Daryl Braithwaite’s faith in Countdown is eternal and unifying. “The Bible” is how he describes it. “In the ’70s, you’d perform on Countdown on a Sunday, it would go out to all the regional areas in Australia, then you’d do a tour out there and everyone had seen it; they’d all be talking about it.”
As it happens, the former singer of ’70s pop sensation Sherbet is calling from one such place, the morning after another show in another outback town that still venerates his name. Countdown classics Summer Love, Howzat, You’ve Got the Gun and “one or two others” remain in his set to this day.
Countdown host Molly Meldrum championed artists local and international, encouraging fans to buy their records, saying “Do yourself a favour!”Credit: Courtesy of ABC TV
He’s fuzzy on details, but ABC records show that Sherbet performed Silvery Moon on the first Countdown episode of November 8, 1974. YouTube evidence shows their frontman in a fantastic candy-striped suit. (“Oh I loved that outfit!” he says). Sherbet would go on to appear on the show more times than any other act.
“There were other music TV shows, but none that served the public as well as Countdown did,” he says. Come the mid ’80s, the show’s ratings would peak at around 3 million: not bad in country of 15 million. “It sounds strange, but people really looked at it like it was the Bible. Back then, you’d go to it to get all the answers.”
To later generations, the scripture was handed down. Like Braithwaite, Katy Steele from Perth band Little Birdy will perform on Saturday night’s ABC special, Countdown 50 Years On, despite being only four years old when the last episode aired on July 19, 1987.
“Nostalgia” is the word she associates with the phenomenon. Recovery and Rage were more her era, but she knows it was Countdown that brought her favourite artist to Australian eyeballs for the first time. She’ll pay tribute to Kate Bush, in cahoots with Kate Ceberano and Kate Miller-Heidke, on the 50 Years special.
Daryl Braithwaite fronts Sherbet in front of the Countdown live audience.Credit: Courtesy of ABC TV
None who witnessed that vision of red lycra singing Wuthering Heights “out on the wily, windy moors” can ever forget it. It was one of countless revelations that seemed to stop time. The gunshots and explosions of AC/DC’s Jailbreak. The unsettling lunacy of Iggy Pop. The jaw-dropping vision of Bohemian Rhapsody. ABBA. Blondie. Er, Pussyfoot. The following school week would drag on forever until the Saturday repeat could confirm what our eyes could barely believe.
“Oh, that’s right,” Steele says. “You couldn’t just watch it again, could you? You had to wait for them to replay it.” She chuckles quietly at the quaint broadcasting technology of her parents’ time. For most of us, the VCR was unimaginable in 1978, never mind the on-demand gratification of today’s perma-streaming world.
It’s partly this endlessly streaming loop of history that keeps Countdown alive. Twenty-seven years since that last episode, it’s now been gone for twice as long as it was here.
Kate Bush with Meldrum.Credit: Courtesy of ABC TV
“We’ve been able to uncover [previously unseen] moments from all eras but particularly from the early years when Countdown was in its formative stage,” says ABC executive producer Cathie Scott. It’s well known that scores of episodes were erased by the ABC in the ’70s and early ’80s, but the archive contains around 480 of the 580 episodes, she says. Recovery of the lost hundred from other sources is ongoing.
“Countdown 50 Years On will focus on what made Countdown the cultural phenomenon of its time, a must watch institution for a generation of young Australians and a series that transformed both the local music industry and music on television,” Scott says.
What she can’t or won’t say is whether this once-vital service to culture and industry might stage a return to the national broadcaster in 2025, as per the latest cycle of rumours that buzz around music and media corridors every few years.
Inundated by global market forces like never before, Australian artists sorely miss the concentrated exposure of a single, expertly curated portal focusing the divided attentions of the nation’s youth. But given the maddening range of options now streaming, is a single, sacred source providing “all the answers” even remotely possible?
The Countdown screen, which when lifted revealed who would perform on the show.Credit: Ray Kennedy
“I’d love to think so,” says Braithwaite. “But I mean, television just doesn’t have the same appeal to that younger demographic that watched Countdown. It was a family show of course, but the teenagers were leading the way. And they obviously have ways of finding new music that are completely different now.”
Steele is more optimistic. She cites BBC2’s Later… with Jools Holland, a long-running success in the UK now with millions of viewers worldwide. Melbourne’s Amyl and the Sniffers recently performed on the show alongside Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour, the kind of exposure they couldn’t buy at home.
“That’s one of the best ways in the UK that you discover new bands,” Steele says. “Australia is crying out for that. I think we’re really missing that format. The rest of the world has it. Why don’t we? It should be a priority.”
Michael Ross from Adelaide duo Electric Fields — they’ll perform a-ha’s Take On Me for the 50 Years special — recalls the original program vividly.
Countdown was so big that tthen Prince Charles appeared on the show in 1977.Credit: Fairfax Media
“Australia’s Top of the Pops,” he says reverently. “I might be a bit too young to have been watching it but the memories of seeing it are just there somehow, whether it’s from YouTube or … it’s just a part of the furniture in my mind.”
As kitsch as some of it looks from here, the progressive nature of the furniture is a big part of its legacy. For Ross, the show’s most abiding image is of its host, Ian “Molly” Meldrum: “This incredible queer man that Australia somehow accepted into their hearts as their musical guide, curating pop for the rest of us.”
Meldrum’s skills in that regard seemed secondary at the time to the chaotic energy he brought to the show. Among Braithwaite’s fond memories is the infamous 100th episode, in which “Molly was tired and emotional” after a flight from the UK. He and John Paul Young wound up holding the broadcast together with hastily scribbled cue cards as Meldrum swung punches backstage.
But to give our curator his due, Countdown was social education by stealth for Australian teenagers of the ’70s and ’80s. Whether it was Bronski Beat calling out gay oppression with Smalltown Boy or some band called Goanna letting us know we were standing on sacred ground, there was food for serious thought beyond the bumbling, the screaming and the razzle dazzle.
“That’s what artists do, through storytelling and artistic expression,” Michael Ross says. “It’s a sharing, especially of the fringes of society and outside of the mainstream. You know, with a teaspoon of sugar and some deadly pop hooks, we can tell stories that you wouldn’t hear otherwise.”
Molly has retired from appearing on TV, “so will be enjoying [this weekend’s special] from his lounge room,” says Scott No doubt he’ll appear in flashback form as Myf Warhurst and Tony Armstrong “guide the audience through some of the unexpected and unlikely moments” of the show’s history.
Countdown 50 Years On premieres on November 16 at 7.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
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