Here's a tatty old picture of a Brisbane band called the Impacts taken shortly before they became the Purple Hearts, I stumbled across it , or more truthfully, I knew I had it somewhere and just went looking. This search was the result of just discovering that my dear old friend Mick Hadley had died about 18 months ago, he's playing drums in this pic and therefore not visible, regular drummer Adrian Redmond is singing with bass player Bob Dames and Les Binns on lead (Les and Bob both ex-art school). Lets try not to make this so long, because as I write so many very old memories comes rushing back. Adrian and Les both left and were replaced by Tony Cahill, Lobby Loyd and Fred Pickard, all in the pic below.
Mick's death made me Google those times and rummage through old photos etc, more out of respect than anything else. But then I discovered the romance of memory and one of those plausible ways that both the history of art and music get slightly bent, its sort of like the old game of Chinese whispers, memories altered by time instead of poor hearing. Dear Mick on one or two of the blog histories of Aus Rock was convinced that I was the 'black sheep son of a British Aristocrat" often called "remittance men"back in those days, and before, in the Colonies. Nothing could be further from the truth, I'd actually been to secondary school in Queensland and was at art school with Les Binns (pictured in the first picture) 1962 . His family sponsored me as 10 Pound migrant to Brisbane in 1965.
And Mick believing that, "Clive regularly received T chests of items suitable for maintaining sanity in the colonies. Art/Music magazines and newspapers, Carnaby clothes, catalogues, oh and those long play records just coming into rage as well as 50 of all the latest singles," wasn't quite on the money either, the T chests were just my belongings, I'd flown here and my things came by boat! but to be at Guildford Art School in 1963 and 4 meant that I did have some records that any Queensland band trying to play British style R&B would die for in 1965, and almost the entire Purple Hearts repertoire was covers of bands like the Graham Bond Organisation, the Pretty Things, Downliner Sect, Yardbirds, Georgie Fame and more - all regular players at Guildford's Ricky Tick club and some booked by us for our Art School Parties!
Mick and me - 2008, there are thousands of stories connected to my Purple Hearts days but I there's one that I'm still little ashamed of. So now's the time to get off my chest.
We did a tour of Queensland and Northern NSW Christmas 65, compare Ross D Wylie - bands, the Easybeats, MPD, Purple Hearts and Tony Worsley and the Bluejays and nearing the end of the tour we started to get bored. So in Casino the guys thought they have some fun, they reckoned that I looked enough like Manfred Mann, so backed by the Easybeats, and a big bunch of the other musos, I'm up on stage (could play harmonica a bit) being Manfred Mann - for half a tune and heaps of "It's great to be here in Australia - you're a wonderful audience etc etc take it away Stevie and so on," but here comes the bad bit - after the show, of course, I have to sign lots of autographs as Manfred Mann. So I often wonder if there are still people in Northern NSW who still faithfully keep their prized autograph believing it to be the real thing.
Good on you Mick.
