me continuously. “Do you guys wanna fight?”, “We’re gonna get you guys!”, “You guys are poofters!”, “Are you guys too scared to fight?” etc. Too scared? He was right.
Suddenly my fear was shattered by a blow to the side of my face. I felt a rush of adrenalin as I stood up and instinctively threw a punch, which happily landed right in the middle of his ugly face. He landed flat on his back. I don’t know who was more surprised, him or me!
I felt somebody grab my arm. It’s all right, we’re on your side!” he said. After moving back to safer ground near the very nervous band, I saw more fights break out. One guy was being mercilessly pounded up against a wall. Much to my horror, I recognised him through the blood on his face to be the one who said he was on my side. All too soon the dance was over. I was reminded by a few comforting souls that the bodgies were all waiting for us outside the front door. While Bert Gobbe was anxiously carting his drums to the front door, a voice called out, “Quick, follow me. There’s a side exit. You can come in my car!” It was the guy who ran the dance, Harold Haggerty. Ryanny and I quickly shuffled out the side door and into Mr. Haggerty’s little Morris Minor. As he put the key into the ignition I could hear a voice calling “There they are, there they are!” A pitiful sound came from the ignition: “un nu nu nu nu nunnah err!”
All at once we were surrounded by a gang of bloodthirsty rockers clawing at the windows. Then “hun nu nu nu nunnah ...BROOOOOM!” What a beautiful sound! The little Morris Minor sped out onto the road with fists pounding on the doors and bodies falling off the bonnet. We had escaped with our lives. The one consolation was we had found a piano player for our proposed rock’n’roll band. Not only that, but the guy I had smashed in the face no longer had protruding teeth!
GET ‘IM FOR THE BAND!
Jimmy Taylor and I did form a very short-lived band called “The Thunderbirds”. Our only claim to fame was that we went in a talent quest at the Kirribilli Hotel and won ten shillings each. We gave up the idea for that band when we realised the singer, Clive Glover, couldn’t really sing. In those days it was a bit hard to tell right away because the P.A.s were so bad.
So it was back to the search for band members. On Wednesday September 17, 1958, we decided to go to the Johnny O’Keefe dance at the Leichhardt Police Boys’ Club where we finally found a singer — Ray Hough. Ray got up and sang with the Dee Jays and all the girls went crazy. He looked a bit like Eddie Cochran. Jim and I were impressed. This was the right guy for our band. We signed him up for rehearsals in Jimmy’s lounge room. “Get ‘im for the band,” said Jim.
We now had a singer and a name for the band “RAY HOFF & THE OFF BEATS”, managed by our failed ex-singer Clive Glover. After overhearing some people in the train talking about a new band called “Ray Hoog & the Hoof Beats”, we decided to get Ray HOUGH to change the spelling of his name to HOFF, to go with OFF Beats. Getting an electric bass player was another story. They were about as scarce as rocking-horse shit. We found a guy called Laurie Skewes whose claim to fame was that he played for a couple of weeks with the Dee Jays while their bass player, Keith Williams, went on holidays. Laurie wasn’t too keen on practising with the band. He had a home-made bass that looked like a boat paddle. We didn’t get much joy out of Laurie but his paddle returns to the story later on.
At that time procuring any halfway decent rock player was difficult. Jim, Ray and Leon, the faithful trio, practised on. We seemed to go through an endless succession of guitarists and sax players who couldn’t pass the audition. Most of the sax players came from the Neville Thomas School of “rude” players and soon got the “hook” from Jim who sneered at them from the piano. Jim didn’t suffer fools gladly, especially if they couldn’t play rock’n’roll.
We were afraid that it would be all over by the time we got a permanent band together. I remember one day we were practising at Johnny Debien’s place. Johnny was a friend of mine from across the road at Abbotsford, whose father drove us around in a left-hand drive 1957 Oldsmobile Rocket convertible — Wowee!
We stopped practising Summertime Blues to watch a live band on Bandstand, “DIG RICHARDS & THE R’JAYS”. “See,” someone moaned, “even those guys have got their shit together!”
Jimmy finally left his band the Squares after being caught practising with the Off Beats and was replaced by Billy Hucker. Clive lined up a few more jobs for Ray Hoff & the Off Beats, the most memorable being the dance at the Mascot Marina Theatre the same week that Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens, Ray Hoff’s hero, were killed in a plane crash. We still had no sax player, so good old Vince, Ryanny’s elder brother played with us.
Meanwhile, I continued my drum lessons with my favourite drummer, Frank Marcy. I wanted to be able to “read fly shit off the wall” just like he could. I used to watch Frank playing in Bob Gibson’s huge Ford Show orchestra at radio 2GB and would marvel at the way he knew just what to play and when to play it. And he always played it beautifully.
Reading music didn’t help much at this stage of my musical career, so I took a few paying jobs with a rock’n’roll pub band called the Stoneagers with Teddy Lees on vocal and guitar and Roger Keyes on piano, of course (“Keys on piano, get it?”). They played in some pretty horrible places.
One night, June 17 to be exact, after playing at the Erskinville Hotel (I still wasn’t old enough to be allowed into a hotel!), Teddy had a girl in his 1939 Buick and I was sitting in Roger’s car with Roger. Suddenly, Roger disappeared and I was sitting in Roger’s car with Teddy. What was going on?
Roger reappeared after a short time and said to me, “She wants you now.” I didn’t want to appear too young and uncool so I went over to Teddy’s car and looked in the back seat.
“Come in,” beckoned Shirley. I looked around feeling rather embarrassed, then opened the door and got in. My embarrassment turned to trembling trepidation when I saw that Shirley had absolutely not a stitch on! Shirley threw her arms around me and grabbed me in a sensitive place. “You don’t feel too excited,” she whispered. I was too numb to speak. “We’ll soon fix that, darling,” she said in my ear and well ... she did!
Another embarrassing moment of a different kind occurred when the Stoneagers and Ray Hoff & the Off Beats were booked to do a spot at the Matraville RSL, on the same night. I was playing the drums in both bands! We played to a somewhat bewildered audience of elderly people. Here is a quaint extract from the local Matraville ‘Rag’ dated July 12, 1959:
“FOUR O’CLOCK ROCK” AT MATRAVILLE R.S.L. CLUB
Great how-do-you-do at the Club last Sunday afternoon when Rock n Roll music was the vogue. Two bands competed for honours and favours during the afternoon and fears were held for the safety of the roof, which very much looked like lifting.
First the Stoneagers took the stand and promptly “went to town” led by guitarist and vocalist, Ted Lees, a very self-assured and capable entertainer, who gave us the whole “book”, ending up with Why Am I A Teenager In Love?.
The next band, the “Off Beats”, led by vocalist, Ray Hoff, started off their repertoire with the classic, I Met A Big Fat Woman. The pianist in this group, as with the first, forsook the piano stool (strictly for squares) and stood on his own two feet, giving as many gyrations and facial expressions as the vocalist, who of course, these days is expected to go through these gymnastics. All these boys gave an excellent example of modern day rhythm and entertainment and, from the expressions and foot-tapping that went on, it could safely be said that the afternoon was very enjoyable.”
Because of the lack of suitable venues for rock’n’roll,
