Psychedelic rock in Australia and New Zealand

Psychedelic rock in Australia and New Zealand is the psychedelic rock music scene in Australia and New Zealand.

Overview

The Bee Gees, one of the most commercially successful survivors of the psychedelic era, performing on Dutch television in 1968

Although only a few singles gained recognition outside the region, the thriving Australian and New Zealand rock scenes that formed in wake of Beatlemania produced a wealth of inventive and original psychedelic pop and rock music. Much of this was strongly influenced by British psychedelia, since many bands included first-generation British (and European) immigrants, and bands such as The Twilights, whose members were British immigrants, were able to keep up to date on current musical developments, thanks to regular "care packages" of the latest singles and albums, tapes and cassettes of radio broadcasts, and even the latest Mod fashions, sent to them by family and friends back in the UK.^[1] After gaining local success, a number of these groups returned to the UK further their musical careers.^[2] The most internationally successful Australian pop-rock band of this period were The Easybeats, formed in Sydney in 1964 by a group of English, Scottish and Dutch immigrants, who scored a string of local hits in Australia and became hugely popular there before travelling to the UK. They recorded their international hit "Friday on My Mind" (1966) in London and remained there for their forays into psychedelic-tinged pop until they disbanded in 1970.^[3] A similar path was pursued by the Bee Gees, formed in Brisbane, but whose first album Bee Gees' 1st (1967), was recorded in London, and gave them three major hit singles and contained folk, rock and psychedelic elements, heavily influenced by the Beatles.^[4]

Two bands that formed in Adelaide in the mid-1960s also figured prominently in Australian psychedelic pop/rock. The Masters Apprentices started out as a gritty R&B band in the style of the early Rolling Stones and the Pretty Things, but they rapidly absorbed the changes in music spearheaded by The Beatles, and during 1967 they released several accomplished psychedelic singles - "Wars or Hands of Time" (the B-side of their 1966 debut single "Undecided") is generally regarded as the first Australian pop single to address the Vietnam War; their second single "Buried and Dead" (1967), showed the unmistakable influence of the nascent "Raga rock" genre, and their third single, the psych-pop classic "Living In A Child's Dream", became a major national hit and was voted "Single of the Year" by the readers of the Australian pop magazine Go-Set. The group also performed at one of the first psychedelic "happenings" in Australia, the "Living In A Child's Dream Ball", staged on 14 October 1967 at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, which featured a full psychedelic light-show, with liquid slide projections, smoke machines and mirror balls, with the band wheeled to the stage inside a specially-constructed giant die.^[5] All the groups' early singles tracks were penned by rhythm guitarist Mick Bower, who was sadly forced to quit the music scene for health reasons soon after "Living In A Child's Dream" was released, but after a period of upheaval, the band was able to continue with new members, scoring another Australian psych-pop hit in late 1967 with the classic Brian Cadd song "Elevator Driver".^[6] The Twilights, also formed in Adelaide and likewise became nationwide pop stars in the mid-1960s before making the trip to London. Here they recorded a series of minor hits, and absorbing the psychedelic scene, before returning home in mid-1967, where they performed the entire Sgt Pepper's album live on stage some weeks before its official release in Australia. This was followed by the release of their psychedelic 1968 concept album Once upon a Twilight.^[7]

Although The Easybeats were the only Australian band working in the psychedelic style to score a major international hit, many other Australian bands scored local or national hits with singles that were strongly influenced by psychedelic trends. This included the cult Brisbane-based group The Wild Cherries, led by guitarist Lobby Loyde, whose 1967 single "Krome Plated Yabby"/That's Life" combined influences from R&B, soul and psychedelia, and the single's driving B-side, "That's Life" is believed to be the first Australian pop single to employ phasing in its production.^[8] The most successful New Zealand band of the period, The La De Das, produced the psychedelic pop concept album The Happy Prince (1968), based on the Oscar Wilde children's classic, but failed to break through in Britain and the wider world.^[9]

Although British influences were predominant, a number of progressive Sydney-based groups such as Tamam Shud and Tully produced music that combined influences from Eastern mystical philosophy, avant-garde jazz and American psychedelic groups like The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. Both bands also regularly collaborated with the experimental Sydney film and light-show collective Ubu, and Tully were also notable for being the first Australian group to buy and use a Moog synthesiser, as well as performing as the house band in the original Australian stage production of Hair, which premiered in Sydney in 1969.^[10] Australian psychedelic music in the late 1960s peaked with the two singles by Melbourne singer Russell Morris. His 1969 solo debut "The Real Thing" (penned by mid-Sixties pop star Johnny Young) broke new ground in Australian popular music, both for its lavish production by Ian Meldrum and John L. Sayers - it was reputedly the most expensive Australian single ever produced up to that time - and for its running time of almost seven minutes, unprecedented for an Australian pop single. It became a national number one hit in Australia, where it charted for 23 weeks, and also went to number one on local charts in New York, Houston and Chicago. It was followed by "Part Three Into Paper Walls" (co-written by Young and Morris), which was deliberately crafted as a virtual "sequel" to "The Real Thing", featured similarly dazzling production, was just over seven minutes long, and gave Morris his second consecutive number one hit in Australia.^[11]

References