The Way We Were: Rock ‘n’ roll fistfights of Brisbane

WHEN a musician was asked “Is it true you’re a drug addict?”, the question kicked off a furious fortnight of fistfights and fracas that ended with our PM telling the band to never return.

Members of British band 'Small Faces' (l-r) Steve Marriott, Kenney Jones, Ronnie Lane and Ian McLagan.

TWO words, the second of which was “off”.

That reply to the first question at the first press conference of 1968’s The Big Show tour of Australia pretty well set the scene.

The Big Show was a mod’s dream team, comprising The Who and the Small Faces, whose keyboard player Ian McLagan had just been busted for marijuana possession.

“Mr McLagan ... is it true that you’re a drug addict?” was the question that kicked off a furious fortnight involving fistfights, a fracas with cabin crew and finally a telegram from Prime Minister John Gorton bidding them never to return.

Relations with the media were so bad, Who guitarist Pete Townshend punched a reporter who’d asked for his opinion about the devaluation of the pound back home.

Brisbane, by contrast, brimmed with bonhomie.

“During one of the airport’s craziest press conferences, the groups clowned and improvised songs and drank Queensland beer,” The Courier-Mail wrote.

“(Support act) Paul Jones, a one-time student at Jesus College, Oxford, sat on the floor and quietly discussed the world’s problems with reporters.”

When it came time for the two Festival Hall concerts headlined by the “long-haired pop group”, the crowd “sat mildly placid throughout”.

Later, say unconfirmed reports, veteran off-road driver and Who drummer Keith Moon parked a car in the lobby of what’s now the Royal on the Park Hotel.

Alas, Brisbane has not been such a bright spot for other acts.

Eight months after The Big Show, things didn’t go so well for The Monkees.

The made-for-TV pop group by this stage had become quite bolshie, and their Brisbane presser was dominated by outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War.

Goaded by TV reporter Keith Sharpe, from his first question: “When do you think you might break up and try something like music?”, pint-sized Davy Jones eventually poured a glass of water over his head.

Sharpe replied in kind. “Nobody does that to Keith Sharpe and gets away with it,” he told reporters.

The Stranglers, too, turned the tables on their attackers, with Jean-Jacques Burnel famously donging local identity V2 with his bass guitar after being gobbed on at the highbrow punk band’s first Queens Hotel gig in 1979.

The return show a few nights later was just as memorable.

“I watched a beer glass sail through the air from the back of the room to connect with singer-guitarist Hugh Cornwell just as he stepped up to the microphone to start singing,” recalled music writer Noel Mengel.

“Cornwell shrugged it off and the band kept playing at full-tilt as blood poured across his face, before finishing the night by trashing their gear.

“In print it sounds like great theatre. In the flesh, it was a dangerous place to be, in the audience or on the stage.”

Blondie didn’t even get on stage the first time around, with the 1977 Festival Hall no-show by singer Debbie Harry blamed on too many cherries.

It was not widely believed.

Four young’uns were arrested after they took to the stage following the announcement.

Whitney Houston at Brisbane Entertainment Centre.

One, now in his 50s, this week recalled the thrill of seeing the Telegraph poster: “Rock riot: four charged” as he was being driven home by unimpressed parents.

Billy Connolly’s 1976 Brisbane debut was a disaster, with the crowd not appreciating the Big Yin’s bawdy badinage.

There were boos, a walk-off and even a bit of biffo.

“In Brisbane, one guy tried to belt me in the jaw but he made the mistake of presuming my chin came to the end of my beard,” he recalled.

Saddest of the Brisbane debacles was the rambling 2010 Boondall show that confirmed increasing reports that a “breathless and exhausted” Whitney Houston had a problem.

It was her final tour.

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