they had a fourth vocalist, billy somebody or other, or a Chris Pettifor, to make up a bass voice. When we amalgamated, mike Sykes dropped out yep, against his wishes, I might say. Glenn said I'll tell Mike that he's not wanted. You know. He said it was the hardest thing he had to do in his entire life. It was till Mike.
Speaker 2:He wasn't wanted you know, To this date, I've sort of mended it's okay, mike became very high up in the Air Force. I've spoken to him recently. He's cool.
Speaker 1:You married really early, wife Valerie. And then you guys did the big move with the Twilight's late 65, early 66 with a brand new baby to Melbourne.
Speaker 2:Absolutely six months old Colleen was. That's a gutsy move and I can't understand it even today, how we would contemplate such a thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We had no plan. Everything we did was just serendipitous. The fact I was married didn't seem to enter into it. The fact I had a baby didn't seem. I guess we didn't value our jobs very much, because Glenn was a drastman for the Salisbury Council, patty worked for Canberra TV, fixing televisions. Peter was a student, kevin Peake, he was a student, I think. Frank Barnard worked for Sportco Sporting Goods. Yeah, how'd he come to just chuck a job in? You know, actually it was a gradual thing. We didn't give our job up straight away. We were invited to play in Melbourne. We'd go over on a Friday night on a pine ear bus, right Play in Melbourne, come back Sunday night bright and early for work on a Monday. We did that three or four times before Gary Spry, the guy who was taking us to Melbourne, said why don't you guys consider coming to Melbourne full time?
Speaker 1:Do you think it's the naivety of youth? Very much so the innocence and bravado of one so young.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. In the times that we went to Melbourne to play, we could see what the scene was like. We knew it was a different scene to Adelaide. There was more gigs around. We only ever played, I think, at Pinocchio's nightclub. You could tell by the reaction we got that there was more to be had?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was a pretty bold move you know, but we did it.
Speaker 1:Talking about Gary Spry, who managed you, your biggest national chart success came with your dynamic cover of the Velvet that's right Needle in a haystack in 66. Now, you guys weren't keen on that song, but he insisted and it made the top ten in every state of Australia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we were on a boat going to England at that time. We were sailing out of Brisbane and we got a telegram saying number one Australia was needed on a hastag. You see, we didn't know. We just sort of recorded it, played it, put our spin to it. We'd had a few records out before that. We had recorded an album that wasn't released until Christmas. It was released where we were in England actually.
Speaker 1:Were you on a boat to England because you won the Holy Battle of the Sounds.
Speaker 2:That's right. Yeah, we won the inaugural one, the first one, the very first one.
Speaker 1:And the prize was a sick Marquess to the UK $1,000, trip to UK and one gig.
Speaker 2:Did I say a recording contract as well? Yeah, a recording contract which we already had with EMI.
Speaker 2:That was our label, and we were met at the Docks in Southampton by the EMI rep. I can even remember his name, roy Squires. We went up to London by train. Anyway, we contacted the great organisation who were supposed to be giving us the gig and we said we're the Twilight from Australia. And they said who Would you believe? They knew nothing about it. And it wasn't until one of the directors, a guy called Nat Berlin, the cousin of Irving Berlin, the composer took pity on us and got us some gigs.
Speaker 2:One of those gigs was at the Cavern in Liverpool. We hired a van and went up and played the Saturday evening with a few other bands and they liked us. So they asked us to play on the Sunday afternoon, which we did. We did another gig for one of the English newspapers. We played at a few clubs Played at the Cromwell Inn Tiles Blazers was another one, but we were taking Coles to Newcastle.
Speaker 1:We were playing Beatles songs.
Speaker 2:See there's that naivety, because the Beatles were in their own backyard, they weren't the big deal to them as they were to us. You know that's right. I mean they were huge. Of course they were huge. Everybody took for granted. And by 1966, the Beatles had been around for so long. They'd been around for three odd years in England and there's us playing Beatles songs. I think we would have been better off going to America, but that really wasn't on the table.
Speaker 1:Everybody went to the UK, really, didn't they at that time?
Speaker 2:Absolutely had to go to the UK, had to go to the mother country.
Speaker 1:You had the opportunity to record at the historical Abbey Road Studios.
Speaker 2:Yes, did three tracks there what's Wrong and the Way I Live, Young Girl and 950.
Speaker 1:I think we might play one of those right now. Well, why don't you? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Back with more.
Speaker 1:Drunk by Water straight after this Young Girl from the Oceanic Odyssey album. Yeah, we surely that radio chick. We're chatting to John by Waters.
Speaker 2:We're back, we're back.
Speaker 1:You guys, based on the success of the Monkeys TV series and the Beatles Hard Days Night film, had a series called Once Upon a Twilight.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right. We were asked if we wanted to do a pilot for a TV show. It didn't have a name at that time and we were just sitting around in the office of the film company Saga Films and they were saying what can we call it? And I piped up what about Once Upon a Twilight? And that's how that name came to be the director, brian Kavanaugh, when he was shooting it, and we'd say, oh, that's like the Monkeys. And he'd say who, what? He'd never watched him, so it was entirely him thinking of sort of zany things to do.
Speaker 2:Just so happened that the storyline was a group that lived together. It's a pity it didn't take off. It was an interesting concept.
Speaker 1:You had as your co-star comedian Mary Hardy, but also my husband's cousin Ronnie Burns. He played the part of Alphonse from Gumbelut Gully.
Speaker 2:You can actually buy it at JB Hi-Five. Victor Marshall, a good friend, gave me a copy the other day. It only goes for 23 minutes. I've got a copy right here. That's exactly it. And that photo was taken for a Rice Quinkles breakfast cereal. That photo was on the back of the packet, and that was the photo.
Speaker 1:Look how young you all are. Oh, you've got to grab it Once Upon a Twilight. Yeah, this is actually a prize that's been donated for our support act.
Speaker 2:Oh, some didn't want it, so they donated for a prize. I think you donated it.
Speaker 1:John has been involved in support act South Australia for how long?
Speaker 2:John, oh, not long after it came into being in Adelaide I've only been with you for two years.
Speaker 1:That's right. Third Thursday of every month Support, support act.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we need support. No, it's a very good cause that looks after down and out people from the industry. It's a nationwide organization. We have our monthly lunch to raise funds, which we then send to Sydney. It's to do a lot of good for people that might have problems with not able to pay their rent or their instrument gets stolen or something. You just make an application entirely confidential. You might get a bit of a hand, see you through.
Speaker 1:It's not just for artists and performers, it's for roadies and lighting tech and sound guys. Anyone in the industry, absolutely yeah. Come on down. You might win a Once Upon a Twilight DVD in the raffle. Yeah, you're with Shirley, that radio chick. We are talking to John Bywaters from the Twilight. Let's have another song now, bad Boy. We'll be back with John straight after this. You've got a pretty long history. You've mentioned the hurricanes which sort of morphed into the Twilight.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:I'm going to repeat you were with John Vincent's Can Iath Orchestra.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, that was fantastic. You know, very funny guy. I must have played on I don't know two or three or four albums with Vinny. It was always a laugh.
Speaker 1:What a character he was.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and we miss him dearly yeah.
Speaker 1:Five-sided circle.
Speaker 2:At the moment, but of course being in lockdown. Five-sided circle has nowhere to play because we only played once a month at the Aster and the Aster hasn't gone back to having a band yet.
Speaker 1:You're just in hiatus, that's right, but you'll be back.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:And were you one of the original members with five-sided no I wasn't. You're a ringing, I'm a ringing.
Speaker 2:I think the original bass player was John Arbon. Then Ron Cosmider joined, so I took Ronny's place about 18 months ago I suppose.
Speaker 1:Actually, yeah, so you played with Insect in the 70s.
Speaker 2:Frank Sebastian, but it was called the Frank Sebastian Entertainment Review. It wasn't called Insect Uh-huh, Frank likes to call it Insect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I guess to him.
Speaker 2:It's the same band, you know.
Speaker 1:Did you know that he used to be my boss?
Speaker 2:Did he yeah?
Speaker 1:He had a venue in High New Street called Downtown.
Speaker 2:Leisure Centre yes.
Speaker 1:And I was a skate marshal. Was you Picking up all the little kids that fell over, telling all the big kids to slow down, ha ha and stop knocking over the little kids?
Speaker 2:My daughter Colleen, worked there for a while. I don't know what she did.
Speaker 1:We might have even been work colleagues, you might have been.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a bit of a legend that place, wasn't it?
Speaker 1:It was, I remember, the midnight to dawn lock-ins Parents used to just drop their kids off.
Speaker 2:Of course, they did that midnight. Drop them and run.
Speaker 1:Come and get them at six o'clock in the morning. Those were the days and.
Speaker 2:Frank used to get the staff in when he'd pay them and he'd say you need a haircut. And he used to have all these rules, didn't he? Hard task master.
Speaker 1:I wonder if he knew that we used to take it in turns, going into the change room and having a sleep during those midnight to dawn. Your turn. Go have a little nap. Probably not.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Another band, Honest John.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was a very early band. When the Twilight's broke up in January of 69, I stayed in Melbourne for a year working for a company called Strauss who made amplifiers. My wife was terribly homesick, terribly terribly. We came home one Christmas and Frank Bernard, who was the first drummer in the Hurricanes, he was playing in a band in Adelaide called the Formula at Redlegs Club and he said well, look for a bass player, Are you interested? And before I had a chance to answer, my wife said yes, he'll take it.
Speaker 2:Bless a good honor, yeah. So we went back to Melbourne, packed up, gave notice at my job with Strauss and headed back to Adelaide. I was working with Formula and we were doing four nights a week at the Redlegs Club, because that was the place to be.
Speaker 1:So you came back to Adelaide and you've been here ever since. Yes, and you're playing with the Russers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the funny thing about the Russers. I was just asked if I'd fill in for Derek Manning while he was sick and I said, yeah, sure, oh, yeah. Well, unfortunately Derek never got better, so I'm there by default. Not a very nice way to get a gig, but unfortunately it's happening more and more. Hmm, I got a gig on an ocean liner with Peter Tilbrough because Brian Davage passed away. As we get older, more of our contemporaries are falling off the perch, you know.
Speaker 1:John, in 2014,. You were the very first inductee into the SA Music Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2:True Congratulations. Thank you, peter Tilbrough was number two.
Speaker 1:Trendsetters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, who rang me? Was it? Daisy rang me. Yeah, daisy rang me. He said do you mind if we induct you in the Hall of Fame? And I said why me, you know, he just says because you've been nominated. And I said by who? Well, he wouldn't or couldn't tell me, you know. I said but there's other people before me that should be inducted, very well deserved. I don't consider I've done anything extraordinary, I just do what I do Keep on keeping on, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's an honor, it's a real honor. Of course you know to be judged by your peers and I still, to this day, don't know who in the hell put me up, Because you have to nominate, People nominate and then a peer group panel sits around, but of course there was no peer group panel in those days because I was the first. Yeah, yeah, so it was just a committee of a few people. You know Daisy and his wife, Enrico? Yes, I think so. But it's great that people know who you are and you're not forgotten and you're appreciated Sort of a strange feeling, you know.
Speaker 1:We love having you playing around our town and hopefully we'll have you playing around our town for many more years to come.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not planning on going anywhere.
Speaker 1:God, I really appreciate you coming in and sharing some of your stories with us today, john.
Speaker 2:Thank you, you're lucky, I can remember them.
Speaker 1:I was actually thinking that you had such amazing recall. I couldn't remember all those names and places and dates.
Speaker 2:What names and places are there? What was my name? Again, who are you? Where am I?
Speaker 1:Where do I live?
Speaker 2:I've got to keep the wheels greased, otherwise you know I've seen what happens to some of my friends. You know they cannot remember what they'd done in the past. Some of the twilight's and I we get together, whilst with Glenn two weekends ago at Port Douglas, and I remember a lot more than what he does. I'm just blessed that I can remember a lot of this trivia.
Speaker 1:There's a lot to be said for playing an instrument and keeping your brain young.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, we didn't talk about the Chicago show band, which I'm in my wife's in as well. She plays flute. I joined the Chicago show band because it's a reading gig. You read the dots. There's no chords for me to follow, it's a proper musical thing. That's something that I must keep up to keep my mind active, Cause if you sort of stop and just withdraw into yourself, it's going to end in tears, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Not only does it keep your brain active, but the whole socialization thing, like loneliness, is more detrimental to your health than smoking. Staying connected to your community, getting out and about and socializing Music and dancing and playing an instrument it's like the double whammy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the Chicago show band. We do pageants, libraries, nursing homes. We played government house about a month ago to the governor's open day on the lawns there. The band does it usually every year. A fabulous day, you know. That's not too bad to put on your resume, is it?
Speaker 1:No, that's pretty good If someone wanted to hire. Do they go to?
Speaker 2:website chicagoshowbandcomau.
Speaker 1:So get onto the Googleometer and track them down.
Speaker 2:And there's a Facebook page to Chicago show band.
Speaker 1:When we finally work our way through this whole COVID situation. Keep your eyes open for gigs with the five-sided circle and the rustlers.
Speaker 2:Yes, Anyone else. I play a fair bit with Peter Turbrook because he's lost Davo.
Speaker 1:Brian.
Speaker 2:Davidge, I'm blessed that I can actually put my hand up and do gigs all over the place and the high tides don't forget but we haven't got any gigs at the moment. We did a Butte's 70th birthday party down at the General Havlock just recently and that was good to get back in the saddle.
Speaker 1:Hopefully it won't be long, we'll have everything back under control. We have a little bit of a whinge and a complain, but you know, compared to other countries, australia we're really blessed here.
Speaker 2:We're very, very lucky and fortunate and I think the government's doing a good job. They're looking after us quite well.
Speaker 1:Thank you, John. I look forward to seeing you at our next Support Act lunch. Yes for sure, wonderful cause looking after the musicians.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the music industry family, I guess.
Speaker 1:That's nice. Yeah, john, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:All right, cheryl Lee, my pleasure. Ok, thank you.
Speaker 1:You're with Cheryl Lee that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me on the Still Rocking it podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can support Aussie music and I'll see you down the front.