Have a Go News ambassador and radio and television legend John Burgess takes a look back at his early career and recalls some of the famous international stars he has had the pleasure of meeting back in the late 1960s.
Some of the stars I’ve met have had some very humorous stories, or at least I think so, which I’ll talk about over the coming editions.
In the early part of my career, as I mentioned last time, I hosted a lot of shows at Sydney Stadium, which was a huge round tin shed with a spinning centre stage that seated about 15,000 people.
One of the larrikins that I had the pleasure of meeting there was PJ Proby, who had, in my opinion, one of the greatest voices around. He had a huge hit with lots of songs, but my favourite was Somewhere, a terrific song. He used to start singing it in the dressing room with a very long extension cord. Before he actually appeared, people were listening to the song and then all of a sudden, out he’d walk and climb up onto the stage.
All the girls went berserk.
And before jeans became fashionable to have holes at the knees, PJ Proby used to have these jeans made where the fabric over the knees was very, very thin, so after he’d sung a couple of songs and got excited, he would bend down and the jeans would split at the knees. All the young girls in the audience used to come and visit him for some unknown reason and see his naked knees up on stage.
Very funny guy, PJ Proby.
I was invited back for a couple of drinks with him in the hotel he was staying at in Sydney after the show and we were just having a chat and a fine time with a few people around when the phone rang and he answered and there’s a very animated conversation and he hung up.
He said to everybody: “I just had a call from the police in Hawaii, my wife has just been arrested at the airport because she had a gun in her handbag. Rumour has it she’s coming to Australia to shoot me.”
It’s a true story. Everybody sort of laughed, I laughed nervously and left immediately. That’s the last time I saw or heard of PJ Proby, but his wife obviously didn’t get to Australia with the gun. Wild times in those years.
Another story from the Sydney Stadium. On one show there was The Who, the Small Faces, and Paul Jones who was lead singer with Manfred Man.
In those days when bands travelled, they used to have huge speakers with them and they used to stack them on top of one another on the stage. At Sydney Stadium, on the revolving stage, the speakers would be stacked on one side and the artists would be on the other. The audience, at any given time, could only see the act one side of the stadium at a time. As the speakers spun around, it blocked out the artist. It was ridiculous really but that’s the way it worked.
Anyway this night on this show, because there was so much weight on the stage, it stopped revolving and broke down. So the promoter said to me ‘Burgo, get up on the stage and calm the audience down’, because they were getting quite boisterous, I told the audience if they wanted to throw something please make it money because I could do with some.
It was quite an experience at the end of the concert, The Who always finished their segment with My Generation, which was a big hit for them at the time. And at the end, Pete Townshend, who was always singing for The Who, used to smash his guitar and kick the drum kit over and, pseudo demolish their gear. He stopped and said, ‘Baby John’, cause I was called Baby John, come up here. He got me up on the stage. He let me kick the drum set over, because of what I’d been through that night trying to calm the audience down, which was quite hysterical.
The promoters offered people who weren’t happy with only seeing half the show for half the time to come another night. I had to convey that to the very disgruntled audience, it was quite a frightening night, I might say. But The Who and the Small Faces and Paul Jones were fantastic, they were great. So I got to kick over the drum set in my so-called ‘rage’.
Because of the success of hosting all these live gigs for promoters I got a call from Kenn Brodziak and Malcolm Cook, who came up with my first television show. It was called Baby John Is Turning On, which was a pop music show featuring all Australian artists. A bit like Bandstand and a prelude to Countdown.
I’ll talk about that next month along with my move from Sydney to Melbourne.