Les Gock: From 70s Glam Rock to Jingle King

From the electrifying energy of 70s rockers 'Hush' to the sonic branding of household-name jingles, Les Gock has left his mark on both rock and advertising. 

As the band's lead guitarist, songwriter, and co-producer, he helped define the glam rock era before transitioning to a career shaping the sounds we associate with major brands. 

Join us as we explore his journey from Countdown stardom to mastering the art of musical storytelling in the commercial world.

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Transcript

00:00
This episode of The Big Six-O brought to you by Louis Carr Real Estate, helping people in the Hills District find their dream home since 1992. Ready to buy, sell or rent? Check out louiscarr.com.au for all your property needs. If you're old enough to remember when phones had cords and the only thing that went viral was a cold, then you're in the right place. Welcome to The Big Six-O with Kayleigh Harris and Guy Rawlison.

00:28
Because who better to discuss life's second act than two people who still think mature is a type of cheese?

00:53
Hey and welcome to another episode of the Big Six O, the podcast that proves that life after 60 is anything but quiet.  I'm Guy Rollison and today we're turning up the volume partly because we love rock and roll  and partly because let's be honest our hearing isn't what it used to be. Speak for yourself.  Exactly.  But lucky for us today's guest is someone who knows not only about loud music but some pretty loud fashion choices back in the day as well.

01:22
But before we introduce him, let me welcome my co-host, the queen of conversation, the diva of discussion and the woman who's been cranking up the volume since our primary school days, Kayleigh Harris. Wow, what an intro. I look forward to your intros every week on the podcast. You always come up with these amazing bull crap things about me. I love it. But thank you. But look, if the songs, Boney Moroney, Glad All Over mean anything to you, so will our next guest.

01:52
hit songs, things like that. It didn't stop there. Les Gough became one of Australia's most successful composers and sound designers, creating music for major ad campaigns, working on the 2000 Sydney Olympics and collecting a whole stack of industry awards along the way. Les Gough, welcome the big success. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. Well, Guy and Kayleigh.

02:20
Les, take us back to, we've spoken, Guy and I are passionate sort of 70s and 80s music fans. Take us back to music in Australia in the early 70s. Now Hush formed around 71, 72. How did you, and was it Keith Lamb who was the lead singer at the time? And he'd come out from the UK and then that's when you sort of heard about them. How did that gel, how did that synchronicity happen with the band and you? Yeah.

02:50
Back in the time before there were dinosaurs,  there was  a  battle of the bands and was called the Hoedlies Battle of the Bands. And Hoedlies, the chocolate company has gone to heaven, I think,  as to most of the people who were around at the time.  But there was a Hoedlies Battle of the Bands. And I was in a  band with a few mates that came out of school  and we didn't really play anywhere.

03:20
The HODLest Battle of the Bands was a chance where you sign up and then you just sort of, you just go and play in some local hall or something  and there'd be a couple of judges and then they decide who wins that heat and all that sort of stuff. So we went to one of those  and  there was a couple other bands  on and unfortunately the band that won on the day in our heat, thought,  we were so much better than those guys and they were called Sherbert.

03:50
They were crap and so girly and all that.  So the week  or a couple of weeks before, we went and saw one of the other heats and we saw another band  that we checked out the winner of that particular heat and it was a band called Hush and we thought they're crap.  I mean, God, why would they win?  Anyway, the reason why is because they were also very

04:20
soft kind of pop and very pretty songs and all that kind of stuff. that was because Keith Lamb and his mate Robin had come out from the UK and they wanted to start a band. They just formed this band called Hush and their first iteration was this kind of poppy, nice, know, sort of rubbish music.

04:49
And  anyway, the guitar player, Robin, was leaving the band. had girlfriend troubles.  And so they  decided to go to some of the other heats and see maybe they someone they could steal. Rick and Smiley came to the heat that I was in.  And Smiley came up with the idea. And he said to Rick, think we we should get that guy. We should talk to that guy.  And Rick, who, as you know, is Chinese.

05:19
said hang on but he's Chinese and Smiley's going yeah he's going well we can't have two anyway poor old Rick he got the Smiley came over and talked to me anyway and he said look we're in this band called Hush we won you he'd a couple of weeks ago I said yeah yeah I know I saw it I thought oh god you know and these guys said well

05:47
you know, would you be interested in joining us?  I thought, I don't think so, buddy.  And  he said, how many gigs do you do? I said,  maybe one or two a year.  And he said, well, we do about three a week.  he said, I think you should talk to us. Anyway, that's how it started. Can I wind back a little bit? Let's talk about your growing up,  where you were born, childhood, all that sort of thing.

06:16
That's an extremely long story. It depends on how long you've got. Maybe the abbreviated version. I don't think there is one. The abbreviated version was that I was born in Sydney and then I grew up above a fruit shop in southwestern Sydney, very kind of very lower middle class area. I went to school there and those days it was a

06:46
And still is a selective high school that I went to, but back in those days, it like, you know, a handful. And I was meant to go to uni and do something important. And I think I ended up doing law, but I lasted for about five minutes because I thought, oh, this is really boring. And luckily this, the episode with Hush came along and

07:12
And in the meantime, I thought, well, I need to get some work. I joined an advertising agency, George Patterson's, as a dispatch boy, which means you deliver letters. They give you a letter and you have to deliver across town. So they give you 20 cents to catch the bus to go across town. And if you're fast enough, you can run the whole way and keep the 20 cents. And that's what I did.

07:39
That was the biggest agency in the country at the time. miles. By miles. miles. my goodness. And you know, they weren't going to hire me, even though it was just a dispatch boy job, because they said when they saw that, you know, I was doing a law degree at Sydney Union, they said, aren't you a bit overqualified for this job? I said, no, no, I'll be great. Let's talk about Hush in the 70s. think they were Australia's first glam rock band.

08:08
When you look at the clothes, I love the clothes, so 70s and the stage presence, not only from Keith, but particularly from you.  You loved, you appeared to love being on stage and  relishing and all that. Did you love the clothes? Did you enjoy, know, Hush at that time? Everything about it, everything about  Hush, despite it, except for its name, was loud.  And  what happened was that  going back to the Holy Battle of Bance,

08:38
I can't play guitar any other way than just being outrageous. I don't know any other way of playing it.  And so, you know, was, don't know what I was doing at the level. I was standing on my head. was, you know, on my knees. We're doing whatever, you know, I was just being outrageous.  And,  but that's just the way I am. and  with the costumes, we were the first glam rock band.  So what that meant was that no one

09:07
knew what that meant in terms of what does that mean? What does that mean? are the clothes mean? How do you have? Where do you go to get clothes like that? Because everyone was just wearing jeans and t-shirts and being really cool and all that kind of stuff. So luckily, Peter Ricks, our manager, came up with this what I think is a brilliant idea. Still is. He went to the opera company and he said, you guys make clothes suitable for stage work.

09:38
and  you can make as outrageous a  clothes as  anyone. So  if you imagine a rock band and you were going to make the most outrageous clothes you could think of for these guys, what would you come up with? And so they just came and they just did it for nothing because they just thought it was what a fabulous thing to do. So I ended up with  top to toe gold lame.  There was

10:06
absolutely skin tight, leaving  nothing to the imagination.  And it was stretch Lame.  And the sleeves  went to the ground.  And I had gold boots  to go with it.  So the first gig that we got to do with these clothes,  no one had seen this, was we were going to play at Moor Park in Sydney in front of

10:36
10,000 people. It was a 2SM kind of concert and headlining was Gary Glitter.  And so  we  had to get changed somewhere. They didn't have dressing rooms and certainly not for the band,  you know, the support band. And so we had to go to climb into the back of a dirty old truck where all the gear was to get changed.  And they said, you go in there, you get changed and come out. We'll all be secret and everything. And they closed the

11:06
you know, the door for privacy.  But of course, those trucks don't have lights.  So we're trying to get change into these stretch Lame, whatever it is, you know, that we've never worn before in the dark, you know, well, that's what I was, you know. But anyway, we came out  on stage  and  the glitter band was standing on the side of the stage looking at us.  And I mean, the audience  and the glitter band had their jaws on the ground going.

11:35
Who the hell are these guys? Anyway, that's how we got launched. Because nothing says glam rock like gold, llama and probably a little bit of satin here and there, right? Yes, we had satin. We did have lots of that. I feathers in costumes afterwards. had I had I wore it. I would wear anything. You you give me something to wear, I'll wear it. So and then when the band finished, I thought, what am going to do with all these clothes? I mean,

12:05
you what do you, God, I'm not gonna walk down the street in it. So I chucked them in the skip. surely, surely that's just fun on a Saturday night, though, isn't it? Well, it could have been. I didn't think of it those terms. And so every year, virtually every year, I get called up by the Powerhouse Museum saying, oh, excuse me, Mr. Goch, would you mind if we borrowed some of the costumes you had back in the day? I go, yeah, well, if you can go back to 1977 and go through some of the skips.

12:34
Back then you might be able to find what's left of it. A fellow we've spoken to before and a friend of Kayleigh and myself, Marty Roan. I remember him introducing an episode of Countdown when you guys were on and he mentioned in the post performance, which was the old Dave Clark five sort of rendition of Gladdle Over, that a lot of people confuse you as being related.

13:01
which I don't think you could probably say these days on national TV. No, no, there's a lot of things you can't say, but you should be able But Marty was, yes, he was a groundbreaker because he was, you know, the first sort of Asian and like me, you know, half Asian and he made it before we, you know, kind of around the same time, but, you know, different kind of music. And that's great. You know, it's terrific. you know, very rare occasions where we

13:30
run into each other, you know, it's great. It's, um, I remember Kate Cibrano came up to me, you know, a years ago and just recently on Countdown 50 years kind of reunion. And she said, look, she and her brother used to sit at home and wait for us to come on Countdown and they'd see us and we, cause we're the only, we were the only Asian people in a rock band and

13:59
She said, she remembers saying to her brother, Phil, you know what? I reckon we could do this. We can get up there and do this. And it gave her inspiration to start a career. What were those countdown years like? I touring, I assume there were tours.  What was it like then? Was it just frenetic or was it something you enjoyed or were they just disasters or really fun moments as well? Well, there's a number of issues there. Like firstly, countdown went to every home.

14:27
in every country town, every city, everywhere around the country, because it's on the ABC.  Very few other TV shows actually did that. And that meant that that opened up touring for all of us, you know, and particularly early on, it was just really Sherbert and ourselves  going out on the road. You know, we were the kind of pioneers of touring around the country. And with the help of Countdown, of course, we would roll into

14:57
a fairly distant country area,  anywhere in the country, and they knew us, you know, and they knew the music and all that. And that was really, yeah, I mean, talk about right time, right place, you know,  as a band, we were  certainly in the right time for Australian music.  And we pioneered a lot of that because of Countdown. So it was frenetic and we played, what, 200 odd shows a year.

15:26
and they're and  you know all the halls have been packed because people hadn't were starved of seeing live bands you know particularly rock bands  for years and years and years and  you know the fact that we could go out to them was  was fantastic. Les you wrote a lot of the songs for the band tell us  and one of my favorite all-time ever songs tell us about your first song that you wrote for the band.  Well it was the first song I ever wrote. There you go  actually the

15:56
Before you do that, let's hear a bit of it. Hang on a second.

16:27
How good is that? Oh my gosh. I remember a young Kayleigh listening to that on the radio. Kayleigh, I wouldn't have thought you would have been born. Well, I was almost. You would have had the poster on the wall as well, wouldn't you? You were still an embryo, surely. No, I do remember it very well. I'm not that much younger than you. Yeah, okay. So the story with that was that we were doing covers, you know, and then as

16:57
interest in the band grew and it grew very, very quickly. Someone said, look, what you've got to do is have original music. You've got to have your own music. So  Peter Ricks, our manager said, OK, all right. So he started to divide up jobs for each of us.  So, OK,  Keith, you're pretty good with mechanical things. You look after the truck.  Smiley, you used to make policeman's uniforms. Maybe you can.

17:25
be part of the tailoring, know, like just to make sure all the clothes are done properly. Rick, you're an art director, you used to do window dressing.  Maybe you can help with the design. Les, you're useless.  Maybe you can write the songs or something, you know.  So, so I got  I thought, well, I got the best job. I didn't didn't want to work on the truck.  So we had to write a song. And so I just sort of said,  OK, I haven't written song before.  And I came up with that.

17:54
to get the feeling riff and they said, oh, that's great. And then we just jammed on that. And then, then next minute somebody said, let's record it. And we got thrown into a little studio with an engineer and you know, who really wasn't that interested. Oh yeah, another band coming in. Oh God, I have to suffer this. But yeah, everyone got into it and thought, gee, this is pretty good. And lo and behold, it was top 10. Before I move across to life after Hush,

18:23
songs like Bony Moroney and Glad All Over.  Did I read correctly that there were about a dozen gold albums  out of those? What was the creative processes as well behind those tracks? And you know, was a rapid success really, wasn't it? Yes, it was very rapid and it's sort of out of the blue.  you know,  so the first  after the success of Get the Feeling,  we demanded that we had to get an album.

18:53
The record company said, no, no, you have to have two or three hits  before you can have an album. We said, no, no, we're ready. We want to be, you know, the audience is going nuts. So anyway, they said, okay, fine. They shoved us into a studio and said, you've got three hours to record an album. And we said, okay. So what we decided to do was record  our live show. And we had,  you know, we got our fan club to come into the studio, sit down and, anyway, recorded the live show.

19:23
And because the record company thought three hours is GEO time, no worries, you know, it's not costing us much and it will keep them out of our hair. It went gold. And then so that we went to the next album. But you see, after that,  everyone got all serious about it because they thought, oh, maybe these guys are pretty good.  And and I was only really just learning to songwrite. And so I was just writing all sorts of stuff. I was just all over the place in the songwriting.

19:52
And so the early albums that you'll hear are less rock and roll and really me experimenting with writing songs.  And, you know, I mean, I think some of them were okay.  Do you think?  But it wasn't, it wasn't the kind of rock and roll that  I actually wanted to play. It was just me kind of going, oh yeah, look at this piano thing. I can do,  how about that song? And they go, yeah, that's great. You know, let's record that. Anyway.

20:20
We got, and each of those albums went double gold, triple gold, that kind of thing for whatever reason. And then later on we went back to the kind of rock thing. So yeah, it was, but I was, I was just kind of learning on the job. Was Boney Moroney based on a real girl? I've always wanted to ask that. Good question. You'd have to ask, what's his name? Williams, who wrote it? Larry Williams, Larry Williams. It's a 1950 song.

20:50
The history of the song was a hit  in the  50s. Robbie Porter, who was our producer, who used to be called Robbie G,  remembered the song fondly because  that was his era.  And  the first band that he got to  record it was Daddy Cool. I remember Ross Wilson sort of thinking, why are we recording this? And Robbie's going, oh, now there'll be a hit. They recorded it. It wasn't a hit,  but they had plenty of other hits.

21:19
And so then when he got his hands on us, he said, okay, this song, you record this, you just do it your own way, do your own version of it, I don't care. Just do whatever you think.  And it will be a number one record. we're going, I thought, I don't think so. I mean, it's, you know, it's a song about, I don't know, know, skinny girls.  Anyway.

21:45
He was the head of the record company. So I thought, oh, well, I'll give it a crack. I'll just do my, you know, a hush version of it. Nothing like the original, nothing, not even close. And I'll put all sorts of weird stuff in it. And anyway, I did it when we were rehearsing it. He heard it. said, that is a number one record. And we're going, what? He's lost the plot. Anyway, we go and record it. And for the first six months, nothing.

22:14
nothing happened.  We thought, oh, there you go, that's a wasted thing. And then we played it, then we got on countdown and we played it.  And that was 1975.  By the end of the year,  Boney Moroney was the number one record on countdown for the whole year,  the number one record of the year on countdown. That meant that we beat Bohemia Rhapsody. You know, we beat

22:44
all the Rod Stewart songs at the time.  We beat Sherbert, we beat Skyhooks, we were the number one record of the year with this silly song.  But there it was, Go Figure. And I've kind of gotten the right...

23:10
And certainly better than that crap band Sherbet we were talking about, right? That's right. Yeah, no, they were all girly and stuff.  That was a nice guy. Yes, that was a nice guy. My first crush was Alan Sandow, though, I've got to say. Oh, yeah. God, I loved him. All the girls wanted Garth, but I wanted Alan. Yeah, they were good guys. But we were in heavy competition. So, you know, we'd all be kind of looking at each other, know, snarling. if we're on the same gear, we'd sort of go. And our roadies would...

23:39
would push their roadies out the way and their roadies. Yeah.  Got to be careful you don't have a nasty fall at a certain age when that starts to happen. That's right. Can I fast forward now? And I'm not sure what the timelines are. You might be able to walk us through it.  Moving from,  hush and rock into that second stage of your career when you moved into, and I don't want to be flippant, jingles and  the science of sound, soundtracks, all that sort of thing. Can you walk me through the timelines between

24:08
gold lame  and actually having a profession where, you know, you could, you could actually say, well, this is what I do and not have a screaming hordes sort of mob you. Well, yeah, that was one of the great benefits of changing,  you know, direction.  Jingles, by the way,  are much maligned, but they,  I miss them.  We're not getting jingles anymore and are so dumb of the advertising industry not to have, but anyway.

24:37
What happened was that I was deciding to leave the band. Five years, it was enough and the touring thing was, it was getting pretty hard. So we were recording our last album, which was called Touche, and we were in Melbourne recording and I noticed one of the guys from a band called the Bootleg Band and he was just a keyboard player. We had, as you said, a dozen gold albums.

25:07
touring the country. were the  one of the top acts in the country, but like Bang, you know, had a couple of hits, but they were down  much further down the list. And he drove to the studio in a silver Alfa Romeo. And I thought, man, how does he do that? I mean, I'm where, you know, we're barely, you know, staying alive, barely putting food on the table. And we've had number one records and all sorts of stuff.  And somebody said, oh, no, he writes jingles. So I thought.

25:37
What are jingles?  And so that's how it started. So I literally transitioned from being in Hush to writing jingles almost straight away by just, I had no idea  anything about it, but I just thought,  you know, I'll just put myself out there and say, look, you know, I've written all these songs and albums and things. I'm kind of in touch with the younger generation. If you've got a  Coca-Cola or Levi's or something that you're trying to flow, maybe I, you know,

26:07
more in touch with the audience and a couple of people sort of took me up and thought okay well give them a go and then it sort of started from there  and I kind of took to it like you know the old duck to water thing. And you're responsible for some of the most famous jingles that we remember we put a little package together of some of your work.

26:49
you

27:00
1984 Toyota extra cab, the neighborhood will never be the same.  And Decore, we talked about this last week on our podcast was about jingles from from the 70s and 80s. And that was one of the ones that we played. So and that's one of yours.  Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's a reworking of  a thing, but it was brilliant. My part of it was to make the music  super catchy.

27:29
But  it was,  his history was that  Decoray was a  shampoo brand that was going out the back door. It was old, it was tired.  And this was its last chance to maybe get a few more sales before it just,  you know, they just close up the shop.  This is the whole beautiful thing about Jingles. putting Decoray name into this old song, which is called the Duke of Earl.  And  it's just,

27:58
super catchy and the idea of it was simply it was you know basically branded  the family shampoo  because the whole family can use it it's not it's not expensive it's fancy it's not that it's just a shampoo  and they just had pictures of people just singing in the the shower singing this jingle  and it's  super catchy with the duh duh duh duh de coré

28:26
You know, and it just caught on and literally after the ad appeared on the next Monday, it the shampoo shot to number one and stayed there for months until people realised that the shampoo was rubbish. then there's been changes in technology and media since probably back in those days. Do you think Jingle still has the same cultural impact today, but they're just not used? It does. People.

28:56
I don't know. You know, the advertising industry takes itself so seriously now. So seriously. It's not about being serious. It's not about creating an art form that, you know, you go to museums to look at. mean, half the ads, seriously, guys, I don't know about you, but I don't even, I don't understand them. They come on and they go, what was that for again? And, know, I mean, it's, it's pretty, you know, connecting with people through music and through jingles and all that.

29:25
is if you're sitting at home and an ad comes on, you know it's an ad. You're not trying to,  you know, it's not trying to be the next blockbuster or something.  And you want to be told some information in as entertaining a way as possible because the ad is interrupting the thing that you actually want to watch. So the ad better be good or better be funny or better be warm and inviting and whatever.

29:53
in order to take your attention. But if it's just time wasting, then you know. So you did a book called, So You Want To Be A Rockstar, but the original intent, I think, was completely different from  how it evolved because it came through the ABC or something like that, wasn't it? That's right. The thought for whatever reason, approached me and said that  would I be interested in  writing a book?

30:22
myself and I said sure but I don't think anyone would be interested in reading it. So  I said look  what's more interesting I think or may could be more interesting is that through you know working in the music industry for so long and all that kind of stuff I often get people you know kids or parents of kids and stuff saying look you know the music industry is really confusing.

30:49
How do we break into it?  How do I get little Sally who's I think is a pretty good singer? How does she get into the business? And  how does little Johnny who plays a bit of guitar,  what does he do next?  And I thought, yeah, I have a whole lot of views myself as to what should happen. But I thought rather than do that, rather than just listen to  me, why don't I go and interview all the people I know in the industry, heads of record companies, heads of publishing companies.

31:21
Kyle and Jackie Ode, you know, and people who are themselves or were at the time, know, musicians, how did they get started? How do you know that someone's going to be a star? How do you get it? What is it that makes someone a star? What is it? What are you looking for? What do you are you looking for in a song? If you're a publishing company, what are you looking for in an artist? Why are some people who may not necessarily be the best?

31:49
singers or the best musicians, why do they make it while other people who are fabulous musicians and fabulous whatever don't seem to ever make it? And that's really the question that's asked in the book and hopefully  answered by the people who at the time  gave their views but the views I think are as relevant today as they were back then  as to well what is it  if you want to be a rock star or

32:19
whatever, how do you go about it? Or what is it? What are the qualities you need? And secondly, if you don't end up like, thousands and thousands of people not going to end up being rock stars and all that. But there are so many other avenues that you can go down with this radio, whether it's publishing, whether it's management, whether it's that are all just as interesting. Production, all that kind of stuff that

32:46
that hopefully it opens up the doors and the thinking for kids and their parents and stuff and say, look, the music industry really is an industry. It's a business  and you can really make a really good career out of it. just on that note, and finally, what are your thoughts on the reality TV show genre of Australian Idol and America's Got Talent? Do you think they're a good or a bad thing for people who are trying to get it start?  Obviously, it's good for some. But remember, it's a TV show. The TV show is not about the music.

33:16
And it's not about finding stars. It's not about that. It's about drama. It's a  drama show. And what they want to have is the drama of people  crying and not making it or do they make it. And if they do make it, then you see they all fall at the end. It's,  you know, the show is built around not talent. It's built around drama  and  who's going to beat someone else and all that kind of stuff. So  you have to sort of put it into context.

33:46
Well, from rock stardom and gold lame, a little bit of satin thrown in to the way we experience music in everyday life. You've had a career like no other. Thanks for diving into at least part of your journey and spending some time with us on the Big 6O. Thank you. And I'm well past the 6O, so there is life. Thanks, Liz. Bye guys. The views and opinions expressed on the Big 6O are personal and reflect those of the hosts and guests.

34:15
They do not represent the views or positions of any affiliated organisations  or companies.  This podcast is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice. Please consult with a qualified professional for guidance on any personal matters.

34:33
Ah, and before we go, let's give credit where credit is due. Kaylee Harris and I came up with all the genius content for this week's episode.  Our producer,  Nick Abood,  well he keeps the lights on and makes sure we don't accidentally upload a cat video instead of a podcast. thanks for keeping us on track, Nick.  Nick?  Nick?