Chapter 33: Summertime Tours

Country Tours (Part One)

December 9th – 23rd, 1977

We spent the morning going over the ‘Sister Angela’ scenario with Lori; she wrote down all of the lines that we could recall, our descriptions of what happened overnight, even my rather sacrilegious thoughts on nun-fucking. While Megan and I would be out of town on the tour, Tracy and Lori would flesh out the story, even starting to write it.

Around lunchtime some of the others returned home; Mary Beth was pleased to see us. She showed us the final schedule for the first country tour, we would leave on the morning of December 14, and over the next ten days, perform in a number of country towns, ending up in Albury, before returning home on Christmas eve.

“There are some new songs that some of the guys had written, too,” she told me. “Tonight, you can start learning them; we don’t have a lot of time to get things right.”

She showed me the proposed set list; there would be two eighty minute sets; with a twenty minute break between them. She described the tour bus that we would be using; it would be pretty cramped inside; what with eight sets of double bunks, plus a small clothes storage area and a toilet compartment in the back half. The front half had some of the original bus seats in it, for us to relax in while we were traveling on the road. Our cases with our clothes would be in the normal luggage storage areas underneath the bus. Just as well we all got on well with each other, because we weren’t going to have much personal space or privacy.

Later that afternoon, we looked over the new songs that had been written; Phil, Paul, Mandy and Rachel had combined their talents; not only did we have words for our ‘Blues Noodling’ music – it was now ‘Cold Hearted Woman Blues’, but there were three other new songs they had written. They all needed some polishing up; but we could get them ‘performance ready’ before we left on tour, and refine them based on audience reaction.

Saturday was the Federal Election; a number of us were up early, to set up our stands at some of the polling places, handing out how to vote forms for the ALP. It was a long, and ultimately unsatisfying day; while Les McMahon (our local member) easily won his seat; it was still a loss for Labor. While they managed to win back some seats from the Liberals, they still didn’t have a majority in either house.

Lori and I spent Sunday sailing; it was the forth heat of the Quartet Bowl; we had a great sail up the river to the Juno Point mark, and battled with several of the other boats on the run back to the clubhouse. We ended up coming second; not being able to reel in the winner; a new boat from a couple who had just joined the club. Their Top Hat, ‘Night on the Town’, managed to stay ahead of us, despite us closing in on the spinnaker run down Pittwater. All in all, it was a great day; the weather was glorious, and we were in a good mood as we returned to the house.

Monday and Tuesday were spent on final rehearsals, getting the new songs ‘performance ready’, and Wednesday morning we helped load up the main truck and the bus for the tour, getting on the highway to Lithgow before lunchtime. We stopped for lunch at Katoomba; then continued on to our destination. We parked behind the Lithgow Workers Club; at least they had a decent looking motel attached to the club, so we would have the use of the facilities there to change, shower and sleep.

Mary Beth and Peter went to work out where we were to park to unload; once the details were sorted out, it didn’t take us long to unload the equipment, and get it all set up on the stage. We had time for a full sound check before we had dinner; at least we had some showeres and a motel room to get ready in. Megan, Allison, Jillian and I shared one of the larger rooms; there was lots of joking around (and playing with each other) while the four of us were getting changed, showered and dressed.

The performance wasn’t too bad, actually; it wasn’t one of our best live shows, but I think the audience still enjoyed it. The hall wasn’t completely full; our estimate was maybe a bit under a thousand people. I did manage to fluff the cue for the third verse of ‘Cold Hearted Woman’; I guess because I was still accustomed to it being an instrumental, I completely forgot after the middle instrumental break that I had to sing the third verse ... at least I managed to pick it up on the second line, and I doubt if anyone in the audience would have even noticed.

After the show finished, it was back to our rooms; we would load up the truck and bus first thing in the morning, as we weren’t going all that far, just the short distance up the highway to Bathurst. When we were in our rooms, the other three teased me about missing the cue for the third verse; Allison suggested that I needed some coaching in good rhythm so I could get it right. I shared one of the beds with Megan, while Jillian and Allison were in the other. At least for this night, we had decent, comfortable beds; I had tried one of the bunks on the bus; the mattress wasn’t too hard; but there wasn’t enough head room in the bunk to sit up, and they were just wide enough for one person. I wasn’t sure how well I would be able to sleep with Megan, or anyone else in the bunk.

We slept well; despite being able to hear the rather distracting sounds of Allison and Jillian enjoying themselves in their bed. After a large breakfast in the club dining room, we took everything apart, loaded up the truck and bus, and headed down the highway to Bathurst. We would be playing in the main auditorium at the Mitchell College of Advanced Education – what was originally the Bathurst Teachers’ College. Due to the time of year, most of the students would be on their summer vacation, but Mary Beth said that initial ticket sales were very strong.

While we were traveling the relatively short distance to Bathurst, we tried rehearsing some of the new songs; Phil and I had our acoustic guitars in the bus with us, while Paul had his trumpet. That allowed us to at least work on some harmonies and vocal backings; we decided that we would do more work once we were set up later in the day, and had the full range of instruments at our disposal. We found our way to the campus, and the main auditorium without problems; once Peter and Mary Beth had contacted the college administration to give us access to the building, we started unloading our equipment.

With all of the space in the truck at our disposal, not only did we have room for all of our equipment, sound and PA gear, but a good range of carts, dollies, ladders and tools to make moving and setting things up easier. We had everything unloaded and on the stage by lunchtime; Mary Beth had arranged for one of the cafeterias in town to provide a light lunch for us; a range of sandwiches, meat pies, sausage rolls and cold drinks. We had finished our lunch break, and were just starting on the sound check, when Peter introduced us to a middle aged woman who was the ‘Director of Campus Life’ for the college.

“It’s a pity that you are here during the summer vacation,” she said. “Most of the students have gone home for the summer, or are at jobs.”

“Well, the only problem with that,” Mary Beth said, “is that when the students here are in session, most of us are studying, too.”

She told us that there were a number of students still here, doing classes over the summer; and there had been considerable interest from people in the city, and the surrounding areas. She apologised for not being able to make rooms available in one of the dormitories for us; but they used the summer break to get in and undertake major maintenance and refurbishment tasks.

Once everything was set up, it was time for a sound and lighting check. After some adjustments; Murph was satisfied with the lighting; we were able to have the PA and lighting control desk set out about ten metres from the front of the stage. Mary Beth made a few adjustments to the microphones; for this tour, we had a larger mixing desk than the one we had used for live gigs previously, that allowed her to have additional mikes on the two drum kits. For the sound check, Phil suggested we do ‘Cold Hearted Woman’, to give me more practice with the vocals.

We played it through once; and Mary Beth made a few changes to the amp and equalizer settings. She reminded Rachel to keep her mouth closer to her voice mike when she was singing; told Andrew to turn up the gain on his amp a notch, and had us run through the song again. This time she seemed happier; I really couldn’t notice much difference through the foldback speakers, but she was out in the centre of the room and able hear the sound properly through the main PA system.

We decided to play through the complete first set from the top; last night’s performance was a bit rough; maybe because it was our first time playing that set, or we hadn’t done sufficient rehearsing, but whatever the reason, we had the rest of the afternoon to polish it up. This time we sounded much better, our timing was spot on; I didn’t miss my cues (!), and everyone was pretty pleased with it all. Time to go and have a shower – it had been pretty warm inside the auditorium; they hadn’t been running the air conditioning system. After that, it was time to eat and then back to the stage, to make a final check that everything was right.

The auditorium was rapidly filling up; with just under half an hour to go before the scheduled starting time, there appeared to be over a thousand people waiting inside, with more queued up outside still to come in. By the time we started, I would have estimated the audience at one and a half thousand, maybe a little more. The first set went down pretty well; the audience seemed to enjoy the music, and I didn’t stuff up ‘Cold Hearted Woman’. The second set was even better; that’s where we had the blues numbers and the Stones covers; they were always a big hit, particularly when Allison came out in her tight skirt and I pulled it off, revealing her tight leather shorts. There was the usual brief silence when I pulled her skirt off, and when people saw the shorts on underneath, they all cheered.

“That really turns me on when you do that to me,” Allison whispered in my ear. “I can feel my pussy getting really wet!”

I wasn’t able to respond, since we were going right into ‘Brown Sugar’, but when I had a chance, I told her we might have time for something later in the night. I wasn’t quite sure how both of us would squeeze into the tiny bunk, but it might be fun trying.

We finished the set; and played two encores; the audience called out for more, until we told them we didn’t know any more stuff, and we had to start packing up. It didn’t take us long to load everything into the truck, then it was off to the bus. Allison had already asked Megan if I could sleep in her bunk for the night; at least with the arrangement of the sleeping area in the bus we could close the centre curtains to give some privacy to the two bunks that had been allocated to Allison and Jillian.

At least Allison had the bunk on the top; there was a reasonable amount of head room above it, not like the lower bunks, which had just enough room for a person to lie on the bunk. Once we were undressed, we climbed up the ladder to her bunk, and tried to make ourselves comfortable.

“Just remember, I’m below you both,” Jillian said.

“You like being on the bottom, as I recall,” Allison said to her. “So don’t complain!”

It took some effort to find a position where we were both comfortable and neither risking falling out of the bunk. Eventually we decided that I would lie on my back, and Allison would get on top of me. She couldn’t sit up completely as the luggage racks were in the way of her head, but if she leant forward, we could make it work.

Allison was kneeling astride my waist; leaning forward so that her face was close to mine.

“We will have to be extra quiet,” she whispered. “We don’t want to disturb the rest of the bus.”

“I can stay quiet,” I said, “but can you?”

“Of course,” she said, as she guided my prick into her cunt, and slid down onto my shaft.

What we hadn’t taken into account was the squeaking of the bunk as she rode me. After ten seconds or so, it was getting very noisy, the sounds were very suspicious.

“Damn, that’s not going to work!” Allison said. “What if I lie on my side against the wall, and you get in behind me?”

We shifted around on the bunk, I scooched up close behind her, and guided my cock between her thighs. She reached down over her back and pressed my shaft up against her pussy; she wriggled my shaft around, letting my knob spread her labia apart. I could feel the hot wetness at the entrance to her cunt, and with a gentle push, I slid inside her.

“Your cunt feel so lovely and wet; you are tight around my cock,” I whispered in her ear. “I love fucking you, Allison.”

“And I fucking love you, Will,” she said, turning my words to her around.

We slowly made love; in this new position the bunk made hardly a sound; although I was sure that Jillian, just lying below us, knew exactly what we were up to. Allison was able to remain silent, just moaning very softly as she came. She shuddered again as I spurted inside her; I held her close to me, and still coupled, we fell asleep. We repeated the process in the middle of the night, and again just before everyone else woke up in the morning.

After breakfast, it was on the road for the eighty kilometres to Cowra; I had arranged to go around to my Grandmother’s cottage in the afternoon – she wouldn’t be coming to see us perform, but I wanted to take the chance to see her. My cousins and their girlfriends would be coming to the show; and I had arranged for them to get complimentary tickets.

South of Bathurst, where the highway climbed up Fitzgerald’s Mount, we had to pull over to stop at the top of the hill. The truck had overheated on the steep climb; and we decided to wait there to let the engine cool down, before refilling the radiator. There was an area to pull off the highway at the top of the hill; we parked both vehicles under some broad trees; it was a good time to stretch our legs and have a drink. Once the truck had cooled down, and the radiator filled with cold water, we were on our way again. Passing through Blayney, Carcoar, Mandurama, and Lyndhurst, we pulled into the carpark behind the Cowra Ex-Services club in time to for a late morning tea. Again, Peter and Mary Beth went inside the club to speak to their management; they returned after a few minutes, one of the staff showed us where we could park next to the loading dock.

By lunchtime we had the equipment set up on the stage; after a quick meal from the club snack bar, we did the lighting and sound check. With everything ready for the evening’s performance, I decided to visit my grandmother’s place; Megan came with me. We walked the short distance; I noticed parked out the front was my uncle’s car – being Friday, they had come into town from their farm to do their weekly shopping. While my Grandmother knew I was living with Lori; my mother hadn’t told her – or any others of my relatives – about the arrangement with Megan; that would be a little too much for my very traditional grandmother to cope with.

We knocked on the door, and I heard my grandmother call out from inside ‘come in’. They were all sitting at the dining table having afternoon tea; I introduced Megan to them, and we were invited to join them at the table. They were quite interested to hear the details about our country tour; my aunt and uncle apologised for not coming to the show tonight, but they said it really wasn’t their style of music. I held Megan’s hand while we sat at the table; not making a big deal about it, but not hiding it, either. When it was time for us to head back to the club, we made our goodbyes, and walked back.

“Your grandmother is very sweet,” Megan said.

“Yeah, but very traditional,” I replied. “My mother thought she would have to give her CPR when she told her that Lori and I were moving in together, back last year. If she really knew everything about my life, it might be too much for her to handle!”

“That’s like my grandmother, too,” she said. “No sense in causing them more upset than is necessary. What they don’t know can’t hurt them.”

When we got back to the club, it was time to get ready for the evening’s performance. We did another sound check, had dinner, and then got showered and dressed. Before it started, I met my cousins and their friends at the club entrance; they were looking forward to seeing us play. I told them I would catch up after the gig; and I could get the others to sign any records or posters if they wanted.

The show went well; again, we had a full house. Probably being a Friday night, there were lots of people in town and at the club. After the show, we packed the truck, and slept in the bus; that night I was with Megan.

The next week was much the same; driving to the next town after breakfast, setting up in the local venue; either the RSL club, or the Workers Club, or Bowling Club. The only exception was at Wagga, we performed at the Riverina College of Advanced Education; this was much like the night at Bathurst; except accommodation was available in the dormitories. It was a great change, sleeping in a proper bed, with access to a decent bathroom.

By the time the last performance of the tour was approaching at Albury, I was getting sick and tired of the drudgery of the road trip. It was starting to affect all of us; the cramped living quarters, no real privacy, the constant grind of travel, setting up, playing, pulling down. The shows all went well; I had initially thought that we wouldn’t have big crowds, maybe a few hundred people at the most, considering we were playing in small country towns, but each place was packed out; there were never less than a thousand at each show. After the show at Cowra, Mary Beth had to contact Fifa to get more copies of records and other merchandise couriered overnight for her to collect at Wagga; sales were so strong.

The other problem I had was I was really missing Lori. This was the longest that we had been apart since July of last year; and even before that, we would generally see each other every day. Things actually came to a head on the morning as we were leaving Hay; Jillian said something to me – it was so inconsequential that I don’t remember what it was – but I somehow took offence at it, and rather than ignore it, I snapped back at her. Things escalated from there; she ended up running off to her bunk in tears. Both Allison and Megan told me how inconsiderate and unfeeling I had been, and ordered me to go to Jillian and apologise for my behaviour. That, of course, didn’t go down well with me; and I told both of them off, making for a very uncomfortable morning’s travel.

Fortunately, by lunchtime I had calmed down sufficiently to realize I had been an unreasonable dickhead, and I apologised to all three of them.

“You’re missing her, aren’t you?” Megan said.

When I told her that she was right, that I was really missing having Lori around, she said she was feeling the same, and also missing Tracy. Jillian accepted my apology, on one condition.

“Tonight, after the gig, you will sleep with me, in my bunk,” she said. “You’ve slept almost every night with Megan, except for that one night with Allison. I’m beginning to think that you are ignoring me, that you don’t want to sleep with me anymore.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea, us sleeping together. I’m not ignoring you, it’s just that these stupid bunks are not designed for two people,” I said. “Maybe I could convince Megan to swap bunks for the night, so we have an upper bunk, and we don’t bash our heads on the underside of the bunk above us.”

That night, after our Deniliquin gig, Jillian and I shared a top bunk. We had no problems finding suitable positions, since she was smaller than Allison and Megan. We found her being on top of me worked the best, but we successfully tried many different positions over the course of the night. The morning started with a very nice sixty-nine; nothing like a hot pre-breakfast meal.

“Happy birthday, too,” Jillian said to me, after she had swallowed a mouthful of my come. “I would have got a present for you, but I haven’t had a chance to buy anything.”

“You don’t need to get me anything.”

“Would you like a nice, hot, wet cunt to fuck?” she asked. “Let me get you hard again, and she’s all yours.”

Jillian moved down to my groin, and sucked my cock back to life; then straddled my waist, guided me into her, and started fucking me. She was particular good at that, when she was on top and riding me. She had this combination of muscle contractions and hip movements, combined with moving up and down, that seemed to be extra stimulating. Despite having recently come when she was sucking my cock, my second orgasm of the morning was even more powerful.

“Happy birthday, lover,” she said smiling, once I had filled her cunt with my come.

“Well, that was a great present,” I said. “And you’ve given me an idea of what I can get for your next birthday, too.”

“Mmm, I would love that as a birthday present,” she replied. “Now, I suppose we need to get ready for the day’s travel.

After breakfast, it was on the road to our last destination for this tour, Albury. As we were approaching Albury, Phil started to strum some chords on his guitar. I recognised the opening riff of ‘Long Way to the Top’. At the right point, I started to sing:

The others joined in on the chorus:

“I never really appreciated those words until now,” Paul said.

“And we’ve still got next week on the South coast, and the northern tour in January,” Megan said. “How are we going to cope with it all?”

“What would make it easier is if we didn’t have to sleep every night in this bus,” I said. “The nights where we got to sleep in proper rooms made the next day so much easier.”

“We can see if Mary Beth can organize something for the next leg,” Phil said. “Although I doubt we could get hotel accommodation on the second half of that tour, coming down the North Coast; January is the busiest time of the year for them, everything will be booked out now, or cost an arm and a leg.”

After we had unloaded at the venue, I spoke to Mary Beth about the possibility of having hotel type accommodation for the northern leg of the tour. She said that while she couldn’t guarantee anything, she would see what could be done.

“At least there’s just tonight left before we’re back home,” she said. “As soon as we’ve got the stuff loaded after the gig, we’ll hit the highway back to Sydney, so we will be home around lunchtime tomorrow.”

Since this was to be the last gig for this part of the tour, we wanted to make it particularly good; after we had finished the sound check, we rehearsed a slight change to the opening set, where we would lead off with ‘Good Times’ and ‘I’ll Make You Happy’. Those would normally set the stage for a pretty huge performance, and get the audience rocking. To keep the overall show in the time limit, we would reduce our break between sets by five minutes. We still had to work out our set for the New Year’s Eve concert; we had been allocated an hour. Mary Beth had the latest details; there would be four bands; opening would be ‘Dragon, followed by a new band that had just moved up from Melbourne, ‘Cold Chisel’.

“Have you heard them, Will?” Phil asked me. “They’re pretty hot; their lead singer is terrific; even if he’s half pissed most of the time.”

After the opening two groups we would play, and ‘AC/DC’ to finish off just before midnight. It promised to be a pretty big event; the first time we had played an outdoor venue; it would be interesting to see how they organized the PA and switching groups on stage.

Just as we had hoped, the change to the opening set worked; we were only half into the first song before most of the large audience were up on their feet. The vibe continued right through that set, and when we finished the second set, they almost bought the house down with their clapping and cheering. We had to do three encores; the extra encore was the opening two Easybeats numbers. When we finally finished, we started packing everything into the truck; and we were on the road back towards Sydney just before midnight.

We stopped at Goulburn for breakfast at the Paragon around eight; it was good to get out of the cramped bunks and stretch our muscles. The food was excellent; it reminded me of when Lori, Megan and I stopped there on our way to the concerts we had done in Canberra the year before. After breakfast, it was back on the road for the last leg to Sydney. We had played ten gigs, to probably twelve thousand people or more, sold over two hundred copies of the album, and despite the effort of the travel, it had been a pretty successful tour. Now to unload everything, and see what had happened while we had been away.

Christmas, Races and Country Tours (Part Two)

December 24th – 31st, 1977

The first thing I did when I walked in the door was to embrace Lori, and kiss her. It was a long, long kiss; we held each other tight.

“God, I missed you,” Lori said, when we broke apart.

“I missed you too,” I replied. “I don’t know how I’ll get through the next few weeks without you.”

We sat down on the sofa in the living room, and we told each other about everything that had transpired while we had been apart. Lori talked about working on the new book with Tracy and preparing for the Hobart race. She wouldn’t be sailing on ‘Polaris’ this year, although her father would be; rather the group she had worked with on the America’s Cup training had recommended her to another yacht owner, Sid Fischer, who was pretty much a legend in the Australian sailing circle. She would be sailing on his Frers 47, ‘Ragamuffin’, filling her usual ocean racing position in ‘the pit’. She was pretty excited about that; not only did the boat have a good chance of winning, but she was sailing with some very experienced sailors.

“Sid is amazing,” she said. “He’s done so much, lots of Hobart races, plus Admiral’s cups and all that. But he’s not arrogant, he’ll ask me questions, like ‘what do you think about the jib trim’, or ‘do you think the wind is better across there’, and it’s not to test me, but he actually wants and values my opinions.”

She was very excited about the upcoming race, so much that she forgot to tell me about her University results until I asked her. Her comment was ‘okay, I guess’, and she showed me the results letter. ‘Okay’ was an understatement; all of her results were a High Distinction or Distinction, with only one Credit. She also handed me the letter with my results, I opened it, and read through them. I was pretty happy, I passed every subject, even Electromagnetism (which was a ‘Pass Conceded’, acceptable for the degree, since I wouldn’t taking any more Physics subjects). Even the two pure maths subjects got pass results, the same as the General Studies subjects. The three computer science subjects were all distinctions and high distinctions, so all up, I was pretty happy.

“Murray Allen called as well,’ she said, “asking when you would be able to call in to enrol in the subjects for next year. I said most likely not until just before the Australia Day long weekend, so when you get back from the final leg of the tour, you will have to go across and see him. Now, do we need to help unload the truck?”

Once everything was unloaded from the bus and the truck, I took a long, hot shower. Halfway through, Lori came in, and offered to help ‘scrub my back’ ... all I can say is that it wasn’t my back that she paid attention to. Megan came into the shower as well, I decided I was clean enough, and left the shower to her and Lori. The three of us spent the rest of the afternoon in bed, making love and catching up on the time together we had missed.

Around dinner time, we went downstairs; as we were preparing dinner, Tracy arrived. She would be spending Christmas day with us (and all of the families) at the Winters’ place, then coming on the boat to watch the start of the Hobart race. She and Megan embraced; it looked as if they had missed each other as much as Lori and I had missed each other.

After dinner, the four of us, plus Jillian and Allison sat in the lounge room, talked about the next few months. Despite the university vacation lasting until the beginning of March, things were going to be rather busy. There were still the two legs of the country tour; Wollongong and Nowra next week after the start of the Hobart race, the New Year’s Eve concert in Victoria Park, and then the extended tour around the northern part of the state, which would end just before Australia Day.