Novocastrian and former lead singer Gaye Sheather recently shared her memories of the era many of us recall as the ‘good old days of pub rock in Newcastle’. This work has been turned into a book entitled Rock This City: Live Music in Newcastle, 1970s-1980s.
We are thrilled to announce that Gaye has agreed to write four guest posts for Newcastle Live and share with us some of our town’s great rock history. This is the second of those posts, you can find the first one here.
Our Rock n’ Roll town – second installment, by Gaye Shearer
Two of my favourite stories in the book were told to me by local musicians Pam and Les Gully, both about bands who became household names performing at local Newcastle venues. The first is about Cold Chisel before they became famous and the second is about The Angels who were a bit too famous for the venue they were performing in!
In the first story, Les Gully recalled seeing Cold Chisel at the Mawson Hotel at Caves Beach (now the Caves Beachside Hotel) where they were regular visitors: with a PA that didn’t look big enough, and Jimmy Barnes screaming so loud that he could just get over the band and being able to stand from here to that table away watching it, and you’re going ‘Something’s happening here’. Then two big black cars pull up outside and swarthy guys in suits come in and look at them for awhile and push us all out of the way, and look at them for 15 minutes or so and then all file out again and the cars go away. And you think, ‘Yes, something’s happening here’.
Cold Chisel and INXS played often in Newcastle and were crowd favourites. Here are Jimmy Barnes from Cold Chisel and Michael Hutchence from INXS at a concert at the Motordrome.
And something was indeed happening. You would rarely get Sydney management reps to travel to the outer suburbs of Sydney to see bands, let alone drive to Newcastle for a look. Les reminds us that back then Cold Chisel weren’t the famous Australian band they became: they were simply playing as many gigs as they could, trying to build a reputation. Pam and Les Gully remembered that whenever Cold Chisel or The Angels played the Mawson there was always a party at Redhead or Caves Beach and the boys would join the party.
The other story is to do with The Angels performing at an inner-city nightclub, then located at 800–810 Hunter Street, Newcastle West. At what now is a pretty unassuming doorway, thirty to forty years ago that doorway represented the entranceway to one of Newcastle’s foremost music venues – the Ambassador nightclub – fondly and perhaps better remembered as simply ‘the Bass’. Inside those glass doors you paid your cover charge and headed up the stairs to the club on the first floor. The Bass played host to a range of local and national acts, that included INXS, Midnight Oil, Kevin Borich and a raft of others. Pam and Les Gully recalled the night when The Angels were playing, when they said: Everyone was pogo-ing then, straight up and down, you know, all that business, and the whole place was doing it . . . it was packed . . . if the licensing police in those days had been efficient, that concert wouldn’t have gone on. The next day, architects were brought in and they went ‘Holy hell, Werner [the licensee at the time], you are so lucky’ And [Werner] said, ‘From now on I want 600, no more’. And the architect turned around and said, ‘You’re only licensed for 350!’ They had like 900 people in there.
Next week – Local artists talk about their favourite local pub rock venues…
Purchase Rock this City
Rock This City is available at a range of book stores, newsagencies and for order through Hunter Press at hunterpress.com.au
