Chapter 38: Third Year Ends

Hordern Pavilion

October, 1978

Because our combined concert in Melbourne with AC/DC had been such a huge hit, Alberts was working on a similar gig here in Sydney. They had settled on using the Hordern Pavilion out at the showground; this one would have us playing together for all of the sets. The dates were set for three consecutive nights near the end of the month, which gave us a few weeks to work together with the other guys. We decided for the next couple of weeks we would all get together at Crystal; there was plenty of room on the stage for all of us.

One Tuesday evening early in October we were all up in the studio; I was doing some reading for my Computer Networking class; others were studying, while Paul, Phil and Bruce were working on a new song. There was a knock on the door at the top of the stairs, and we heard Alonzo call out in his deep voice.

“I was hoping all of you would be here,” he said, as he and Ros came into the room. “We’ve got an announcement that we want to share with all of you. Yesterday, I asked Ros to marry me, and she accepted!”

The girls all screamed with delight, and we rushed over to see them. Ros showed off her engagement ring, we all kissed her, and slapped Alonzo on the back to congratulate them. We pumped them for all the details, like when, where, and other information.

“We’re having it at St Mary’s church, just on the other side of the railway line; Saturday January 13th, at 10:00 a.m.,” he said, “and I want to talk with Alex, to see if we can use Crystal for the reception. Now, one other thing, would y’all be willing to provide the music at the reception?”

“It would be an honour,” Phil said. “Consider it our gift to you; closer to the date we can talk about what music you’d like us to play.”

“Great, thanks for that. Now I have one more favour to ask; I’m flying my mother, sister and brother over for the wedding; they’ll be here for about a week. Is there a chance of there being some rooms here for them to stay in?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Mary Beth said. “January, that’s in the middle of the summer holidays, some people could well be out of town; we can work out the arrangements closer to the date. I’m sure several of us can show them around Sydney, too, make sure they enjoy their visit.”

That pretty much put an end to study for the rest of the evening; we peppered Alonzo and Ros with questions about who would be in the wedding party, where they planned to go for their honeymoon, how many people would be there, even them having the ceremony in a catholic church.

“That was something Ros wanted,” Alonzo said. “Mainly to keep her mother happy, but I’ve converted to Catholicism. I can tell you, those services are very different from my memories of the Missionary Baptist church I went to as a kid. But that will keep everyone happy.”

It also turned out that because Ros’s father had died quite a few years ago, Paddy Murphy would be ‘giving her away’, since he was a good friend of her family. Michelle Jones would be doing most of the coordination and organization for them; including the travel arrangements for Alonzo’s family.

“The big question though,” Bruce said, “is who is organizing your buck’s night?”

“And you hen’s night, Ros,” Allison added.

“Well, since I’ve asked Patrick to be my best man, he’ll probably get with you to organize something. Nothing too outrageous, please, my kid brother will be coming along!”

“I’m sure we can come up with something tasteful,” I said. “Maybe on the Thursday night before the wedding, that gives you all Friday to recover from your big night!”

As well as Patrick being Alonzo’s best man, his younger brother would be a groomsman. Ros had asked Wendy to be her principal bridesmaid, and Lori would be the other bridesmaid.

Rehearsals for the combined gig at the Hordern Pavilion continued, in between university, assignments, reading, and our regular gigs around Sydney. We decided to split the songs we would play into three groups; AC/DC songs, our own songs, and a third group of rock, blues and soul numbers that we all thought would be good to do together. When we added everything up, we had over four hours of playing! Clearly we would have to refine the set lists somewhat. We eventually came up with three forty minute sets, so with a fifteen minute break between sets, that would be a two and half hour performance; and leaving time for a decent encore or two, that would fill the three hours for the overall gig.

It took some changes to how both groups played; we had to adapt to each other’s styles of playing; reworking the AC/DC songs to include backing vocals and keyboards, plus working out who would take various vocal and guitar leads, but we all had a lot of fun working on the songs. Eventually we reached the stage where we felt that we had what would amount to a damn good show; all we needed to do was to work with Mary Beth and Murph to make sure the sound and lighting would be of a similar high standard.

There had been plenty of ads promoting the concert; Double-Jay were even proposing to broadcast one of the shows live. We were slotted in between some pretty big local and international acts there; Tina Turner, 10cc and Jethro Tull were playing in September, Lou Reed at the end of October, Fleetwood Mac in mid-November, before the Angels, Skyhooks, Ol’ 55, Rose Tattoo and the Kevin Boritch Express in December. The Saturday before we were scheduled to play we went around to check out the venue; the guys from AC/DC had played here before, and told us what it was like.

“It’s not like playing at a big pub,” Bon said, “you get people here who want to listen to the music, not just here to get pissed and start fights.”

“So, nothing like the Antler then?” I said.

We were impressed with it as a venue; while we wouldn’t have a large a crowd as we had at the Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne, by the time we included people standing in the middle, and the seats up each side, it looked like it could hold maybe ten thousand people – people there to listen to us, and not get blind drunk and fight, as Bon said.

By the time of the actual first concert, we felt pretty good about our sets; we had rehearsed together several times at Crystal over the previous weekends. Despite the stage being as large as the one at Crystal, once we were all on it, along with all of our equipment, it felt small and cramped; but there was sufficient room to move. According to Mary Beth, all three nights had been sold out; as we waited backstage for the start time, we watched as people started to fill the hall.

We started right on time; the opening numbers were ‘Mean Woman Blues’, ‘Treat Her Right’, and ‘Midnight Hour’, the same as we started the final set in Melbourne. With all the lights on us, it was difficult to see the crowd reaction, but we could certainly hear it. Once we started on some of the AC/DC songs, they almost raised the roof off the arena. We continued through all of the planned sets, then our encore. We decided to play a second encore; since the crowd were still yelling and cheering; and finally we could go backstage to rest. We all decided playing a full concert together was far better than just the single combined set that we did in Melbourne.

The next two nights were just as good; when we had finished the series of concerts we all decided that we really had to do that again soon, probably the earliest we could fit it in would be the New Year’s Eve concert in Victoria Park.

“Add that to the planning calendar, Mary Beth,” Bruce said to her.

A few months earlier, Mary Beth had somehow acquired a large whiteboard which she had put up on the wall of the studio, right next to where the stairs from the garage came up. She had marked on the board the outline of several blank months as a calendar, and she would regularly update that with events and appointments for all of us. Alonzo and Ros’s wedding was already marked for the second week in January, along with Christmas and New Year’s events, the Sydney to Hobart race, and other things that we already had booked. George and Fifa had proposed a more limited summer concert tour for us; mainly Sydney, Wollongong, Canberra, Gosford and Newcastle; but that was yet to be confirmed. We also had to spend some time working on our next album; George had tentatively reserved time in the recording studio for early February. We had to pull our collective fingers out and work on some new songs for that.

By the time classes had finished for the semester, and we were hard at work studying for the exams the money came through for the combined Hordern gigs; Mary Beth gave us all our cheques. I was impressed with just how much we made for those three nights; combined with money from the albums and our regular gigs, it was proving to be a very rewarding year, music wise.

“Two number one singles, some successful albums, plus all the concerts, it’s gone really well,” I said to Lori. “I’ve been able to sock most of that money away, I haven’t had much cause to spend all that much.”

“You might want to think about getting yourself a new car,” she said. “The Freeway’s starting to show its age. Remember, at some stage you’ll want to buy a house, too. We don’t know how long the groups success will continue; at least you’re smart enough to take advantage of it while you can.”

“I guess you’re right, the car, I mean, not a house just yet,” I replied. “Not sure what sort of car I want to get; another station wagon, mid-sized, like what I’ve got now.”

Playing in the Park

November, 1978

Early in November, Lori announced what was to be her most audacious plan for outdoor, public sex; she wanted us to have sex somewhere outside in Hyde Park, near the Archibald fountain, during the middle of the day. I wasn’t sure how we could do it and not get caught, but she explained how we would have several of the others around us to make a screen, plus Garry and Megan could be nearby, busking by playing their guitars to distract people’s attention from what we were doing.

“If you sit down on the grass, and lean right back, I can sit on top of you. If we wear our overcoats, then that will cover most of the ‘action’. Let’s go upstairs and practice the positions, to make sure we can quickly get into the right position. I think if I sit with my back to you, then it won’t look too obvious,” she said.

Even after practicing the moves in our bedroom, then over the road in the little park, I was still unconvinced. Sure, Lori could straddle my waist and lower herself down onto me; and by quickly opening the front of my overcoat at my crotch, assuming I wasn’t wearing any shorts or underwear, my prick would be accessible. She would have to flick up the back of her overcoat, and if she was wearing a short skirt without panties, provided she had the position right, she could just slide onto my cock.

“We don’t have to fuck for all that long,” she said. “Just long enough for someone to get a few quick photos, just to prove we actually did it.”

We decided to try it on the first Monday of the study break; we would all meet near the fountain in Hyde Park. We chose an area that backed onto some trees and bushes; that way we would not have to worry about people approaching from that direction. Garry and Megan set up where they were going to play, about 15 metres away from the back of the cleared area; then Murph, Ros, Wendy, Mandy, Jillian and Allison moved to form the ‘screen’ around where Lori and I would be sitting on the grass. There weren’t all that many other people around this part of the park; they weren’t all that close to where we were lying on the grass. When we were ready; Garry and Megan started playing and singing; a few people stood around them to listen to the music.

I sat on the grass, not all that far from the shrubs at the back of the area, and leant back and supported myself with my arms. I had unbuttoned my overcoat to give Lori access to my cock; all I had on underneath the overcoat was a tee shirt. Lori moved back so she was standing astride of my waist, and looked down at me, smiling.

“Are you ready to fuck?” she whispered. “I hope your cock is nice and hard; I’m already very wet, just thinking about what we are about to do!”

She squatted down, and just before she sat down on my lap she flicked the back of her overcoat up. I reached down to open my overcoat, and held my erect cock up as she slid down, and I entered her wet cunt. She was very hot inside; and she started slowly riding up and down. Ros moved around so that she was in front of us, she knelt down and started taking some photos. Lori stopped moving up and down, and instead concentrated on rocking back and forward and massaging my cock with her interior muscles.

We had been fucking, fairly discretely I thought, when Murph turned around, and pointed to some people maybe 20 metres away from us, who were talking to two policemen.

“You’ve been made!” he whispered. “Time to piss off, we’ll cover for you!”

Lori jumped up, straightening her overcoat, while I buttoned up the bottom of my overcoat. We headed quickly through the shrubs behind us, and walked to the St James station entrance on Elizabeth Street. Once we were inside the station, we started to run towards the platforms; and just as we got to the platform, there was a train about to leave that would take us back to Erskineville. We got inside, just as the doors were closing, and found a seat.

“That was such a fucking turn on!” Lori whispered in my ear. “God, I’m so incredibly wet and horny. I was worried we wouldn’t get to the station ahead of the cops, but the others must have steered the cops in another direction.”

“Yeah, we’ll have to check with them once everyone gets home,” I replied. “Your cunt was so incredibly wet when you slid onto my cock!”

“God, I can feel the wetness between my legs. As soon as we get home and inside, I want you to fuck me, right on the living room floor! Then you can take me to bed, and fuck me again, and again, and again!”

I don’t think I had seen Lori that horny for quite a while; and I had to admit, what we did was a huge turn on. It was different from the previous times we had engaged in sex in public; prior to this, we had found relatively isolated places where there was no one else around. This time, we were completely in public and we could see lots of other people; the only things hiding our fucking from general view were our overcoats and the screen that the others provided. As soon as the train reached Erskineville, we walked as fast as we could back to the house. The others were going to wait for at least thirty minutes at the park before they made their way home, so we had plenty of time for a quick, uninterrupted fuck.

Once we were inside the front door, Lori closed it behind us, and she quickly removed her clothes. I took off my overcoat and tee shirt, and I pushed her down to the floor, roughly spreading her legs wide open.

“Yeah! Fuck me, fuck me really hard!” she demanded.

I plunged my cock into her; I could feel her wet lips spread open as my knob pushed into her sopping cunt. She cried out loud with pleasure as I rammed all the way home, right to the top of her cunt. I raised my upper body, pressing down on her shoulders as I pumped in and out of her. Lori was moaning as I fucked her; with each thrust into her, she would cry out “yeah, fuck me!” and similar words of encouragement.

After a minute or so of frantic fucking, she groaned loudly and gripped my arms, jerking her body up and down. Her orgasm was so powerful, so wild that I was almost thrown off her.

“Don’t stop, keep fucking me!” she cried out.

I kept pumping in and out, forcing my prick deep into her sopping cunt. Lori was moaning continuously now, pleading for me to fuck her harder, to make her come, and to spurt inside her. I was starting to get tired; I wouldn’t be able to keep this pace up for much longer, and I was just about to suggest we change positions when Lori cried out loudly, and gripped my arms tightly.

“OH, FUCK! YEAH!“ she cried.

She bucked her hips up against me, and pulled me down hard against her chest. She managed to roll us over, so that she was now on top of me; she sat up, and started riding up and down on my cock, while rubbing her clit with one hand. I could close my eyes, and concentrate on the sensations that her cunt was generating in my prick, and before long, I was on the brink of my own orgasm. I groaned loudly, and arched my back, thrusting up hard into her as I started spurting. When I finished coming, Lori lay down along my body; we were both breathing hard, and covered in perspiration. That was a very exhausting fuck.

When we had recovered; Lori rolled off me, and we helped each other up.

“Maybe we should go up to our bedroom,” she suggested. “The others should be home soon, and we probably don’t want to be here on the floor like this!”

We headed up the stairs to our bedroom, opened the curtains to the French doors, and got into bed. We had been in bed for maybe fifteen minutes when Megan came into the room; took off her clothes and slid into bed next to me.

“That was so exciting, seeing you two there,” she said. “Even though I really couldn’t see much from where I was, I KNEW what you two were doing. I was so turned on, my panties were soaked! So, were you waiting for me to join you before you finished it off?”

“No, we barely got inside before we threw our clothes off, and then Will fucked me, hard and fast, on the living room floor. We were both so turned on, we couldn’t wait long enough to get upstairs. But, since you are here in bed with us, are you interested in joining us for the next round?”

“Oh, yes, please! I’m wet enough for Will to slide right into me, unless you would like to taste and see how wet I am, Lori?” Megan suggested. “We could have a sixty-nine, Lori. But that leaves Will by himself.”

“I’ve had my fuck with Will, at least for the moment. You can do him, Megan,” Lori said.

I rolled over on top of Megan, and slid into her. As I slowly made love to her, Lori moved over to start sucking her breasts, then told me to change positions, so she could straddle Megan’s face while I fucked her. Eventually, all three of us had come, and we took a shower, and went downstairs to where the others were.

“That was so outrageous,” Mandy said. “I can’t believe you actually had the guts to carry that off!”

“Well, you managed to keep the cops away from us,” I said.

“That was so funny when they came over,” Murph said. “One of them asked if we had seen two people wearing light coloured overcoats, because there had been a complaint they were engaged in ‘lewd activities’. I said that I really hadn’t noticed them, as I was watching and listening to the music.”

“I told them I had seen the two of them,” Ros said. “I said that I had assumed they were two homeless people, since they looked pretty dirty, and smelled like they hadn’t washed in quite a while.”

“I said that I could also smell dope, you know marijuana, around them, and they started calling out to Garry and Megan insults, like ‘why can’t you play proper music’,” Wendy said. “I told them to fuck off, as some of us wanted to hear the music, and I told the cops they got up and headed across towards Queens Square. The cops thanked us for the information, then headed in the opposite direction from where the two of you had gone.”

“I’ll get the photos done tomorrow,” Ros said. “I took a couple of close ups, we will see how they turn out. But that was so hot watching you two; I’m going to get back to the University, and see if I can drag Alonzo away from grading papers!”

We all agreed that not only had it been a successful stunt, but very arousing for everyone involved. The consensus was that it would be unlikely for anyone to top that, at least in terms of being ‘in public’, without getting arrested.

Exams, Albums and Summertime

December, 1978 – January 1979

With our latest ‘public sex’ escapade behind us, it was time to knuckle down and put in some serious study. I concentrated on the Applied Maths subjects; since there wasn’t a final exam for Computer Networking, and I felt I was pretty much on top of Computer Systems Engineering. The general studies Economics exam shouldn’t be all that difficult, besides, all I needed was a pass in that subject.

By the time exam week started, I felt pretty confident. That confidence wasn’t shattered during any of the exams; I felt that the concentrated study had paid off. Now it was just a case of waiting until the results would come out in a few weeks’ time. We could focus on events over the summer. Lori would be sailing to Hobart again, on the same boat as last year; but with a new name – ‘Margaret Rintoul II’.

“I thought it was bad luck to rename a boat?” I asked Lori.

“Normally it is, but there was a formal ‘Renaming Ceremony’ the other month, you have to appease Poseidon and the gods of the winds. I believed it involved spilling copious amounts of champagne and rum, and removing everything with the old name on it,” she replied. “I don’t think they used one of the very old boat naming ceremonies, though. The modern approach of christening a ship by smashing a bottle of champagne over the bow is a variant of an ancient Greek tradition, where they would spill either the blood or urine of virgins over the bow to appease the Gods, and protect the sailors.”

“Spilling the blood of virgins, that might be frowned upon these days,” I said.

“Not too many virgins around sailing clubs, either,” Megan said. “It’s probably safer to pee on the boat rather than use blood!”

“I’d do it,” Jillian said. “Pee on it, not have my blood spilled!”

“The only problem with that, Jillian,” Allison said, “is you’re not a virgin!”

“But you’ve still got the box your virginity came in!” I said.

“Groan! That’s an old joke, Will Morris,” Jillian said. “Although you can come in my box anytime!”

After everyone had finished their exams, we got together in the studio and looked at the calendar through to the end of February. Tracy had returned from Melbourne, and wouldn’t be back filming until the start of February, so with the exception of the week between Christmas and New Year when Lori was doing the Sydney to Hobart race, we would all be here. With our regular Friday and Saturday night gigs at Crystal, along with a number of gigs around Sydney, Newcastle and the Central coast, we would be rather busy.

Several of us suggested how we should try to get days where we could all get up to Maitland bay, just to swim and lie in the sun, to make sure we didn’t burn ourselves out. We all recalled how hectic the previous summer was; the long, hot road trips, no time to rest or unwind, and how that led to several blow-ups between us. We had to work on the songs for our next album, which was tentatively scheduled for recording in February. We kicked around some ideas for a possible album ‘theme’; we wanted to move away from the ‘teenage romantic angst’ that had been the style of some of our earlier singles.

“It would be nice to be a little more hard-hitting,” Phil said. “Maybe we can look at songs with more of a social message?”

“We could compete with ‘Midnight Oil’ for the rock group with a social conscience?” Mandy said.

“It’s not a competition,” Paul said. “All of us have at least one social issue that we care about; let’s try to express that in our music.”

Later that morning, we were still sitting around the studio. I still wasn’t completely happy with some of the music for ‘Fast Woman on a Slow Moving Train’, Megan, Paul, Phil and I were working on it. Allison called out to us, she was sitting on one of the sofas reading this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald.

“Did you hear about this story?” she asked. “Some young teenage girl, a student at some fancy private school around Mosman, killed herself over the weekend, because she had been bullied by the other girls in her school. Apparently, she had come out to one of her so-called ‘friends’ as a lesbian, and the gossip spread around her classes, and most of the other students bullied and teased her. So sad!”

“Didn’t the school, or the teachers do anything about it?” I said. “That’s pretty bad, if the school administration allows things to get that out of hand, where someone actually commits suicide.”

“According to the girl’s mother – they don’t mention her name, for privacy reasons; neither have they mentioned the school, maybe because they don’t want any lawsuits,” Allison continued.

“If it’s a private girls’ school around Mosman; there aren’t that many there,” Lori said. “I guess it’s probably Queenwood, down at Balmoral Beach.”

“I think your right, Lori,” Allison said. “According to the girl’s mother, the school refused to take any action, and even threatened to have the girl expelled, for ‘lewd and depraved conduct’. That wouldn’t surprise me; I know a few girls who attended that school, while it’s not affiliated with any specific church denomination, like SCEGGS, they are all pretty much conservative Christians. I reckon Katey Jackson would fit in well there, Will, if you get what I mean.”

“That’s still pretty poor of the school, I guess being a private school, there’s not much the girl’s parents can do about it all now,” I said.

“Maybe there’s a theme for one of the songs on our next album,” Mandy said. “The bullying of people who are ‘different’, who don’t follow the social norms.”

“That sounds like a good start to the theme for the album; does anyone else have suggestions for other songs?” Mary Beth said.

“What about protesting about the release of the names of people arrested back in June, at that Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras?” I suggested. “The police behaved quite badly, bashing a lot of the marchers, and releasing the personal details of many of the people arrested.”

“The destruction of the environment?” Megan suggested.

“Crazy political leaders pushing the world towards nuclear war,” Jillian added.

“I think we’re making a good start,” Phil said. “All we have to do is write the songs!”

“We’ve already had one song line that, ‘Erskineville Road’,” Andrew said. “That managed to piss off the establishment in Queensland, but, fuck ‘em, I reckon. Someone has to speak up about injustices, and if we don’t, that means we are condoning them.”

“What about something for workers’ rights? Employers ripping their employees off,” Murph suggested.

“I seem to recall there was an old Pete Seegar song about workers being ripping off their bosses,” Bruce said. “Let me look through some of my old records, I’ll see what I can find.”

“I’ve got a suggestions, but it’s probably a pretty controversial one, so I’ll let you all decided if we go ahead with it,” Rachel said. “It’s a rewriting of the Australia Day story, from an Aboriginal perspective, called ‘Invasion Day’. A couple of the teachers at school wrote a poem, a year or two back, and I could ask them if we could put that to music.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“Yeah, but we will get a lot of push back from the more conservative elements in society,” Rachel said. “They’ll say it’s ‘Unaustralian’, or ‘insulting to the history of our nation’, all that stuff.”

“All the more reason to go with it, then,” I said. “What do you reckon, Mary Beth, we could even give them the writing credits?”

“We would have to, since it was something they had written,” she said. “We don’t want to be accuse of ripping anyone off, not given the theme of the album.”

It appeared that we now had a theme for the next album; all we had to do was come up with some songs. Several of the others gathered in little groups to start writing; meanwhile Bruce and I flicked through some of his old records, and found a old folk album, ‘The Weavers at Carnegie Hall’. We listened to it, and I was blown away by music and the performance. The music, the harmonies, were all brilliant. The third track, ‘Pay Me My Money Down’, was the one Bruce had in mind, and I thought it would be ideal for the album, all about Negro stevedores working on the docks in Georgia in the US South. I felt that we could adapt that folk arrangement to suit our full band.

Later in the day, Lori, Allison and Mandy came to me with their first draft of the lyrics to the song inspired by the suicide of the alleged lesbian schoolgirl. They had a title, ‘Sandy Couldn’t Take Anymore’; not that anyone knew what the girl’s name was, but ‘Sandy’ seemed to fit the lyrics. The words were pretty good, very powerful and hard hitting. It was just the sort of song that I was thinking about moving to, some songs with a social message.

“What if we called the album ‘Sandy Couldn’t Take Anymore, and other songs of injustice’? I said.

“I like it,” Allison said. “I guess that means ‘Sandy’ would be released as a single?”

“Let’s see what other songs we come up with,” Phil said.

Over the next three weeks in the lead up to Christmas we spent time working on the new songs and heading up to Maitland Bay to lie in the sun and swim. During that period my exam results arrived; I was pretty pleased with them; a High Distinction for Computer Networking; Distinctions for my other two computer science subjects, credits for my Applied Maths subjects and a credit for Economics. All in all, a pretty good result.