Me and Pop Music - a Short History

I have always loved music and have a very good ear, but I’ve never played an instrument. In the family home, the radio was tuned to a station that played the latest hits and from a very early age I would absorb the tunes I heard. Apparently, I would hum the theme from the film, The Third Man, in the shop I was in with my mother, to the amused amazement of the adults present.

However, my parents’ station of choice was not one that included the early hits of Elvis Presley. It was more Roy Orbison, Gene Pitney and a guy that became my choice for my first album (or LP, as we called them then), Gene McDaniels - who? Well he had four Top 10 hits in Australia between 1961 and 1962. One of them was co-written by a guy called Burt Bacharach and another by the Carole King/Jerry Goffin songwriting team.

However, before I discovered the concept of albums, of course I was buying singles (45s) when I saved up enough pocket money. I had always been particularly keen on instrumentals. My first ever vinyl purchase was Pipeline by The Chantays. It was a surf instrumental as surf music was the trend at the time. However, that was soon to change. In mid-1963, a band from Liverpool, England, Gerry and The Pacemakers, had a No. 1 in Australia with How Do You Do It? The band would not have had that success if the song hadn’t originally been rejected by another Liverpool band, The Beatles. I was in my teens when The Beatles hit the scene. It must have been around July 1963, when a schoolmate, John, another music nut, approached me one day at school, raving about a couple of the latest songs he’d heard:

John: ‘How Do You Do It?’ and ‘From Me to You’ – they’re great, they’re great!

Me: ‘Yeah, Gerry and The Pacemakers, and Del Shannon’.

John: ‘And The Beatles, and The Beatles’.

He was referring to the performers of the second song - the family radio was tuned to my parents’ station of choice which played the Del Shannon cover only. That may well have been the first time I heard the name, ‘The Beatles’. In Australia, The Beatles broke in late 1963 with I Saw Her Standing There’/’Love Me Do’ and ‘I want to Hold Your Hand’. Before long I had saved up for my first rock album, The Most of The Animals.

I became a fan of The Kinks, The Byrds, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane - the latter bands demonstrating my appreciation of the more progressive styles of rock that had evolved. When I moved out of home to a share house in Sydney’s eastern suburbs one of my flatmates was a rock freak like me but more advanced in his music tastes and collection. He had records of a band called Quicksilver Messenger Service and several reel-to-reel tapes which included albums by Spirit - these were new names to me.

I became a huge fan of Steely Dan and it was after hearing the electric sitar solo on ‘Do It Again’ that I realised I liked jazz. At home my CD collection is quite eclectic and I still retain some old vinyl albums - including Beatles and other classics. I even have some old 45s!