THE PURPLE HEARTS

Interview by James Pierce and Robert Smith

This interview is a result of two conversations with Mick Hadley, vocalist with The Purple Hearts in Brisbane in February and July 1992.

MH: I went to school in the UK - Carnaby Grammar School - then I came to Australia in 1962.

RS: Was The Purple Hearts your first band?

MH: No, the first band in Australia was a band called The Impacts...then the band sort of changed to The Purple Hearts because we basically had the same line-up.

RS: What sort of stuff did you play?

MH: In The Impacts?

RS: Yeah!!

MH: Well we played covers but we did a bit of blues as well.

JP: Beatles and stuff like that?

MH: Yeah, a little bit of Beatles...it was sort of a pop covers band at the time you know.

RS: Where did you play in The Purple Hearts?

MH: There was a place called The Primitive which is in the Piccadilly Arcade. There's a little coffee bar there and that's where we started. We played r'n'b...all the English Blues stuff really...you know, Rolling Stone...

RS: Pretty Things?

MH: Pretty Things, Kinks, plus some more like Graham Bond Organisation, Spencer Davis Group, Animals.

RS: What made you want to form a band?

MH: (laughs) That's a hard question - something in the blood you know, just something that's there that you want to do...it's hard to say why.

JP: Soul man from the start!

MH: Yeah, I suppose so!

RS: What was the original line-up?

MH: There was only one change in the whole history of the band. What happened was that we had Bob Dames on bass; Freddy Pickard on rhythm guitar; the original drummer was a guy called Adrian Redmond; Lobby Loyde or Barry Lyde, which was his real name on lead guitar. The drummer Adrian had an accident when we were due to go to Sydney. So we went to Sydney and we had to get another drummer while we were there and that was Tony Cahill, so we kept Tony and poor old Red was left out because he broke his leg.

JP: Why did you go to Sydney?

MH: We had to go to Sydney to do the Tom Jones show, so we were only going down there for a couple of weeks. Then we went to Melbourne after that. We turned professional around that time.

RS: Why did you choose the name The Purple Hearts?

MH: I didn't really choose it...it was our bass player's idea and I think it came from 'purple hearts' which was obviously a stimulant of the time - it was like a soft drug you know?

RS: Yeah!

MH: It was a bit controversial and we were a fairly controversial kind of band of the day...

JP: A bit wild?

MH: Well we were banned from girls' schools and stuff like that. I'm trying to think of a modern band...like Public Enemy I suppose (laughter). We were like the Public Enemy of 1962 (laughs)...we were pretty radical but not as radical as that.

RS: Did you experiment with drugs much?

MH: With what??

JP: You don't have to answer that one if you don't want to.

MH: Me? No, I didn't...some of the other guys did, but I never felt like I really needed it, you know. It wasn't really my bag - it never had been.

RS: You've got a great soul voice. Who would you name as your major influences?

MH: Major influences? Well James Brown was probably my greatest influence, I suppose I picked up my style from a lot of different people you know...the Wilson Picketts and Otis Reddings...if I could only be as good as they were! It's hard to say where your major influence is. It's sort of like a blend of all different people really.

RS: Phil May?

MH: Phil May. Well, Phil was...well we did his material and you might copy a few reflections, but he wasn't black enough for me. I tried to copy the black people.

RS: What about the other guys in the band?

MH: Lobby Loyde - well he came from a Shadows type background, so he would have been influenced by Hank Marvin. People like Les Paul, Chet Atkins, but then as soon as he heard Clapton, he sort of picked up a lot off Clapton.

RS: Blues Breakers?

MH: Blues Breakers, yeah and of course The Yardbirds. There was sort of like a bible - the John Mayall album where they're all reading Libido on the cover.

RS & JP: Yeah.

MH: Well that was kind of a bible to all of the bands because everyone learnt every lick on that particularly album and Five Live Yardbirds too, so there was a lot of their influences there.

JP: How many 45s did The Purple Hearts release?

MH: We released five.

JP: All on Sunshine?

MH: Yeah, all on Sunshine: Long Legged Baby, Early in the Morning, You Can't Sit Down, Born in Chicago and Of Hopes and Dreams and Tombstones.

JP: How well did they chart?

MH: Early in the Morning got to Number 10. The rest were around about mid-teens, you know, like Number 15.

JP: That's all right!

MH: Not bad for an r'n'b band...we were pretty uncommercial as far as the band was concerned.

RS: Were The Purple Hearts very popular in Brisbane? Did they tour at all?

MH: Well we did a tour up north with The Easybeats. Up to Cairns and back again.

JP: Did you go over well?

MH: Oh yeah. It was a riot. It was all kids! That was like the first rock and roll tour they'd ever seen in North Queensland. There were funny people like Tony Worsley...when I say funny people, I mean a funny mixture of acts!!

JP: Were The Easybeats good blokes?

MH: Yeah, good...fantastic.

JP: Party Guys?

MH: Oh yeah, yeah...I've never laughed so much in my life, we just played all these outrageous tricks you know like we'd muck up their act and they'd muck up ours!!

JP: What exactly did you do?

MH: It was mostly school halls and there'd be all these theatrical props sort of hanging around, so they'd all get dressed up in this wild gear and stand behind us and make faces and stuff and throw things at us!!

JP: Silly stuff like that?

MH: Oh yeah!! They'd put telephones out on stage and make them ring between the numbers - just lunacy!

JP: Lots of fun?

MH: Yeah!!!!

JP: You guys were pretty big - did you ever get recognised in the street or anything like that? Mobbed by girls?

MH: Oh yeah, because we were always doing television and that sort of stuff. The Go Show and Kommotion which was on five nights a week - we'd be on at least once a week or a fortnight. I suppose we were like the rebels - the equivalent to Australia's Rolling Stones. The press used to really put us down, because we didn't really compromise.

JP: What other shows did you go on?

MH: It's All Happening was live-to-air, that was a big production, that one. Dancing girls...!!

JP: Go-go girls?

MH: Go-go girls! It was electric; it was a great feeling. It was a national program, I don't know what time of night it was, but it was big. We had a fair bit of magazine coverage too.

JP: Were you in Everybody's?

MH: Everybody's, yeah, Go-Set, etc...

JP: What was that about The Purple Hearts getting banned from girls' schools?

MH: That was just a press beat up yeah.

JP: Have you got a clipping of that?

MH: I think I have yeah...it's from Go Set. Some girls sneaked out from school or something and came to see us rehearse. It's a good story.

JP: Yeah, sounds good anyway, what other bands were on Sunshine?

MH: Normie Rowe, Peter Doyle...no blues bands or anything like that!

RS: What other bands were around at this time and what other bands did you play with?

MH: The Five - they were a mod band, The Chelsea Set - they were a good band...kind of an English mod r'n'b band. They were a bit 'Who-ish' in the way they looked, but that was really before The Who came along.

We used to work with The Five at The Primitive. Bands used to play Friday nights and they might have played Wednesdays and we'd play Saturday morning and they'd play Saturday nights or something. We were pretty close in that sense. But when we went to Melbourne we lost track of each other. The Five were more of a poppy band.

JP: Did you guys have any problems with the locals - you know, with your long hair and stuff?

MH: Oh yeah, long hair was pretty radical in those days, I never really had long hair, but our bass player did and he was getting picked on all the time. It was a bit stressful sometimes.

RS: Was Brisbane a rough place back then?

MH: No, it wasn't really rough, I mean it was a pretty volatile period the. The '60s...I mean the Vietnam War was on and there was a lot of R&R people around...you know like American sailors and people our age group were being called up. It was a pretty emotional time. It was a whole new thing. The Beatles were like the whole show, then the r'n'b scene came along. The Sexual Revolution was starting as well, people were getting access to drugs, so it was a whole new ball game really. Although when you live through it you don't really notice it's happening, but when yo look back on it...yeah well there were some pretty wild times there.

JP: What about in Melbourne? Who did you hang out with? Who did you play with?

MH: Max Merritt...

JP: Missing Links?

MH: Yeah...well not really, it was more..The Twilights, we used to do a lot of work with The Twilights. There was this competition between us and them in the Disco Set that they had there - who was the best band kind of thing. Also The Running Jumping Standing Still and The Wild Cherries - the original Wild Cherries with Max McGee as lead singer. They were a really interesting band, they used to play a double bass.

JP: How long were you in Melbourne for?

MH: 1965 to 1967.

JP: Two years straight?

MH: Well we went on tour a couple of times, across to Adelaide, then we'd go to Sydney for a few weeks, then come up to Brisbane and go back again. We usually did a kind of an east coast thing.

JP: What bands did you tour with?

MH: The first tour we did was with The Easybeats.

JP: Is that the one where you played practical jokes on each other?

MH: Yeah!

JP: What pubs did you play at in Melbourne?

MH: The Thumpin' Tum, Sebastian's, The Red Door and there were a lot of suburban gigs as well. We'd sort of play near Port Phillip Bay too. But Sebastian's and The Red Door, they were the big ones.

JP: What songs did you do in your set?

MH: The big one was Early in the Morning. Here 'Tis was one too.

JP: Did you do any Pretty Things? Much English stuff?

MH: We did quite a lot of the English stuff, yeah, a lot of Graham Bond's stuff, Pretty Things. We did Hey Mama Keep Your Big Mouth Shut. In those days you'd do a 45 minute set and you'd pack up and go to another gig, so we'd start out with up tempo stuff, then we'd slow it down a bit and then we'd really let it rip towards the end!

RS: When and why did you break up?

MH: We broke up in about February 1967 ...we just sort of got to the end of our musical relationship and we just felt that we'd gone as far as we could go in that area. We just sort of ran out of gas I suppose. It's just one of those things.

RS: Where did everybody go? I know you went to The Coloured Balls.

MH: I went to England for a year, then I came back to The Coloured Balls. Bobby Dames stayed in Brisbane, Lobby joined The Wild Cherries, Tony Cahill joined The Easybeats at one stage...I'm not sure if it was right after the Hearts...and Fred Pickard came back to Brisbane.

JP: Did you do anything in England?

MH: Oh I did a bit of jamming but I just went back for a bit of holiday to see my folks.

RS: Who was in The Coloured Balls?

MH: Bob Dames, the bassist from The Purple Hearts; a very good guitarist from The Bowery Boys by the name of Robbie Van Delft; the drummer was a guy called Peter miles and then we had another singer by the name of Mick Shannon, and that was about it I think.

RS: Why did The Coloured Balls break up?

MH: Well The Coloured Balls broke up because a guy called Mick Rodgers, an Australian guitarist who played with Manfred Mann, came to Brisbane and pinched the drummer and the bassist. He took them down to Melbourne to form a band called Bulldog, so that was the end of The Coloured Balls.

RS: They played later in the 1970s under Lobby Loyde didn't they?

MH: Well Lobby sort of pinched the name and gave it to another band. It was completely different to us, but a lot of people confuse it and think it's the same band, but it wasn't.

RS: What have you been doing since?

MH: Well after The Coloured Balls came a band called Leroy and some of the guys from this band (The Shakers) are from that and then there were various bands. The original Shakers formed in the 1980s.

JP: With the guys from The Survivors?

(The Survivors were a primal '70s punk/r'n'b band who did Pretty Things, Kinks and Who stuff - better than The Saints!)

MH: The Survivors, that's right, Bruce Anthon and Jim Bugalugs. That folded and the The Last Shout was formed. The Last Shout folded and this is the latest one (Mick Hadley and The Shakers).

JP: Any chance of a Purple Hearts reunion?

MH: I don't think so, I think the logistics would be too difficult because everyone is so far away. I can't see it happening...it would be good if it would but it would need someone with a lot of money to do it, because Tony Cahill is in Los Angeles and...you know...like I'm a bit worried about reunions. I mean, I saw The Masters Apprentices when they got back together and...you know...bloody awful!!

JP: The Loved Ones reunion was OK!

MH: Yeah, The Loved Ones were good...yeah!

JP: What about the big reunion? Are you going to be in that?

MH: Well I'd like to do something with this band, The Shakers, maybe do some of the old numbers and that.

JP: Well you already know Long Legged Baby!

MH: Yeah and a few others...

THE SUNSHINE SINGLES

• Long Legged Baby/Here Tis (October 1965)
• Of Hopes and Dreams and Tombstones/I'm Gonna Try (February 1966)
• Early in the Morning/Just A Little Bit (August 1966)
• You Can't Sit Down/Tiger In Your Tank (January 1967)
• Chicago/Bring It On Home (April 1967)