Springsteen, Bowie, Richard Thompson & The EasyBeats all have Friday on their minds!

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Damn that alarm! Always too early. Every day. Every day.
 
Funny how I know the alarm is bound to ring yet somehow it’s always a surprise.
 
Another day. Here they come, rolling out their carpet of misery.
 
Mournful Monday. Terrible Tuesday. Woeful Wednesday. Tormenting Thursday.
 
Still, still … I got Friday on my mind. Friday on my mind.
 
Guess Mama was right – I should have listened in School.  
 
Maybe then I’d have a job that meant something to me instead of this endless grind where I’m treated as if I’m no more than a cog in a wheel.
 
Got to get through.

Monday morning punch the clock.
 
Monday night punch the clock.
 
Tuesday morning punch the clock.
 
Tuesday night punch the clock.
 
Wednesday morning punch the clock.

Wednesday night punch the clock.
 
Thursday morning punch the clock.
 
Thursday night punch the clock
 
Friday Morning punch the clock.
 
Friday night punch the clock.
 
One of these Friday nights I’m really gonna punch that clock!
 
 

 
 

I do my job. As well as they’ll let me.

Anyway they ain’t said I broke no rule.

Maybe one day if I keep my nose clean I’ll get that raise in pay they been promising for so long. Maybe.

Until then I’ll keep my mind fixed on Friday when I ain’t just one more guy on the shift.

My time. Off the clock.

My time. Off the clock.

Friday on my mind. Friday on my mind.

An undeniable hit from the first second of the intro!

And, a massive 1966 worldwide hit it proved. Top 20 in the USA, top 10 UK, No 1 in The EasyBeats Australian home and also in Holland.

In Australia it’s an iconic symbol of the emergence of a far away continent into pop culture consciousness.

So it’s been voted Australia’s best song of all time as well as being safely lodged in their National Sound Archives Registry.

The song was written by Henry Vanda and George Young lead and rhythm guitar respectively. Dick Diamonde held down the bass with Gordon Fleet behind the drums. The impassioned vocal courtesy of Stevie Wright.

All their energy and talents mesh together here perfectly to lay down a pop classic that always comes up no matter how many weekends it has kickstarted.

Friday on my mind is a wonderful adrenaline rush of a song that sums up a universal feeling. The sense of gathering excitement is brilliantly realised.

Perhaps they were able to capture such a feeling because as the sons of migrant families to Australia they were hyper alert, as migrants often are, to the signals of culture all around and desperate to make their mark in their new world.

They met up at Villawood Migrant Hostel and via intense practice and stints at ‘Beatle Village’ venue in Sydney they became a formidable live band ready to conquer a continent and take on the world.

Their second Australian release in 1965, ‘She’s So Fine’ had launched them into pop orbit and brought them adulation at near Beatles level at home.

But the epicentre of the pop world in 1966 was London. So it was there in September with Shel Talmy (producer of hits for The Kinks) at IBC studios that they recorded the record that will always define their career.

Let’s return to the term, ‘hyper alert’. Perhaps the single artist in the modern era who most exemplifies that quality is David Bowie.

Sharply intelligent, artistically omnivorous and hugely ambitious he hoovered up every influence in the 1960s air (and in all the decades thereafter) right up to his majestic sign off with, ‘Blackstar’.

His 1973 record, ‘Pin Ups’ celebrated the 1964 to 1967 world that David Jones/Bowie moved in before his own career ascended to the stratosphere.

Bowie lends, ‘Friday On My Mind’ his own wild glamorous sheen.

Now, The Boss, Bruce Springsteen, is well known to be tuned in to the blue collar life.

Growing up in New Jersey his ears will have pricked up at the skewering of working class realities captured by The EasyBeats.

And, Bruce pays his dues. So, arriving to tour Australia he has no hesitation in pulling out, ‘Friday On My Mind’ and bringing the full force of his personality and the drive of the E Street Band to lift the roof off!

As the 21st Century approached Playboy Magazine decided to ask a series of musicians for their choices for the music of the millennium.

Playboy assumed that the responses would be choices of music from the 20th century and for all but one contributor the assumption proved correct.

The exception was the list provided by English guitar and songwriting genius Richard Thompson.

Richard must have delighted in producing a list that included both, ‘Sumer is Icumen In’ and, ‘Oops! … I Did It Again’.

Richard as a teenager was playing and attending the iconic 1960s clubs like the UFO. And, who,knows that he crossed paths with The EasyBeats. He certainly recognised a classic guitar figure when he heard one.

There’s a caricature of Richard a misery laden, doom and gloom merchant. In truth he’s a serious musician with well honed wit who can turn his considerable gifts to any subject he chooses.

Listen to him give Friday another dimension.

Few songs appeal so powerfully to so many artists.

Vanda and Young with The EasyBeats have succeeded in keeping Friday on our minds eight days a week.

86 thoughts on “Springsteen, Bowie, Richard Thompson & The EasyBeats all have Friday on their minds!”

  1. Great, great post Thom. My first proper rock concert was Sydney Stadium, 15th May 1967, seeing The Easybeats triumphant return on the back of the success of Friday. I’ve written a lot about this song and used it in talks on popular culture in the Australian curriculum, because it is the centerpiece of the Australian youth culture that exploded from the late 1950s. We were perfectly placed to draw on American musical influences through TV, radio, and our shared Pacific boundary. We were perfectly placed to draw on the emerging British cultural influences because of our strong reliance on British migrants. Those influences fused into an Australian sound, of which The Easybeats and Friday are certainly the most well known. It is the definitive Australian rock song because it reflects our migrant heritage, our working class roots, and our determination to make it overseas.

    Being in the audience when Bruce Springsteen opened his Sydney show with it was an overpowering moment for someone who has spent his life championing Australian rock’n’roll. This was as powerful a vindication of the music I grew up with as there could be. And Bruce emphasised the point by going straight into “Out in the Street” after Friday, bellowing the line “when the foreman yells time I’ve already got Friday on my mind” in case anyone missed the reference. He also did it again in his next show in the Hunter Valley, and again it became a glorious celebration of rock’n’roll. Steve and Bruce had been trying to play Friday live since 1967. Apparently they’d rehearsed for their 2003 tour, but couldn’t quite nail it. They did in 2014, and if you have any doubt what it meant to the two of them, just notice the look that passes between them when Bruce goes back to swap his guitar at the end of the song.

    I could write for pages on the power of Friday On My Mind. Every time I have been to the US this century, somewhere I have heard Friday playing. It never loses its impact, and that opening riff is to Australians what the Johnny B Goode riff is to rock’n’roll. We lost Stevie Wright last December, but Friday On My Mind will be around as a tribute to the greatest rock showman we ever produced for a long long time yet. Thank you for resurrecting it one more time. Brilliant post.

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  3. I loved this song as a teenager when it was released, and played the Easybeats single constantly. When Bowie covered it, I thought I had died and gone to heaven! Great pace in that song, driving, and relentless. I had never seen Thompson perform it, so thanks for that. Thom.
    Best wishes, Pete.

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