Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to speak tonight to pay tribute to and recognise a truly iconic and widely admired and loved figure in the Australian music scene, Billy Thorpe, who died tragically and very unexpectedly just a couple of days ago. I saw, amongst the many descriptions and the talk of him on various websites around the place since that event, a description of him—I presume by a younger person—that was fairly dismissive of his influence. It made me think that perhaps the younger generation, which maybe just still includes me, might not fully appreciate quite how large and influential a figure Billy Thorpe was, and indeed continued to be right up until his death, in the Australian music scene. He was and will remain an icon. He was also a trailblazer.

Speaking as someone of a slightly later generation who has a great interest in music, particularly Australian music, it is fair to say that I was not fully aware of just how significant a role he played in the early years of Australian rock and live popular music. I believe it is important that some recognition of the enormous contribution that he made be recorded in the Senate. I think it is also important that in this, as in many areas, people be more aware of the efforts of those who went before and made such a difference in enabling others to later do such magnificent things.

While Billy Thorpe had enormous chart success and an enormous public following in his younger years, his whole career right through to his death is a reminder that it is not just by being top of the charts that you have influence in the field of music and amongst your peers. Sometimes that very thin veneer of fleeting adulation that constitutes chart success can end up meaning very little by way of influence or significance over time. Certainly that did not apply to Billy Thorpe. He was born in 1946, nearly 61 years ago. He moved to Brisbane, my home town, in the early 1950s. As he said on his website, whilst he took his first breath on 29 March 1946 in Manchester, England, life really began when he heard on the radio, when he was three or four years old, the song Under The Bridges Of Paris (Sous Les Ponts De Paris). As he said on his website:

Somehow that syrupy, sentimental French love song … got inside my 4 year old head and I was hooked. From that moment I couldn’t get enough of music. Any music.

It is hard to link that particular song to the image of Billy Thorpe as a long-haired rocker and perhaps the first person who really celebrated making people’s ears bleed because of the loudness of his live gigs, but it also gives an insight into why he was able to cover so many different genres of music so well over his whole career, including sometimes his own syrupy ballads such as Over the Rainbow, which were successful. He played his first gig at the age of 10 and within six months he was performing regularly on television and around Brisbane. He said on his website:

I was discovered in the classic Hollywood sense while playing guitar and singing in the store room behind one of my parents local stores on Fegan Drive in Moorooka which was then a sleepy little Brisbane suburb at the end of the line. The Beaudesert road tramline that is.

A woman came into the shop looking for directions and she just happened to be a booking agent and the wife of the host of a new television show on Brisbane’s Channel 9. Billy got an audition and off he went. Not much later he did his first gig, as a 10-year-old, in a church hall in Moorooka—which he described as being on the fringes of Brisbane. I suppose Moorooka was on the fringes in 1956, but these days it is almost inner suburbia. He spent six or seven years honing his craft in Brisbane before moving to Sydney, including headlining with his band the Planets at the legendary Cloudland venue, which, disgracefully, has since been demolished. He played with a whole range of visiting international acts. He supported people like Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. He attended Moorooka State School and Salisbury State High School during the day and ‘rock-and-roll high school’ at night.

It is incredible to think of a 12-year-old boy headlining at Cloudland or fronting a support band before a Jerry Lee Lewis or Little Richard performance. It was incredible then and it would be incredible now. He performed on popular TV shows like the Jimmy Hannan Show. He moved to Sydney in 1963 and hooked up with a surf band called the Aztecs. Within eight months, he and his band had the No. 1 record in the country and were performing to 60,000 people at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne. His version of the song Poison Ivy was another No. 1 hit. It knocked the Beatles off the top of the Australian charts when they were touring the country in March 1964. He appeared on Johnny O’Keefe’s legendary TV show, with the Bee Gees among others. Within a couple of years a new version of the Aztecs was born and a new song went to No. 1. In 1966, at the age of just 20, Billy had his own TV show. He had further hit singles throughout the period. He had an incredible record of 11 top-10 singles and five No. 1 singles in just over two years. He had a single in the top 10 on average every six weeks. It is unthinkable by today’s standards, and obviously it was not done by many others at that time, either.

As I said at the start, topping the charts is not the only measure of success, influence or talent. As was detailed in an article written by Alan Howe in a number of the News Ltd publications, Billy Thorpe’s zestful live performances reshaped the live music scene and indeed the licensing laws. He was a trailblazer for pub rock and the many great Australian bands that followed that path. He was a key figure behind another legendary event—the Sunbury musical festival on the Australia Day weekend of 1972—35 years ago. He headlined a program that was completely made up of Australian bands. Senator Watson, that is before even you were in the Senate. That is really going back a while! It is extraordinary to think of it now, 35 years later—a weekend-long outdoor rock festival entirely made up of Australian bands.

Billy Thorpe moved to the USA and also had success there, which we all know is not easy for Australian bands. He worked with many great musicians there, including Mick Fleetwood from Fleetwood Mac. He was also involved in other areas of music there. He wrote music for television themes. Indeed, I think I recall reading that he had written one of the football introductory themes not too long ago. He returned to Australia in the last decade and continued to be active. He was part of the very successful Ultimate Rock Symphony concerts, where he was involved with some legendary international performers—I know I am using the word ‘legendary’ a lot, but it is apt—and he was also involved in the Long Way to the Top concerts, another immensely successful celebration of an enormous number of highly talented Australian artists and musicians.

He loved the Australian music industry and he really wanted artists looked after. That is another reason why he was so respected, so admired and so influential. He loved not just his own music; he was enthusiastic about other people’s music and worked with many other people. He would try to help and support anybody involved in the Australian music scene. He had recently joined the board of Support Act Ltd, a body which provides relief and assistance to members of the Australian music industry who are in need or suffering hardship or distress. As I said, topping the charts can be great while it lasts, but things can sometimes get a bit tough for some down the track. He had held numerous benefits for Australian artists who had fallen on hard times, including recently Lobby Lloyd, and I understand that he was in the process of preparing another major benefit for Support Act Ltd at the time of his death.

Billy Thorpe was performing and recording right till the end. He leaves an enormous legacy, not just with his recordings but in so many other ways. He truly was a trailblazer, an icon and a legend—and he will remain so. I think it is appropriate that his contribution be fully recognised. I express my sympathies to his wife of many years, Lynne, and their daughters, Rusty and Lauren.