While the nickname ‘Baby John’ doesn’t seem appropriate these days – I prefer just plain old Burgo – it came from DJ Ward Austin on Sydney radio, 2UW.
It followed the very tragic loss of Tony McLaren at sea and I ended up with his afternoon radio shift. After only a very short time in the business I found myself in a prime time on a major Sydney radio station, with virtually no experience whatsoever.
It was a big move and it started off a chain of events which I think is unique in the radio industry and I’d like to touch on it this month.
I was doing the afternoon shift, but the management of the radio station decided that they should move me to the more popular evening time slot of 7pm till 10pm, still playing the usual top 40 music and doing the live commercials in Burgo’s unique style.
I followed on at seven o’clock from Ward Austin, one of the biggest names in the business, and it was he who gave me the nickname Baby John because I was the youngest on the radio station. He used to say before I started at seven o’clock that he was finishing up. He started off by saying the baby will be on next, which then morphed into Baby John, which is a nickname that tragically, I have to report a lot of people still use to this day some 40 years later.
I was doing 7pm to 10pm and my first real major sponsor emerged during that time, Rod Levis, who had just one female clothing store in Sydney. He became a major sponsor of mine and they virtually sponsored the whole three hours.
We had a lot of fun doing that. I used to do in-store appearances which was quite unique, somebody popping up in a ladies’ boutique talking about fashion and things which I knew absolutely nothing about. Rod Levis went on to bigger and better things, from one store in Sydney to having national stores now under the brand QVC, which proliferated across Australia.
I like to think I played a part in getting Rod Levis’s empire started.
Other people started to take a bit of notice of me. Lee Gordon, Ken Brodziak and Harry M. Miller were bringing all the overseas artists to Australia, which culminated in me getting to host a lot of the big shows that came to Sydney Stadium. People like the Rolling Stones, The Who, Leo Sayer, Small Faces, PJ Proby, The Hollies, Trini Lopez, Paul Jones from Manfred Mann, Peter, Paul and Mary, Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass, Roy Orbison, Tom Jones, Bobby Darin, Tony Bennett and the Monkees when they first came to Australia as well. Harry M. Miller got me out onto the tarmac at Sydney Airport to interview the Monkees, the first person in Australia to do that, as they came down the plane’s steps. I actually interviewed Davy Jones at the bottom of the stairs on the plane.
I’d only been in the business a minute, and this, I figured, was the greatest achievement of all time.
In the course of hosting all these shows, I discovered some interesting things happened which I’ll share over coming months.
I actually didn’t host Tony Bennett’s concert, he was on at the Silver Spade room at the Chevron Hotel in Sydney. But I became reasonably good friends with a guy called Tommy Leonetti who was doing a tonight show on Channel 7 in Sydney in those days and his manager Bob Crystal who knew Tony Bennett really well. I found myself being invited to a dinner at Beppi’s restaurant in Sydney, one of the very fashionable restaurants at the time, to have dinner with Tommy, Bob and Tony Bennett. I couldn’t believe it.
I’m sitting there having dinner and Tony Bennett, who was just about to start his tenure at the Silver Spade Room in the hotel, asked me if I played any of his records? I had to say no, I don’t because it’s a top 40 radio station, Tony, so we only play what’s on the top 40 charts at the time.
He was a bit astounded at this and not very happy. And he said, well, I’ll tell you what, you invite your listeners to come to see me and I’ll put on a special show for nothing on Saturday afternoon at the Silver Spade Room, and we’ll see how many people actually listen and enjoy Tony Bennett’s music. I couldn’t wait to tell the Silver Spade Room management that Tony Bennett had offered to do this and I was going to invite my listeners to come to a free concert on the Saturday afternoon.
They were absolutely gobsmacked and terrified at the same time because they thought if we let Burgo’s audience in here, screaming kids along with their parents, they’re gonna trash the joint, how will we get it set up for Tony Bennett’s Saturday night, very special dinner concert? So they said, no, you can’t do it.
I had to go back to Tony and say, they wouldn’t let me do it.
He wanted to prove to me that people on the radio station that I worked for, even though it was top 40, would still want to see Tony Bennett. I think that was a bit of a coup.
All this happened in the 1960s. It was an exciting time for me as I was also offered my own television show on Channel 7.
I’ll talk about that and my big move from Sydney to Melbourne in my next column. It was a move that would prove to be bittersweet.
Stay tuned.