Dig. David Nichols S.

youth culture in Melbourne in the 1960s’ and, indeed, as confirming Melbourne as the ‘centre of the pop scene’ from the mid 60s.⁹⁶ By the end of its first year, there were three versions of Go-Set, aimed at pop fans and advertisers in Victoria-Tasmania, NSW-Queensland, and Western and South Australia.⁹⁷ The paper’s form and style was exactly what its audience required, and its most unusual aspect, from an early 21st century viewpoint, is that it aimed to cater for both teenagers and readers in their 20s – demographics that many would see as quite different (though teenagers have never objected to reading something for an older age group, of course). The magazine offered up photographs of, and gossip and interviews with, stars of the moment and would-be stars, record reviews, advice and fashion tips. Advertising was largely but not exclusively for music-related items – records, instruments, live shows and the like. Early in its existence the magazine had a cross-promotional, mutually beneficial relationship with television’s similarly titled Go!! Show.

      Keays says the Masters Apprentices read the magazine ‘avidly in Adelaide’; he describes it as ‘a crazy, unorganized mess, but it worked.’⁹⁸ Later, the publishers were to launch a subsidiary, more pop-oriented version called Gas and a more adult, political publication, Revolution.⁹⁹ Go-Set continued on into the 70s with, it claimed, a circulation of 57,000 per week.¹⁰⁰ Its format had implications for the way the Australian music press would operate for at least two decades after its demise in 1974. Juke, which was initially edited by former Go-Set chart compiler (and critic, writer and ultimately editor) Ed Nimmervoll, was arguably a direct successor to Go-Set, particularly in its post-Nimmervoll era, when it became a much more uncritical reporter on the music industry, unlike the relatively partisan and left-field Rock Australia Magazine (better known as RAM). Ian Meldrum – who will be discussed further anon – joined the staff of Go-Set early in its existence; his original job was to clean the house the magazine was run from.¹⁰¹ He was soon writing for them, with a story about Ronnie Burns meeting the (flamboyant and gay) thespian Frank Thring.¹⁰² It is possibly true that Meldrum was the magazine’s greatest gift to Australian music – and like the magazine itself, it was a gift with both positive and negative implications.

      MOLLY

      Ian Meldrum was born in the regional Victorian town of Orbost, near the holiday beach settlement Lakes Entrance, in 1946.¹⁰³ He has always been relatively secretive about his background, and it is plain that he did not fit in. He learnt piano from an early age, then did musical comedy at school; he liked ‘classical music and musical comedy and all of that’ and experienced pop music through the Tarax jukeboxes in Kyabram, a town north of Melbourne¹⁰⁴ – ‘I liked it, but it didn’t move me.’¹⁰⁵ He relocated to Melbourne for his final years of schooling, attending the prestigious Wesley College. In 1962, while studying law at the University of Melbourne, he was billeted with some aunts in St Kilda. In a strange and audacious move, he asked their neighbours across the road – the Burns family, whose son Ronnie was a singer – if he could live with them instead.¹⁰⁶ What was even more extraordinary was that Meldrum did go on to live with the Burnses – for almost a decade.¹⁰⁷

      Another turning point for Meldrum was hearing the Beatles on a transistor radio ‘in the sand dunes’ at yet another regional Victorian pleasure spot, Point Leo.¹⁰⁸ And in a happy accident for his future career, he once tripped over singer Lynne Randell on the beach ‘and we became great friends.’¹⁰⁹

      A friend from school, Max Ross, had gone on to be a member of the Groop, a hit band which began as the Wesley Trio and which, Meldrum later recalled, ‘was the first band I could get into because it was Australian music.’ It was late 1965.

      I knew some people in the industry like Stan Rofe and Ken Sparkes . . . I said I’d try to get their record “Ol’ Hound Dog” on air. I never looked at it then as even publicity, because I was being the regular band moll.’¹¹⁰

      The ‘moll’ tag, which Meldrum happily applied to himself with all its sexually subservient connotations,¹¹¹ possibly led to Rofe’s dismissive nickname for him: ‘Molly’. Within six months – in tandem with his Go-Set activities – Meldrum was not only a reporter on the TV show Kommotion, he was also miming international hits for the show (a briefly popular practice until it was banned by Actors Equity in 1967).

      Go-Set, August 30, 1969.

      Meldrum’s involvement in Russell Morris’s career included his first acknowledged production job, ‘The Real Thing’. The song was supposedly written by Johnny Young for Ronnie Burns. The story goes that when Meldrum heard the demo tape as he was passing by Young’s dressing room at Uptight, he cajoled a copy from Young and insisted to EMI that the song be given to Morris, whom he was now managing. On the recording, the song, which is in three distinct parts, was played by the Groop; Meldrum impulsively urged them to play for twice as long as was originally intended, speeding up as they went. He then added an overkill of sound effects and overdubs – everything including the kitchen sink and a Hitler speech and a nuclear explosion – as well as Groop member Brian Cadd reading the ‘conditions of sale’ wording from the back of a tape box:

      ‘I said, “Just read part of that.” So where you hear the talking it is in fact Brian reading and then he and I going into hysterical laughter.’¹¹²

      Howard Gable, who had recently come to Melbourne from New Zealand as resident A&R/producer for EMI (he had produced ‘Sadie’), saw no commercial potential in the recording, and initially refused to release it, at which Meldrum ‘really kicked up a stink . . .’¹¹³ The battle to see the record become Morris’s solo debut, and to have it available nationwide, was possibly as arduous as the recording process itself, if not more so. But by April 1969, Go-Set was reporting that ‘The Real Thing’ was ‘a real hit’: ‘Record bars are finding it hard to keep the record in stock. In Sydney you can’t buy a copy of “The Real Thing” anywhere.’¹¹⁴

      Achieving a number one single allowed Meldrum, Morris and Young to have a free hand in creating its follow-up, which was a Morris and Young collaboration in the way that ‘A Day in the Life’ was a Lennon-McCartney song – it was two separate tunes jammed together. Former Missing Link Doug Ford played on ‘Part Three Into Paper Walls’ as well as its flipside, ‘The Girl That I Love’.¹¹⁵ The A side – which is seven minutes long, forty seconds longer than its predecessor – starts up where ‘The Real Thing’ ends (and then ends with the beginning of ‘The Real Thing’!); it’s as if the team were making a concept album in instalments. Meldrum was, incidentally, never paid for his production work, as this would have been seen as a conflict of interest.¹¹⁶ Twenty-five years later, he remarked with his usual candor and garbled syntax, ‘I’d be the last person to hire myself to do a record production.’¹¹⁷ His meticulous muddle-headedness – ‘he only ever understood passion’, according to engineer Ern Rose¹¹⁸ – might have been the reason that Brian Cadd, when he was ‘going through a period of slight disenchantment’ with his friend, recorded a song about Meldrum called ‘Handyman.’¹¹⁹

      WINGS OF AN EAGLE

      Meldrum’s ascent as a record producer is one way to look at the success of ‘The Real Thing’; another is through the career of the 19-year-old whose name was on the single’s label, Russell Morris. In early 1968, Meldrum had written in Go-Set that ‘the biggest threat to Ronnie is the golden wonder boy, Johnny Farnham, who with his first record “Sadie” has reached the coveted No. 1 position in most states.’¹²⁰ Ronnie Burns’s biggest hit, ‘Smiley’, was still ahead of him, but as we have already seen his status as ‘golden wonder boy’ would be usurped not only by Farnham but by Russell Morris – and as a result of Meldrum’s own efforts.

      Russell Morris may have seemed like the flipside (substantial, ‘with-it’, sensitive) to the jovial showman Johnny Farnham in 1968, but he was still in many ways the same kind of product. Indeed, ‘The