Glenn, lead singer of the original Little River Band, who has recorded next door to the Beatles, played the same stage as the Rolling St`ones, and hung out with artist Brett Whiteley, also happens to be a boat spotter. He likes to watch the cruise ships coming and going on Sydney Harbour.

“I don’t need the binoculars anymore because I can recognise them all, 300 came in last year,” he says.

In between boats, last year he found time to write his memoirs, Now, Where Was I?, published in June. Anyone looking for a kiss-and-tell-all yarn will be disappointed. Glenn had read enough sex, drugs & rock ‘n’ roll biogs to know he didn’t want to go down that path.

“I don’t need to brag about my sexual conquests, it’s just sowing your wild oats,” he says. “It’s the old rule what goes on the road stays on the road.”

Instead he tells an equally compelling story in his own voice, with the dry (he says dour) humour inherited from his dad, a Yorkshireman who in 1954, when Glenn was 10, brought his family to Australia on the 10-Pound Pom scheme.

In his new home of Adelaide, young Glenn was thunderstruck by the beginnings of rock ‘n’ roll and its new god Elvis, painting his pushbike pink and covering it with the names of his favourite songs. He formed his first band, the Twilights, in 1962, and in 1967 found himself back in England, recording at Abbey Road, where the Beatles were making Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the studio next door. Ten years and another band later (Axiom), Little River Band was born in 1975.

And so began a wild ride. Writing hits such as Help is On Its Way, Lonesome Loser, Cool Change and Reminiscing, LRB was the first Australian band to make it in the US, gaining fans all over the world and going on to make an album with Sir George Martin, who produced Sgt. Pepper’s.

Unlike many rock biogs, however, Glenn’s book is not a hagiography.

“We did bloody well as a band, selling over 30 million units, but we were fairly well down the totem pole of great bands,” he writes in the first chapter.

Sitting at his kitchen table in Double Bay, he expands. “I’ve worked with top people — the Dooby Brothers, Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, a band called Little Feet who were the best band I’ve ever seen and heard, The Band. In that scheme of things if you put them on a plateau, I think we’re one rung behind them.”

At first sight, the Shorrocks’ apartment doesn’t show many signs of Glenn’s career. Most of the walls hold an impressive collection of Australian art, including works by Gary Shead and Martin Sharp. Through a mutual friend, the Shorrocks also befriended Brett Whiteley, who liked to play LRB while he was painting.

“George Martin and Brett Whitely were the two most impressive intellects I got to know,” Glenn says, and it seems there are few people in the music world he hasn’t met, from Kate Bush to Billy Joel to Joni Mitchell (an idol of his who he snubbed when he met her because he was so nervous).

In the sitting room at Double Bay is a baby grand Glenn says he plays occasionally. The room itself is extraordinary — baronial, as Jo says — with original wood panelling and ornate carved fireplace. It was a large part of the reason they bought the place, Jo says. Formerly owned by Alan Bond, the two-storey sandstone Gothic Revival house, now divided into apartments, was built in the 1860s, part of the original Point Piper estate.

The Shorrocks have been together 42 years and married in 1980, the same year they moved from Melbourne to Sydney, where they settled in Birchgrove, in another heritage harbourside property. They were accompanying a househunting friend when they first saw the Double Bay property.

“We drove her here,” Glenn says. “She walked in and said ‘wow!’. We walked in and said ‘yes wow!’. And one thing led to another.”

“I resisted the eastern suburbs, I felt I was more Balmain,” Jo says.

“Yeah, big lefty!” interjects Glenn.

Jo carries on, “But since we’ve lived here I get why everyone loves this area …”

“That went out the window!” cackles Glenn

“It’s so cosmopolitan here,” Jo says. “You’ve got the beach and I walk to Rose Bay and the shops …”

Glenn: “No more red flag now!”

But without Jo, there would have been no memoir — she typed all Glenn’s handwritten notes. “He didn’t pay me — he didn’t even give me a typing credit!”

She was also the unofficial archivist, digging out old programs and tour schedules. Apart from his lead singer duties in bands, Glenn has also appeared in musicals, on TV, in tribute shows, as awards host, MC and solo artist, with his latest album, Rise Again, released in 2016.

“At one stage,” Jo recalls, “Glenn came out and said, ‘What happened between 1994 and 1997?’ I said ‘gosh, I don’t know’, then looked in these boxes I’d kept. I said ‘oh look, you did Grease the Arena Spectacular!”

Subtitled My career with the Twilights, Axiom & Little River Band and back again, the book begins with the difficult story of how the original members of LRB lost the rights to that name. The group, which never officially broke up, is still touring in the US, run by “last man standing” Stephen Housden, who joined the band in 1981. Though Glenn and other founding members still perform some of the songs, they are legally not allowed to use the Little River Band name or its platypus logo.

In 2004, when LRB was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, the original band members reunited on the night, but had to apply for a special licence to perform one song, Help is On Its Way, as Little River Band.

“I’m proud of LRB and what we achieved but I have a lot of emotions about my years in the band — happiness, sadness, disappointment, anger — and I would gladly leave it all in the past if LRB would leave me alone. There’s always someone out there who wants to revive the conflict or bankroll a new tour but does anyone really care anymore?” Glenn writes in the book.

He was sacked from LRB in 1982, replaced by John Farnham.

“I was deemed to be a bit too out there,” he says now. “I wanted to expand the band’s repertoire and be a bit more show-bizzy and daring.”

The band’s other two song writers saw it differently, he says. “It’s just chemistry.”

He thought about writing a memoir for more than 10 years before finally knuckling down to it last year, whipping through it in six months, but it wasn’t a particularly cathartic experience.

“It didn’t help in that way. I’m over it really, but the ghost of LRB haunts me all the time. I sing the songs all the time — I’m not complaining about that at all because a lot of it’s my material — but the whole name loss, the revolving door of LRB’s line-up … 30 people played in it.”

He still doesn’t really understand how it happened. “I’m not a businessman, Wheatley’s the guy, he signed all the contracts.”

Glenn Wheatley, who managed the band, remains a great friend despite all the ups and downs. He and his wife have just arrived at the Shorrocks’ place with their dog, Danko, named after Rick Danko, late bass player of The Band. They have driven up from Melbourne to house-sit and look after the Shorrocks’ dog, Bella, while they go on holiday.

When an original 1970s poster of LRB is produced for signing, showing the original members on a beach proudly clad head to toe in ’70s denim, Wheatley fondly recalls it was his first sponsorship deal. In the lift on the way up to talk to Levis executives, he didn’t know how much to ask for — when he got out on Level 10, he decided to ask for $10,000. When the execs immediately agreed, he wished the meeting had been on the 20th floor.

It’s only in the Shorrocks’ small study, with a desk each for him and her, that Glenn’s career is on show. Awards line the mantel piece, and the walls are hung with gold records, original Elvis and Beatles posters and Glenn’s 1991 Aria Hall of Fame induction. Framed side-by-side is a personal letter from Sir George Martin and a signed photograph of the legendary producer with LRB when they recorded an album together on the Caribbean island of Montserrat in 1981.

Glenn’s father Harry only ever saw him perform twice and was not impressed — Glenn does an impression of his dad’s Yorkshire accent: “It were too loud, you don’t have to have it that loud.”

His mother Joyce, who lives in Adelaide, cheered on her son’s musical success. “Mum was thrilled. She still loves Mick Jagger, she’s 98.”

At the age of 74, watching the boats go by in Double Bay, Glenn acknowledges he has “made it, relatively”.

“But a few pages are left unturned, had I stayed on with LRB,” he says. He also wonders if, after being ousted from the band, he should have stayed in the US and continued as a solo artist instead of returning to Australia.

“It really didn’t cross my mind, I just liked this country too much. I liked America as well but it’s the best and worst of everything there.”

While writing his own book, Glenn was reading British actor Peter Ustinov’s autobiography.

“I thought Christ, mine is so banal compared to his. Every other sentence I’d have to look up the words he used, he’s such an erudite writer and funny.”

Glenn’s handsome hardback book also contains a lot of humour, interspersed with nearly 100 photos. It’s not just the story of one man’s life, but a musical history, in particular charting Australia’s early golden age of rock.

If Glenn’s adolescence hadn’t coincided with the birth of rock ’n’ roll, he’s not sure what would have become of him. “I’d probably be a clown or knockabout comedian or an actor. Or in prison, I might have been a good conman.”

But the cards of life fell in the right place and he picked them up and played them, he says.

“I’ve never planned anything, never had too much ambition as such. Things have come my way.”

You can say that again.

Now, Where Was I? is published by New Holland, $35