Vanda & Young: Inside Australia's Hit Factory

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION: THE SULTANS OF ROCK

The inspiration to write about the career of Harry Vanda and George Young came from being surrounded by thousands of wonderful LPs in my second-hand record- and book-shop. It became clear that many of my favourites and some of the most sought after – AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, Easybeats, Stevie Wright, John Paul Young, Flash and the Pan – all originated from a little dark studio on the fifth floor of an old office block in King Street, Sydney. They also had the same two mysterious names listed in the cover notes – Vanda and Young.

Much of my research was done during the quiet times in the shop. It was on such a day that one of my regulars was pestering me while I was trying to work on the manuscript. I was attempting to listen to a rare Flash and the Pan record. The more the customer talked, the more the volume control was rotated upwards. Eventually he said, ‘I know who this is.’

‘Oh yeah?’ I replied.

‘Vanda and Young,’ he announced.

I was slightly impressed but not really surprised; some of the guys who hang around the shop have an extraordinary bank of rock knowledge.

‘The Sultans of Swing,’ he continued.

‘What do you mean?’

‘ Sultans of Swing, the Dire Straits song, is all about George Young and Harry Vanda.’

‘I’m not so sure about that. It’s about a jazz band in London … ’

‘No, no, no, listen to the clues.’ He started to sing one of the verses: ‘Check out guitar George, he knows all the chords, mind he’s strictly rhythm, he doesn’t want to make it cry or sing.’

Normally no-one is permitted to sing in my shop, but I let it pass as my interest had been kindled.

‘Okay, that could apply to George Young, I suppose, but there must be thousands of rhythm guitarists in the world called George. How do you explain the next verse: And Harry doesn’t mind if he doesn’t make the scene, he’s got a daytime job, he’s doing alright. He can play the honky tonk like anything, saving it up for Friday night. ’

‘ Saving it up for Friday night...Friday on My Mind … get it?’

Even though I had dismissed his theory as a bit farfetched, there was enough circumstantial evidence for it to keep nagging away at me. In the 1960s, Easybeats guitarist George Young was famous for his brilliant and unique rhythm guitar work on songs like ‘She’s So Fine’, ‘Wedding Ring’ and ‘Sorry’. And lead guitarist of the Easybeats, Harry Vanda, is one of the most easy-going guys you could meet. By the time ‘Sultans of Swing’ was written by Mark Knopfler, around 1977, Vanda had a daytime job as resident producer and songwriter, along with George, at Albert Productions in Sydney.

Irrespective of whether Knopfler was writing about Harry Vanda and George Young, there are other legends of the music industry who admire them greatly. David Bowie opened an Australian press conference with the question, ‘Where can I find Vanda and Young?’ Meatloaf pleaded on national television for an opportunity to meet with them. Joe Jackson tried to reschedule a performance in 1986 so he could catch the Easybeats reunion concert. Jimmy Barnes once wrote: ‘As a kid I was a big fan of Vanda and Young – it must be an immigrant thing …’¹ Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum knows full well the extent of their fame: ‘When I interviewed Kiss in the 70s, they wanted to talk about the Easybeats. When I interviewed Bruce Springsteen in the 90s, he wanted to talk about the Easybeats.’²

Their songs have been recorded by international artists like Rod Stewart (‘Hard Road’), Suzi Quatro (‘Evie’), Bay City Rollers (‘Yesterday’s Hero’), Grace Jones (‘Walking in the Rain’), Tina Charles (‘Can’t Stop Myself from Loving You’), Cissy Houston (‘Things to Do’) and Al Wilson (‘Quick Reaction’). Ricky Martin did an uncredited Spanish version of ‘Bring a Little Lovin’’. Many have been inspired to record ‘Good Times’, including Meatloaf, the Move, Warren Zevon, and Mott the Hoople. ‘Friday on My Mind’ has been covered by over a hundred artists, including David Bowie, the Shadows, Gary Moore, Peter Frampton and Rickie Lee Jones. ‘Love is in the Air’ has been sung by well over three hundred artists, including Cher, Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey and even Robert De Niro!

Australian stars more than eager to record Easybeats and Vanda and Young songs include Johnny O’Keefe (‘Rock’n’Roll Boogie’, ‘Working Class Man’, ‘Saturday Night’), John Farnham (‘Things to Do’, ‘One Minute Every Hour’, ‘Come on Round’), the Seekers (‘Far Shore’), Little River Band (‘St Louis’), the Saints (‘The Music Goes Round My Head’), the Sports (‘Wedding Ring’), Rose Tattoo (‘Black-Eyed Bruiser’), Rick Springfield (‘I’ll Make You Happy’) and the Living End (‘Guitar Band’). One of their compositions has been lauded as the best Australian song of the popular music era, while at the other end of the spectrum another has been voted the ‘daggiest’ song of the generation.

Their songs have a habit of showing up in the most unexpected places. At a concert by the Melbourne Ukelele Collective I heard one of the most unique renditions of ‘Love is in the Air’. I was moved to tears when I heard the same song performed by the Choir of Hard Knocks – an ensemble of homeless people. At an ‘open mic’ festival on Victoria’s Surf Coast I was delighted to hear a teenage garage band punch out a rocking version of ‘She’s So Fine’ by (in their words) Australia’s greatest ever band. At a trash’n’treasure market in the small Tasmanian town of Penguin I came across a female country singer belting out her version of ‘Yesterday’s Hero’.

Jimmy Barnes once said that ‘music should reflect the culture of a country and the more diverse the better’.³ In this case, the music of Vanda and Young perfectly mirrors Australian culture for its diversity, working class ethic, rebelliousness and sense of humour.

A spectacular career

Like their huge hit ‘Evie’, their career can be structured into three parts. Part one is set in Australia in the early 1960s when they became key members of the Easybeats, causing the same level of mass hysteria as the Beatles. They were the first Australian band to exclusively record original material and had a series of Top 10 hits. Part two is set in London where the Easybeats conquered the world with a song that has become a rock standard. They toured Europe with the Rolling Stones and the USA with Gene Pitney. After the band broke up, George and Harry, still in their early twenties, remained in London working as session musicians, songwriters and producers. In part three of the story, Vanda and Young were coaxed home to Australia by their mentor, Ted Albert. They became Australia’s top songwriters, producers and star-makers. Their stable of stars included Stevie Wright, John Paul Young, William Shakespeare, Cheetah and Mark Williams. As producers they helped launch the careers of AC/DC, the Angels and Rose Tattoo. In their spare time they recorded as a duo called Flash and the Pan.

As a partnership, Vanda and Young rank alongside Burt Bacharach, Jeff Lynne, Quincy Jones and Todd Rundgren as great all-rounders of the international music industry: successful musicians, songwriters, arrangers, sound engineers and producers.

Musicians

Harry Vanda is one of Australia’s most underrated guitarists. The Vanda guitar sound is clean, crisp and full of emotion. His lead break in ‘Evie part 3’ perfectly captures the anguish and despair of the character. On the ballad ‘You’, the guitar evokes incredible sadness. On ‘Black-Eyed Bruiser’ it is pure violence. On ‘Good Times’ it portrays fun and exuberance. John Paul Young explains how such an array of emotions is possible: ‘When he picks up a guitar he holds it like a baby, it becomes a part of him, even if he’s just tuning it. All of a sudden he looks complete.’⁴

When asked if he has been underrated as a guitarist, Harry says: ‘On one hand I have a terrific ego. I take my work very seriously. But it’s not all about me. I learned early in the piece that a band is a unit; it’s not about the individual. Right from the first I intuitively understood what the Easybeats needed, and it was not playing Hank Marvin riffs. So I did what needed to be done. I adapted to what was needed. If I had played with some other band I would have played differently.’⁵ He has often described himself as a graduate of the ‘Harry Vanda school of advanced guitar bluffing’.

In Juke magazine, Angus Young confirmed this approach: ‘Like Robbie Robertson, (Harry) has perfected the knack and discipline of playing what is required and nothing more or less.’ Easybeats second drummer Tony Cahill says, ‘Harry’s solos would always stand out. They were like [blues guitarist] Albert Collins: elegant, generous, simple, sincere, soulful.’⁶

As rhythm guitarist of the Easybeats, George Young laid the groundwork for what would become the distinctive Australian rock sound that AC/DC would go on to perfect. Down-under guitar legend Lobby Loyde paid tribute: ‘No matter what anyone says about the birth of that rhythmic guitar playing, it was George. It was a style; it was like no-one else in the world. George had it in spades. It was how that rhythm fixated itself around the centre of the beat. George has always known it. His rhythm was right in your face. It wasn’t sissy rhythm playing. George was always the fucking engine room, mate. He drove like a semi-trailer.’⁷

Songwriters and producers

The Vanda and Young song catalogue is extensive: rock’n’roll, hard rock, ballads, disco, funk, soul, psychedelia, bubblegum, cheesy pop, reggae, ska, jazz, blues, instrumentals. You name it, they can do it. There is even an Easybeats B-side, ‘Me or You’, that is as close to a ‘country’ song as you can get! They have written train songs, car songs, coming home songs, drinking songs, epic songs, historical songs and hysterical songs. The lyrical content of Vanda and Young songs can be described as intelligent, witty, cutting and incisive. They even invented some genres. The style they developed on the first few Flash and the Pan albums, typified by songs like ‘Walking in the Rain’, ‘Lights in the Night’ and ‘Waiting for a Train’, was truly unique and original – hypnotic rhythms dominated by keyboard, spoken distorted vocal, meandering lyrics describing everyday situations (walking down a street, sitting in the kitchen, waiting for a train). They were rapping before rap was invented! Similarly, the style they developed for John Paul Young, starting with ‘Standing in the Rain’ and climaxing with ‘Love is in the Air’, was again unique.

Billy Thorpe once described George Young as ‘one of the best rock riff writers ever put on the planet’. Promoter Michael Chugg also makes lofty claims: ‘George and Harry were two of the greatest songwriters the world has ever seen.’⁸ The late Greg Shaw, editor of the well respected Bomp magazine, insisted that Vanda and Young were the most important force in the development of the sound known as power pop. In 1978 he wrote:

A case could be made that they invented the form … even the earliest Easybeats records were, down to the last detail, solid power pop at its most exhilarating. Nobody has yet surpassed their sense of dynamics and, what’s more impressive with the passage of time, their music has lost none of its forcefulness. Listen to the ‘yah yah yah’ chorus in ‘Sorry’ (1966) next to the guitar chords opening ‘Natural Man’ (1973) or the original ‘Can I Sit Next to You Girl’ (1975) and it’s there unchanged: the energy that Townshend had and lost; that Roy Wood knew and forgot.⁹

Their signature style as producers was to construct a song layer upon layer and build up to a crescendo. Yet their greatest claim to fame as producers was in finding a way to harness the raw energy and power that Australian rock bands were unleashing in pubs all over Australia in the 1970s. Then they would reproduce it in the studio and on record. When you play those records today you can almost smell the beer, sweat, vomit and cigarette smoke of an inner city pub.

Accolades

The deeper I delved into the career of Vanda and Young, the more I realised that they were national treasures who have long been undervalued by the Australian public. People would ask me ‘Who are you writing about?’ When I answered ‘Vanda and Young’, their faces would often remain blank until I added the words, ‘the Easybeats’ and ‘AC/DC’.

But the Australian music industry has consistently recognised them as legends. They were recipients of the APRA (Australian Performing Rights Association) Ted Albert Award for outstanding service to Australian music. APRA also acclaimed their classic ‘Friday on My Mind’ as the best Australian song of modern times. Vanda and Young were in the first group of inductees to the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Hall of Fame. A few years later they were inducted again, this time as the Easybeats. Over the years they have won numerous awards for best group, best songwriters, best Australian producers, song of the year, and the most played Australian song internationally. Australia Post honoured them with a postage stamp. The National Film and Sound Archive has added ‘Friday on My Mind’ to the Sounds of Australia registry. The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has made an exhibit of Harry Vanda’s 12-string Maton guitar. More recently, the Vanda and Young Songwriting Competition was launched in support of the music therapy charity Nordoff-Robbins.

The partnership

Australian Musician magazine dedicated its June 2007 issue to the ‘Fifty most significant moments in Australian Pop/Rock history’. Ranked at number one, ahead of Countdown, the Sunbury rock festivals, the Beatles’ Australian tour and other critical developments in Australian music, was the day that Dutch teenager Harry Vanda met Scottish teenager George Young at the Villawood Migrant Hostel in Sydney. The article argued that without this partnership ‘there would not have been an Easybeats as we know them, possibly no Stevie Wright solo career, certainly not the Albert Productions that made AC/DC a huge success, and none of those classic Countdown songs by artists such as John Paul Young, William Shakespeare, Cheetah etc, as well as their own hits under the Flash and the Pan name’.¹⁰

They are a partnership of opposites. Harry grew up in The Hague as an only child who spent most of his spare time in the basement practising guitar, while George grew up in a family of eight kids playing soccer on the streets of Glasgow. While Harry is easy-going and laughs most of the time, George has a reputation for being intense and abrasive. Harry speaks English in the style of someone for whom it is a second language, George is eloquent and has a brilliant turn of phrase, even if it is punctuated with expletives. Harry now lives and works in Sydney, George lives a reclusive life in Portugal. At this late stage of his career, Harry is patient and diplomatic regarding interviews, photos and autographs. George makes it abundantly clear: ‘I don’t do that stuff anymore.’ Each one’s strengths have complemented the other’s weaknesses. Harry says: ‘We are very similar in many aspects, but we are also opposites in many others. George is a very volatile person. In those days I was a lot more mellow. He gave me a bit of fire and I gave him a bit of peace, and it worked out excellently.’¹¹

What they had in common was a desire to explore new musical territory, an incredible work ethic and a fierce sense of loyalty. George was the creative genius, but Harry had the musicality and soul to give life to George’s ideas. He was also a good problem solver. Mark Gable of the Choirboys describes George as ‘a genius with the extreme character that goes with that. He was very clever, astute, non-emotional and a visionary’. They had their share of arguments, but it was always about the music, and never got personal.

In my interviews with Harry, I found him to be a humble, kind and generous man. All my attempts to contact George were politely declined. Their wariness comes from the fact that Vanda and Young have never been comfortable in the limelight and have received some shoddy treatment at the hands of journalists over the years. For them, it was all about the music, not the fame.

Over the years, Glenn A. Baker has been the only media person to break through the Alberts’ fortifications. He told me that ‘when they wouldn’t speak to anyone I was like the conduit to the world for them. George found that whole PR thing a bit undignified. Remember, the Scots are very, very proud too. Harry’s the same: a dignified Dutchman. I don’t think they were up for being manipulated pop stars. It didn’t suit them as human beings.’

The hits that Vanda and Young wrote and/or produced over four decades are like stepping stones through the history of the Australian music industry: ‘She’s So Fine’, ‘Step Back’, ‘Sorry’, ‘Friday on My Mind’, ‘Falling in Love Again’, ‘Superman’, ‘Pasadena’, ‘Evie’, ‘My Little Angel’, ‘Yesterday’s Hero’, ‘High Voltage’, ‘Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again’, ‘Long Way to the Top’, ‘Hey St Peter’, ‘Bad Boy For Love,’ ‘Love is in the Air’, ‘Good Times’, ‘Show No Mercy’ and many more. I recently discovered that they wrote and performed the Rocktober radio jingles that I grew up with in the 1970s. It is clear to me now that Vanda and Young have written and produced the soundtrack of my life.

1

THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY

I stood, stripped to the waist, in the centre of a football ground wishing I was someplace else. My native Holland would have been about the right distance away. As long as it was anywhere but on that piece of ground in Sydney. I looked at the fellow standing opposite me. He didn’t seem worried. His fists were bunched and he was already measuring me up like a homicidal tailor. Then it was on. The stoush, I mean. The two of us fought for God knows how long, urged on by two rival groups on the sidelines. We fought until both of us were too bloody and battered to continue. Someone announced it was a draw. I couldn’t disagree more. In a fight both sides are the losers. And why, you may ask, was Harry Vanda brawling in the centre of a football ground in Sydney?¹

Harry Vanda was soon to be the lead guitarist in Australia’s biggest band of the 1960s. But at this moment, he was just a Dutch immigrant trying to survive at the Villawood Migrant Hostel. It was a sport in those days for groups of local louts to harass the hostel residents verbally and physically. When they had nothing else to do, which seemed to be often, they would come in a gang wielding bicycle chains, brass-studded leather belts, even knives, to beat up a few ‘reffos’. Harry managed to keep out of trouble until one day he received a message: ‘So-and-so is out to get you.’ He later found out that because of his size (6 feet 1 inch [186 cm] – a Goliath for his generation!) he was chosen to represent Villawood Migrant Hostel in a bare-knuckle fight.

Populate or perish

After World War II, the Australian government felt an urgent need to quickly increase the nation’s population. The alarmist catch-cry of the time was ‘populate or perish’. Europeans were the target, given that Australia would be a very attractive proposition for the working class of war-torn Europe – if only the journey could be made affordable. The lure was sunshine and opportunity.

For the grand amount of £10 for adults and £5 for each child aged 14–18 (and nothing for younger children), a British family and all their belongings would be transported half-way around the world. The only condition was that they had to stay for a period of at least two years. Those who took advantage of this offer were colloquially known as ‘ten-pound Pommies’ or ‘ten- pound tourists’. Most came by ship, although towards the end of the program some came by plane. Those who were unsponsored were temporarily housed in government-run hostels until they were able to get on their feet.

The Australian music industry indirectly benefited from this policy. The list of ‘ten-pound Poms’ who went on to become music stars is long and includes: Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb (Bee Gees); Glenn Shorrock, Terry Britten and Paddy McCartney (Twilights); Jim Keays (Masters Apprentices); Billy Thorpe and Tony Barber (Aztecs); Mike Brady and Pete Watson (MPD Ltd); Jimmy Barnes and Steve Prestwich (Cold Chisel); and Dave Evans, Bon Scott, Malcolm and Angus Young (AC/DC); as well as solo artists like Ted Mulry, Lynne Randell, John Farnham, and John Paul Young.

Young British immigrants had a few advantages over local budding musicians: they were up to date with the latest trends in pop culture; they had the right accents for rock’n’roll; and singing was an integral part of their background. Popular music was one way these young immigrants could express themselves and find a place in what was a