Rock stars share their favourite Molly Meldrum stories — and what parties at his house were really like
THE Molly Meldrum TV series has struck a chord with fans — now rock stars reveal their secrets about the Aussie legend and the parties at his place.
Music
Don't miss out on the headlines from Music. Followed categories will be added to My News.
ASK pretty much anyone in the Australian music scene and they’ve got a story involving Molly Meldrum.
Some of them can’t be printed here, but in the midst of Molly mania here’s a quick guide to the man in the hat and words from his famous friends.
THE NAME GAME
Ian Meldrum became Molly courtesy late and great Melbourne DJ Stan Rofe. Both men wrote columns for Go Set magazine and used to indulge in friendly rivalry in print. In 1967 Rofe plotted to get back at an insult Meldrum had written about him in his latest column. Rofe decided to refer to him by a girl’s name. He chose Mildred, but the typist wrote Molly instead. The name stuck.
HELPING KISS HOOK UP
In the Molly miniseries Meldrum is seen meeting Kiss as they arrive in Australia on their 1980 tour. That didn’t quite happen. But Meldrum had met the band in America previously and singer Paul Stanley hints that he was a great party guide to help them go, er, down under. “We knew Molly before we got to Australia,” Stanley said. “Between him and his cowboy hat he was really the ambassador for us being on Countdown before we’d ever been to Australia. When we got there he was one of our guides. Let’s just say the ride was rockin’. Since then I’ve always had a soft spot and a not so soft spot for Australian women.”
HIGH HOOKS?
The first episode of Molly had one scene showed Skyhooks herbally “hotboxing” the Countdown dressing room and frontman Shirley Strachan getting close attention from a fan. The band’s chief songwriter Greg Macainsh, although not present for the pilot episode they helped shoot for Meldrum depicted on the show, quipped that the only thing ingested at the ABC was a “cheese and salad roll from the canteen”. He added “One of the thing we did like about being there was going into the makeup department. It was rather luxurious having the ladies do our makeup instead of us having to do it in the rearview mirror of the car.”
THE REAL THING
Molly Meldrum’s production masterpiece was The Real Thing for Russell Morris, a chart topper in 1969 and still considered an Australian classic. Morris said Meldrum as a “nightmare” in the studio. “During The Real Thing he just kept saying ‘You’re not singing it right! You have to sing it differently!’ But he couldn’t tell you how he wanted it. After a while he went in and sang it how he wanted it, and he can’t sing at all so it was hilarious. I went in after and sang it like that but they’d forgotten to wipe Ian’s voice. So his vocals are still on the track under my voice in the second verse. There’s not a lot of melody in it. Another time we were recording and again he was yelling ‘No! Do it again!’ and I ended up running into the recording booth and slamming his head on the console. It could be volatile!”
AUSTRALIA’S PHIL SPECTOR?
For some stars of the Countdown era, meeting Molly Meldrum meant meeting a record producer known as Australia’s Phil Spector for his experimental methods. Steve Kilbey’s band The Church got on Countdown early on. “Being a bit of a rock and roll historian I already knew Molly had produced The Real Thing for Russell Morris, which is one of my all time favourite songs. I was already very predisposed to liking Molly. I figured anybody who could produce The Real Thing and do what he had done with that was no fool. I realised a lot of that umming and aahing and ‘Do yourself a favour’ was a bit of an act. Obviously the guy knows a lot about rock and roll. Producing The Real Thing was a mammoth thing. He synched up two recording studios, each at one end of Melbourne, using coaxial cable to synch up the machines. That was unheard of in 1969.”
FIGHT CLUB
Colleen Hewett got Meldrum’s production fingerprints on her breakthrough early ‘70s hit Day By Day. But the studio sessions were long and gruelling. “I was so frustrated with trying to work out what he was saying,” she recalled. “Who do you want me to sound like? I wasn’t an aggressive type in those days but I grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him up the wall and went “What do you f---ing mean!’ I could have punched him to a pulp. Then he went and sulked.”
PARTIES AT MOLLY’S HOUSE
There are two kinds of musicians. The ones who didn’t go to Molly’s house for his legendary parties, and then those that did but don’t remember what happened. Brian Mannix of Uncanny X-Men said the parties were good, but not *that* good. “You’d see the Australian cricket team and random people like that. Molly’s parties were not as debauched as people think but they were just good fun. The X-Men parties were debauched. And I remember Mi-Sex had a ripper of a party at the City Baths. Everyone ended up being chucked in the water, even Molly. Some bloke was there with eight grams of cocaine in his pocket and he ended up being thrown in the water, that was a big waste of money.”
GUIDING KYLIE
Kylie Minogue first encountered Molly when the music guru was written into a storyline in Neighbours. Minogue’s character Charlene wanted to be a musician. “I would have been nervous meeting Molly for the first time because he’s Molly! But perhaps he was more nervous than me because he had to act,” Kylie told Channel 7’s upcoming documentary Molly: The Real Thing. Meldrum befriended the entire Minogue family. “He has supported us and pop music through times when pop was a dirty word,” Dannii Minogue said. Meldrum was at one of Kylie’s first live shows in Melbourne, where she played a secret show as the Singing Budgies. “Michael Hutchence was in the audience, we’d just started seeing each other,” Kylie said. “Molly was in the middle of the audience just willing me to do well.”
THE HAT
The first Stetston cowboy hat was a gift from Olivia Newton-John, which Molly wore on Countdown a few times. While in Aspen, trucking magnate Lindsay Fox bought the style of first version of the Stetson he still wears to this day. “A lot of people call me The Hat,” Meldrum said in his autobiography. “When Elton sees me he always says ‘Oh, she’s still wearing that dreadful hat’. And I guess it has become as much a part of me as the name Molly.”
OUTING MOLLY
The Molly miniseries follows Meldrum through a heterosexual phase (he was engaged twice), then being bisexual before finally concentrating on gentlemen. While he’s always put any attention on music rather than his own life, he’s never lived his life in the closet like a lot of TV personalities. “Molly is not given enough credit for being the first out gay man in Australian media,” Skyhooks’ Red Symons tells Molly: The Real Thing. James Reyne of Australian Crawl added “the way he embraced it was completely open and proud. It’s brave now, but in the ‘70s? That was seriously brave.” Colleen Hewett noted “Ian was engaged a few times to lovely girls but they just didn’t work out. So what? Neither did my three marriages!”
DRY HUMPED BY ROD STEWART
Molly, Elton John and Rod Stewart have been close friends for many decades. On his Australian tour last year Rod got Meldrum on stage in Melbourne to show his affection. Later Stewart invited Meldrum to a private dinner at posh Melbourne restaurant Donovans. “We’ve been mates for a long time,” Meldrum said. “At Donovans we spun stories all night, at the end Rod and (wife) Penny (Lancaster) were getting into their car. There were all these people there. Rod was saying ‘Give me another hug and a kiss’ and he turned me around and started dry humping me.”
MIME OF OUR LIVES
While Countdown has been romanticised, many Australian rock bands had a love/hate relationship because of the show’s production restrictions which required them to mime. Midnight Oil flatly refused to go on the show unless they could perform live. When the did acquiesce the band turned up late and were not allowed to perform. Cold Chisel agreed with Jimmy Barnes singing live vocals. But the unpredictable and volatile band, who prided themselves on their live performance saved their protest against miming for the annual TV Week Countdown Awards in 1981. They were riding high off the success of their album East and the band decided to throw their weight and their instruments around, trashing the set at the end of My Turn To Cry. Barnes said the band members were “like a pack of giggling school kids” backstage as they left the awards to head to a local pub. He said the band respected Meldrum but not the edict to lip sync. “It wasn’t a feud but it was a good battle for years, from when we first started making records to when they wanted us on,” Barnes said. “We didn’t go to their after-party because we knew they would have the s---s but no matter how pissed off Molly was with us, he came and crashed our after-party. He wanted to go to a good party and he knew where to find it.”
DRUG FREE ZONE
While the Molly miniseries showed the TV host taking something that wasn’t a headache tablet before the ill-fated 100th episode of Countdown, Meldrum has always been anti-drugs in an industry where that isn’t always the case — even though he doesn’t mind a drink. “When we were recording we weren’t on the spliff or anything naughty,” Colleen Hewitt said, with Molly adding “I can guarantee I was never straight.”
STEVE KILBEY’S STUFF UP
The Church were embraced by Countdown early on. Talking to a rock magazine, frontman Steve Kilbey tried to make joke at Molly’s expense that fell flat in print. “I said some stupid sh — about him, which was supposed to be facetious. A journalist asked me ‘How come you were hosting Countdown so soon in your career’. And I said ‘Well, obviously it’s not because I’ve got any talent, it’s because Molly fancied me’. Molly took that very graciously. I rang him up and apologised. He was fine. He could have really held a grudge. Every time I meet him I walk away thinking what a cool character he is. He’s Molly Meldrum! The one and only.”
Molly airs 8.30pm tonight on Channel 7.
Aussie song that conquered the whole world
Australia has crowned a break-up anthem that conquered the world as the greatest Aussie song of the 21st century.
HR chief makes shock announcement
The fallout in the Coldplay affair scandal continues, with the female HR chief at the centre of the storm making a huge decision.