Gary Young, drummer with The Rondells and later with Daddy Cool was Interviewed by Daniel Ring and Matthew Wicks.

Who were some of the bands you played with throughout the sixties?

Well I was still at school in the early sixties. I think I was playing in school bands but I can't exactly remember what they were called because we never got anywhere.

First thing I was involved with when I left school was a day gig working for Allan's, but while I was working there I had this little singing duo with a guy called Izzy Di. He has this incredible knack of being able to score gigs for big money. I don't know how he did it but we used to score all these private gigs. We were called Double Trouble and all we were doing was whatever British stuff was around. We were doing early Stones and we would just use what ever band was at the gig and for most of the numbers we'd try to do like a 12 bar format so we didn't have to do any rehearsals! I worked with him for maybe 6 months.

Then I got this call saying that Bobby & Laurie who had already had a number one record with I Belong With You were looking to form a new band because their group The Rondells didn't want to go professional as they had these day gigs. They decided to quit because Bobby & Laurie wanted to travel around the country and do all these gigs and they couldn't do it. So Bobby & Laurie were forming a new group and they asked if I was interested in that and I said alright, so I got in there.

The thing about it that I remember was my wage at Allan's was twelve pounds nine and six and my wage to go join Bobby & Laurie. My salary was 25 pounds a week. It didn't matter whether I worked or whether I didn't work, I still got the same retainer of 25 pounds, and as I was playing with that group around the time that decimal currency came in it instantly went to 50 bucks! Guys who were doing regular 9 to 5 jobs were probably pulling 25 dollars a week when we were pulling 50 dollars.

So really The Rondells was probably the first influential sixties group that I played with. I started

playing with them in 1965 and I think stuck around until about the end of 1967 when Bobby and Laurie split up and went their own ways. We did one album and cut a few singles, one of which was Hitch Hiker, which was a national number one. All I had to do was play on the floortom and at the time I remember having my trendy black cardigan with silver buttons that certain Mods wore. I remember putting this cardigan over the floortom and playing a basic pattern. I had an imitation castanet on the vocal track.

After Bobby & Laurie I played with the Laurie Allen Revue and from there went to The Changing Times and the Ram Jam Big Band. The Changing Times were a sort of Mod band. At the end of this time things actually were changing - - music was changing, people were starting to smoke a bit of pot — the whole thing was sort of changing. As we were drawing towards the end of the sixties, thing started to get a bit more radical and I remember what happened at the end of The Changing Times - one of the guys got drafted. In fact it was the guitar player who was in The Rondells with me, a guy called Roger Treble.

Also what happened at the end of the '60s was that there was some kind of a ban on radio stations. They slapped a ban on playing British and Australian music. As a result of that, in Melbourne gigs started to close up, bands started breaking up, nobody could get any work. It went on for about 6 months or so. All of the big bands from Australia felt the pinch of it. Guys like Masters Apprentices and The Twilights went to England to try something different. There was just no work for the ones that were hanging around. I'd been playing professionally for 5— almost 6 years — by then and I had to resort to getting a day job when I met Ross Wilson. This was around 1969 and then we moved into the '70s and that's when Daddy Cool got happening.

Which was the most successful band of all those?

Well it would have to be The Rondells. The Rondells as themselves probably never would have done much. We didn't make any records. We used to do gigs on our own — apart from backing Bobby & Laurie on their gigs, we would always come out and play maybe a twenty minute or half hour spot before Bobby & Laurie would come on. In fact it was a whole travelling show! If it wasn't for Bobby & Laurie, The Rondells would have just been another four piece band slugging it around and even though it was a good group, we were basically a backing band. But in those days it was only the guys who were making money who could afford their own backing band. Most of the solo artists who were singing, that you would see on The GO Show and stuff like that, didn't have their own bands so when they'd go out on tour they'd be part of a package tour, and usually the group that belonged to the main act would back every artist on the show. So guys like me would have to learn about four other different bands' tunes plus the main act's.

What are Bobby & Laurie doing these days?

Bob still works as a singer...they both do. Laurie lives in Sydney where he's got a country and western band.

In some of the photos of The Rondells you were pictured with The Easybeats. Who were some of the other acts that you played on the same bill with?

Well you name it and we performed with them on the same bill. There would be a lot of what they called big shows that would roll out with...well like The Easybeats. They put them all on the one show. In fact there was one, I think The Easybeats were headlining it, Normie Rowe and the Playboys were on it, Bobby & Laurie were on it, M.P.D. Limited were on it. There were a couple of other heavy acts that were on TV regularly — on The GO Show which is where they would get their only exposure. Then the rest of the bill would be literally sprinkled with some up and comings like Lyn Randell and people like that who hadn't quite made it yet, so you would get all those acts who would come on the one package show and they'd tour for maybe six weeks and depending where you went you would hook up with all of the local acts like The Purple Hearts in Brisbane.

Did you perform with The Missing Links?

Well I didn't actually play on a bill with them but I saw them perform. They were frantic, they were really frantic.

Andy James was a wild guy wasn't he?

One night I saw him put his head through a snare

drum. I also saw his other band The Running

Jumping Standing Still. They were frantic too!

How about The Creatures. Did you ever catch them?

Yeah, I saw them once and they were pretty frantic too. The thing I remember about The Creatures is their bass player. He had an electric Fender bass which had a little hook with an eye and he used to hang his bass off his belt. He had this special belt made so that instead of having a strap, he would hook his bass to his belt and every time he would let go it would tip and so would the head of the bass. They were wild man, wild. I saw them with their coloured hair. I saw them in Sydney too. They used to drive around in this huge Ford Customline or something. They were kinda desperate guys though - they had a great band but they were more into ... I didn't really know these guys ... but their reputation was that they were more into a life of crime and even though they were a great band, they did it for kicks. They were pretty notorious. Some of those bands like The Creatures and the other Sydney bands like The Throb, who looked sort of like The Creatures, were kinda pretty heavy guys. The Throb were pretty outrageous looking but they were pretty dedicated musicians.

Who were your favourite bands in the Sixties?

The Loved Ones was always one of my favourites. Something about them. I mean, I guess it was Gerry Humphries — the main man. He was always a bit bizarre and because I was a bit sort of straight myself — I mean I was a rager — but I was pretty conservative in my musical tastes. I used to like The Twilights, I liked that South Australian thing...there was the Y?4, The Masters Apprentices. I think the reason I liked them is that they were very British like the Melbourne bands. Then you had the Sydney bands like The Missing Links and bands like that who were probably into The Pretty Things and trying to look as bizarre and ugly as they could.

Groups that were from South Australia were more like The Kinks and the reason is that 20 miles out of Adelaide was a city called Elizabeth, which was a satellite city. It was a dropping off point for all English migrants and as a result of that these guys had the latest English gear and the latest records. You think of guys wearing like Union Jack suits and stuff like that now and you think 'oh yeah that was '60s' because a lot of the Adelaide musicians had seen The Small Faces and they knew how to play that sort of stuff. I was more impressed with the stuff that came out of there. I mean I liked the rough sound of the Sydney and Melbourne bands, but I didn't go for all the stuff that surrounded the bands. They weren't really dedicated guys...not dedicated to music anyway. They were more dedicated to having fun and having a rage, and being in a band provided that for them, whereas the South Australian bands were really dedicated players.

Did you make many TV appearances? What were the different shows you appeared on?

There were a few — the most important one was The GO Show. They also put out the GO record label and all that was tied in, so the show was like a promotion for the record label. Also Kommotion was on every night of the week for half an hour and they would have one act on and the rest of the time there would be guys miming current records. They were called the Kommotion Kids. Everything was mimed in those days. I went on The GO Show with Bobby & Laurie a few times.

Did you ever get hassled about your long hair?

All the time, especially when we went out to the country areas. I can remember going to Morwell and pulling up outside this pub on a Saturday afternoon. I remember getting out of the car and seeing all of these yahoos drinking at the bar. It was like Marilyn Monroe had stepped naked out of a car - they were all running to have a look and yelling "what are ya?" and whistling at us guys standing there with our hair. I also remember my father when I first started growing my hair. He said to me "Look Gary, your mother and I, we don't care how long you wear your hair...I mean you can wear your hair down to your asshole as far as I'm concerned, but you don't live here with it like that!"

What was the general feeling around the music scene and around the clubs?

Well it was kind of a fun time. People were just into having a good time, like the feeling amongst all the artists and the bands was good. In general it was a good vibe. When bands weren't playing you'd go out to one of the clubs like Bertie's or Sebastian's and you would always have other musicians just hangin' out. Life in general I think was a lot easier than the way we have it today and it was reflected in young people's views towards going out and having a good time. In 1965, an article about someone being knifed or something would have been on the front page and it would have read "Kid Knifed On The Way Home From the Biting Eye". Today if something like that happened it would be on the tenth page! Society has just changed - like this society in which we live is probably the most decadent.