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Read Jade's Autobiography Every now and then HERE ... you can read exerpts from Jade's Autobiography. The Autobiography has sold an astonishing 32,000 COPIES. At this time ... it is out of print ... however it may be re-printed in the future. but in the meantime ... you are invited to read it ... chapter by chapter MINUS the 153 photos included in the actual book.
JADE THE JADE HURLEY STORY (Continued) (These excerpts posted on 28th December 2007)
ON THE ROAD We see and experience many things, some quite by accident, whilst ‘on the road’. On a recent Queensland month long tour, I discovered one of the funniest things I had seen for years.
After almost each paragraph, I
laughed out so loud that Judy came over and told me to shut up as I was
making a scene. Some people had recognised me and were talking about me,
including the six people sitting at the table next to me. I looked at
them and one bloke said, ‘Well it must be bloody funny Jade’ and I said
it was. A rugged looking truckie yelled ‘Well read it to us then’. It was almost like being introduced
to do a show. I was laughing as I read it out loud and everyone listening
was now doing the same. When I finished reading it, everyone clapped.
The truckie said, ‘You should put it in your show mate’. I told Judy that I was going to read it in the show that night which I did and it ‘killed ‘em’. Ever since it has been part of the show. Although I have endeavoured to establish who wrote it, I haven’t had any luck. But it is a funny tale about one Aussie bloke’s feelings towards the love of his life and it reads like this … ‘AN AUSSIE LOVE POEM’ Of course I love ya darling So ya bum is on the big side So your belly isn’t flat no more Now no Sheila who is your age I’m telling you the truth now I swear on my Nannas grave now So … no matter wot you look like
SOME BLOKES AND A GOANNA
I thought to myself that this was
possibly the last time Bob Rogers would ever compere one of my shows let
alone play any of my records. After I finished my show my worse fears
were founded, as this night in particular Bob was definitely glad to see
the last of me, my act, and definitely Aussie. After another show a few months
later, I had arranged for some mates to call in for a few drinks. One of them had picked up a ‘Sheila’
on the way and they were both pretty pissed when they arrived. While we
all sat around drinking and listening to records, this bloke had taken
the woman out into the front yard, of all places, where he proceeded to
slowly peel off her clothes one item at a time until she didn’t have anything
on at all. My other mates and I were observing the ‘performance’ from
the lounge room. In almost no time at all, we saw that they were both
totally naked on the ground and going for it ‘hell for leather’ with the
bloke’s backside going up and down at a fast tempo. I had told my friends about the
incident between Aussie the goanna and Bob Rogers. Aussie was still outside
in the car and they asked me to go out and get him. Out I trotted, nearly
tripping over the performing pair, got Aussie in his banjo case out of
the boot and brought him inside, once again nearly tripping over the love
makers. I got Aussie out of the case and
with the other couple of mates, adjourned outside again to see what he
thought of the performance on the front lawn. With encouragement from
my mates amid much drunken laughter, I proceeded to prod Aussie’s nose
into the rapidly rising and lowering bum of my high performance mate with
the expectation that Aussie just might bite it! At the time, that would
have been very funny. But true to his passive nature, Aussie didn’t bite,
which, when I thought about it later, was just as well, as legend has
it that if you are bitten by a goanna, symptoms of the bite will re-occur
every year at the same time from then on. I later jokingly said to my
mate that it would be pretty embarrassing having to explain to a doctor
year after year how he got bitten on the bum by a goanna. He just laughed. Aussie was a wonderful pet and
great in the show for some time, but my wife Barbara said he had to go.
After I was away on a three week tour and she and a girlfriend who stayed
with her had a terrible time. Just like Bob Rogers, they were both terrified
of reptiles, particularly Aussie, even though he was so docile. I had
left him on the floor in his banjo case at home in our tiny flat which
was out the back of a double garage in the suburb of Mortdale. The girls
spent most of their time in the little flat with their feet up off the
floor and watching the television while sitting on the double bed. No
sooner had I left to go on the tour, Aussie had prised the banjo case
lid open and was loose on the floor. When he heard that I was getting
rid of Aussie, a great radio station 2UW disc jockey mate named Tony McLaren
who had seen my show came up with the idea of having a Jade Hurley competition
on the radio station with Aussie as the prize. A young girl from western
Sydney won the competition and she and her father came to the flat, collected
him, and took him home. Sadly, I never did hear what became
of him. Speaking of radio station 2UW,
a few years later, Festival records were releasing my latest single produced
by J. O’K called ‘Good Morning to You’. John came up with the idea of
somehow getting me to appear on the 2UW breakfast disc jockey Malcolm
T Elliott’s show which at the time was at the top of the Sydney ratings.
Malcolm, being a great radio personality, had the listeners as well as
the ability to make or break a new release. John called the station music director,
a terrific guy called Garry Jaeger, who was then and still is a walking
encyclopaedia on anything to do with any rock and roll song that had ever
made the hit parade charts in Australia. He told him of the song but Garry
had already heard it as the record company had sent him a copy. Straight
away Garry suggested that at a determined time, right in the middle of
Malcolm’s show one morning, I should burst into the studio, totally disrupt
his program and throw the 45 record onto the desk in front of him. He
would talk about it, then play it, and everything would be great. I wasn’t at all comfortable with
this as John had already said to Garry, ‘Well what if he’s not in a good
mood?’ Malcolm in those days was known to be a good sport if he was having
a good day and got out bed on the right side. However, if this wasn’t
the case then God only knows what would eventuate and I was the one that
was to do the deed. The morning of the planned Malcolm
T Elliott ‘studio raid’ I caught the train into the city and arrived at
the station bright and early to be greeted by Garry. He kept telling me
that, ‘This is going to be a real hoot’ and that ‘Malcolm will have a
real ball with this and play ‘Good Morning to You’. He’ll make it a hit’.
He was so enthusiastic. It was about a quarter past eight
and Garry led me around to the studio door. He said that when he tapped
me on the shoulder I was to burst in and yell as loud as I could, ‘Good
Morning to You Malcolm T Elliott’. I knew that Malcolm was talking live
on air as the red ‘on air’ light at the top of the studio door was flashing.
Then out of the blue Gary tapped me heavily on the shoulder and said ‘Go’.
I pushed open the studio door and burst in yelling at the top of my voice
‘Good Morning to You Malcolm T Elliott’ and threw the record onto the
consol in front of him. Well, I was about to find out very
quickly which side of the bed Malcolm got out of. Firstly, he got the
shock of his life. Then when he realised what was going on, he glared
at me, picked up the record, threw it down onto the other side of the
consol and yelled just as loudly as I had when I burst into the studio.
‘No-one comes into my studio when I am on air without my permission so
take your bloody record and get out’. I was so shocked and embarrassed
to the point that I just stood there and stared at him and he once again
yelled, ‘Get out and don’t come back’. I got out. Garry had followed me into the
studio and both of us turned on our heels and got out of the studio as
fast as we could and when outside. He started apologising for what had
happened saying, ‘Jade, I would never have put you in this situation if
I was at all concerned that something like this would happen’. I was nearly
crying as I was so upset and quickly realised that Malcolm would never
play ‘Good Morning to You’. This was certainly no ‘Good Morning for me’. I look back in hindsight and if
I were Malcolm, I probably would have done the same thing. Here he was,
running the top rating breakfast show in Sydney where ratings dictate
the longevity of employment of each announcer on each station and the
station as a whole. Hindsight is a great asset and I am now inclined to
think that if Garry had approached Malcolm, played him the song and set
it up properly, maybe he would have agreed to the promotion and everyone
would have won out of the situation. This was Garry’s judgement at the
time and I was thankful for his efforts in at least trying something different,
no matter how disastrous was the result. However, I knew one thing for
sure and that is that I was never going to do anything quite like this
again. Of course, Malcolm, who was one
of our best DJ’s then, is still a great announcer on Sydney radio station
2UE. He was totally in the right and I was totally in the wrong and I
hope he has forgiven me. ‘Good Morning to You’ was only a minor hit on the charts and to my knowledge Malcolm never played the song on his program.
OLD SHEP'S MATE Sometime later, the singer, Digger
Revell, and I were on a tour that started in a country Victorian town.
The promoter was a lovable rogue promoter who was rarely seen without
a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I will call him Mr M. The crazy thing was that Mr M had
booked both Digger and me with both of our bands which was equally ridiculous
as the jealousy between both sets of musicians was such that no-one got
on or talked to each other. We all arrived in town at a pavilion at the
showground in which the show was to be held that night and we thought,
‘Geez, it’s going to be bloody cold here tonight’. That night we all arrived
at the showground at about 7pm. Sure enough it was bloody freezing as
there had been a heap of snow on the nearby mountains that day. It was hard enough setting up the
instruments and sound gear to do a sound-check earlier that afternoon
as it was so cold, but now I didn’t know how I was going to play the piano
and most of the musicians thought the same with their instruments. At
8pm, the show was scheduled to start and our beloved, ever smoking, promoter
Mr M was standing at the door of the pavilion. Here, he would collect the money
from the people, tell them to grab a seat from over the side and take
it and sit down where they wanted to, but there was not one paying customer
in sight. Digger and his band who were to go on first and me and my blokes
were all sitting out the back of the stage looking at each other trying
to keep warm. Unlike Digger and me, who were the best of mates, our respective
bands were still not talking to each other. Everyone thought, what a mongrel
night and didn’t know what to do until Mr M raced back stage and told
us that the people had arrived. We all jumped up and looked out from the
side of the stage to see how many people had arrived. There were two and
they were sitting in their seats that they had collected from the side
of the pavilion about twenty feet from the front of the stage. We all looked at each other and
Digger said to Mr M, ‘Do you still want us to do the show?’ and Mr M said,
‘Treat it like a rehearsal for the rest of the tour’. I looked at Digger
and said, ‘Well on you go mate’, he just shook his head. Digger and his
band did their show and it was hilarious listening to him sing a song
that was followed by only the two people clapping. Then my band set up
and out I went. The same two people were still
sitting where they had been since the start of Diggers show and still
clapping after every song. After a few songs, I said softly
to the band, as I didn’t have to yell above an audience, ‘Let’s do Old
Shep’ and started singing the song. I was about half way through singing
the story of poor Old Shep when something made me look out of the corner
of my eye at one of the band. I noticed that he was laughing which made
me look at the other band members who were also laughing. One of them gestured with his eyes
and a nod of his head for me to look out the front of the stage. When
I did, I noticed a sheep had wandered out of the darkness of the end of
the pavilion and was casually walking up to the stage. We now had an audience
of three. The sheep stopped right next to the two people as though he
was expected to. He stayed there for the rest of the show. We finished the show and the two
audience people up and left, immediately taking their two chairs back
to where the hundreds of others were stacked. The sheep still stood there.
I walked off the side of the stage to where Mr M was standing and said
to him, ‘Where’s Digger?’. He told me that he had gone to the hotel. I
asked him if he had seen the sheep and he said, ‘That’s the reason he
left. He couldn’t believe it when he saw the sheep wander in and stand
next to the two people’. I said to him, ‘What a ridiculous night. I’ll
see you tomorrow’. Then I left and wandered out of the showgrounds and
walked up the main street to the hotel and hopefully a warm bed harnessing
a memory I will never forget. The rest of the tour was an equal disaster with not many people at each show. Mr M never paid us a cent and he went on to be notorious for his non-event tours and non-paying. I never toured for him again.
BANDSTAND IN
PERTH My manager was organising a National
tour starring almost every big name in Rock and Roll in Australia in 1965.
These included all of the acts he managed plus a few more. A tour of this
nature had never been put together before. It was called ‘The Sounds of
65 Tour’ and the stars were Ray Brown and the Whispers, Billy Thorpe and
the Aztecs, Merv Benton, Digger Revell, Max Merritt and the Meteors, Bryan
Davies, Vicki Forrest, Paul Wayne, Lyn Randell, Colin Cook, a young up
and coming good sort called Donna Gaye and myself. Whatever happened to
Donna Gaye I don’t know as she showed so much promise as a singer and
had so much talent but just disappeared off the scene. My mate Ray Brown tragically collapsed
and died of a heart attack whilst simply walking down a street in Sydney.
Billy Thorpe has gone from strength to strength, performing absolutely
deafening rock shows (if you want to have your heart and chest muscles
massaged, go and see a ‘Thorpy’ show; it is that loud). Merv Benton has
lived in America for years but doesn’t perform there. Digger Revell has
recently been released from doing his second stint in jail for getting
caught for the second time growing ‘pot’. Max Merritt had a huge smash
hit with a fabulous song called ‘Drifting Away’ and still performs many
shows. Bryan Davies and Vicki Forrest work mainly the Sydney club scene
along with Paul Wayne, who does a Kenny Rogers impersonation show. Colin
Cook does the occasional show, and I don’t know what happed to Lyn Randell.
John Rowles who called himself
J.R. at the time was only booked to perform on the Brisbane show of the
tour. The accommodation was such that everyone in the show was in a sharing
situation of two to a room and in Brisbane I was told that I was sharing
with J.R. There were a couple of the wags
in the show, including Ray Brown who was notorious for enjoying a practical
joke. They came and told me that J. R. was a poofter and that everyone
who had shared a room with him on tour stated that he ‘put it on them’
sometime during the night. I was so naïve at the time
I believed them. But I needed a good night’s sleep as I was buggered.
J. R. for some reason would leave our room for a while then return, then
go again. This went on for quite a while which I thought was really strange.
In the meantime, every time he left I would nod off. But I had been told
he was a ‘poof’, so every time he returned to the room I immediately became
wide awake and sat up in bed. There was no way I was going to go to sleep
and perhaps be woken with him in my bed. Hours went by and he eventually
got into his bed and went to sleep. So did I. The next morning my eyeballs
were hanging out of my head I was so tired. When I went downstairs for
breakfast, Ray and some of the others asked if anything had happened.
I replied abruptly ‘No’. I wondered at the time why they were laughing
and sniggering at my reply. It wasn’t until a few days later, after J.
R. had left the tour that Vicki Forrest commented that it would be a relief
not having J. R. banging on her door as he had done about a dozen times
in Brisbane. Immediately the penny dropped.
This was the reason why he was coming and going from our room. He was
trying to get into Vicki’s room to have it ‘off’ with her. So, he wasn’t
a ‘poof’ at all. I had wasted most of the night sitting up in bed looking
at him snoring his head off and having a great night’s sleep. J.R. went on to use his full name
of John Rowles and he is one of the most polished entertainers I have
ever known. We have been great mates ever since. On this ‘Sounds of 65 Tour’ I was
being backed by Max Merritt and the Meteors who were a fabulous New Zealand
band. When we were doing the show in Wollongong, I was pulled off the
stage by some overzealous fans and I landed very heavily on my left knee.
The pain was so bad that I was taken to a local hospital where it was
x-rayed. The x-ray showed that I had severe knee cartilage damage, but
as the tour was moving on to Adelaide the next day, the doctors bandaged
it and gave me some strong painkillers. I didn’t get any sleep that night
because of the pain and when we moved onto Adelaide I had to perform again
but couldn’t move too easily because of the severity of the pain. But
I got through the show then we flew to Perth the next day for a show at
Her Majesty’s Theatre, which was to be broadcast on the Channel 9 show
‘Bandstand’ compared by Brian Henderson. Once again, because of the severity
of the pain I hadn’t slept properly since I was pulled off the stage in
Wollongong. Prior to that was the Brisbane scenario where I sat up on
the side of the bed nearly all night looking and listening to ‘Rowlsie’
snoring his head off. Now I had taken a lot of painkillers, which had
spaced me out and that’s how I went on stage that night. When I had just finished singing
‘How I Lied’, which had reached number one on the Radio Station 6PR top
40 chart, I moved to the piano and sat down to start singing ‘Great Balls
Of Fire’. I became dizzy and collapsed and couldn’t go on. Some of the
guys in the Meteors helped me off the stage and an ambulance was immediately
called which took me to Royal North Perth hospital. My knee was X-rayed
again and it was again confirmed that the cartilage was badly damaged
and it was decided that I would see a specialist when I returned to Sydney
and have it operated on. I was given an injection that knocked me out for the night and I enjoyed my first night sleep for days. The footage of this collapse on Bandstand has been shown again and again as it is a ‘one off’ situation because it was captured ‘Live’. There is hardly a time goes by when I appear on Bert Newton’s ‘Good Morning Australia’, when he doesn’t screen it and have some fun with it.
THE "DRINK"
ON THE PLANE On the plane trip back to Sydney
from Perth, everyone involved with the show was having a great time. The
hostess looking after us and getting our drinks was working non stop,
going up and down the aisle countless times, bringing more and more beers
and wine. After about two hours she informed us that we had drunk the
plane dry. In those days, wine on aircraft was served in the large bottles.
I was sitting with my mate Ray Brown, and a guitarist in one of the bands
(who shall remain nameless) who was so pissed he couldn’t have stood up
even if he tried. He was loudly insisting to the hostess that he wanted
another drink, even if it was hot. Ray (my practical joker mate) decided
that he was a candidate for some mischief. He got an empty wine bottle
that the hostess hadn’t taken away, got out of his seat and told me to
come with him. I didn’t know what the hell he was up to but I followed
him down to the rear of the plane. He went into the toilet asking me to
stand guard. I still didn’t have a clue what he was doing but a minute
or two later he came out with the bottle. It had gone from empty to having
about a glass full of ‘something’ in it. All of a sudden the penny dropped.
I said to him, ‘You pissed in it didn’t you’. He laughed and said, ‘Sure’.
I laughed and asked, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ He said, ‘Follow
me’ and we headed down the aisle back to our seats. Someone had cottoned onto what
Ray might be up to when he was seen with the empty bottle going into the
toilet. The word got around to almost everyone who was in the show. Most
were laughing when we were walking back down the aisle and some were straining
themselves trying to see the quarter filled wine bottle. We got back to
our seats where the guitarist was still sitting and still complaining
that there wasn’t anything left to drink. Ray said, ‘Hey mate, here’s
the last drink on the plane, do you want it?’ Everyone was waiting for
his answer but they didn’t have to wait long. He grabbed the bottle and
skolled down the complete contents. Fair dinkum, I nearly fainted and
half of the show cast was doubled up in their seats laughing. He took
the now empty bottle away from his lips, held it up, and said, ‘Boy, that
was great’. The other half reached as one for the sick bags. The hostess,
who had by now guessed what Ray had done, cuffed her hand over her mouth
to stop herself from vomiting and stormed off down to the back of the
plane in disgust, never to be seen again. I really felt very sorry that Ray had done this. Particularly as the guitarist he did it to was regarded as one of the nicest guys in the show. But one of the lady singers summed the situation up later by commenting that it was ‘disgustingly hilarious’.
SOME NAUGHTY
GIRLS IN GRAFTON I was now performing so many shows
and tours, I was away from home for many weeks at a time. It was a difficult
and very hard life, particularly for Barbara, as she spent long periods
of time alone or relying on friends and family for company. For me, the best parts were when
I would walk out onto a stage to a screaming reception from people from
all walks of life and do what I would pride myself as hopefully a good
show. The down side with all the touring was the personal loneliness attached
to these very shows. It was really terrible. As soon as the show was finished
we would have a drink, then go back to the hotel or motel we were booked
into. In the early days of my touring career there was not any television
or video machines and certainly no cable TV in the rooms. Indeed, some
rooms didn’t even have a radio so loneliness became the devil. If you wanted them, there would
be no shortage of girls waiting at the hotel or motel but that (believe
it or not) even became boring. There were the nights when we would get
back to the room and there would be three, four, or sometimes a half a
dozen girls there. How they would get into the rooms we would never find
out. But in a lot of country towns, in particular, everyone knows everyone
else’s business so for a few adventurous females it was never hard to
dig up room keys. The boyfriends of some of these
girls were the problem. They would be the ones to come around to the hotel
or motel wanting to beat the crap out of everyone in the show because
one girl would brag that one of us had propositioned her after the show. One such situation happened at
Grafton in northern New South Wales. Billy Thorpe and I were doing a country
tour together and this particular night when the show had finished, Billy
and I walked back to the hotel which was on one corner of the main street
just down from the hall we performed in. When we opened the door to our
room there were about six girls in there. A couple of them were all prepared
for what they obviously wanted as they only had their nickers on. It turned out that this was a bet
between a few of the local adventurous girls as to who would get either
Jade or Billy, and who would get ‘it’ first. Well, I looked at Billy and
he looked at me and without even uttering a single word, we told all the
girls to get out. Boy, were they mad - even the ones
with their clothes on. We followed them downstairs and into the foyer
of the hotel where we were confronted by six or eight local guys who the
girls ‘belonged’ to. I said to Billy, ‘I think we are going to get the
buggery kicked out of us here’. Out of the blue, three more guys appeared
outside the hotel foyer entrance and I added sarcastically, ‘God, now
it looks like its going to happen twice’. One of the new blokes looked at Billy and me and said, ‘Need some help fellas?’ We both nodded. One of them looked at the jealous boyfriends and added, ‘We are leaving for Vietnam tomorrow. We’ll clean these blokes up like shit’. And they proceeded to do just that without Billy or myself having to throw a punch. God, what a night, but it was one that was quite familiar for the many years of constantly touring.
COCAINE AND "THE
MICKEY MOUSE CLUB" When it came to drugs I was, in
every sense of the word, totally naive. I had shared a couple of joints
of marijuana with J. O’K but that was it. On one of these occasions, he
must have had some heavy stuff as I spun out. I didn’t like the experience
and never touched the stuff again. I had never seen any heroin or anything
heavy like that. And I certainly never saw John with any of this type
of stuff. One night I was support to J. O’K
at Canterbury Bankstown Leagues Club. I had to do a forty minutes spot
before John’s show and his band was backing me as they did on all of the
shows I did with John. About half an hour before the show
started, two members of the band were in one of the back stage dressing
rooms. I walked in as one of them was sniffing something off his thumbnail
up his nose. I asked what they were doing and they said they were sniffing
something that would make them do a better show and perform better. I
watched as they both proceeded to put a small portion of the white powder
onto their thumb nails then sniff it up one nostril at a time. One asked if I wanted some and
I said no. But they both persisted, saying things like, ‘Come on Jade.
‘Great Balls of Fire’ will never be as good’. So I stuck out one thumb
then sniffed and did the same with the other. J. O’K came into the room
and saw what I was doing and went off his brain at the two band members
for giving me what I later found out was cocaine. At the time, I didn’t
have a clue what it was. Something, I don’t remember what, seemed to happen
very fast and I had the strangest feeling that I wasn’t even there. But I had a show to do. I don’t
remember the show but it was apparently one of the funniest performances
anyone had ever seen. I started the show singing ‘Running Bear’, ‘Hippy
Hippy Shake’ and a few others. Then it came to the part where I was to
sing ‘The Battle of New Orleans’ with the banjo. Well, the band started
playing the march tempo of the great Johnny Horton song and the next thing
I jumped up onto the top of the white grand piano. While the band played
‘The Battle of New Orleans’, I was singing, ‘Who’s the leader of the club
that’s made for you and me M-I-C-K-E-Y … M-O-U-S-E. Mickey Mouse (Donald
Duck) … Mickey Mouse (Donald Duck),’ etc etc etc. J. O’K was in the wings on the
side of the stage laughing himself silly and screaming out jokingly: ‘GET
OFF, YOU BLOODY JUNKIE, GET OFF!’ As I say, I don’t remember any of this
show but apparently it was a one off and not to be forgotten. Apart from
the odd joint with John, I rarely touched drugs again. If I did, it was
only the occasional social joint. I woke early the next morning and
couldn’t remember much of, or any, of the night before let alone the show.
A couple of John’s band-members called and told me the full story of what
I had done bit by bit. It must have been hilarious as I laughed myself
and they told me that even John thought it incredibly funny. I was soon to learn that anything to do with being funny in my performance would disappear in an instant when I received another call, this time from John. He was furious and said, ‘If I ever see or hear of you taking drugs again like you did last night, you will never ever do another show with me’. I told him that a couple of the guys in the band had called and told me that he thought it was funny and he said, ‘That was last night, this is today’, then hung up. He never mentioned anything to do with it again.
A BOTTLE OF WHISKEY It was very convenient living at
JO’K’s house as we were doing a lot of shows together. One of these was
at Cardiff Workers Club, near Newcastle. John Hansen drove us to the show
where I was to do the first half and John, obviously, the second half.
The place was packed right down
to almost the edge of the stage. I had done my show and then there was
a fifteen minute interval. All throughout the interval John was drinking
straight out of a large bottle of J & B Whiskey. He would gulp down
a large mouthful every few minutes. When his show was about to start,
he once again grabbed the whiskey bottle. Only this time, he ‘skolled’
down almost half of what was left without taking a breath. I nearly fainted,
as if most people had drunk that much whisky they wouldn’t be able to
walk or talk - let alone do a one and a quarter hour show. His introduction was done and the
band started playing his first song. He walked out onto the stage to the
screams and applause from the audience. He did his show without one hiccup
and no-one would have guessed that he had drunk so much whiskey. After performing for about an hour
and twenty minutes, he finished singing ‘Shout’, and walked offstage to
where John Hansen and I were standing on the side. While the audience
was screaming for more, he grabbed the whisky bottle again and downed
the rest of the contents. John Hansen shook his head and I nearly fainted
again. I said to him, ‘Geez, mate. I hope
you’re not going to go on to do an encore?’ fullyrealising
that he probably would. He didn’t answer. He just casually handed me the
now empty bottle. But this time, instead of walking in a straight line
as he had done at the start of the show, he staggered out onto the stage.
The amount he had just drunk on top of what he had previously downed,
instantly knocked him for six. I stood there and watched him stagger
towards the centre of the stage. Either the spotlight hit him in the eye
or he just didn’t or couldn’t see his gold microphone and stand. Whatever
the case, instead of stopping at the mike, he went straight past it, walked
off the stage and fell into the audience who clapped and yelled for more.
Everyone thought it was part of
his act. What happened next was one of the
funniest things I have ever witnessed on a stage. John was only a short
person and the stage was about four to five feet off the floor and he
tried to climb back up onto it. But every time he would get one leg up,
he would topple head over heels back into the crowd. God it was funny.
He attempted this about four or five times, with the crowd still screaming
and clapping for more because they still thought it was part of his show.
It also looked so bloody funny that with every attempt, John would once
again disappear into the crowd. He finally gave up trying to climb
up. He then staggered along the front of the stage and somehow climbed
up a set of stairs at one end. Now back on stage, the crowd roared its
approval once again. Still being the ultimate showman, spurred on by this
further reception, he once again staggered across the stage. This time
he found the gold microphone, grabbed it and immediately broke into ‘Shout’
once again. How he was standing up, I don’t
know. How he was singing, I don’t know. How he was singing in tune, I
don’t know. But once again he killed ‘em with this totally pissed version
of his famous hit. He finished singing ‘Shout’, yelled goodnight, waved
to the audience, then staggered off to the side of the stage where John
Hansen and I were still standing in awe of what we had just seen. He walked
straight past us without saying a word. He then went down the back stairs
which led to the back entrance of the club, got into his car parked just
outside and was asleep in only a couple of seconds. He snored all the
way home. For whatever reason, he didn’t ever like being reminded of this show. I think it was because it wasn’t the thing for the pupil (me) to sometime in the future copy what the teacher (him) had done. One time when I did crack what I thought was a joke about this show; he didn’t see the funny side at all and went to great lengths to remind me of my ‘Mickey Mouse Club song’ performance while stoned out of my brain on cocaine.
PETER THE COP I had a mate called Peter who was
a cop who was stationed in Gundagai. He was also another practical joker.
When he heard we were going down the Hume Highway doing some shows he
asked me to call in and have a coffee. I explained I would have Bev Harrell
(who had a great hit in the sixties called, ‘What am I doing Here’) and
comedian Col Elliott (who was just starting to make a name for himself
touring with me as my support act). Pete asked what time approximately
we would be coming into Gundagai and said he would be in the highway patrol
car and to keep an eye out for him. He wanted to play a joke on Bev and
Col. We were about ten kilometres out
of Gundagai in my Volvo station wagon when we heard a siren behind us.
I said to Bev who was sitting in the front passenger seat and Col, ‘Bugger
it, the cops have got us for something’. I pulled over and my mate Pete
came to my door and very sternly instructed me to step out and go to the
back of the car. He then went around to Bev’s side and tapped on the window
and gestured for her to wind it down. Bev was a really timid and shy person
and was shaking like a leaf as she struggled to wind down the window.
He then asked her name and she said in her tiny voice, ‘Bev Harold’. Pete
who had a big voice said bluntly, ‘Speak up I can’t hear you’ and added
sarcastically, ‘Huh, a girls first name and a bloke’s last name. Which
one are you, a girl or a bloke? Get out of the car’. Fair dinkum, Bev
was pooping herself as she got out. He then knocked on Col’s window
and he wound it down. Once again, Pete said loudly and bluntly while staring
him straight in the eyes, ‘We have had a report from some truckies that
someone in the back of a Volvo station wagon has been dropping their pants
and poking ‘brown eyes’ at them’. You should have seen the look on Col’s
face. It was funnier than any of his jokes. Then he said very innocently
to Pete, ‘Sir, I don’t even know what a brown eye is’ Pete replied,’ What
are ya? Some kind of comedian or something?’. Col went silent for a moment then
said, ‘Sir, I’ve just been sitting here reading my book’, and he held
up the book. It was Mein Kampfe written by Hitler. Pete, who was as sharp
as a tack, said, ‘What are ya? Some kind of Nazi? Get out of the car’.
Col didn’t know whether to laugh (which he didn’t) or say anything (which
he also didn’t). But he got out, looked at me and noticed that I was starting
to laugh. The joke was over. I formally introduced Pete to him and Bev
but she was still in shock. After a few more laughs, we drove off to the next town and the next show.
STONES GREEN
GINGER WINE AND BRANDY At the peak of the Mike Walsh Show
days, I was booked for a two-week season at Romano’s Night Club in Perth,
owned by a lovely Greek couple Michael and Lietta Aquarola. I got off the plane with a bad
case of laryngitis. It doesn’t cause soreness in the throat or anything
like that, but when you try to talk, let alone sing, nothing comes out.
Anyway, I went straight to Romano’s
for rehearsals and sound checks. Lietta freaked out with worry as every
show for the two week season was sold out weeks in advance with a lot
of bookings from people coming from many country areas of Western Australia.
However Michael said, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll give you something to
get you through each show’. I arrived at the club that night for the first
show and just before it started Michael brought in a huge glass of what
he informed me was a fifty-fifty mixture of Stones green ginger wine and
brandy. It tasted great and packed a real
wallop. So the show started and after a few songs it was obvious to everyone
in the place that I had a real problem with my voice (or lack of voice)
as I had trouble talking let alone singing. I explained to the audience
that I had laryngitis and to please excuse me but I would somehow get
through and we would all hopefully have a great time. Then I heard a voice from the back
of the room yell, ‘Have a drink’. It was Michael. He went on to say in
front of everyone, every time I get ‘croaky’ swallow another mouthful
of the drink he gave me. Well, to my surprise, during the next few songs,
I did this and my voice cleared up. However, I was becoming very ‘pissed’
after each mouthful. The audience and I didn’t mind, as I was able to
get through the show. This was repeated for the next two weeks with me
now explaining to each audience early in each show what my problem was
and the drink Michael prescribed for me to get me through. How I did get through though, I
really don’t know. To this day, I don’t remember very much of any of those
shows at Romano’s. All I did was sleep to save my voice when I wasn’t
doing the shows and the rest of the time I was totally pissed. The great thing out of this trip
and experience was that we never had one complaint about me being obviously
drunk during each show. People were so gracious and understood, given
the circumstances. As a result of this, I never go
on stage without my Stones green ginger wine and brandy. However, I never
allow myself to get pissed. Yes, sometimes a little tipsy, but that’s
about all. I now use the excuse for having the drink that, ‘I have a dicky
throat’.
THE COCKROACH IN MY DRINK
I was doing a show at Lismore R.S.L.
Club. Once again, while I was playing the piano instrumental break in
‘Oh Lonesome Me’, I instinctively leaned down to my left, picked up my
customary glass of green ginger wine and brandy, and had a swig. I felt
something strange and took the glass away from my mouth. Something grabbed
hold of my top lip. I tried to brush it off me and dropped the glass.
The contents of green ginger wine and brandy went everywhere, all over
the piano and me. The audience was wondering what
the hell was going on. The more I swiped at my top lip, the more ‘the
something’ grabbed harder and held on. I eventually brushed it off and
would you believe where it landed? Yes, back in the glass, which still
had a bit of drink in it. I finished ‘Oh Lonesome Me’ and looked around
me on the floor to see a bloody great cockroach in the glass. I held the
glass up to show the inquisitive audience what had gone on. Some started
laughing, while the remainder thought ‘how disgusting’. I was with this
mob. I pulled
it out and placed it on its back at the front edge of the stage. It looked
dead – stunned, dead drunk, or all three. No one could tell, but it didn’t
move. A lot of the audience came up to have a look at it. What should
have been a disgusting and dirty thing to happen to me turned out to be
a really funny part of the show. Most of the audience were now falling
about laughing as this would have been the last thing they would have
expected to see in a rock and roll and country music show. I only had a few more songs to
do in the show. When I finished singing ‘Running Bear’, a lady in the
front row who hadn’t take her eyes off the upturned cockroach yelled out,
‘Hey Jade, the cocky is starting to move’. I left the piano to inspect
it. It was still on its back, however its legs were now moving which made
me suggest to the audience that it was either stunned by my constant ‘flicking’
to get it off my lip, or perhaps it was not dead but just dead drunk.
My final song was ‘clap your hands’.
By now, the lady in the front row couldn’t give a stuff about the song,
the show, or me. She was completely mesmerised by the now upright cocky.
She yelled over the top of the
crowd applause, ‘Hey Jade, now its walking’. Would you believe, that’s
exactly what it was doing. However it was walking like I did after each
show at Romano’s. It wasn’t really a walk, more a drunken stagger. Then
it disappeared over the edge of the stage never to be seen again much
to the regret of the lady in the front row. God, that thing felt terrible hanging on for grim death as I tried to bash it off my top lip.
THE CAT AND OLD
SHEP One night in a school auditorium
in Shepparton, in the middle of a Victorian tour, the show was once again
a sell-out and I was half-way through my show. I started to play the very soft
introduction to the Elvis song ‘Old Shep’. This is a sad song about a
dog called Shep whose master has to put him down by shooting him simply
because he is old. Every night was exactly the same. When I started the
song with its emotional introduction you could hear a pin drop in the
audience. But this night, all of a sudden, I picked up a few giggles coming
mainly from people in the front rows. Other people started to join in
and the giggles got louder. I thought to myself, ‘Bloody hell, what’s
going on, this has never happened before’. Then the lighting man moved the
follow spot light off me and down onto the floor on the side of the stage.
This was in the direction I was sitting so I immediately saw what the
people in the audience, who had now increased their giggles, were laughing
at. Sitting on the side of the stage
at the top of a set of stairs that led down to a side door of the auditorium,
which was slightly open, was a cat. No wonder the audience was breaking
up. Here I was giving an emotional introduction to a song about a dead
dog, and a cat had wandered through the side door and now was just sitting
on the stage looking at me seemingly oblivious to the pandemonium he has
caused. In other words, his timing couldn’t
have been worse. Or could it? I had to think quickly as my show and poor
Old Shep were going downhill fast. I got up from my piano stool and
walked over to the cat, who for whatever reason wasn’t taking his eyes
off me. I bent down, picked it up, turned it around to see if it was a
male or female then said to the audience, ‘It’s a boy’. This completely
broke everyone up. Then I took him over to the piano and sat him on the
top. I sat down and started to introduce
the song all over again. This time with even more emotion as I was now
looking at and singing to the cat. I sang the song and when I got to the last line which is, ‘Old Shep has a wonderful home’, the cat nonchalantly stood up, turned around, jumped off the piano and casually walked across the stage, down the stairs and out the door, never to be seen again. The audience stood up and clapped for about five minutes. What happened was really incredible. Nobody could ever set something like this up no matter how hard they tried.
MY PIANO FALLS
OUT OF THE BACK OF A UTE I had done a few shows in Brisbane
at hotel venues and they were always very successful. I now had an offer
to perform at Checkers Nightclub in the centre of the city. My instructions were to fly from
Sydney to Brisbane and get a taxi to the venue. When I arrived at the
club, I went inside to be greeted by the manager Johnny Bell. He immediately,
as a courtesy, showed me around the venue and I looked at the stage. There
was no piano so I asked him where it was and he pointed to an electric
keyboard. There was no way that I could use that to do my show and I told
him so. There were no arguments or anyone
getting upset. He asked me to follow him into his office where he would
make some phone calls. It only took a couple of calls
and he organised an upright piano from a nearby leagues club with the
proviso that he organise to have it picked up and transported to Checkers
then back to the club. John called a couple of his bar
staff who were big blokes and told them they were to go to the club in
the Checkers utility. I asked John if I could go with them to have a look
at the piano before they loaded it into the back of the ute. The three
of us headed off to the leagues club. We arrived in about ten minutes
and were shown where the piano was. I lifted the lid and played a few
notes. It was a beautiful instrument with a great sound. This would be
a pleasure for me to play. The two big blokes finally got
the piano out of the club and into the back of the ute and tied it down
the best they could with some feeble cord they had found. Off we went
very carefully with the beautiful piano swaying from side to side in the
back. I pointed this out to the guy who was driving and he never took
his eye off the rear vision mirror. To get to Checkers Nightclub from
the direction we were coming from was going to be tricky with the piano
still intact in the back of the ute. The driver was driving really slowly
because of the constant swaying backward and forward from the top heavy
piano. We were in Queen Street Brisbane which is the main street and holding
up all the traffic behind us and up in front of us was a policeman directing
traffic at the corner we had to turn left at. When we finally got to him, the
cop yelled as loud as he could at our driver, ‘Hey you, hurry up’. Which
he did. Unfortunately, it was a bit too fast and when we started to turn
left, the swaying and top heavy piano, which by now had shredded the feeble
cord endeavouring to hold it in the back, had other ideas. While we, on
the instructions of the policeman, turned a little too fast to the left,
the piano made up its mind to turn right and that’s exactly what happened.
It fell completely out of the back of the ute and smashed into hundreds
of pieces almost at the feet of the cop. He was so surprised at the beautiful
piano flying out of the back of the ute and bearing down on him that he
shit himself. The ute screamed to a halt and
we all jumped out. The poor cop was so mesmerised that he couldn’t move
a muscle. He later said that he was directing the ute, not the piano. It took about half an hour to finally
track down the mass of broken piano parts that included all the 88 keys,
every bit of mechanism that made each note and key play, and sundry other
parts. God it was a mess. Every part was thrown once again into the back
of the ute but now instead of standing about 5 feet high it was about
3 feet high. After I came off stage, I was surprised
when a fellow I hadn’t met before wandered into my dressing room to tell
me how much he had enjoyed the show. It was visiting English synthesiser
musician and entertainer Rick Wakeman. He had done a show earlier himself
at Festival Hall just down the street. When he heard that I was doing
the late show at Checkers, he came to see the show. This was a nice compliment
from an artist who had sold millions of copies of his incredible album
‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ all over the world. He was really
friendly and gracious and organised front row tickets for me at his concert
at the Horden Pavilion in Sydney the following week. It was this concert all those years ago that gave me my first insight into the possibility of the use of synthesisers and computer generated music which I utilise on stage and in my studio now.
I SPLIT MY PANTS Revesby Workers Club in the south
west of Sydney was for many years recognised as one of the best club venues
to perform at in Australia. It held 1500 people and the sound and lights
were fabulous. The auditorium was unique because it had a very wide aisle
right down the middle of the audience to the front of the stage. I did
my first show at this great club with JO’K in his show, ‘The Good Old
Days Of Rock and Roll’, but now I was booked to do three shows of my own.
One on Friday night, one on Saturday night then a Sunday afternoon show.
The whole three sold out in a couple of days. In my band at the time was Ernie
Allen, a Pommie and a great drummer; J.J. (Jeanette) Horne a fabulous
country rock singer who I had brought up from Geelong in Victoria after
she had sang terrific back up vocals for me on a Victorian country tour;
and Kenny Kitching who was regarded as the best pedal steel player in
Australia and a really nice bloke. Kenny also had one other distinct thing
that made him stand out. He was born with a slight speech impediment.
Ernie, J.J., and Kenny travelled with me for a long time all over Australia.
The Friday night show was under
way and I was wearing a brand new lime green outfit studded with sequins
and diamantes. Most who saw it before the show agreed it looked a ‘million
bucks’. Everything was going great and most of the 1500 capacity audience
was swaying backward and forward and stamping their feet and clapping
their hands on cue. For a long time Kenny and I had
a thing that we would do during every show. At the finish of each song,
I would look over in Ken’s direction and he would say in his own individual
way, ‘Gwate, maate … gwait, maate’. But this night at Revesby the stage
was so large that Kenny was some distance from me. Still, after each song,
I would look over to him and he would look at me and say, ‘You mit ya
trides … you mit ya trides’. I knew what he normally would be saying but
this particular night wasn’t our normal banter. I was just far enough
away that I couldn’t fully hear what he was saying. The show had to continue
so I couldn’t stop everything to ask him what the hell he was saying. Then we (once again) got to the
part of the show when I was to sing ‘Old Shep’ and (once again) whilst
doing my introduction, I could hear that some people in the audience had
started to giggle and I thought (once again) that this was strange. Then
through glare of the spotlight that was beaming down the middle of the
auditorium a single person was walking down the centre aisle who then
walked up to the edge of the middle of the stage where I was sitting.
It was a woman, and she was holding up a large safety pin. I stopped my
introduction to ‘Old Shep’ and the lady said, ‘Jade: your pants are ripped’. I immediately looked down between
my legs and saw that my beautiful new lime green pants were split from
the fly right through to my bum. The audience burst out laughing as I
had my legs very open and pointing out off the stage. Most people could
see not only the huge split, but also my white underpants and everything
contained within them bulging out of my new lime green pants. The audience
was falling apart with laughter. I milked it for all it’s worth. I looked
over at Kenny who said loud enough for most of the audience to hear, ‘I
toll ya, maate … you mit ya trides’. Which I immediately translated to
‘I told you mate, you split your strides’. The audience broke up again, and
so did I. I then noticed my road manager Paul Condon standing on one side
of the stage. I called out to him and asked him to bring a roll of gaffa
tape (used to tape leads down onto the stage floor) with him. He quickly
found a roll, which happened to be silver, and came out on stage. When
he got to me I stood up putting one leg up on my piano stool which made
the gaping split in my new lime green pants gape even more. My white underpants
and everything held in them dropped out at an alarming rate. I had to hold the whole lot together until Paul ripped off a number of long strips of the silver tape and then proceeded to stick each strip over the protruding bulge and the now ever increasing rip from the fly to my bum. Most people who discussed this very funny event agreed that the whole of the 1500 people in the audience were absolutely pissing themselves laughing. This was a very funny ‘impromptu’ thing that just ‘happened’ and was talked about for many years by many in the showbiz scene. It is just a pity that someone didn’t have a video camera running at the time or get a photo.
A COMEDIAN HAS
THE LAST LAUGH Constantly touring would bring
out a lot of funny and sometime spontaneous situations (just like what
happened at Revesby Workers Club). This particular time we were in Goondawindi
where the great Melbourne Cup winner Gunsynd, nicknamed the ‘Goondawindi
Grey,’ was raised, and once again comedian Col Elliot is my support act
as he had been on many of my tours. At the time, one of the highlights
of his show was a terrific impression of the great Aussie country singer
Chad Morgan whose big hit was, ‘The sheik from Scrubby Creek’. Chad’s
trademark and ‘gimmick’ had always been his unbelievable protruding ‘buck’
teeth (and they are his own) and Col had Chad and his teeth (which he
had an identical set made), down to a tee. About fifteen minutes before I
was to introduce him on stage, I pinched his set of ‘Chad’ teeth out of
his bag in the dressing room. I then got a roll of strong gaffa tape and
stuck the teeth onto the top of his microphone, which was positioned centre
stage out the front of the curtain. Well, when he discovered the teeth
missing he freaked out as the ‘Chad’ routine was almost the highlight
of his show. He asked the band, roadies, and
me if we had seen the teeth and of course we all said no but knew where
they were. He raced outside and jumped into my car and back to the motel
to see if he had left them there. After about ten minutes he was back
and really upset but I told him we would have to start the show with me
doing his introduction which I proceeded to do. The curtain opened up and he walked
out on stage and over to the microphone and immediately noticed the ‘Chad’
teeth stuck to the top with the gaffa tape. He struggled for the next
two or three minutes to rip it off bit by bit so he could finally start
his show. The audience was intrigued and couldn’t figure out what the
hell was going on and Col got madder and madder by the minute. The furious
look on his face only made myself, the band and the roadies break up all
the more. He finished his show and then there was a twenty-minute interval.
Score: Jade 1 … Col 0. The fanfare for my show started
and the curtain opened up. I raced out to the piano to do my show where
about two thirds through I would introduce a song I wrote called, ‘Taking
the country road home’. I recorded it in Nashville Tennessee in America
and every musician who played on the album had recorded with most of the
biggest names in the business including Jerry Lee Lewis, Tammy Wynette,
Kenny Rogers, Jim Ed Brown, Dolly Parton, and Linda Rondstadt among others.
Whilst recording the album I took photos of each musician and put them
on the inside of the album that opened like a book. During each show when
I started to introduce the song I would instinctively reach over and get
it off the top of the piano, open it up (without looking at it as I had
been doing this for hundreds of shows) and display the photos to the audience. This night, when I opened the album
up to show the audience, there was a muffled gasp. No-one in the audience
said anything for about a minute until a lady who was sitting in the front
row, and who was a member of my fan club and also had the record, said,
‘Jade - they are not the right photos’. I quickly turned the album around
to see two big pictured stuck over the photos of the Nashville musicians. The pictures were extremely explicit
centrefold pictures that had been cut out of a Penthouse magazine. They
showed very naked women with their legs open and you could see their ‘everything.’
I nearly died. Col was over the side of the stage and, along with the
band and roadies, was almost wetting himself laughing. Score: Jade 1 …
Col 1. Col, a married man, refused to disclose why he carted Penthouse
magazines around with him on tour. Jade 2 … Col 1.
JERRY LEE LEWIS
NO SHOW My then manager John Hansen brought
Jerry Lee Lewis to Australia for a tour and booked him at Penrith Leagues
Club in western Sydney. John asked me if I wanted to come out and see
the show and I said, yes. On the night Barbara, John’s wife Di, and Judy
McRae, who is now my manager following the tragic death of my previous
manager Ron Morris, drove out to Penrith for the show. When we arrived at the club I drove
up to the front entrance to see if there was a car park as close to the
front door as possible. I saw John Hansen, Roger Cowan, the secretary
manager of the club, and a couple of others all in a group, so I drove
directly over to them and John and Roger came quickly over to the car. I noticed that something was wrong
and that John in particular seemed upset. I got out of the car and walked
around to ask what the problem was. John blurted out that Jerry Lee couldn’t
do the show and that the show was a sell out with people who had paid
top dollar to see this rock ‘n roll legend. He was a ‘no show’ as he had
taken some sleeping pills earlier that afternoon and was now non-compus-mentus;
in other words, out like a light, and couldn’t be woken. John, who was getting more visibly
upset by the moment and now had tears in his eyes asked, ‘Can you do the
show?’ Well, I didn’t at first know what to say. Then John added, ‘Dinah
(Dinah Lee) is doing support and she is using your band so there’s no
problems with musicians or anything like that and everything has been
sound-checked’. I said, ‘I’ll park the car and see you backstage’. I made my way through the large
crowd who were obviously there and prepared for a big night seeing Jerry
Lee sing all of his hits, including ‘Great Balls of Fire’ and ‘Whole Lotta
Shakin Goin On’. I walked to the back of the stage and found John and
Roger in one of the dressing rooms with Dinah and my band members - guitarist
Brian Gillette, bass player Ken Churchill, drummer Rex Forbes and keyboard
player Peter Forrell. In the next dressing room was Jerry Lee’s Band and
by now they were aware that Jerry was out like a light and not coming,
however they didn’t have a clue who I was apart from me being a well known
Aussie entertainer. After a few minutes of discussion
with everyone concerned in the dressing room I agreed to do the show.
Even though I only had the clothes on that I had worn out to the club
and no sequinned and diamante-sprinkled outfit that was synonymous with
every Jade Hurley performance. Roger decided he would go out the front
of the stage curtain at the start of the show and explain that Jerry Lee
was ill and couldn’t do his show. However, I had arrived to see the show
as well and would now be performing instead of Jerry Lee. If anyone wanted
their money back all they had to do was go to the ticket office and a
refund would be issued. Much to everyone’s surprise only two people asked
for their money back but they stayed for the show. Jerry Lee’s band went on and did
a few numbers. Dinah did her show. Then there was an interval of fifteen
minutes. I was really nervous as I had never been in a position like this
before, especially standing in for someone like a great legend like Jerry
Lee Lewis. The band started my show and I bounced out to the piano, which
was centre stage, and rocked in with Jerry’s own song ‘A Whole Lotta Shakin
Goin On’. His band who were in their dressing room wondered what the hell
was going on and came out and stood on the side of the stage for my whole
show. Halfway through I stopped the show
and thanked the audience for being so kind by staying. I will never forget
what happened next. A guy halfway down the back of the packed room stood
up and yelled, ‘Don’t worry Jade, you’ll do us anytime’. He brought the
house down and made me feel so good for the rest of the show. The guys
in my band stated that it was one of the best shows they had ever done
with me and that John Hansen should book Jerry Lee more often. We all
laughed ourselves silly, including Jerry Lee’s band. A little later, one of Jerry Lee’s
band members took me aside and said, if I ever wanted to try my luck in
America, he was confident I would be a success. He would be only too willing
to put a backing band, including himself, together for all the shows.
It was nice hearing this but I never took him up on it.
AM I GOING TO
DIE IN A PLANE CRASH? I am constantly touring throughout
most of the main cities and country town’s right across the country such
is the demand for my show. On one of many the Victorian country
tours promoted by Bernie Stahl, a well respected agent and really nice
guy who operated out of Geelong in Victoria at the time, the first show
was at Sale in the Gippsland district about 220 kilometres south east
of Melbourne. Bernie decided that he and I would fly whilst the band and
production crew would drive. He decided this because we had so many shows
on this tour and he was aware that the constant travelling in the car
took a lot out of me. We arrived at Essendon airport
to catch the plane which was a twin engine eight to ten seater and there
were four other passengers as well for the direct flight to Sale. The
plane was late taking off and we were getting a bit worried as to why
but we finally boarded and took off. We found out later that this class
of plane legally required two pilots however we only had one. I was seated
directly behind the pilot and Bernie was across the aisle on the right
hand side and could see the pilot quite clearly. We flew over the city of Melbourne
which looked spectacular from the relatively low altitude we were flying
given this type of aircraft. We followed the Mornington Peninsular south
east until we just passed Dandenong. All of a sudden, the left engine
cut out. I looked at Bernie and he looked at me and we both nearly died
with fright. I asked him, ‘Can you see what’s going on?’ He didn’t answer
straight away which made me look around at the pilot. From where I was
sitting behind him, you could see that he was panicking. So much so that
beads of sweat were rapidly forming on all parts of his face whilst he
talked to the control tower via his head-set advising of the problem. It didn’t take long for him to
obviously be given instructions to return to Essendon airport so he banked
the plane to one side and turned it around. By this time Bernie and I
were in deep whispering conversation, but this was surely heard by the
other passengers sitting behind us. We were all now fully aware that the
pilot was panicking to the extent that it was obvious the control tower
personnel were trying to calm him down. Yet all the time Bernie and I
were seeing him get more and more anxious and the tone of his voice was
now disturbing all of us sitting behind him. We got to the south east side of
the city proper which now didn’t look as spectacular as the first time
we flew over it and things seemed to be going OK - apart from our ever
increasingly sweating pilot which made me whisper to Bernie, ‘How did
this guy ever get his licence?’, Soon, it looked like he had it under
control and I flippantly said to Bernie, ‘Gees, I thought we were going
to do a Buddy Holly - Richie Valens - Big Bopper thing’ (referring to
the plane crash that they were killed in). I was trying to re-assure myself
that things were alright and I thought it was a pretty funny thing to
say at the time, but Bernie didn’t even crack a smile. We were now over the centre of
the city listening to the constant one way conversation of the pilot when
all of a sudden the other engine lost power. It didn’t completely stop
but it was obvious to all of us on the plane that what had happened prior
to this suddenly paled into insignificance. We were now definitely in
trouble and all of a sudden the Buddy Holly – Richie Valens – Big Bopper
comment to Bernie wasn’t funny even to me. The plane started losing altitude
whilst the pilot was losing the plot altogether. What was sweat before
was now pouring out of him seemingly by the bucket full. His one way conversation,
which we could hear with the control tower personnel, was almost out of
control to the extent that Bernie wasn’t capable of saying anything apart
from, ‘Now he’s shaking like a leaf.’ And he was. That’s all I needed
to hear. The plane was slowly going down;
everyone’s heart rate on the plane is rapidly going up caused by hearing
what the now out of control and terminally panicking pilot was screaming
into the sweat drenched microphone of his head-set. I said to the very
quiet Bernie, ‘Jesus mate, we are really in trouble aren’t we?’ He was
dead silent but all the time not taking his eyes off the shaking, sweating,
and panicking pilot who got himself together long enough to turn around
and tell us that we had a problem. Fair dinkum if I had a piano there,
I would have dumped it on his head. But I thought about it for a second
or two then opted for asking him, ‘Are we going to be alright’? He replied
that all air traffic around Essendon and Tullamarine had been diverted
to allow for us to have a direct path to Essendon airport so we could
land. This made me look out the window at the ground that now seemed to
be getting increasingly close to the bottom of the plane, then I looked
at Bernie once again and out of the blue said, ‘Gees, my rings. If we
are going to crash, I’ve gotta save my rings’. I don’t know to this day
what would make me say this, let alone be concerned about my jewellery
(apart from the fact that it was worth about $250,000 at the time). I
quickly took all of my rings and both bracelets off and threw them into
my bag under my feet on the floor. We were only a hundred or so feet
off the ground, so close in fact that I vividly remember seeing a Creepy
Crawley doing its job in the pool of one backyard. Essendon airport runway
was rapidly approaching and we could now clearly see the car expressway
that skirts around the end of the main runway of the airport. I looked
at Bernie and he looked at me and said, ‘Shit, I don’t think we are going
to clear the expressway.’ That’s all I needed to hear from him. We both
threw our heads into our laps and curled up into a ball that instructions
in all emergency situation in airplanes state, waiting for our shaking
and still profusely sweating pilot to hopefully get us over the expressway
and onto the runway. Next thing, we felt the wheels hit the runway and
Bernie and I looked at each other with such relief that he got tears in
his eyes. We managed to taxi to a terminal
and stop. The pilot just sat in his sweat- drenched seat like he was glued
to it. He was really in shock. A few people raced out onto the tarmac
to see if we were all right. We were apart from the fact that we had all
had twenty years or so taken off our lives. The first thing I did was go into
the terminal and phone Barbara to tell her what had happened, but the
news had already got out. We found out later that Bernie’s then girlfriend
heard a newsflash describing the emergency at Essendon airport with rocker
Jade Hurley on board on the radio. In true show-biz tradition, Bernie
and I put the Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and Big Bopper scenario behind
us and reluctantly caught another plane a few hours later. Interestingly,
this one had two pilots on it neither of which was the original pilot
who I think had crawled into a corner somewhere and had his own private
nervous breakdown. We flew to Sale for the sell-out show that night. This certainly was a day to remember. Apart from his second flight to Sale, Bernie has never flown in another small plane from that day to this.
"THAT'S COUNTRY IN NEW ZEALAND I always had a deep affection for
New Zealanders as many Kiwi folk who would be holidaying in Australia
would come to my shows in Sydney. One day I received a phone call from
Christchurch in New Zealand from Ray Columbus, a Kiwi mate who had a couple
of big hit records in Australia with his group ‘The Invaders.’ The biggest
of which was ‘She’s a Mod,’ capitalising on the ‘Mod’ trend of the day.
He told me that he was the compere
of a television show recorded every week at the James Hay Theatre in Christchurch
called ‘That’s Country’ and that every week an American ‘name’ country
singer would be flown to New Zealand to be the headline act. Some of these
acts included Stella Parton (Dolly’s sister) Dickey Lee who had a hit
in the sixties with a song titled ‘Patches’ and Dobie Gray whose multi
million seller was ‘Driftaway’. Ray told me that the act that was
coming from America this week was sick and couldn’t come so they needed
a headline act who could get to Christchurch straight away. Bringing another
singer all the way from Nashville in America was out of the question so
in a troubleshooting meeting with the show production staff, producer,
and director, Ray mentioned that he had a mate in Australia and if they
could get him, with a bit of luck he could be here in time to start rehearsals
the next day. The singer’s name was Jade Hurley. He asked me if I had anything on
that week. If I didn’t, could I get on the next plane to Christchurch
to do the show. Little did Ray know (and I didn’t mention it) that I had
only earlier that day been discharged from hospital after being admitted
a week earlier for tests after having another heart attack. Apart from
this problem, I didn’t have anything booked for another few weeks. Television
New Zealand who produced the show made travel arrangements and I was on
the plane the next morning. I arrived at Christchurch and was
met by an entourage of representatives from Television New Zealand and
treated like royalty. This was unusual as none of them had seen what I
did or how I performed but Ray had given glowing reports and they accepted
his judgement. I was rushed straight to the James Hay Theatre and met
the cast and crew and backing musicians and backup singers. I was surprised that a couple of
the band had worked with me in Australia and they told me that the rest
of the musicians were great. They weren't great, they were fantastic.
The rehearsals went well apart from the fact that, being a perfectionist,
a few of my demands, particularly with me taking control of my own sound
levels as I can’t hear all that well with my left ear, were taken as grandstanding
by a few of the production staff. This couldn’t have been further from
the point. All of my years performing with
Mike Walsh and the Geoff Harvey Band were now coming home to roost as
the rapport I immediately developed with most of the personnel working
with the show - from the producer and director, to the cameramen, floor
crew, band, and Ray himself - was fantastic. Really, all I was doing was
transferring my Mike Walsh Show segments to ‘That’s Country’ and a new
audience. The show was recorded live to a
capacity house and my segment went great. As a result of this I was invited
back for another show a few week later, then another show and so it went;
to the stage that I was regarded as a ‘regular’. The show was broadcast
in America on the ‘Nashville Network’ to almost twenty million people
twice weekly. Very soon the fan mail that came from New Zealand and America
totally eclipsed the incredible amount of fan mail in Australia. The success of my appearances on ‘That’s Country’ led to my first ‘Jade Hurley’s 20 Golden Oldens’ album -which had received double Platinum sales status in Australia – being released by Festival records in New Zealand under the title of just ‘Jade Hurley’. It would repeat this success in New Zealand after only a few weeks of being released there. A National Kiwi tour followed and this was a total sell-out.
MY ROAD MANAGER'S
"DATE" After one of the shows finished,
John Hansen (my personal manager at this time), one of the guys who worked
with us - ‘Pete’ - and I mingled with the audience having a few drinks.
‘Pete’ was pissed. In no time at all he had picked up what he thought
was the best looking woman in the place. My good mate Ray Columbus had come
to the show and we were with him. He was introducing me to a few of his
friends when he noticed ‘Pete’ with the woman. He said to me, ‘Does Pete
know that that’s not a woman but a guy?’ Well, you could have knocked
John and me over with a feather as both of us also thought it was a woman.
But, no, HE was a transvestite. ‘Pete’ was totally infatuated with the
attention he/she was paying him, with many cuddles and kisses and caresses
(in the right places) until they both just disappeared not to be seen
again that night. The next morning we were packing
our bags into our van for the trip to the airport to catch a plane back
home to Australia and down the stairs bounced ‘Pete’ with the biggest
grin on his face, even though he said he had one hell of a hangover. He
asked, ‘Did you see that bird I picked up at the club last night? Boy,
what a night. That’s the best root I’ve ever had?’ John and I looked at each other and neither of us knew what to say. We both broke up with uncontrollable laughter. ‘Pete’ looked at us for a few seconds then said, ‘What’s so funny?’ Well, this made us laugh all the more. After a few more minutes of trying to control my laughter I said, ‘Hey mate, that was a transvestite. It was a BLOKE. Not a BIRD’. Well, ‘Pete’s’ jaw nearly hit the ground and he screamed ‘BULLSHIT’. I said Ray told us that when he saw him with her last night at the club. With that he once again screamed ‘BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!’ He threw his bags in the back of the vehicle and himself onto the back seat of the van with the wildest look on his face. He never said another word to us all the way back to Australia and refused to even discuss it from that day on.
JOHNNY AND JUNE
CARTER CASH An English-born booking agent from
Nashville Tennessee named Tricia Walker was charged with booking the acts
for ‘The Carling Country Music Festival’ which was held over three shows
at the Cork Opera House in Cork, Ireland. Tricia had seen many of my performances
on the New Zealand television show ‘That’s Country’, shown twice weekly
on the Nashville Network cable television network throughout America.
She had become a real supporter. On a promotional tour of America she
helped my manager John Hansen set up a number of shows with Don Williams,
who’s biggest hit was ‘I Believe In You’. She also helped with my headlining
of an edition of the immensely popular country music/talk television show
‘Nashville Now,’ compared by big name disc jockey Ralph Emery. It was during this tour of America
that I was banned from appearing on ‘The Grand Old Opre’. The newly designed
sequined outfits I was wearing showed too much of my bare chest. This
may have offended some people from the ‘Bible belt’ Southern States. I
didn’t have any other outfits with me so I missed out. This was a pity,
as I was all keyed up to put on the performance of a lifetime and jump
all over the piano in a manner that hadn’t been seen since the early Jerry
Lee Lewis days. Not only that, I planned to do it even wilder. It was
not to be. Anyway, Johnny Cash with his wife
June Carter Cash were booked to headline the shows in Cork. Billie Jo
Spears, who had the number one hit, ‘Blanket On The Ground’, Becky Hobbs,
who was an up-and-comer and ‘bloody good sort’ in the country scene in
America, along with myself and a local Irish band, made up the shows.
John Hansen called one afternoon
and said to me, ‘How would you like to do some shows with Johnny Cash?’
I replied, ‘Are you bloody kidding?’, thinking that Johnny was coming
back to Australia for some shows in the Sydney clubs. Then he said, ‘But
there’s more’. I yelled, ‘What?’ He said, ‘The shows are in Ireland …
and you are going to be paid top dollar’. He paused for a few seconds
and said, ‘Plus there’s even more’. Again I screamed, ‘What?’ He said,
‘They are paying all expenses including airfares, accommodation and everything
and Paul (my then road manager) and I are going with you’. I couldn’t
believe it. Every Aussie singer would give their right arm to be the support
act for Johnny Cash anywhere. To be paid to go across the other side of
the world to Ireland was simply something dreams are made of. We decided before we left Australia
that after doing the shows in Cork, we would fly to London, then on to
Paris and Amsterdam for a few days of sightseeing in each place. It was
agreed that it was a long way to go for just three shows and then turn
around and come back home again. After flying for twenty four hours
with only a few brief stops before landing at Heathrow airport in London,
we continued onto cork airport where we were met by representatives from
the Carling Brewery who were sponsoring the shows and they took us to
our hotel. The next day we were taken to the
Opera House for rehearsals in a dusty room below the main stage. My backing
band was a group of local rock and roll musicians and they were great.
I still hadn’t seen let alone met Johnny Cash. Then came the following
day when we were to be transported to a sort of art gallery in the centre
of the city where a press conference was to take place. I was interested
to hear that Johnny Cash and I were the only ones to be focused on at
the conference. Armed with this news and after
learning to never let a chance go by from my mate Johnny O’Keefe years
earlier, I said to John Hansen, half flippantly to see his reaction, that
I was going to wear my full gold sequined ‘tails’ outfit to the press
conference. He said, ‘You’ve got to be bloody kidding?’ But as soon as
he said this he knew that I was serious and going to do it. To go to the
conference with my full gold sequined outfit complete with gold pants
and gold shirt and shoes was accepted and my presence dressed like this
with all of my jewellery, we hoped, was not going to be missed by the
cameras. Our car pulled up outside the building
where the press conference was to be held. John and I were amazed at the
reaction from members of the public who had gathered mainly to see Johnny
Cash who had already arrived a few minutes earlier and was inside. This
guy (me) attracted the photographers as I got out of our car dressed in
a full blown gold sequined long tailed outfit. The autograph books came out in
their dozens and it was many minutes before we were to finally get inside.
I soon learnt that my attendance in my most elaborate stage outfit wasn’t
missed by Johnny Cash himself. As soon as I entered the room where he,
June and all the journalists, some local dignitaries and television cameras
were, he and June came over to me and introduced themselves. His first
words to me were, ‘Fabulous suit. Hi, I’m Johnny Cash and this is my wife
June’. I felt really fantastic to be greeted in such a friendly manner
by one of the all time greats of country music. And yes, true to all of
years of promotion and publicity, the man was dressed in black. I was clearly and almost embarrassingly
the centre of attention with the newspaper photographers and television
cameras at the press conference. At first I found this really curious
as I had never had a hit record or appeared on television in Ireland up
until now. But the schooling from JO’K who instilled in me the, ‘have
the guts’, to pull this kind of ‘stunt’ with me wearing my gold sequined
outfit worked better than I could have ever imagined. He would have been
proud of me. I was so sorry to hear of June’s recent death following heart surgery.
THE CORK OPERA
HOUSE SHOWS The next night my gut was full
of butterflies to say the least. I was more nervous than I had been for
years before a show, and show time was only a few minutes away. Each show was a sell-out and I
was to close the first half. The local group started the show followed
by Becky Hobbs, then Billie Jo. Obviously showing my nervousness, the
guys in my band were very confident saying that I was going to ‘kill em’.
Billie Jo finished her show with a reprise of ‘Blanket on the Ground’
and the curtains closed while the stage hands moved the in-house grand
piano that I was to play to the centre of the stage and position it where
I wanted it. I gave my cue for my fanfare to
be played and then the curtains opened and I bowled out onto the stage
to a fabulous reception. Once again, the gold sequined long tail outfit
worked better than we could have ever imagined. The outfit (with me in
it) was covered so extensively at the press conference by the media that
I think most of the audience just wanted to see the outfit. All I had
to do now was perform a great show. The whole thing worked. I performed
better than I had done for years and when I got the whole audience up
on their feet whilst crossing their hands and swaying backward and forward
to ‘On the Wings of a Snow White Dove’, I thought to myself, ‘It doesn’t
get any better than this’. One of the greatest compliments
ever paid to me in my life happened during this show. After I finished
my first song, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye at one
side of the stage. It was Johnny Cash standing there watching my show.
I don’t know what it was, but his presence standing there watching me
perform seemed to make me work twice as hard and this obviously showed
as the reception from the audience was overwhelming. At the end of my
first show they screamed for more and more long after the curtains closed.
It was the same at the conclusion of each of the following two shows.
They screamed for more. Johnny watched the second and third show form
the side of the stage as well. The whole experience was such a ‘buzz’. At the Cork airport the next morning
we bumped into Johnny and June who were browsing in a shop just like we
were as we were all waiting for our plane to take off for London. I had
brought my video camera with me on the trip however for whatever reason
I didn’t film all that much. But I thought to myself very quickly that
I would get a shot of Johnny and June browsing around. I had no sooner
started videoing when he showed an interest in the camera, so I gave it
to him and he proceeded to shoot some video footage of myself. With a bit of time still to spare,
we chatted about the camera and in this few minutes it dawned in me that
he didn’t have one and had never had anything to do with one. I found
this very surprising as he was a millionaire many times over, had starred
in his own television show for many years as well as many movies, yet
this basic home video camera caught his interest and he was like a kid
with a new toy. We all got off the plane together
at Heathrow Airport in London and we shook hands and said goodbye. It
was to be a few years before I would catch up with Johnny and June again.
This was at Twin Towns Services Club at Tweed Heads. When I knocked on
his dressing room door and it opened, Johnny was lying on his back on
the floor with his feet up against a wall. He hadn’t been all that well
for quite a while and sadly, he hasn’t got much better since. He is a
great man and a great entertainer and certainly one of the genuine ‘legends’
in the world of country and popular music in the world. It was indeed an honour as well as a pleasure to spend some time with him and June and to perform with them.
LONDON We arrived in London and caught a taxi to our hotel in Kensington Road, Kensington. It was a dump. My Manager John Hansen and I complained but to no avail. We were locked into staying in the dump for a week. As well as seeing me regularly
on ‘That’s Country’ in America, Trish Walker had first seen me perform
live during one of the productions. At the time, Trish was booking most
of the American acts for the show and as fate would have it, she had organised
to come to New Zealand to see one of the shows actually in production.
It was one that I was performing on and we hit it off straight away to
the extent that she stayed while I did some shows on a tour following
the taping in Christchurch. She turned into not only a real friend but
a real fan as well and this would culminate a few years later with her
booking me for these shows with Johnny Cash in Ireland. Trish invited John, Paul, and I
to a party at her parents home in an upmarket part of London and we were
treated like a part of the family to such an extent that Trish and her
mother took it upon themselves to show us the sights of London. Firstly,
to the historic ‘Cricketers Arms Hotel’ for lunch and some fair dinkum
‘Pommie’ Shepherds Pie, which was delicious, then off to some other obligatory
tourist places including Windsor Castle, which was great. Each night we had to go back to the Kensington Hotel ‘dump’. Then thankfully out of there and off to Paris.
PARIS Arriving in Paris, it was into
yet another taxi to yet another hotel. It was an older style hotel but
this was not a dump. I said to John Hansen and Paul
Condon that as we were now in France we should find a restaurant and have
a steak au poivre or pepper steak as we call it in Australia. We were
recommended to a restaurant by the hotel desk clerk and ended up in an
up-market part of Paris where we ordered our pepper steak, after some
language difficulties, which I found un-believable in such an establishment.
We also had a couple of local beers. The bill was almost AUD150.00 or
$50.00 a head. What a rip-off. And the steak au poivre was lousy. You
get better at almost any club or pub in Australia. The frog beer was dreadful
as well. Not a good night in Paris. The next day we decided to get
a taxi to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa painting and other century’s
old masterpieces. The Louvre was only a short distance
away from our hotel. We could see the Eiffel Tower from the front door
of our hotel and the Louvre is only a short distance away from the tower.
We got into our taxi and I said to the driver, ‘The Louvre, please’. Well,
we drove around and around and even though this was the first time we
had been in the city of Paris, it became obvious after about a half and
hour that we were approaching the Arc de Triomphe for about the tenth
time. In other words we were being driven around in circles by our taxi
driver. If I hadn’t picked up that this
was the about the tenth time we had approached the Arc de Triomphe, we
could possibly still be driving around Paris to this day. Now we were
for the umpteenth time approaching the Arc again. On impulse I yelled
out at the top of my voice ‘Stop’. The driver shit himself and the taxi
screamed to a halt taking about 5000 kilometres of rubber off the tyres.
He turned and looked at me with a worried look on his face at me sitting
in the passenger seat beside him. I said, ‘The Louvre’. He looked at me
with a stupid look on his face. I repeated, ‘The Louvre’. He looked even
more stupid. I asked for a street directory. He understood that alright
and gave me the directory. It only took a minute for me to
find the Louvre in his book. I lifted up the book and pointed to the Louvre.
He said, ‘Ah … Louvre-ah’, with a stupid smirk on his face. It was such
bullshit and I told him so. He drove off and we pulled up at the front
entrance to the Louvre about two minutes later. We got out of the taxi
and I threw a few francs onto the front seat. ‘If this isn’t enough, then
call the Gendarmes (the police),’ then slammed the door as hard as I could.
The bloody thing nearly fell off the side of the taxi and he shit himself
again before planting the pedal to the floor. John and Paul stood on the
footpath staring at me as neither could believe what I had just done. Bloody frog rip-off merchant. God
only knows how many tourists he ripped-off by pulling this stunt. After our tour of the Louvre, we
walked to the Eiffel Tower and caught the lift to the very top to where
Mr Eiffel, who designed the tower, had an office which is preserved to
this day as a part of the attraction of the tower. It is a magnificent
structure. That afternoon, we walked back
to our hotel as John and Paul wouldn’t flag down a taxi in case we got
the same driver as early in the day. It was a freezing cold winter’s day
and even though I had a beautifully snug and warm three-quarter sheepskin
coat on, I was coming down with what I thought was a cold. On the stroll back we passed a
shop that had a beautiful but very brief bikini displayed on a model in
the window of an exclusive boutique. It was black with silver all over
it and was quite spectacular. Certainly you would never find something
like this in Australia. I thought it would be a nice gift to take home
to Barbara. I went inside and enquired as to the price and I nearly died
when I found out. However, I thought it was unique enough and would make
a great memory of Paris. I didn’t have enough money on me so I asked the
shopkeeper to put it aside and that I would come back the next day and
pick it up. The next day I woke and I was feeling
terrible. I thought it was the flu, but I had to go and find the shop
where the black and silver bikini was and buy it. Well, I walked and walked for hours in the freezing cold but couldn’t find the street let alone the shop. By this time I had to go back to our hotel as we were leaving that day for Amsterdam. I was now feeling so sick that I thought I wouldn’t even make it back to the hotel. I stopped and sat down in the gutter for about a half an hour, then something made me look up. Right across the street was the shop with the black and silver bikini on the model still in the window. I struggled to my feet and went across the road and into the shop and purchased it. It cost the equivalent of $250 Australian dollars but at least now I had it. I got back to our hotel just in time to leave for the airport to catch a flight to Amsterdam.
AMSTERDAM After arriving in Amsterdam, yet
another taxi took us to our hotel. By the time we arrived and booked in,
I was so sick. John Hansen decided that I should go to bed and that he
would get the hotel to immediately call a doctor. About an hour later a doctor arrived.
It was out of the question that I would go with John and Paul to see the
sights of Amsterdam. I was to spend the next three days of our visit in
bed and never got to see any more of Holland than the taxi trips to and
from the airport. I was bitterly disappointed as we rode in the taxi to
the airport to catch a plane once again to London then on to Singapore
then home to Sydney. When we arrived at Sydney airport,
Barbara took me straight to St George hospital where I was admitted with
what was diagnosed a short time later as a severe bout of Pneumonia. This
would keep me in hospital for almost two weeks. The trip to Ireland was fantastic.
Paris was the pits because this is where I first started to feel sick
with what was to turn out to be pneumonia. Then there was the bloody frog
rip-off taxi driver and the trip to Amsterdam where I didn’t see anything
apart from two taxis. Putting this all together following on from a young fellow spotted by Johnny O’Keefe in the Allawah Hotel all those years earlier to end up being support to one of the true legends of Country and Rock and Roll music like Johnny Cash; it was an incredible experience. Pneumonia and all.
THE PHENOMENAL "PRINCE OF WAILS" ... JOHNNIE RAY
The phone rang one day and it was my manager Ron Morris.
Fair dinkum, my bottom lip hit
the floor. During the 1950s, Johnnie Ray who had hits including ‘Cry,’
‘Just Walking in the Rain,’ and ‘The Little White Cloud That Cried’ and
many others, was the biggest ‘name’ in the world of entertainment. I couldn’t
care who opened or who closed the show, for me it was just a privilege
to perform on the same bill as him. His voice had such an emotional
feeling to it, that he was nicknamed by some critics as ‘The Crying Crooner’,
‘The Prince of Wails’, and ‘The Nabob of Sob’. No singer before him had
ever dared to take the microphone off its stand (singers in those days
just stood there and sang). No other singer had ever dropped to his knees
weeping whilst he sang. And no other singer would have dared to jump off
the stage and perform among the audience. Johnnie Ray was simply a phenomenon
and the first cross from the big band to the rock and roll era. Even today,
singer Tony Bennett credits him as being the true father of rock 'n' roll.
For me to be asked to do a ‘double header’ with him was just fantastic
and unbelievable. I arrived at Jupiter’s and was
shown to my dressing room. I passed one which had JOHNNIE RAY on the door.
Mine was just around the corner from this. Gee I felt good. The band arrived and I was doing
my rehearsal which included ‘Great Balls of Fire’, Running Bear’, ‘Do
What You do do Well’, and ‘Down in the Riverina’. During this I noticed that someone
had come into the auditorium, sat down half way up towards the back of
the theatre and was watching what I was doing. After a few songs my curiosity
got the better of me and I asked the stage manager who it was. He said
‘That’s Johnnie Ray’. I looked around and Johnnie had guessed what we
were talking about. He got up out of his seat and came down the side aisle
and up onto the stage. He walked over to me and held out
his hand and said ‘Hi Jade, I’m Johnnie Ray, and boy are you going to
make it hard for me singing those songs’. I couldn’t believe it! Here
was the one of the all time greatest acts in the world, a man who caused
just as much hysteria as Elvis Presley and the Beatles with his fans,
paying me such an incredible compliment. It was to be a compliment that
would be soured a few nights later in more ways than anyone would imagine. I finished my rehearsal and walked
to my dressing room. As I passed Johnnie’s he called me in and we talked
for quite a while about his prime days, how I started, and entertainment
in general. He was such a pleasant guy to converse with but I picked up
that he had an obvious problem hearing me every now and then. He wore hearing aids because he
had an accident in 1937 when he and his fellow Boy Scouts were playing
at the time and doing a blanket toss. When it was Johnnie’s turn to get
‘tossed’ he flew up into the air but completely missed the blanket coming
down and it was suspected that he hit his head on something on the ground.
Whatever he hit the result was that he lost 53 percent of his hearing. Every show was booked out and on
opening night I did my show and it went fantastic. I hurriedly showered
and changed during the interval so that I could get out into the auditorium
to see his show from start to finish. He was introduced and he walked
onto the stage singing ‘Just Walking in the Rain’ to tremendous applause
from the audience that included people from all parts of the world as
Jupiter’s attracts a lot of tourists on the Gold Coast. His voice was still so strong and
had the ‘emotional element’ that had made him famous; however he wasn’t
pitching on the note all the time which resulted in him sometimes singing
slightly out of tune. I put this down to his hearing problem but the capacity
crowd was getting more and more restless hearing this as well. The upshot
was that as his show progressed, a few people got up and left, but most
stayed and gave him I am sorry to say ‘sympathetic applause’. I felt so
sad for him but as a performer selling his songs, he could still do this
in style. The first show finished and there
was a generous but half hearted applause from the audience and then came
the next night. Once again I opened the show and
it went really great again, then after the interval Johnnie walked on
stage again with ‘Just Walking in the Rain’. Once again his out of tune
pitching was noticeable with the result that again before he had finished,
many in the crowd had left. I wondered how he felt as he would have seen
some of these people leave. Once again I really felt for him. The next night we both arrived
only minutes apart backstage and were in our respective dressing rooms
when the manager who had booked the shows came into my room and asked
if I could come around to Johnnie’s room. Johnnie’s door was open but
the manager knocked and Johnnie invited us in. I didn’t know what was
going on until the manager said straight out that for the final four shows
I would close the show by doing the second half. Johnnie was furious at
this suggestion and looked at me with a look that could kill. At the same
time I suspected that he knew what had happened during the first two shows
and realised what the score was. For the next four shows this is
what happened. Johnnie opened and I closed and thankfully no-one left
in my show. However, Johnnie was really stand offish to me for the remainder
of the shows. Where he had been really chirpy and talkative and always
had his dressing room door propped open, it was now closed at all times.
I felt so sorry for him as here he was in a country where he had enjoyed
so much success in his early years and now he was relegated to opening
for a local act. I can’t imagine what this would
be like as I have never placed much importance on who opens or closes
as to me to be part of some show is a real privilege. If I have to open,
then so be it. At the time I thought about what
JO’K would think given the same circumstances. What would he do? Would
his voice be really bad? And what would Elvis think given the same circumstances?
How would he handle it? Would he have just retired and never done another
show? I have no answer apart from the
fact that as entertainers we all grow old. Unfortunately, some of us grow
older faster than others. It shows really badly when some can’t sing constantly
in tune like Johnnie had the problem of doing. God I hope this situation
never happens to me. I really regretted that he left
the venue whilst I was performing my last show. He didn’t stay to say
‘goodbye’. It was only a short time later that I heard that he had died
a very sad man. One headline said that it was a result of ‘tears, fears,
and too many beers’. He was only sixty three years old. Looking back to these shows, it was once again a privilege to share the bill and also the stage at Jupiter’s Casino with one of the greatest singers in "SHOWBIZ" history.
"TONIGHT
AT SEAGULLS" Seagulls Rugby League Football
Club at Tweed Heads, along with Twin Towns Services Club on the border
at Coolangatta/Tweed Heads, were rated among the best of the registered
clubs in Australia Ron Morris was Entertainment and
Promotions Manager for many years at Seagulls and he booked me to perform
two shows on a Friday and Saturday night at the club after seeing me on
my first ‘Golden Oldens’ appearance on ‘The Mike Walsh Show’. In those days the entertainment
room at the club was called ‘The Zoo’ and was relatively small seating
about 400 people. My first appearance was to turn out to be a comedy of
errors as far as Ron was concerned as the club didn’t have a piano and
I arrived at Coolangatta airport from Sydney about 11am. Ron was there
to greet me. I asked what sort of piano the club had expecting him to
say a grand piano. Instead he said, ‘Bloody hell, I forgot all about a
piano. The club doesn’t have one’. I wondered to myself what the hell
I had gotten myself into with this guy. He quickly dropped me off at the
motel at Coolangatta then raced straight to the club to organise a piano
from somewhere. It took him a couple of hours to
finally find a piano in a private home just near the club. He and a few
of the staff went and loaded it into the back of a ute and took it to
the club and into ‘The Zoo’. It was about three o’clock in the afternoon
when he finally came and picked me up to take me to the club for a rehearsal
with the club band. He couldn’t contain his excitement as soon as I got
into his car. ‘I got you a great piano,’ he said. I was relieved and happy.
We got to the club and I followed him to ‘The Zoo’ and when we walked
in I looked at the stage. What was there was not a GRAND piano but the
ugliest and oldest UPRIGHT piano I had almost ever seen. Not only did
it look terrible, it was all out of tune as well. God, what was I going to do with
this mess. By now I was convinced that this guy Ron Morris was as big
a disaster as the piano that was on the stage. However, he immediately
jumped on the phone again and in about a half an hour a piano tuner turned
up. This bloke took one look at it, then looked at me and shook his head
in sympathy; he then proceeded to try to tune it. At least I could perform.
The two shows that weekend were booked out and were fantastic. Ron booked
me back immediately a few months later. The first up disaster at Seagulls
was put into the background and after doing many more shows for Ron we
developed a great friendship. Just like the first piano fiasco, if there
was any problem large or small, Ron would fix it and fix it fast. I developed
a great respect for him and him for myself that would last for many years
to come. After performing a few more shows
in the small room (the zoo) the Board of Directors decided to spend millions
of dollars on extensions to the club which would include a gigantic showroom
that would comfortably seat 1500 people. When this was finished, I performed
many shows over many years in the auditorium, which was called ‘The Stardust
Room’. This was truly a magnificent facility at a club that now had the
reputation of being one of the finest venues in Australia. So now, after being associated
with Ron and many Board Members, I came to form the view that ‘The Stardust
Room’ and associated club facilities was absolutely perfect in every way
for the production of a weekly live variety television show. The auditorium
seated 1500 people, under the stage there were many large dressing rooms,
there was an enormous lift which could transport literally anything from
the back stage entrance of the club directly onto the stage itself. It
had magnificent sound and lighting systems. The entertainment facilities were
second to none in the whole of Australia, so much so that the club attracted
some of the biggest stars that would visit Australia including Liberace,
Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdink, Bob Hope, Nana Mouskouri, Peter Allen,
Ricky Nelson, Robert Goulet, Shirley Bassey, Meatloaf, Billy Connelly,
Joe Cocker, Gladys Knight and the Pips, plus most of the top Aussie artists
among hundreds of other great performers and entertainers. After much discussion with Ron
we formed a proposal which we presented to the Management and Board of
Directors. This proposal was for a television show ‘Pilot’ called ‘Tonight
at Seagulls’. The Board was excited with the proposal and allocated a
large sum of money. This would see the on-stage facilities up-graded to
Studio standards and provide for the hiring of the Outside Broadcast recording
facilities from Channel 9 in Brisbane. Ron would act as co-producer of
the pilot with me. It was an exciting few months which culminated with
one of the greatest shows ever seen at Seagulls. I acquired proven Channel 9 production
personnel from Sydney who had worked for many years on ‘The Mike Walsh
Show’. Headlining, was Brian Phillis as Director, who was a genius at
getting the best production and live shots in a variety show of this kind.
Also on board was Ray Derrick, who produced and mixed the sound and music
for the Mike Walsh Show for so many years, and many more top line associate
technicians and crew. We flew them to the Gold Coast
for the recording of the show. A set designer was brought in and he designed
a magnificent set that looked not only great in the room but fantastic
on the screen as well. Everything was backed up by some of the best musicians
from the north coast of New South Wales, the Gold Coast and Brisbane. With myself as compare and artists
including singer Julie Anthony, a fabulous Scottish pipe Band from Brisbane,
the best singer Australia has produced but never quite made it to be a
headline act, Sylvie Paladino, Carter Edwards, Lucky Grills, Jan Adele,
Greg Anderson with his horse galloping through the audience, New Zealand
Guitarist Gray Bartlett and fully choreographed dancers. Never had there been a pilot of this magnitude ever been produced in Australia and I dare say the world. It was a fabulous show and a memorable night in any person’s language and recorded live to a capacity audience in the ‘Stardust Room’. The show sold out in a few hours of the tickets going on sale.
SHOWTIME So here we were and it was ‘SHOWTIME’.
The club board had backed the show, Channel 9 had backed the show, every
artist (apart from one) donated their time and talent to what was hoped
to be a new start family entertainment variety show, beamed out of Seagulls
‘Live’ every week. Hence the title ‘Tonight at Seagulls’. The guarantee
to each artist was that if we got the show ‘up and running’, they would
be a regular part of its future. Ron and I spent many hours over
many days designing a large promotional booklet which contained all the
details about the show. Things like, who were the stars, who were the
musicians, who were the production staff, how it was anticipated the show
would be in regular production. The front of the brochure in gold printing
said, ‘YOUR NEW LOGIE WINNING SHOW’. We then spent a small fortune of
our own money getting a couple of hundred copies printed and sent it to
every television network, newspaper, magazine, showbiz journalist, and
top rating radio personalities. A couple of days later we received a scathing
solicitor’s letter from the producers of the ‘Television Logies’ instructing
us to cease mentioning anything to do with the word ‘Logie’ and retrieve
every copy and destroy them otherwise they would sue us. With friends in the entertainment
business like this, who needs enemies? Please remember this if and when
you watch the ‘Logies’ again. God, what harm did we do apart
from getting together some of the cream of the all round and diversified
talent in Australia to endeavour to produce a show that would be telecast
specifically to highlight up and coming and newly discovered talent. Talent
that could sing, talent that could perform, talent that could act, talent
that could be funny, talent that could play an instrument. Gees, isn’t
this exactly what is needed on Australian television instead of the tired
shows that show people digging up bloody yards, painting walls, hammering
in nails, and showing you how to change a room or build something that
you will never ever build let alone use? How dull is that. Wouldn’t it
be great to discover another Graham Kennedy, Bert Newton, Don Lane, Phillip
Brady, and a few other notables? Remember Tommy Leonetti? I look back on all of this now
and I thank God for Rove McManus on the TEN Network - what a fabulous
talent. Maybe the other networks will see
that there is a place for some great talent to be showcased. Maybe they
will open their eyes as well as their budgets and tell the accountants
to go to buggery, while a good producer starts looking for the next REAL
star who will provide an on-going show to profile ‘real talent’. Through my long association with
Channel 9, I was given much assistance in ‘cutting costs’ with special
rates for the outside broadcast recording facilities. They also indicated
all along that they would be interested in contracting the end result.
This all came to a shuddering halt as Kerry Packer sold the network to
Alan Bond. The new management wasn’t interested in a show like ours that
would cost so much to produce. Likewise, with the Seven Network, Christopher
Skase had almost destroyed it. So we then went to the ABC, only to find
that the then federal government had pruned millions of dollars off the
annual budget. A dream was lost. Ron and I and
the Seagulls Board of Directors were devastated but it was left for Ron
and I to inform the loyal artists and everyone else who had given so much
of their talent, time, and effort. This was one of the hardest things
I have ever had to do. There were so many expectations with the show,
and from Ron and I as producers. The dream that we could produce
what could have been the greatest live show to highlight Australian, New
Zealand, and international talent was over. The dreams and hopes of the
majority of the acts who devoted their time and showbiz expertise were
all for nothing. But I thank each and every one of them for at least giving
it a go. This is perhaps the greatest disappointment in my career and to this day is something that I really haven’t gotten over. Check back in a while for the next few chapters | |
| Copyright 2007 Jade Hurley Official Website |