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. Oh gosh. Now you’ve done it. My memory neurons just went into overdrive. Johannes Vanderberg (Harry Vanda), and George Young (elder brother of Angus from AC/DC) lived in the Villawood Migrant Hostel in the early 60s. I am not sure if Stevie Wright lived there, or nearby. The system was that the government paid for the immigrants to come out here on a two year commitment and promised jobs and housing. The housing was Nissen huts (like a huge 44 gallon drum cut in half and laid on its side), in hostels such as Villawood. Hot in summer, cold in winter. People of all nationalities crammed together. Dutch next door to Germans because some bureaucratic fool thought their language was the same, forgetting the sensitivity of old war wounds. Everyone had to turn up to the mess hall to get a feed. The food was typically English and included sending kids to school with jam sandwiches on white bread and slices of Madeira cake. My high school was opposite the Villawood migrant hostel. A thousand kids in the school, and all you had to do to be in the A grade was speak English proficiently. I didn’t start until 1969, and by then the Easybeats were well into their career, but the music scene in Australia was HOT. I don’t know whether on account of them, or whether Australian culture had tuned into the Mersey sound, rejecting our parents old favourites of Perry Como and such like. (There wasn’t much music in my house, but if there had been, my mum was still in possession of old 78s like “Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider” and, “If I’d Known You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a Cake). Not just those from the hostels, but young people everywhere, were forming bands who bashed away anywhere they could, garages, church halls, backyards. Even now if I hear certain songs, I still remember wandering into an empty hall to hear a band practice. I already told you about dancing to Mona Lisa at the local hotel – way well underage – but I wasn’t there for the drinking, I was there for the music. I got to going to a (teetotal) dance hall once a week. Again, I was VERY young, 13, going on 14. Again, it was for the music. Plus I love to dance. It started out 50/50 ballroom / “disco”, but pretty soon the ballroom had to give way to this new music sound. There was a regular in-house cover band, plus local up-and-coming artists would do a guest spot: Johnny Farnham, Jeff St John, Ted Mulry, John Paul Young. All gone now. Gone, gone, gone. They started doing those video clips on television, such as Madonna and so on, and people stopped coming to hear live bands. Now it costs a fortune to go to a concert in an entertainment auditorium with often dodgy sound systems, especially if it doubles as the basket ball stadium at other times of the year. Even if the sound is right, the artist is so far away you can’t see them. And now of course, we are losing them, one by one. Stevie Wright had a fabulous comeback with Evie, which he performed on the steps of the Opera House to great acclaim, but when he died last Christmas, he was in a sad and sorry state. Then again, Johnny – now “John” Farnham seems to be still around and wholesome, long after people had written off his career.

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      • Thank you. I overlooked to mention that the complex subsequently became the Detention Centre. I think you are based in England right? Not sure if you know that we detain our asylum seekers. Very political so I won’t go into details here, but after huge controversy and riots, Villawood fell out of favour for that purpose and these days it is mostly visa over-stayers awaiting deportation. Anyway – on to nicer subjects! Thank you for signing on to my blog, and I hope you like my eclectic stories. I have also started to follow your blog as of this morning. I have warm memories of several visits to Scandinavia, and used to stay on a dairy farm in Denmark so I am sure there will be various posts of interest.

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      • I am actually in Australia but often travel to Denmark. I have never been to England. It is possible you saw my regular Monday mystery photo feature, wherein people guess a location from a photograph. Oxfordshire’s photo was from a guest blogger from England. So I am aware of Villawood in the contemporary sense and was interested to read more about times gone by. Where was the dairy farm located in Denmark?

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      • You’re right. It was the Oxfordshire post that threw me. The farm is in Ferritslev on Fyn. I first went there in 1978. At the time it was one of the largest in the co-op . . . they had 30 cows or some such! Farmhouse built in the traditional U with living quarters on one leg, stables on the other, and the “nursery”, bathroom, etc in between. I think the son still runs it, or at least a nearby farm. Do you ever get to that island? Hans Christian Anderson’s house is nearby in Odense.

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      • Yes I know Fyn and Odense quite well. I was there in July this year. Denmark is a wonderful country that i think of as home! The traditional farmsteads are a practical way of living, even today! I would give my eye teeth to have one of those.
        Thanks for your comment.

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      • You can imagine what a wonderful experience it was for a 22 year old Aussie girl on her first overseas trip to have the opportunity of spending a week at a time there. We stayed in contact until recent years, and even now I still have occasional messages from the (now adult) grandchildren.

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  2. Its actually Vanda, not Wanda. Fab song and great performance by Richard Thompson. As always he’s fully there and puts everything into it. Nice to see the female drummer too.

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