The Groove at the final of the 1968 Hoadley's Battle Of The Sounds. Left to right: Rod Stone, Peter Williams, Jamie Byrne, Tweed Harris (Geoff Bridgford not visible)(From http://www.milesago.com/artists/groove.htm)
Australian-New Zealand musician and songwriter, Peter James Williams, talks to Jason Barnard about his musical career including time fronting The Groove in the 1960s as well as hitmakers The Mixtures in the 1970s. As we delve into the depths of Peter’s contributions to the Australian-New Zealand music scene, we also celebrate the release of a new compilation titled ‘The Groove Plus: The Unreleased Eureka Stockade Album’ on Frenzy Music.
Can you tell us about your early years in music in New Zealand including The Silhouette and Max Merritt and The Meteors?
I started learning guitar just to play at parties etc. One of my rugby mates had some friends who wanted to start a band. Initially, they just wanted a singer, so I knew a few tunes and put my hand up. That’s how The Silhouettes started. A few months later, Max Merritt was looking for a guitarist and asked my guitar teacher, Tommy Kahi, who his best student was. I was the second best, with the best being a girl. However, Max didn’t want a girl in the band, so I got the gig. He wanted a singer because he was having trouble with his voice!
We did many gigs because we were musically capable and had a lineup similar to The Beatles, which made us desirable as a backing band for touring shows. The Beatles were just starting to gain international recognition, and having a band that resembled them was sought after for tours. We were offered a residency in a newly opened nightclub in Auckland called the Top Twenty, which bore a striking resemblance to the Cavern. Not long after, we were offered a tour in Australia backing a show called Hootenanny Hoot. It was our first trip to Australia, and we were billed as “Direct from Hollywood.” Promoters in those days were quite happy to bend the truth if it helped the show!
Shortly after that tour, we were offered another trip to Australia to do a two-month stint at the Kings Cross Rex Hotel in Sydney. After this stint, we lost Johnny Dick (drums) and Teddy Toi (bass) to Billy Thorpe, so it was just Max and me. We had to carry on with Aussies Bill Flemming (drums) and John Blake (bass) until Billy Kristian and Jimmy Hill could make it over from New Zealand.
Such was the industry in those days, Billy and Jimmy arrived in Melbourne, and Max and I drove down from Sydney, but our combi van broke down about 80 km from Melbourne. So Max and I spent a cold, uncomfortable night waiting for Ron Blackmore’s dad to come out and tow us in because all the gear was in the van. We got into Melbourne late afternoon, met up with Billy and Jimmy, and Mr Blackmore took us to three gigs that night in his old Ford V8 with the gear in his trailer. We rehearsed verbally while he drove us to the gigs. Amazingly, we went down quite well! I remember one of the gigs was with the Strangers at Mentone. John Farrar was kind enough to lend me his gear. Max used Freddy Wieland’s gear (who I was to work with a few years later in the Mixtures in the UK). Garth loaned Jimmy his kit, and Billy used Pete Robinson’s gear. Boy, we really slept well that night!
So we settled into the Melbourne scene over the next few months, and it was buzzing. We did all of the TV music shows down there: the Go Show, Kommotion, some ABC specials, not to mention all the great shows in New South Wales. Plus there was Bandstand, Saturday Date, and Johnny O’Keefe’s Sing Sing Sing (Johnny was very helpful to us in Sydney). We also did Billy Thorpe’s It’s All Happening quite regularly, a great show where the acts were live and had a live backing band. We did a couple of cruises entertaining the passengers. We toured with The Rolling Stones and The Searchers, a great profile-building experience. The promoter was Harry M Miller, who actually managed us for a while. And then another tour with Tom Jones and Herman’s Hermits.
What led to the formation of The Groove in Melbourne? How did you come together as a “supergroup” and what was the experience like recording and performing with them?
By this time, Bruno Lawrence was playing drums with us, but after another cruise, Billy and Bruno decided to leave. So Max and I were joined by Stewie Spears and Bob Bertles. By this time, I had figured out that I wanted to be a lead singer in my own right, as I had been offered the lead singing role with the Vibrants because Rupert Perry was leaving. So after discussing it with Max, I jumped on a night train to Melbourne with my suitcase and guitar in hand. I got down to Melbourne the next morning, and things had changed even further. Rupert Perry had decided to stay, and The Groove was about to be formed.
After two weeks of solid rehearsal we were ready and our opening night was at our new manager Garry Spry’s Club, Pinnochios in Toorak near Melbourne. About three weeks later we celebrated earning 50 dollars each a week and we never looked back. A few weeks later our first hit record hit the charts with an Isley Bros song called “Simon Says””. However the radio stations flipped it and also played “With this Ring” which was a Platters’ song. So we were on our way with a double sided hit. Before this record was released we had entered the 1968 Hoadley’s Battle of the Sounds finishing down the field.
Can you talk about some of the other singles released by The Groove and any accompanying tours?
So, it was sort of straight after the Battle of the Sounds that we really got serious and really got stuck in. The first single had gone well, so we recorded “Soothe Me” as a follow-up. Rod had seen the Stax-Volt review in London when he was there with Normie Rowe and the Playboys, and on the review, Sam and Dave did the Sam Cooke classic “Soothe Me,” so Rod suggested we record that! We did, and it became our most successful single! Then, as the ’68 Battle of the Sounds was getting close, we released Ben E. King’s “What is Soul.” We won the Battle of the Sounds against some formidable opposition, basically the cream of the Australian pop scene. The Battle of the Sounds was the number one ticket in the Australian music scene.
After that, we recorded an LP. I seem to recall doing it in three days at Armstrong’s Studios. Fitting that into our busy schedule was difficult as we worked six days a week, always taking Mondays off (otherwise it would have been seven). The album had quite a few originals, a handful of covers, and the successful singles. We then embarked on a couple of tours around the country. I remember meeting Davy Jones and Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees when Marcie and The Cookies brought them into the Here Disco where we were working in Sydney. The Monkees and the girls were touring Australia with Jimi Hendrix. Being interested in songwriters, I asked Davy if they were going to continue recording Neil Diamond’s material. Davy said no, he’s been bad-mouthing us, so that’s the last you’ll hear of him? Hmmm?
We did some major shows around the country in the lead-up to our departure for the UK, the prize for winning the Hoadley’s Battle of the Sounds. We performed for 90,000 people at the Moomba festival in Melbourne at the Music Bowl, the Trocadero in Sydney, big festivals in Queensland, and tours to South Australia and Western Australia. The Moomba show was the night before we flew to Sydney to board the Fairstar at Circular Quay for a 7-week voyage before our assault on the UK music industry. If nothing else, we were going to have a much-deserved rest.
There was a great lineup of Australian talent on the Fairstar, including the Virgil Bros and the Rhythm Aces featuring Little Sammy. We did one show in the ship’s theater, which was a lot of fun, and about three weeks into the trip, we needed it!
What happened when you got to England?
We arrived in Southampton, and EMI had sent a Timpsons Coach for us and our gear. We rented a four-story house in Chelsea near the Kings Rd. We shared that with our road crew and the Cookies, so there was lots of fun. We were more or less straight away into writing and recording demos, rehearsing, and checking out the historic sights of London.
So, within one month, we were in Abbey Road recording a song that David MacKay had organized for us. It was written by Mickey Most’s brother David and Clive Westlake, who had written for Tom Jones and Engelbert. The song was called “How the Web Was Woven.” Initially, they liked our version, but after a week or so, they decided not to release it. Eventually, Jackie Lomax released it without much success. Not long after, Elvis recorded it, also with little success.
“The Wind” is my favourite song by The Groove – do you remember the writing of that and your memories of that time?
It was written using the refrain we had surrounded “How the Web Was Woven” with. The original project aspired to be a summer anthem in the vein of “Whiter Shade of Pale.” We even used the keyboard setup that Procol Harum used to wonderful effect. EMI was very supportive of the project, and their promotional staff worked their butts off for us, but unfortunately, it didn’t find success.
Soon after, we moved out from Chelsea to Reigate in Surrey, to a run-down stately home with 18 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms, its own ballroom, tennis courts, and even a croquet lawn. It was perfect for a rock ‘n’ roll band to live in and rehearse. The house was previously inhabited by the Aussie rock group Procession with Ross Wilson, and after us, my previous band Max and The Meteors.
From Colley Corner, we crossed the English Channel many times to work in Europe, mainly in France. We performed in Le Touquet, Megeve, Grenoble, and even Paris itself. The Groove was turning out to be popular in France, but our main target had always been the UK.
We shifted into a quaint thatched cottage in Maidstone, Kent called Noah’s Ark Farmhouse. We rehearsed, wrote, and gigged in many of the trendy London clubs of the time, including the Pheasantry on the King’s Road, the Marquee, the Bag ‘O Nails, the Revolution, La Velle Bonne, and many more.
What happened in the final period of The Groove?
We were offered a deal in Paris that promised a guaranteed number one record or album, but we refused because the UK was always our target. So we kept venturing back and forth on numerous occasions. The Revolution became a stomping ground for many industry people. One time, we were approached by two guys from United Artists Records offering a deal. They were surprised when I told them that someone from their office had already turned us down. On another night while we were playing there, as we were finishing a set, I saw someone I recognized walking towards me. It was Chas Chandler, of The Animals fame and more recently Jimi Hendrix’s manager. Hendrix had just recently died, and Chas was looking for another group to manage. He walked straight up to me and said, “What a fucking band! What are you guys doing about management?” I replied, “Unfortunately, we are breaking up next week. We had run our race. Geoff had already been approached by the Bee Gees to join them, Jamie had been doing some recordings with the Australian band Python Lee Jackson, including Rod Stewart on vocals, and the rest of us had just run out of steam.
Within days, we were all looking for new directions, accommodations, and so on. I decided to get serious about songwriting for a while, so I settled down to put some material together in a micro studio, which was essentially a hallway cupboard, at the house my wife, daughter, Garry Spry (our manager), and Beverly Cooke (from The Cookies) were renting. I wrote a song called “I’ll Be Home in About a Day or So” which ended up being recorded by the Scottish band Marmalade, as well as another band from the same stable, The Dream Police, featuring lead singer Hamish Stuart, who later fronted the Average White Band. The song was also recorded by Irish singer Joe Dolan, among others.
You also worked with a vocal group called The Spirit of Progress then The Mixtures – what are your highlights?
While I was in my songwriting phase to make a living, we formed a vocal group with The Cookies and recorded a single called “Hey Feet.” It was written by Mike Chapman (Chinn & Chapman) and fellow Aussie, Trevor Gibson. The B-side was “Kentucky Freeway” written by Daniel Boone. We released it on Philips and named ourselves “The Spirit of Progress” after the daily train that ran between Sydney and Melbourne in those days. We did a couple of gigs in Northern Clubs and provided support on a UK tour with Cliff Richard, with the girls doing vocal backing for Cliff as they had done on earlier tours.
I also released a self-penned single on Philips called “Give Me a Sign / Guitar Song,” backed by basically the guys from Blue Mink and others. The Mixtures had arrived from Australia and offered me the position of Road Manager, so I accepted and we went down to Torquay for a summer season. During that time, Idris Jones (who co-wrote the “Pushbike Song”) decided to leave, and they asked me to join the band. We recorded an album for Polydor, and I wrote two tracks on it: “This Song’s for You” and “Daddy Brings Home the Bacon.” I also co-wrote another song with Mick Flinn, which became our next single, “Captain Zero” and it reached the top 5 in Australia. It possibly would have done better in the UK, but we returned to Australia for an extended tour, so we were unavailable to promote it. The tour lasted 6 weeks, and then we returned to the UK to do many Northern tours. Mick Flinn decided to leave and join a new group being formed called Springfield Revival, so we secured the services of the very talented Chris Spooner on bass.
After a prolonged struggle with Fable Records in Australia, we obtained a release from our contract and secured a record deal with United Artists in the UK. We released a couple of singles, one of which, “Slow Train” was recorded in Dave Edmunds’ Rockfield Studios in Wales, where Queen shortly after recorded “Bohemian Rhapsody.” However, the momentum had dissipated, so we released another single, “Dazzle Easy Dianne” a French song produced by John Farrar, a great friend of Fred Wieland’s (from the Strangers, Fred’s earlier band in Melbourne). John went on to find fame writing and producing much of Olivia Newton-John’s great work in Grease and much more.
Not too long after, we decided to return to Australia for good and secured a record deal with Festival Records. We released an album with some very nice tracks on it, but the scene was changing, and the record company would not finance any video clips to accompany the product. Without videos, there was no chance of getting another hit. We toured Australia on numerous occasions and had great crowds. Then, Don Lebler left to join his dad Harry’s drum school in Brisbane, and Fred left to return to the UK with his wife. They were replaced by Willie Fennell, then John Petkovich on drums and Brenton Fosdike on guitar. We carried on, but when Chris Spooner died in a tragic fishing accident in Western Australia, Rob Scott (who had recently joined us on keys), Brenton, and I decided to call it quits. After 15 or 16 years and over 20 musicians passing through the ranks, The Mixtures finally came to an end.
To bring us up to date, what did you do after The Mixtures – the 1980s onwards?
In conclusion, after the Mixtures disbanded, we joined forces with a Perth band called Breakaway and renamed ourselves Brix. We became a six-piece group, all singers, and performed some tight harmony numbers from the likes of Queen, Supertramp, T-Rex, and others. We gained popularity in Western Australia and aimed for a recording career. However, the main recording hubs were centered in Sydney and Melbourne, and relocating there wasn’t a desirable move for us after years of extensive travel. We had just started to settle down.
Not long after, Rob Scott and I broke away to form one of Australia’s first electronic duos. We lasted for about five years, and in the last year, we eliminated the drum machine from our setup and added one of Perth’s top drummers, Ric Whittle, to the lineup. Oops, we were starting to increase in size again!
Around that time, I was offered a management deal from Roger Davies, who was on his way to becoming one of the world’s top managers. After much thought, I had to turn him down because, for once in my life, I was starting to earn decent money. Hmmm, so I had rejected management deals from not just one (Chas Chandler) but two icons of the industry? I console myself these days by saying that if I had become rich, I would have bought myself a Ferrari and probably wiped myself out on the M1 or something. Mind you, I have always been a professional musician and have enjoyed the ride.
Further information
The Groove / Eureka Stockade – ‘The Groove Plus: The Unreleased Eureka Stockade Album’ is released on Frenzy Music.
