Ego not a dirty word for Skyhooks star

GRAEME "Shirley" Strachan, frontman of the successful 1970s Australian rock group Skyhooks, reminded me of a young Mickey Rooney.

Skyhooks

GRAEME "Shirley" Strachan, frontman of the successful 1970s Australian rock group Skyhooks, reminded me of a young Mickey Rooney.

He had the same can-do energy and could surely inspire any gang to put on a good show. Strachan also used cuteness to get his own way, ever ready to flash an open-sandwich smile and twinkle those boyish eyes to advantage. Behind the cheeky charm was a surprisingly sharp ambition.

But, as revealed in Jeff Apter's Shirl, Strachan's Melbourne upbringing during the early years of television ensured that local star Graham Kennedy was his role model. The resourceful lad who would one day become "Shirl the Curl" was five when Kennedy's In Melbourne Tonight debuted in 1957. Apparently, he was smitten.

"He always said he wanted to be like Graham Kennedy -- he was his hero. And he was quick-witted," Strachan's mother, Joyce, tells Apter.

Strachan, who died in a helicopter crash in 2001, aged 49, could certainly dish out one-liners with the best of them and, like Kennedy, his showbiz persona was an amplified version of himself. Unlike Kennedy, Strachan was comfortable in his own skin. He genuinely liked people and they liked him in return, a quality that was key to his success as an entertainer. Former bandmate Red Symons maintains that "Shirley lacked the hatred that Kennedy had".

Apter has written at least 15 celebrity biographies in the past 20 years, works he prefers to describe as studies. Quite a few previous subjects have been unavailable for participation and, as in this case, he has built portraits based on published interviews, cultural context and reminiscences from colleagues and friends.

Skyhooks songwriter Greg Macainsh has written a touching foreword to Shirl and the other members of the band offer insights and memories. Music industry figures, people from Strachan's later career in TV and radio, and the surfing gang he assembled after relocating to Queensland in the 90s, all contribute to a picture of a good bloke fondly remembered.

A dissenting voice comes from singer Ross Wilson, publisher of Skyhooks' songs and producer of their first three albums. Wilson admired Strachan's voice and skills as a frontman, but says: "Shirl had a side that I didn't like and that was that he could find someone's weakness and start picking the scab. He became the alpha dog; he knew how to push people's buttons."

Strachan and his three younger sisters grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Mount Waverley when it was mostly open country. They roamed around a close-knit neighbourhood. Their father, Ron, was a builder and it was on one of his sites that Strachan qualified as a carpenter. Ron sparked his son's lifelong love of water by introducing him to sailing as a teenager.

Strachan always liked big boys' toys and with success came a succession of increasingly flashy boats. After a slow sail across Port Phillip Bay on one of them, an unimpressed Symons felt compelled to remark: "Shirl, there have to be cheaper and easier ways to pick up girls." In fact, attracting women was never a problem for Strachan, a noted enthusiast for easy sex.

What lifts Shirl above some of Apter's earlier efforts is the co-operation and generosity of the Strachan family. It's an input that keeps the journey of a larger-than-life character grounded in personal terms and it makes it all the more distressing to discover they first heard of his death from the TV news.

One downside of Apter's inside run is that in sympathetically honouring the trust of his sources, Shirl becomes something of a tear-jerker. The grief is understandable but in the flow of the book it tends to wipe away the earlier joy of a life well lived, one in which Strachan did pretty much whatever he liked. As his father, still hale in his 80s, says: "The big thing was that Graeme had a great life. He did more in [his 49] years than we've done in all our years." And at least he went out doing something he loved.

Shirl: The Life of Legendary Larrikin Graeme `Shirley' Strachan
By Jeff Apter
Hardie Grant, 240pp, $29.95

Alistair Jones is a former editor of Rolling Stone Australia.