Jeff Apter - Shirl: The Life and Times of a Legendary Larrikin

Other books by the author

A Little Bird Told Me (with Kasey Chambers)

A Pure Drop: The life of Jeff Buckley

Fortunate Son: The unlikely rise of Keith Urban

Together Alone: The story of the Finn brothers

A New Tomorrow: The Silverchair story

Chasing the Dragon: The Life and Death of Marc Hunter

www.jeffapter.com.au

Published in 2012 by Hardie Grant Books

Hardie Grant Books (Australia)

Ground Floor, Building 1

658 Church Street

Richmond, Victoria 3121

www.hardiegrant.com.au

Hardie Grant Books (UK)

Dudley House, North Suite

3435 Southampton Street

London WC2E 7HF

www.hardiegrant.co.uk

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The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

Copyright Jeff Apter

Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available from the

National Library of Australia.

Shirl: The life of legendary larrikin Graeme Shirley Strachan

eISBN 9781742738468

Cover design by Nada Backovic Design

Cover image courtesy of Graeme Webber

To the memory of a good man

Foreword

Graeme Shirley Strachan ridgy-didge Aussie bloke and possessor of a powerful, perfectly pitched set of tonsils that could project an esoteric lyric out past the last row in a cavernous tin shed through even the crappiest of PA systems. The guy I knew wasnt too interested in watching TV, listening to the radio or seeing every group that came to town. But he was dead keen on being on the stage, in camera shot and close up to the microphone. Knew how to cut a perfect circle in a piece of marine ply and probably could teach you to do the same. Rambunctious, tireless, extroverted, driven, laidback, perfectionist, envelope pusher, good chap, bad boy, straight shooter, jester, team player, yachtsman, frontman.

This book tells the story of a man whose life was an undeniably integral part of my own. From our first tentative band rehearsals on the outskirts of Melbourne to platinum awards, headlining concert tours and life beyond the greasepaint and the par-can lights, we stamped an indelible mark on each others psyche. Id like to think we both were better off for the exchange, or at least provided some entertainment for those who got to witness the discourse, both publicly and privately.

Forty years on, the early 70s seemed like a time when most things were possibleat least to those of us who had escaped conscription and possible death in the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a time when a bloke could actually live by the credo that if you wanted something done, you did it yourself. Young bucks like us worked with our hands on cars and guitars, chopped wood in the winter and made bungalows to live in, sans building permits, in our parentsor othersbackyards. Shirl was no exception.

One of my distinctive primal memories of him was witnessing him loading equipment for one of my early bands into his Holden panel van and driving an hour and a half to the Somers Yacht, lugging it up the stairs, and helping set the lot up. He stayed till the end of the night, packed the gear up and drove the lot back to Melbourne. It dawned on me some time afterwards that he had an undisclosed interest in being in our ramshackle groupbut he wasnt going to tell us that. Rather, he demonstrated his singing ability by jamming with us at various parties, and his pitch in and get the job done work ethic pretty soon had us wanting to work with him.

Where I tended to be an observer of the nuances and peccadilloes of our small social milieu up at Eltham and, if activities warranted, the suburbs closer to the inner city, Shirl was the participant. In amongst it all, stirring the pot. In the context of a rock and roll band, Id watch and write and hed sing and draw on his actual experiences to flesh out the emotional backbone of the vocals.

The painter Georgia OKeeffe said, Where I was born and where and how I have lived are unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest. Shirl would have concurred. He wanted people to know about what he was interested in, be it a good song, a perfectly dovetailed joint or a well-maintained boat ready for the open sea. Hey, check this out, mate. A great communicator, yet private about the more mundane aspects of his life. As open and expansive as he was, he instinctively knew when to draw the shades and return to the cave in order to emerge re-energised.

I have so many enduring memories of stuff Shirl made (literally) happen. Like constructing a large plywood box that he would hack his way out of during the opening number of a Skyhooks gig at Festival Hall, the roar of the chainsaw and the smell of two-stroke fumes augmenting the guitars and dry ice. This carpentry-meets-music theme continued with the one-time pressganging of Skyhooks for a working bee at his dads factory to assemble some chipboard speaker cabinets. I think Red did a bit of painting and made the tea. Another one is of him filling a penis-shaped polystyrene stage prop with talcum powder and bean-bag balls, then test-firing it with pyrotechnic charges to ensure an on-cue climax every night for Symons magnum opus Smut during the 1975 Ego Is Not a DirtyWord concerts. And his arranging the Kenworth prime mover from our 1990 tour to drive into the Channel 9 studio as a backdrop to the bands performance on Hey Hey Its Saturday. (Shirl was no slouch when it came to cross-promotion, and the bigger the rig the better.) Or calling some mates down on the surf coast for a wave update, then relaying the report on radio from the top of Mount Buller, via a mobile phone the size of a house brick, as if he was live from Bells. Multi-tasking was a specialty of his.

Kevin Borich told me that Shirl had instructed him to clear a landing pad out the back of his house. This was so that Shirl could arrive by chopper for a cup of tea and a natter. Sadly, this didnt eventuate. Readers will find that popping in for a cuppa was a constant trait of his. Of course, growing up in the Foreword BI (Before Internet) era, being in the same room while holding a conversation with someone was quite the norm.

During the recording of Living in the 70s in 1974, Skyhooks producer Ross Wilson once attempted to motivate us motley bunch of musicians with the threat that we had better get this take right, because you have to live with the result for the rest of your lives. We twenty-somethings chortled at the notion of anything being forever, let alone a pop song. I think Shirl saw things differently and pitched in as always, so to speak. Time proved Ross correct, and whenever I hear a Skyhooks song on the radio its the voice that glues the whole box and dice together.

You cant go to school to learn how to take a crowd of five thousand people from mild interest to single-minded fervour. It takes heading out on the road to places unknown and doing the work required. Shirl made the journey and did the work. Reading this unique chronicle of a man I spent a great chunk of my life with, Im constantly reminded of the boundless energy, infectious humour and uncensored interest that he brought to the table in whatever we did in our far-too-short time together.

Read on.