Lobby Loyde: The G.O.D. father of Australian rock

Overture

The cult of Lobby Loyde

The media’s use of the term ‘godfather of Australian rock’ to describe Loyde is likely to have been sourced from Billy Thorpe, who stated that ‘Lobby is the godfather of heavy rock in this country’ (in Roberts 2002: 3; Cashmere 2007; Donovan and Carman 2007; Eliezer 2007). Thorpe’s testimonial about Loyde is pertinent because it is Thorpe, not Loyde, who has been credited as the architect of Oz Rock by the received narrative of Australian popular music. Thorpe’s account, especially in light of his own status, indicates the importance of the role Loyde has played in the history of Australian rock. Another major Oz Rock figure, Rose Tattoo frontman Angry Anderson, corroborates, contending that:

More than anyone else, Lobby helped create the Australian guitar sound. Long before Angus [Young of AC/DC] or Billy Thorpe or the Angels or Rose Tattoo, Lobby inspired Australian bands to step forward and play as loud and aggressively as they could. People are still trying to copy it today. (in Donovan 2006b)

Anderson’s statement was made in the lead-up to Loyde’s induction into ARIA’s Hall of Fame in 2006. Anderson would underline Loyde’s importance as an innovator in a later interview, stating that:

The Australian guitar sound evolved through Lobby Loyde … I can’t think of one other person before him [who did what he did], and neither can anyone else … Our collective recollection … is the same – it was Lobby. He just started to play [that way]. (Oldham 2007)

This claim for Loyde as the forerunner of Oz Rock is given further credibility by Australian rock historian Glenn A. Baker (1990: 99):

For all his exalted status as the ultimate Aussie larrikin, chameleon Billy Thorpe … was, in many ways, a pretender to a throne which should rightly have been occupied by the man who taught him to play rock guitar and whip up a metallic rock‘n’roll storm — Lobby Loyde.

Baker’s evaluation is supported by music historian Ian McFarlane, who states that Loyde had a transformative effect on Thorpe when they joined forces in December 1968:

Under Loyde’s direction, The Aztecs spearheaded the burgeoning Melbourne underground blues and heavy rock movement. … With Thorpie’s spirits revitalised and his music changed forever, The Aztecs became the loudest and heaviest blues band of the day and the biggest drawcard in the land. (McFarlane 1999a: 636)

Homan (2008) states that AC/DC defined Oz Rock in a global context. David Fricke, senior editor of the American rock magazine Rolling Stone, has written that AC/DC were only able to take ‘Aussie power boogie to the world … after Loyde set the high bar at home with the bludgeoning majesty of Coloured Balls’ (2007: 102). In Highway to Hell, the biography of Bon Scott, Clinton Walker asserts that even the signature high volume which Thorpe and his Aztecs became renowned for was indebted to Loyde, stating:

Thorpie’s sole ambition at that time, many testify, was simply to be the loudest band in the world, and with his trademark massive stacks of Strauss amplifiers, designed by Lobby Loyde (who had by then left the band), he came pretty close. (Walker 2002: 80)

This article has no interest in disputing Thorpe’s part in the creation and success of Oz Rock. Its interest, rather, is in contributing to studies of Australian popular music and expanding the understanding of the identities of Oz Rock’s pioneers. Thorpe’s notable popularity notwithstanding, evidence suggests that he is not the sole architect of the Australian rock sound and that the credit he receives is disproportionate to his contribution. As shown, Thorpe’s role in the establishing of Oz Rock was predominantly as its star personality, premiere vocalist and figurehead, whereas Loyde was both foundational and instrumental in Thorpe and The Aztecs’ sound as well as the shape of the signature ‘sound’ and aesthetic of Oz Rock.

The discussions above reveal a small group of writers and musicians who note Loyde’s importance. They credit him as a forerunner of Oz Rock, as a shaper of its sound, and as a key influence on its biggest names. It can also be seen that the greatest acknowledgements of Loyde’s contributions come from within the music industry and especially from those peers who were on hand to witness his achievements. Outside of this small circle, Loyde is most often unrecognized and overlooked. The contrast between the reverence Loyde receives from his peers and music industry insiders and his relative obscurity in the public imaginary mark him as an enigmatic cult figure.

Little golden hands: Lobby Loyde’s beginnings

John Baslington Lyde (Lobby Loyde) was a descendant of Oscar Wilde (Keenan 2006; Roberts 2002) and was born in Longreach Hospital, Longreach, Central Queensland, on 18 May 1941. Loyde’s classically-trained mother Hazel taught him piano and violin from the age of four (McIntyre, n.d., 2006; Perrin 2006). He was playing Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner by the time he was eight and would later describe these composers as enduring influences on his musical style (Emery 2006). The other great influence was his jazz trumpet-playing father John, who nicknamed him ‘little golden hands’ because he’d also taught himself to play trumpet (by the age of eight). His father taught him important lessons about music technology and the electronic creation of sounds. From an early age, Loyde was also versed in his father’s extensive collection of original jazz and blues 78 singles, which included prison work songs and early ’20s–’40s blues (Perrin 2006; McIntyre, n.d.). His parents also exposed him to world music influences such as Arabic and Indian music which would later manifest throughout his professional music career (McIntyre 2006).

When the young Loyde heard the rock‘n’roll of Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry, he became set on the popular music path which would dominate the rest of his career (Emery 2006; Taylor 2004; Perrin 2006). He went to Salisbury State High School in Moorooka where he met lifelong friend Billy Thorpe (Walker 2009: 26; Keenan 2006). After school finished, Loyde began playing in bands around Brisbane such as Errol Romain and The Remains as a Jerry Lee Lewis-inspired pianist (Perrin 2006). He regularly took part in local talent shows but always lost out to either Billy Thorpe or The Bee Gees (Keenan 2006). Loyde came to the guitar relatively late, at the age of 18 or 19 (McIntyre, n.d.). His father provided notation for guitar solos and, importantly, instilled in him the ethic of not imitating others (Whitten 2005). Coupled with his own ability to pick up music by ear, he proved a fast learner (Warburton 2004; McIntyre, Wild About You). Loyde joined the instrumental band Bobby Sharpe and The Stilettos as a lead guitarist within weeks of starting to play (Taylor 2004). Loyde’s guitar idol at this time was Hank Marvin of The Shadows, who he later claimed was ‘the godfather of heavy metal’ (Keenan 2006). He was still fixed in this style when he joined The Purple Hearts but he soon merged this with the accumulation of his previous influences and the emerging London purist R&B sounds to create a signature sound of his own.

The boys with the benzedrine beat: The Purple Hearts

Loyde first made a splash on the Australian music scene in 1964 with wild garage rock act The Purple Hearts, which took its name from a type of amphetamines as opposed to the military medal of honour (Stafford 2006; Taylor 2004). The Purple Hearts played tough, loud and dirty R&B music, wore street clothes and were unafraid of working up a sweat. This quickly set them apart from their contemporaries in an era dominated by non-confrontational, conservative Beatles-esque pop (Taylor 2004; Whitten 2005). Their uncompromising attitude flagged them as bad boys to certain members of the music industry, as Loyde told Go-Set music magazine in 1966:

[Promoters] think we’re difficult, because we don’t walk on stage in identical suits … we used to smoke on stage, wear sandshoes and t-shirts, play as loudly as we liked and tell people where to go! Come to think of it we are practically the same now. (in Go-Set, 3 Aug. 1966, in Whitten 2005: 9)

The Purple Hearts’ unconventional image also made them a target of the Brisbane police force, as Loyde explained to Iain McIntyre for 3CR radio’s Wild About You website:

If you played rock‘n’roll and had long hair then you were a fiend. You were definitely batting with Satan. … in Brisbane [there were] …a lot of bored police officers [who] spent a lot of time harassing [us]. It was the long hair that did it, and the way [we] dressed.

The Purple Hearts’ emphasis on the grittier end of R&B reflected the band’s desire to capture more authentically ‘black’ sounds, much like London’s The Yardbirds. According to Whitten (2005: 4), one pop publication reported The Purple Hearts’ ambition was ‘to have rhythm and blues accepted in Australia’. African-American rhythms and vocal patterns had been little heard in Australia outside of select subcultural groups until the early 1980s (Stratton 2007a: 26). The Purple Hearts were one of few groups able to act as mediators of this African-American influence to Australian audiences (Stratton 2007b).

According to Baker, The Purple Hearts became the ‘undisputed kings of the early Brisbane scene with a giant cult following’ (in Spencer and Nowara 1993c: 411–412). When The Purple Hearts relocated to Melbourne in early 1966, they rapidly established themselves as scene-leaders. Drummer of The Wild Cherries, Keith Barber recalled that ‘[when The Purple Hearts] hit Melbourne practically every band realised, “shit, we can’t play, these guys can play.” … They were the real thing’ (Warburton 2004: 15). The considerable influence of The Purple Hearts has been noted by Ross Wilson (2002) of Daddy Cool, who remarked, ‘The Purple Hearts … changed the way [the Melbourne music scene] thought about music. …[Loyde] played in a style that made us … lift our game.’

Loyde was generally unimpressed with the Australian music scene in the mid-’60s, arguing that it was dominated by poorly written ‘sissy pop’ (Colvin 2007: 53). Loyde’s position is supported by Douglas and Geeves (1992: 110), who contend that the growth of Australian music from the 1960s into the early ’70s was stunted by a combination of:

unadventurous and technically backward recording companies … ill-informed media … and a lack of creativity and courage [from many Australian rock musicians]: they received and copied at a time when they might have adapted and developed.

While The Purple Hearts possessed a bold creativity as showcased on their radical rearrangements of The Graham Bond Organisation’s Early in the Morning and Rosco Gordon’s Just a Little Bit and were revered by their peers, the record company Festival were unsupportive of The Purple Hearts and blocked their attempts to make a full-length album. As Loyde recalls:

[Festival] … thought we were a waste of oxygen, they never let us make an album. We were pissed off because The Loved Ones were making an album in Melbourne, and we had all those sounds way before they did. … Our live stuff would’ve really kicked on an album. … [When the record company] say they like you, they mean they … hate the way you look and hate the music you play, but they love your crowd. (in McIntyre, n.d.)

The Purple Hearts were unable to record a document showcasing the strengths which had enabled them to make such an impact on the live scene. This lack of recording history can be seen as a contributing factor to the reason they are not better remembered today. Ultimately The Purple Hearts were only able to record five singles. Once out-of-print, these singles became increasingly difficult to find until eventually reissued by Raven, Glenn A. Baker’s rerelease label, in the late 1970s and in 1982, and on the 2005 CD Benzedrine Beat by Half A Cow. However, they remained well-remembered by experts. As McFarlane (1999d: 500–501) asserts, The Purple Hearts’ ‘tough, incomparable R&B singles remain classics of their type. The band’s uncompromising approach to music-making was unrivalled in its day’. Loyde’s gift for innovative guitar playing played a significant part in The Purple Hearts’ appeal. On the 1966 single Early in the Morning, Loyde played an Indian-influenced ‘snake-charming riff’ (McIntyre 2006: 13–14), which was unheard of in Australian popular music at that time. Loyde’s peers had begun referring to him as the Australian equivalent of The Yardbirds’ guitar wizards Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page (Anderson cf. Oldham 2007; Fricke 2007; Wilson 2002). His reputation as guitar hero and a musician’s musician had begun.

Adventures in psychedelia: The Wild Cherries

The Purple Hearts announced their break-up on 23 January 1967, ‘stating that they had ceased to progress musically, were becoming stagnant and had decided to split’ (McFarlane 1999d: 501). Loyde immediately joined The Wild Cherries, where he encountered classically trained musicians whose skills brought out new dimensions in his guitar playing. The Wild Cherries were steeped in jazz and modern art, and encouraged each other to stretch out in radical artistic directions (Warburton 2004). For the first time in his career, Loyde began writing original music and became The Wild Cherries’ chief songwriter. According to Colvin (2007), he continued to be driven by his father’s lessons regarding authenticity. He had also been awakened to psychedelic possibilities through the use of LSD and marijuana (Emery 2006). Loyde’s influence on The Wild Cherries was as dramatic for them as it was for him. As Baker (in Spencer and Nowara 1993d: 556) explains, ‘originally a blues band, the Cherries made the transformation to anarchistic psychedelic bliss in 1967 with the arrival of Loyde’. Baker would go on to describe The Wild Cherries as:

a hallowed legend of Australian rock. They are our equivalent to Detroit’s [The] Stooges or [The] MC5. They were what rock dreams are made of – relentlessly experimental musicianship, stunning vocals and a real guitar wizard. (in Spencer and Nowara 1993d: 556)

Considered creatively peerless in the live forum, The Wild Cherries became known for extended jams which McGregor described in 1967 as having a:

loose, underivative [sic], free-flowing style, which often seems close to jazz in approach, though the sound is in the usual pop-soul idiom. … They are one of the few groups which have got something going all the time and retain the capacity to surprise. (in Warburton 2004: 23)

The Wild Cherries’ desire to push the musical envelope extended to their customized technical equipment, partially motivated by Loyde’s penchant for playing at high volumes. Loyde had become notorious for driving his amplifier’s capabilities so hard that he would continuously blow up his speakers. In late 1967, Loyde found an answer to his dilemma through second Wild Cherries’ bassist John Phillips, who worked at an Australian amplifier and speaker company named Strauss. Loyde worked with Strauss to come up with a custom-made amplifier which allowed audiences to hear his prowess as lead guitarist with the kind of high volume that would became his signature. This extreme volume would be adopted as a staple feature of the Australian rock to come.

Due to the constrictive conservatism of the Australian recording industry during their day, neither The Purple Hearts nor The Wild Cherries were able to record an album which documented their true strengths. Therefore and unfortunately their live prowess and legendary musical explorations remain fixed in mythology. No live recording exists to corroborate what critics have said. Once again their record label, Festival, considered The Wild Cherries to be too uncommercial to warrant a full-length album recording (Warburton 2009). However, the four singles The Wild Cherries were able to produce managed to make their mark. As Baker (cited in McFarlane 1999e: 679–680) says:

The Wild Cherries…[were Melbourne’s] most relentlessly experimental psychedelic band.… The band’s four singles…were exciting, revolutionary excursions into a musical void with no concessions to commercial demands.

Fricke (2007: 102) corroborates that the singles ‘are all explosive, freak-beat soul. Loyde doesn’t solo at length, but the dirty boom of his outbursts … blow through the lumpy production with psychedelic vengeance’. Like The Purple Hearts, The Wild Cherries material soon went out of print and was only made available when reissued by Raven in the late-’70s and 1982 and again on CD by Half A Cow in 2004.

Reinventing Billy Thorpe: Lobby Loyde and The Aztecs

The Wild Cherries began winding down in late 1968 following the successive departure of three band members. At this time Loyde renewed his relationship with his school friend Billy Thorpe who had moved to Melbourne in 1968 after going bankrupt and had dissolved his popular mid-1960s band The Aztecs to pursue a solo career (McFarlane 1999a; Thorpe 2002). Thorpe was considered a former pop star famed for very ‘white’ renditions of R&B, who had turned into a middle-of-the-road artist (Stratton 2003; Baker in Spencer and Nowara 1993a). Loyde, on the other hand, was already embroiled in expanding musical boundaries ‘with a stinging sound he owed in part to a powerful thousand-watt amplifier. Such radical ideas were not immediately on Billy’s radar’ (Walker 2009: 95). Thorpe told Baker (1990: 102–103) that it was in Melbourne that Loyde helped him discover a music scene he ‘never knew existed … So I played the blues in Melbourne for three years’.

Critically, Thorpe was also receiving guitar lessons from Loyde ‘to improve his soloing and rhythm-playing’ (Walker 2009: 106). Under Loyde’s direction, Thorpe’s guitar playing was shaped into a tougher, punchier style (Keenan 2006). Thorpe confirmed that playing alongside Loyde forced him to ‘get [his] chops together!’ (Lethborg, McFarlane and Dowler 2007: 5). Loyde joined Thorpe’s solo band in December 1968 immediately on leaving The Wild Cherries (Walker 2009). According to Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum (Higginbottom 2007), the combination of Loyde and Thorpe ‘paved the way for … what became pub rock’. Under Loyde’s guidance, Thorpe was transformed into a howling hard rock/blues belter – and his new band became the loudest and heaviest around (Thorpe 2002: 143). The unit was so powerful that Thorpe went back to using the lucrative Aztecs name (Walker 2009: 107). Walker (2002: 79) states Loyde’s radical approach to guitar playing fuelled an ascent of the ‘new’ Aztecs ‘which would see Thorpe reign unassailably as the king of Oz Rock during the early seventies, and The Aztecs a band which would change the face of Australian rock‘n’roll’.

Loyde’s musical influence on The Aztecs (December 1968–January 1971) managed to reinvigorate Thorpe’s career (Baker 1990; McFarlane 1999a). The blueprint of Loyde and Thorpe’s collaboration signalled ‘a new direction, and a new vitality [in Australian rock. This is especially evident on the] … LSD soaked, jam-filled album: The Hoax Is Over … which left no doubt as to the band’s intention: it was loud, long, dirty and undeniably Aussie rock’ (Lethborg et al. 2007: 4). The instigator of The Aztecs’ new style of Australian rock may have been Loyde but Thorpe was its frontman and figurehead. With his powerful voice, charisma and ability to command a crowd, Thorpe was able to take this sound to the mainstream in 1972 with his legendary performance at the inaugural Sunbury Pop Festival and with his anthemic hit, Most People I Know (Think That I’m Crazy), which reached number three in the national charts (McFarlane 1999a).

The Aztecs would reach the peak of their powers from 1972 to 1974 without Loyde. In January 1971, he left The Aztecs after growing tired of the limiting 12 bar blues format (McIntyre 2006). Loyde concluded that he’d stretched The Aztecs as far as he could, and stated: ‘Billy was pretty set in his ways and I felt that I was outgrowing the group’ (Walker 2009: 110-111). Loyde was also tired of the music industry’s conservatism, saying ‘venues wanted straight rock‘n’roll and if you played anything too long or too weird that was it. … I had another vision’ (McIntyre 2006: 75). Loyde’s departure from The Aztecs meant he was not present during the most lauded and visible period of their career. This can be read as another contributing factor to his absence from the dominant narratives of Australian rock.

Liberate rock: The origins of The Coloured Balls

By now, Loyde’s career had established a mercurial pattern of continuous reinvention. He effectively represented himself with a new persona and musical direction in each band. Loyde had used his considerable skills to mutate the heavy blues form as far as it would go with The Aztecs. Loyde had also been dissatisfied with the way The Hoax Is Over had turned out, and recalled it was ‘not intense enough for me. I wanted to go somewhere more intense. [The] Coloured Balls’ music was in my head’ (Walker 2009: 123). Loyde had been inspired by two primal rock‘n’roll bands from Detroit who had both released their debut albums in 1969 – The MC5 and The Stooges. He felt these bands’ anti-commercial, take-on-the-world energy was much more in line with the intensity he craved than the pub rock approach of The Aztecs (Loyde, cf. Taylor 2004: 104–105). Loyde’s vision was of a musical style that re-imagined 1950s rock‘n’roll through the lens of the furious energy and volume he’d developed through The Purple Hearts, The Wild Cherries and The Aztecs.

Loyde took a brief detour back into his psychedelic leanings before turning his full attention to the musical ideas he was cooking up for The Coloured Balls. He formed an all-new, three-piece incarnation of The Wild Cherries which was willing to follow him into the furthest reaches of his experimental explorations (Clarke et al. 2001). Though the band barely lasted a year, their efforts together include the prototype of Loyde’s signature tune which he would perform in all his subsequent bands: a powerfully affecting, Beethoven-inspired, freeform modal instrumental called G.O.D. (Guitar Over Drive). The trio also performed on Loyde’s long out-of-print debut solo album …Plays George Guitar; which has been described by McFarlane (1999c: 376) as ‘a progressive rock milestone, one of the most remarkable heavy guitar records of the period’.

Fate presented Loyde with his opportunity to try out The Coloured Balls material in early 1972 when he dropped in to lend a hand to The Aztecs as they were recording the single of Most People I Know (Think That I’m Crazy). In the middle of the session, Billy Thorpe was called out of the studio to do an interview, so Loyde and The Aztecs filled in the time by recording a blues boogie tune he’d been toying with entitled Liberate Rock (Keenan 2006). It was released as a single under the joke name The Coloured Balls at the suggestion of Aztecs drummer Gil Matthews (Loyde 1996). Loyde subsequently formed the ‘real’ Coloured Balls to support the single and produce a follow-up album (Perrin 2006). The veteran musician assembled a line-up of young rockers who were ‘unspoilt by music’ (Keenan 2006). The band included Andy Fordham on guitar (later replaced by Ian ‘Bobsie’ Millar), 18-year-old Janis ‘John’ Miglans (bass, vocals) and Trevor Young on drums (McFarlane 2006a). The new band members’ fresh energy and enthusiasm were just what Loyde had been looking for to create ‘high energy rock‘n’roll on his own terms’ (McFarlane 2006a). When Liberate Rock was finally released in August 1972, it shocked Loyde by becoming a surprise hit, reaching number 20 on the charts in both Melbourne and Sydney (McFarlane 2008). Loyde likened Liberate Rock’s success to winning the lottery, and stated:

[we] threw it out for a joke and everyone bought it so it’s just one of those cosmic moments when something works that you didn’t expect to. [I] thought it was a throwaway line and it turned out to be a hit record. (Loyde, in Perrin 2006)

Fate had another surprise in store for The Coloured Balls. The long-haired Loyde decided to get his hair ‘cut-to-the-bone’ (apart from the back) while returning home to Melbourne from a tour of Brisbane in the punishing summer of late 1972 (Perrin 2006). The rest of the band soon followed suit. It was generally perceived by the public and media that The Coloured Balls had adopted the look of the sharpie subculture which had emerged since the mid-’60s. Thereafter, their career became inextricably linked with the sharpie movement (Cockington 2001; McFarlane 1999b; Perrin 2006; Sheppard 2006; Terry 2006). The confluence of the band’s radical haircuts, their intense rock‘n’roll, and the growing visibility of the sharpies resulted in The Coloured Balls being laden with a fierce image they had not intended. This would lead to severe consequences. The band had unwittingly given the media a talking point which would eventually overshadow the importance of their music and contribute to their absence from the dominant narratives of Australian rock. Though a staunch supporter of the sharpies until his death (Taylor 2004), Loyde admitted in hindsight that the haircut proved to be ‘a fatal mistake … [because] it distracted somehow from the music’ (Perrin 2006). Loyde’s time with The Coloured Balls, and their connection with the sharpie subculture, shaped what was arguably the most significant and dramatic episode of his career.

Ball Power: the rise of The Coloured Balls

Loyde’s connection with his audience was never more intense than during his time with The Coloured Balls, especially on the release on their first album, Ball Power. McFarlane (2006a: 3) argues that Ball Power (released Dec. 1973) is ‘one of the greatest guitar-driven hard rock albums of the entire 1970s’. Ball Power’s potency remains significant on a number of levels. First, the public reaction (to Ball Power) shocked its disinterested record company, EMI, when it reached number 13 on the national charts (Loyde 1996; McFarlane 1999b) and garnered critical acclaim (McFarlane 2006a). Loyde described EMI’s feelings towards The Coloured Balls’ music:

The record company in Sydney did their level best to stop us making anymore of ‘those crappy records’ as they put it. … but what stunned them was it went into the top five in Melbourne in the second week of release. It even went into the national charts, which meant it was selling in cities that didn’t even have a sharpie thing. (in Taylor 2004: 108)

Secondly, according to many rock writers, Ball Power still stands as an uncannily prescient proto-punk force, anticipating the future of Australian rock with a musical convergence pointing towards Oz Rock, punk, space rock, stoner rock and the alternative rock boom of the 1990s (Fricke 2007; McFarlane 2006a; Turner 2007; Walker 2002, 2007).

Thirdly, Loyde’s lyrical concerns had progressed significantly since his time with The Wild Cherries. McFarlane describes Loyde and The Coloured Balls’ ethos as a cross between punk-ish wilfulness and hippie ideology (McFarlane 1999b, 2006a). Here the philosophical aesthetic of Loyde’s lyrics bears more in common with 1970s–80s protest punk and 1990s grunge ⁴ than the trademark ‘cock rock’ aesthetic which would characterize much of the Oz Rock to come (Frith and McRobbie 1978; Homan 2008). While several Coloured Balls tracks do deal with typical rock fare such as sex, love, rock’n’roll and rebellion, a significant percentage would be more accurately described as bearing existential messages or cynical social commentary married to dirty sounding, riff-oriented guitars and a driving beat. For instance, on Devil’s Disciple (the b-side to September 1973 single Mess of the Blues) Loyde directly addressed his growing unrest over misrepresentation in the media. Loyde sang:

They call me the devil’s disciple,

They say I’ve got occult ways.

Papers just don’t understand …

I’ve got to live my life empowered …

All the crap they say about me is

Part of the life I’ve lived and left behind. (in McFarlane 2006a: 10–11)

Loyde’s existential musings are perhaps best typified in Ball Power’s most celebrated song, Human Being. McFarlane (2006a: 3) describes it as a ‘symbiotic state of pure intent [which] remains a defining moment in the history of Aussie music’. Human Being’s existential lyrical thrust can be broken down to the constantly rephrased question: what is a human being? These philosophical leanings would be explored at greater length on the second Coloured Balls album, Heavy Metal Kid.

With Ball Power, The Balls had made an impact on the national charts, gained a large following and a formidable live reputation, and reached the peak of their powers without pandering to music industry norms (McFarlane 2006a). Loyde’s political stand-off with the industry had finally paid off, and he was succeeding on his own terms. However, there would be a price to pay. Loyde’s stalwart defiance would contribute to conservative media’s reading of The Coloured Balls’ image as both aggressive and non-conformist. This would also prove to be a component in his fall from grace and future absence from dominant stories of Australian rock. Walker (2007: 120) contends that The Coloured Balls were ‘the best band of the day … but it was typical that they were marginalised and ultimately defeated’. It is to this that the article will now turn.

Revenge band: Loyde turns his back on the music industry

The Coloured Balls’ charged and intense rock‘n’roll differed significantly from the grinding blues rock of The Aztecs. According to Walker (2002: 120–21), Loyde ‘took the groundwork he’d laid with The Aztecs, and sharpened it to a logical conclusion’. The Coloured Balls’ music flew in the face of music industry standards. It was uncommercial and uncompromising, in keeping with the aesthetic Loyde had established with his previous bands. Importantly, The Coloured Balls’ rock music forms a connection with the music which came before and would come after. As Walker (2007) asserts:

it was in The Coloured Balls … that Loyde’s sound and vision coalesced into his most coherent and iconic – and thus influential statement. Like AC/DC (who they pre-date), the Balls bridged the gap between the early- and late-’70s, pre- and post-punk.

Loyde saw The Coloured Balls as his ‘revenge band’ and an expression of complete creative freedom:

I wanted a band that did everything that was against what was going down at the time [in music]. That was our way of saying ‘fuck you’ to the music industry. (in McFarlane 2006a: 4–5)

Just when you think you seen everything: The nexus of The Coloured Balls and sharpies

The sharpie subculture played a critical role in Loyde’s history and his association with them is arguably part of the reason he has not been better remembered by the dominant story of Australian rock. ³ Their subculture has been both demonized and mythologized over the years. Hence it is necessary to offer a brief outline of sharpie history and customs. The sharpies were arguably Australia’s first uniquely indigenous subculture. According to Cockington (2001), Strahan (2002), and Tofts (2006), sharpies are a part of Australian folklore which has become marginalized in the Australian ‘popular consciousness…[and] official social and cultural histories’ (Tofts 2009: 21). Despite being mostly identified with the early 1970s, sharpie genealogy stretches from 1964 to 1980 (Taylor 2004, 2006). ⁴ Sharpies were primarily found in Melbourne and came from lower-to-working class backgrounds (Cockington 2001: 174; Strahan 2002; Terry 2006: 20). ⁵ According to Milne (2007), they were predominantly:

bored kids from outer suburbs … looking for things to do in a rapidly expanding city that was renowned for its … conservatism.

While the majority were young Anglo-Saxons, contrary to the English skinhead stigma which is commonly attached to sharpie mythos, they were a multi-cultural phenomenon (including Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs and, to a lesser degree, Asians and Kooris) (Taylor 2004: 91). Joining a sharpie gang was ‘an Australianisation process for a lot of kids’ (‘Mick’, cited in Taylor 2004: 91). The sharpie subculture hit its peak from 1973–74 when it became ‘the number one teen fashion in Victoria’ and spread out from Melbourne across the country to become Australia’s most dominant youth culture movement (Taylor 2004: 86). The sharpies were highly territorial and ‘found an outlet in gang codes and rituals’ (Strahan 2002). According to Fazio (2001: 18870), they ‘did not discriminate against people on racial grounds. You were more at risk of being attacked if you were a male with long hair’.

The music of the sharpie culture was predominantly Australian rock played by locally accessible bands such as Buster Brown (featuring Angry Anderson, later of Rose Tattoo), The Aztecs, AC/DC and Madder Lake, and augmented by an influx of international glam rock. However, as Taylor (2004: 97–8) states, ‘roosting at the top of the sharpie-rock heap were The Coloured Balls’. Though sharpies weren’t their sole audience, The Coloured Balls were ‘the only band who dared to fully embrace the culture’ (Cockington 2001: 180). Loyde had been aware of the sharpies since The Purple Hearts moved to Melbourne in 1967, and has suggested that the sharpies were a key inspiration in forming The Coloured Balls. Loyde observed:

a whole new generation had come through and the fashions had evolved. I formed The Coloured Balls because I liked what I was seeing. I was fascinated by it … The Coloured Balls became one of the few bands who could communicate with these kids. (in Taylor 2004: 105)

Like Loyde, the sharpie subculture is noticeably absent from dominant Australian cultural histories (Fazio 2001: 18870; Taylor 2004: 8; Tofts 2009: 21).

They call me the Devil’s disciple: Moral panic and folk devils

The Coloured Balls’ image and close relationship to the sharpie subculture first started to outweigh attention to their music when media reports of sharpie violence at Coloured Balls’ concerts began to escalate. As Marcus (2000: 6) observes:

without an audience, no band can exist meaningfully yet, at the same time, no artist can control or realistically predict what an audience or the media will make of its creations.

This is a salient point regarding the phenomena which the Balls were now experiencing. Sharpies were no stranger to negative media reports. As an unusual and aggressive subculture, they had been on the receiving end of bad press since their first appearances in the 1960s and this was carried over into the 1970s (Cockington 2001; Taylor, 2004). As Taylor (2004: 115) states, ‘sharps had always been good copy. Slow news days in the early seventies often meant headlines warning of imminent sharpie/biker wars’. Once The Coloured Balls became a fixture on the Melbourne scene, the combination of their image and sharpie audience, coupled with their relentless music and anti-industry stance, placed them at the centre of the growing media outrage, and both the band and the sharpies became increasingly looked upon as folk devils (McFarlane 1999b: 132; 2006a: 4–5). The national media latched onto the perceived violence, increasingly targeting The Coloured Balls ‘as anti-social misfits’ (McFarlane 2006b: 16–17). Neither Loyde nor his band mates were comfortable about being portrayed as a ‘violence inciting skinhead rock band’ (McFarlane 2006b: 17). As McFarlane (2006b: 3) notes, though The Coloured Balls were definitely ‘playing some of the most aggressive and loudest music of the day … it was music with a message’. As the media reports describing sharpie misbehaviour at The Coloured Balls’ shows, so did the incidents of violence.

The media’s response to sharpie violence at Coloured Balls’ concerts can be seen as an example of the deviancy amplification stage of Stanley Cohen’s classic model of moral panic (2002 [1972]). ⁶ Cohen (2002: xxxv) states that public perception of reactions to social problems ‘is socially controlled. And the cognitions that matter here are carried by the mass media’. As Cohen (2002: xxix) argues, the most important function of conservative media is in the ways they ‘reproduce and sustain the dominant ideology’. Cohen contends that dominant, socially created exploitative cultures (such as media) are able to create an appeal to moral indignation on a societal and community level because they essentially report on the ‘threat’ without contextual framework (Cohen 2002: 149). This leads to what Cohen calls deviancy amplification. By creating a sharpie stereotype, the media was able to remove its audience’s need to try to grasp what may really have happened at any given incident. Here Cohen illustrates how commercially exploitative media creates a feedback loop which transmits the information which can be misinterpreted as falsified instructions for how youths should enact their ‘defiant role-playing behaviour’ and leads to deviancy amplification (Cohen 2002: 148). This is certainly the case with the sharpies and The Coloured Balls. Once The Coloured Balls’ gigs began being depicted as places where violence broke out, Loyde immediately noticed a difference in his audiences. Loyde argued that the media played a key role in precipitating the increase in violence, and stated:

The moment the national media galvanised people into thinking that’s how you acted, this is the band you go and see and you beat up everyone in sight, people began to believe that sort of thing. The violence was horrifying stuff once it started because by then it was too late; it had got out of hand. (in McFarlane 2006b: 17–19)

The demise of The Coloured Balls

The close relationship between the sharpies and The Coloured Balls proved to be the band’s undoing. Coloured Balls’ guitarist Ian ‘Bobsie’ Millar remembers that the band’s demise commenced following articles printed in The Truth:

The band started to implode around all that skinhead publicity stuff that came out in The Truth newspaper. They had all these stories about skinhead bashings, and then all those kinds of guys started to follow us to every gig and it became a nightmare. (in McFarlane 2006b: 15)

Even in the face of this, Millar defends The Coloured Balls’ audience, arguing that:

most of the sharpies that used to follow us were just young kids having a good time … then later on there was that whole aggressive skinhead bunch from other areas that took over. (in McFarlane 2006b: 17–18)

The negative media attention accelerated the deterioration of the band’s already unsatisfactory relationship with EMI (McFarlane 2006b; Taylor 2004). The music press also turned on them, savaging Ball Power’s follow-up, Heavy Metal Kid (Keenan 2006; McFarlane 2006b). Drummer Trevor Young handed in his notice in late 1974. In the end, the dispirited band reluctantly used its own powers of agency to take control of the situation and call it quits. Loyde would later state that ‘sociological pressure’ was the band’s undoing (in Emery 2006). However, he was in no two minds about what was most instrumental in The Coloured Balls’ demise when he said, ‘it was totally in response to the media’s character assassination of us … We just dissolved the band and walked away from it’ (McFarlane 2006b: 18–19).

It has been argued that The Coloured Balls were arguably Loyde’s most influential statement (Walker 2007). They had dual trajectories as both a working band which desired a close connection with its audience and as a political statement which was grounded in a specific creative milieu. The confluence of The Coloured Balls and the complex, demonized youth culture of the sharpies with the moral panic-obsessed media led to an impasse which The Coloured Balls could not overcome. I contend that this confluence greatly obscured the importance of Loyde’s work with The Coloured Balls and significantly contributed to the marginalization of his contributions to Australian rock in the dominant histories of Australian popular music.

Going down: The aftermath of The Coloured Balls’ break-up

Lobby Loyde was more bitter than ever towards the media and commercial music industry following the dissolution of The Coloured Balls. Consequently the guitar hero began to remove himself from the public gaze. This move toward the periphery dominated the rest of his career until his re-evaluation by the music industry in the final years of his life. However, despite overwhelming feelings of disaffection, Loyde’s passion for making music remained strong (McFarlane 2006d: 4). Loyde continued to work on solo records and with groups for his own enjoyment – most notably prog rock acts Southern Electric (1974–79) and Sudden Electric (1979–80) – though none would enjoy the popularity or seminal influence of his previous bands. In July 1976 Loyde and Southern Electric relocated to the UK just as the punk movement erupted. He was impressed by the intensity of UK punk bands and noticed the unmistakable parallels between the punk subculture’s energy and disenfranchisement and those of The Coloured Balls and sharpies (Colvin 2007). He observed that The Coloured Balls were ‘closer to the pulse … to what was going down in the world … than we even realised’ (in McFarlane 2006a: 4–5). Importantly, it was in the UK that Loyde revitalized his interest in music production and received an education in recording music which met the standards of quality he felt were lacking in Australia (Keenan 2006). Loyde developed his technique as a live mixer for Devo and avant-garde act Doll By Doll and by sitting in on recording sessions with The Police and Godley and Crème (Barman 2007; Colvin 2007; Keenan 2006). His tutors included skilled British engineers, such as Bill Price and Nigel Gray (McFarlane 2006c). When Loyde returned to Australia in 1979, he actively pursued a new career path as a record producer and live music mixer for the growing punk and new wave movement and bands (McFarlane 2006c). It would be his production work, not his work as a musician, that Loyde cited when asked how he would like to be remembered in a 2007 interview with Mess and Noise writer Troy D Colvin (2007: 55), when he modestly replied ‘as being fairly okay with making records for young guys’. Of his productions Loyde was proudest of X’s X-Aspirations (1980), The Sunnyboys’ eponymous debut album (1981), the Painters and Dockers’ Kill Kill Kill (1985), and the Machinations’ Esteem (1983) (Colvin 2007: 55). The Sunnyboys, X and Coloured Balls records all appear in The Age’s 2008 Best of the Best, which lists the top 50 Australian albums of all time as compiled by Donovan and Murfett from a panel of 59 experts. ⁷ The recorded work of Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs is noticeably absent from these lists.

In Loyde’s final years, his career was finally re-evaluated by the Australian music industry and partially restored to prominence. This began in 1999 when Ian McFarlane’s exhaustive Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop featured glowing entries on each band Loyde had a stake in, his appearances on ABC’s popular major television documentary series Long Way to the Top: Stories of Australian Rock and Roll: 1956–1990, and its follow-up national tour from August to September 2002. Loyde was inducted into the Australian Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame in 2006. Importantly, Loyde’s work with The Purple Hearts, The Wild Cherries, The Coloured Balls, Southern Electric, Sudden Electric, and his concept album Beyond Morgia were all released on CD between 2004 and 2007. Critically, it was also reported that Loyde had been cited as an influence by such international alternative music luminaries as Kurt Cobain of Nirvana (Cashmere 2007; Fantin 2006; ⁸ Triple J 2007), Henry Rollins of Black Flag and The Rollins Band (Fricke 2007; Oldham 2008) and Stephen Malkmus of popular US college radio act Pavement (Eliezer 2007; Fricke 2007; Turner 2007). On 29 August 2006, Billy Thorpe organized a star-studded five-hour tribute/benefit show ⁹ for Loyde, which raised $90,000 towards Loyde’s medical bills for cancer treatment (Donovan 2006a, 2006c). When Loyde succumbed to lung cancer on 21 April 2007, his death was widely reported around Australia and he received consistently reverential obituaries and tributes from music journalists and Australian music experts. With his passing, the press joined in unison to salute the musician acclaimed as the ‘godfather of Australian rock’ (Cashmere 2007; Donovan and Carman 2007; Eliezer 2007), even though his creative path swam against the tide of the hegemonic music industry.

As I have shown, Lobby Loyde was a key figure in the development of Australia’s rock music. However, his contributions to pop culture have proven elusive to the dominant narrative of Australian rock in part because his oeuvre is anomalous and refuses to be categorized into any single convenient moment or genre. He was a songwriter, performing musician, producer and technician. He was Australia’s first guitar hero, the godfather of Australian rock, blues mediator, Oz Rock innovator, proto-punk pioneer, progressive and even avant-garde musician. His career path took him through many key sites of change in Australian music from the seminal garage R&B scenes of the 1960s through to producer of important records of the punk era and beyond. At any one of these crossroads he was commonly a precursor, frontrunner or maverick flying in the face of accepted trends. Sometimes he was all of these. This article has argued that Loyde’s talent and importance placed him as one of the most significant figures in the history of Australian popular music.