Thunderbirds Blast Back,
Sunday Herald Sun May 3rd 1998

Not many rock bands make the Rolling Stones look like youngsters, but Melbourne outfit Thunderbirds this year celebrate a staggering 40 years in the business.

Ironically, the Thunderbirds launch their first official CD on Wednesday night at the Rainbow Hotel, Fitzroy.

"We have put out a compilation of our singles and a live album recorded at Preston Town Hall, but not an album of material recorded specifically for the one project," the band's founder, drummer Harold Frith, said.

Recently the Thunderbirds were in the music news when their singles compilation album was voted in Rolling Stone's Top 100 Australian albums of all time.

"We were very surprised and honored to read that," Frith said.

"What is more pleasing, I suppose, was that we were the only Melbourne band from the early days of rock that was included."

For the record, the lineup of the Thunderbirds at their height, and on the new recording, was and is Frith, Henri Bource ran tenor sax, alto sax and flute, Laurie Bell on guitars, Murray Roberston on piano and Peter Robinson on bass.

Frith said he had been involved with traditional jazz and blues before drifting into rock 'n' roll.

"When I first started up the Thunderbirds in 1958, a lot of jazz musicians looked down their nose at us," he said.

"Back in the late '50s and early '60s rock 'n' roll, the music of long-haired rebellious youth, had yet to be accepted by most of the mainstream music industry.

"There was six o'clock closing at the pubs, so you couldn't play there. Teenagers just had the pictures to go to for entertainment.

"When the music began, all the dances were run in town halls and there was no drinking allowed and they were heavily policed.

"We used to work at the old Earl's Court on the Esplanade in St Kilda five times a week. We also played a lot at the old Stadium, which is now, of course, Festival Hall."

Frith said that, like many of his generation, he had been caught up in the initial wave of teenage hysteria that swept through when American rock 'n' roll music and movies made their way here in the late 1950s.

"It all started the night the local movie halls screened the film Blackboard Jungle and there were spontaneous outbreaks of dancing and kids ripping up the seats all over Melbourne," he said.

"Then Elvis came out on the radio and it was all on. Our early inspirations, though, were Fats Domino and Little Richard."

Frith said the Thunderbirds started playing rock by following in the footsteps of overseas instrumental acts such as Duane Eddy and the Shadows.

Soon they were the most in-demand act in the country and became the backing band to local artists such as Johnny O'Keefe, Johnny Chester, the Bee Gees, Lucky Starr, Frank Ifield, Merv Benton Normie Rowe, Bobby Bright, Laurie Allen, the Thin Men, Marcie Jones, Malcolm Arthur, Colin Cook, Betty McQuade and Judy Canon.

They also toured with international acts such as Roy Orbison, Dion, Fabian, Cliff Richard, the Shadows and others.

"Without a doubt, the show we backed up Roy Orbison was one of the highlights of my life," Frith said.

"He had just released the single Running Scared and was obviously such a huge talent, although he had yet to write some of his bigger hits.

"We backed Johnny O'Keefe a few times, and while he was a bit of a mess off stage and his voice wasn't that great, there is no denying he was a great showman.

"Johnny got to go to America and, unlike the rest of us in those early years, he learnt that rock 'n' roll was a business not a hobby."

Frith said many people did not realise that in those early days of rock 'n' roll the idea of a band playing and singing at the same time was nonexistent," he said.

"It wasn't until the Beatles came and did both jobs that it changed."

The members of the Thunderbirds laugh at how easy and accessible rock 'n' roll is for today's younger breed of musician.

"When I started playing, the only kind of bass guitar you could get here was an upright one," Thunderbirds bassist Peter Robinson said.

"I actually didn't get an electric bass until Laurie Bell, our guitarist, made me one."

Bell said he took to guitarmaking out of necessity.

"Only a handful of electric guitars existed in Melbourne at the time, and most of those were acoustic guitars with some kind of rudimentary home-made pick up attached," he said.

According to Thunderbirds piano and organ player Murray Robertson, the quality of sound systems available then was also rudimentary.

"There were two little speaker boxes and a little grey, lunch box type thing that was the mixing desk," he said.

Roberston said there was very little media support for rock 'n' roll in the early days, apart from legendary local DJ Stan Rofe at 3KZ.

"In order to get on television or gain any publicity from events that are automatically available to performers these days, it was necessary to sanitise our performances by disguising ourselves as something more acceptable," he said.

"In order, for example, to appear on Graeme Kennedy's national 'In Melbourne tonight', we had to come up with something a bit tamer and ended up doing a jazzy Harry Mancini song called Brothers Go To Mothers, which is not a rock song.

"We never played it again after doing the show."

Harold Frith said that to travel interstate with a band was like going to the other side of the planet.

"I can remember the first time we flew to Sydney , it was such a big thrill," he said.

"Later, we got off a plane there one day and Dawn Fraser happened to be at the airport and I heard her say `wow it's the Thunderbirds,' and I thought `wow, it's Dawn Fraser.'"

Frith said the behavior of crowds at rock gigs had also certainly changed.

"They definitely were not as frantic in our day," he said.

"Sure, everyone would have a good jive and end up exhausted, but there was no slam dancing or crowd surfing."

The members of the Thunderbirds said they had been involved in various bands since those early days of rock in Melbourne.

"No one ever stopped playing," Frith said. "The Thunderbirds as such called it a day in the mid '60s.

"It wasn't until we had a reunion gig at Moorabbin Town Hall in 1996, and drew 2000 people, that we played together again.

"We also decided it would be fun to record again, hence the new album."

The band members decided to record as they did in the '50s to recapture their original "feel", rather than try to make a hi-tech album using the latest electronic trickery," Frith said.

Included on the album is the band's biggest hit Wild Weekend.

"This is the tune that first brought recognition to the Thunderbirds and, because of its historical importance, we thought we should include a new version because we wanted to see if we still could cut it," Frith said.

The final track is Bell Boogie, an original recording from 1958.