Oz Rock Goes For Clean-cut Jingoism
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday January 24, 1987
THE Australian Made tour has become the rock industry's answer to the America's Cup. Promoters, performers and critics have rallied to the cause of proving that the little Aussie performer is better than any overseas act.
At the press conference launching today's final concert of the tour, Chissie Amphlett from the Divinyls summed up the mood of all the bands: "We're good. We're the best - this tour has proven that."
While this may be an exaggeration, undoubtedly the tour has shown that the Australian rock industry has come of age.
The $3.5 million tour started in Hobart on December 27 and since then, eight of the country's top bands have been on the road, playing to crowds of 25,000 or more in all capital cities.
An estimated 30,000 people are expected to front up to the final concert at Endeavour Field in Cronulla today, which is being billed as the biggest event in the South since Captain Cook landed more than 200 years ago.
The eight bands on the bill are INXS, Jimmy Barnes, Mental As Anything, Divinyls, Saints, I'm Talking, Models and the Triffids.
INXS rock idol Michael Hutchence says the tour will mean he'll never have to remind Australian audiences how good he is again.
"I'm sick of having to tell people in my own country," he says. "I don't have to anywhere else in the world. Overseas they know; it's obvious."
According to Hutchence, the problem lies in that old Australian belief that if it's imported, it's got to be better.
He sees the Australian Made tour as the turning point: "The tour has set a new standard in the rock industry - we've shown that we are good and we want the world to come to us in future."
But not everyone is as enthusiastic as Hutchence. The Brisbane and Sydney City Councils have refused to be carried away by all the jingoism.
When the bands played in Brisbane the council denied them the use of the new QEII stadium and they had to play in the local velodrome instead.
Tour organisers learnt soon after that the council was permitting Californian boogie band ZZ Top to hold its concert in the QEII.
"This," says tour promoter, Mark Pope, "shows that some people just don't support their local industry." In Sydney the City Council has barred the bands from using the Showground, forcing many fans to travel for more than an hour to reach the new venue.
"Basically they stopped us just because a couple of high-profile silver-tails don't want rock music near where they live," Pope says.
He estimates that the tour lost $250,000 in Brisbane when they had to turn away 10,000 people the venue couldn't accommodate. Even if a capacity crowd turns up today, he estimates they will lose a similar amount of money in Sydney.
The two top attractions, Hutchence and Jimmy Barnes, have each agreed to take a substantial cutback in their original $1 million fee because of this.
Still, Pope believes the tour has been a success. "I think we have achieved what we initially set out to do and that is take Australian music to another level. We've set a standard here."
But until the international rock aficionados discover this, Pope and his crew are prepared to pay them to take notice. The organisers have sponsored 10 overseas rock journalists to cover the tour for America, Europe and Japan.
Even Qantas has got into the act and has flown the 10 in at its own expense. The chief executive, Mr John Menadue, sees a bright future for the local rock industry: "Music has the potential of earning many millions of dollars for Australia," he said.
One of the journalists, Cary Darling, who writes for the Californian rock magazine, BAM, says the tour "could generate a two to three page spread" in his magazine.
Donnell professes to be impressed with the tour and the calibre of the bands but feels the whole thing is a bit too jingoistic.
"I think maybe this sort of display would have happened in America more than 100 years ago when people began to feel they were something different,"he says.
One of the primary aims of the organisers has been to change the sex-and-drug image of rock music. Pope says they have tried to impress upon the Australian public that it is a respectable business - and a big business at that.
"What we've set out to do - and paid a lot of money to do with a road crew of 150 - is to present something professional.
"This is no longer a cottage or backyard industry. It's a multi- million dollar industry in Australia and we want to be treated like businessmen ... "
Pope and his crew are eager for rock to gain establishment approval here. He boasts that in Perth, where the tour received its best reception, the Commissioner of Police went on television to state how delighted he was with the concert and said he would welcome it back anytime.
"Everywhere we've been the noise pollution officers have given us full marks," Pope says. "We want mayors, police commissioners and local councils to understand that we're really organised so that we can return to those venues in the future."
It's not only the organisers who have presented a squeaky clean image but also the audience. According to rock historian, Glen A. Baker, who has accompanied the tour and will be writing a book about it, "The concerts have been more like giant Christian youth festivals.
"It's been a really conservative middle-class audience full of bright young things who are not doing anything their parents wouldn't want them to."
Baker, who used to manage the band Ol' 55, remembers nostalgically the days when "on the road" meant full-out debauchery.
"Now the bandsmen are a bunch of polite, well-spoken family types who earn their money and then go back home to their families. There are no groupies outside hotels and I've only seen one pair of bare breasts in the audiences since the tour began."
One of the reasons for such wholesomeness, according to Baker, is that alcohol has been banned from all the concerts.
The Federal Government's Street Beat campaign has been a major sponsor of the tour. The campaign is the brain child of the Department of Transport and is aimed at curbing the high incidence of alcohol-related road accidents among teenagers.
A Street Beat spokesman, Mr Ross Faull, said Australian Made was an important forum for reaching youths: "We're trying to communicate with them in a language they understand - their music."
Even the working class hero, Jimmy Barnes, who has been known to down a bottle of vodka during a performance, is glad there is a ban and says he much prefers to play to a sober audience.
"Until this tour I didn't care. But now that I've seen this tour I really think that straight people enjoy the show for its own sake and not just to get drunk and throw up. For an artist this is extremely gratifying."
Barnes agrees that the tour has an evangelical flavour to it. If it's not the greatness of Australian music, then the performers are crusading against the evils of alcohol.
"It's disgusting isn't it," he laughs. "But basically us performers are all the same. There's nothing wholesome about us."
© 1987 Sydney Morning Herald
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