GenQ - For the not so straight individual

Billy Thorpe died today, February 28, 2007. 

I first saw and heard the boy who was to become the Wild Man of Australian rock, in 1965, on Bandstand (a very conservative, squeaky-clean, white boy or girl does pop, TV presentation). He sang Somewhere Over The Rainbow in a lovely, sugary falsetto. His thick hair was cut short enough for mums and dads, carefully left long enough for him to look cool to the kids. But he was pop, definitely pop, not rock. He wore a short-jacketed suit with tight pants, a substantial, heavily-textured tie and pointed leather boots. His pants, and his jacket, with tiny lapels and collar, appeared mid grey, his boots a highly-polished black, but I couldn't really tell because TVs were still black ‘n' white back in those days. Billy appeared alone, with appropriate mood lighting and cardboard props, on an open studio stage, not a band member in sight. On that TV, on that afternoon after school, there was no indication of what Billy Thorpe was to become. 

Just over five years later I saw Thorpey and his great band, the Aztecs, at the Myponga Pop Festival. It was less than a year after Woodstock; I'd had my skull broken a couple of days earlier defending a girl I didn't know, and have not, as far as I know, seen since, from some drunken bums who were beating her on the Port Road in front of the Woodville Bowl. I was treated at the nearby Queen Elizabeth Hospital, kept overnight on observation and discharged the next day with the warning: ‘Don't do anything strenuous for a few weeks, and avoid loud noises.'
My first resolution was to go to the Myponga Pop Festival. It was called a Pop Festival, in lieu of a Rock Festival, to keep the conservatives on side. 

For me, so soon after being kicked in the head by a bunch of animals, the Myponga Festival was an uplifting experience. Most of the fans were sitting in the field; plenty were dancing, but most of the dancers were right up close to the stage. If you tripped over a person as you made your way to a clear spot to view the band they invariably apologised to you before you could let them know how sorry you were. My bandaged head probably initiated some of this politeness, but really, it was a wonderful atmosphere. 

Black Sabbath were the headline act at Myponga, and they were, for certain, a hard act to follow. Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs followed them and they blew us all away. Thorpey had hair down to his shoulderblades. Real, thick, red-blond hair that took up space around him, and when he moved, when he put his head down over his slashing guitar or threw it back to scream defiance at mortality and mediocrity, his heaving hair gave him a primal, heart-thumping aura. His voice was like a buzz saw, in tune: a scream of life that came from the most essential pools of existence. Compared to Black Sabbath, The Aztecs were louder, tighter, (more basic, I admit, but complex enough to lay claim to being far more than just another rock ‘n' roll band). In fact, about this time the term ‘rock band' replaced ‘rock ‘n' roll band', to became synonymous with bands that were adventurous, loud and sublime. Thorpey's bracket was an hour or more of sheer adventure: a display of the passion and power of youth; a musical prophecy that somehow told us that everything was going to turn out OK in the end, that our lives just might be worthwhile, maybe even happy, and on that weekend, in January 1971, my broken head never ached at all. 

Thank you, Billy, for a lot of years of life. Real life.