That quote comes from the first volume of Thorpe’s autobiography, Sex and Thugs and Rock ’n’ Roll: Still crazy after A Year in Kings Cross 1963-1964. It’s the story of his rise to pop stardom, set against the backdrop of the vibrant, seedy and shady half-world of Sydney’s nightclub district. More than a story, in fact: Thorpe all these years aims to enrich his account of the events in his life by evoking the associated sensations: These ... factual elements have been included ... to Billy Thorpe pumps up the volume enhance the reader’s ability to feel, hear, smell, taste, see, understand and experience a truly unique place and time. Philip L Kerr In one sentence, Thorpe checks off all five senses—and more. His desire to share his experiences with his readers finds a resonance in the words of the Jungian typologist Lenore Thomson: Thorpe’s attitude reflected local beliefs that Even those ESPs who enjoy writing and publishing are always aware of their potential audience. They performances had to reflect the physicality need responsive interaction, the sense that their of the music in a sonic experience that had words have connected and are having an effect. to be felt as well as heard. Shane Homan I think that Thorpe is indeed an ES_P: specifically, an ESTP, the type whose actions, according to David Keirsey and Marilyn Bates, are habitually ‘directed I don’t live my life on nostalgia, mate. I just towards their audience.’ Thorpe’s audience-centred ...
StillcrazyafteralltheseyearsBilly Thorpe pumps up the volume
Philip L Kerr
That quote comes from the first volume of Thorpe’s autobiography,Sex and Thugs and Rock ’n’ Roll: A Year in Kings Cross 1963-19. I6t4’s the story of his rise to pop stardom, set against the backdrop of the vibrant, seedy and shady half-world of Sydney’s nightclub district. More than a story, in fact: Thorpe aims to enrich his account of the events in his life by evoking the associatseednsation:sThese ... factual elements have been included ... to enhance the reader’s ability to feel, hear, smell, taste, see, understand and experience a truly unique place and time.
In one sentence, Thorpe checks off all five senses and more. His desire to share his experiences with his readers finds a resonance in the words of the Jungian typologist Lenore Thomson:
Thorpe’s attitude reflected local beliefs thatEven those ESPs who enjoy writing and publishing performances had to reflect the physicalityare always aware of their potential audience. They of the music in a sonic experience that hadneedresponsive interactio,nthe sense that their to be felt as well as heard.words have connected and are having an effect. Shane Homan I think that Thorpe is indeed an ES_P: specifically, an ESTP, the type whose actions, according to David I don’t live my life on nostalgia, mate. I justKeirsey and Marilyn Bates, are habitually ‘directed love to play!peorTh’e.ncieudariehtsdrawotinitbg,hinwrsnotiylicilonteisexpredstylcn-eectns’adueiolsautin Billy Thorpehis performing. ‘I like the transmitter-receiver thing with audiences’, he said in 1973. His legendary pub gigs are recalled by one commentator as ‘very much a game between Atrockconcertsinthe1970syou’dseemecrouchepodfertfhoartmeerraaanredoafutdhieen‘cpee.’rsTohnoarlpree’lsatoiownnshmipembeoryioensdin front of the stage, camera in hand, snapping away ’ happily.AtoneshowIgotluckyandwasinvitedupbandand‘audience.’‘That’sallit’severbeenforme,onto the stage. he says, music and the people.’ Billy Thorpe was just launching into his signature song ‘Most People I Know (Think That I’m Crazy)’ when his guitar amplifier gave out. As the road cre scrambled to fix the fault, Thorpe paced the stage like a caged beast. On being given the all-clear, h spun the volume knob around to 10 and hit a powe chord to check that he was back on the air. As the sound boomed out into the auditorium, his eyes lit up and he broke into a grin from ear to ear ...
As Ben Groundwater notes, Thorpe is ‘famed for his eardrum-tearing concerts.’ ‘Volume has a certain vi to it when you learn how to use it’, says the veter rocker, ‘and I learned how to use it long ago.’ According to Tony Barber, who played with Thorpe in the original Aztecs, ‘Billy has a good musical ea and an uncanny ability to detect every nuance, miss note or slight variance.’ By his own account, Thorpe’ other senses have a heightened acuity, too:
All old theatres have it, liokled classic cars. It’s the smellofromance,advenet,uorldleatherandvelvet.To me it’s like an aphrodisiac.
AustraliaPnsychological Type ReviewVol 6 No. 1 March 2004
Billy Thorpe, Festival Hall, Brisbane, 1973.Photo: Philip L Kerr
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Still crazy after all these years Thorpe was born in Manchester in 1946. In his earlySexandthugs...years, he says, he was a ‘proper schoolboy.’ But that all changed when, aged 9, he emigrated to BrisbanTewo girls for every boys!ing Jan and Dean in their withhisfamilyand‘becameanAustralian.’Indeed,1963hit‘SurfCity.’Inthefirstvolumeofhismemoirshe was destined to become an Australian icon. Thorpe tells how, betwesehnows at the King’s Cross ESTPs resent pressure to co venue of the same name, he lived out that popularrnmf , says Otto Kroeger, andprefergettingonwiththingsto‘studyingthemmalefantasy,sharinghisflatandhisfavourswithintosubmission.’Thorpe,utertotype,sayshehatedtwoyoungwomen.Inhissecondvolumehegoesonehighschool.Apart,thatis,fromplayingdrumsinthe(orfour!)better,withanaccountofawildweekendmilitaryband:he‘lovedthepowerandtribalrhythm.i’nahotelwithsixuninhibitedflightattendants:Later, as a successful pop star, he took his revenge by going back to his school in his Aston Martin and rls doing wheelies beside the quadrangle. Not that anaevemyrderkaobtnnindiIawraoluingdancerthi-sTndaestinap,tefgigoynuiSxred.am’snetws.academic career had ever been on the cards: In encounters such as t,hTishorpe relates his ethical Radio 4KQ: Billy, if they’d asked you 35 years ago whatconflicts as a dialogue between his angelic self and you’d be doing in 2001,awt hwould you have said?a devilish personification of the dissenting part of his Thorpe: Oh, what I’m doing now. There was nevernishiorsptsdwoicgn.aRtnylroadtrycounnasa(pupopsretnueeqfr)rewetinatamo.yseencouAndthe any doubt.car on a dark and stormy night, Thorpe runs down Thorpe’sdirectionwassetattheageof10whenhaeyoungwoman.Hecarriesherbacktoherhousesawtheself-described‘WildOne’,JohnnyO’Keefe,ahnedh,aasstsohree’smwovetetahllrooufghherfrcolomthtehse.rain,ofcourseat Festival Hall. ‘That’s what sowed the seeds for me to make music a career’, he says. Within a decade ‘Here I am’, he writes, ‘miles from anywhere in some he would find himself standing in O’Keefe’s shoes: farmhouse with an unconscious naked young beauty ‘One of the biggest thrillsmoyf life was to come back in front of a fire.’ She revives, and guess what? She’s to my home town to a sold-out Festival Hall.’ a Thorpe fan! Her injuries are soon forgotten. He Bytheageof11Thorpewassinginginpubs.Whenrunsherabath,andonethingleadstoanother...Channel 9 opened in Brisbane in 1959 he became aIn ESTPs’ personal relationships, say Keirsey and regular on their childrens’hsow. In his early teens Bates, ‘deep commitments do not always occur’, he graduated to ChannelT7e’sen Beat ‘family responsibilities may at times be given and, performing withhomegrownheroessuchasO’KeefeandColsecondpriority.’Thorpheo,wever,openshisbookJoye, and with top-line touring acts of the calibre ofMost People I Knowby thanking the ‘love of my life’, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. his wife of 27 years, Lynn, and their two daughters. And so when, at a rock star party awash with drink tInhethaesppirreinsegnycoeuonfgtehnetseerntceaorinlosoukmemd,altiestpeenrefdoramnedrsanddrugsatacountryhousenearMacon,Georgia,Thorpe gets the come-on from an attractive young lTehaorrnpeed.w‘Iosutldolleatalelroafdmmyit.eaArlpipereasrtiunffgfrwoitmhhOi’Kmeoefne’,woman‘MissGeorgia,orshouldhavebeen’hegallantly resists. Well, that’s what he says ... Teen Beatwere a trio of gawky local kids, the Gibb Brothers. Later they took brother Barry’s initials, ESTPsare ‘always popular and know many, many along with those of promoter Bill Goode and disc people’, say Keirsey and Bates: and, judging by the jockey Bill Gates, to become The Bee Gees. names he drops, that’s certainly true of Billy Thorpe. ESTPs seek excitement, note Keirsey and Bates. InHe tells, for example, of a pub crawl in Sydney with TomJonesandRogerMiller.TheyendupdrinkingKhiisngesarClryotseseannsdT‘htohraptewfiarsstit’s,ahwetshaeybs.riBgyhttlhigehatsgeofofwithalocalpolicesergeant(‘I’vealwaysgottenon16 he was living there amid all the action. Linking famously with coppers’, says the ESTP charmer) and upwiththefirstincarnationofTheAztecs,hesnared‘gettinglaidbysomeofbtheest-lookinggirlsintown.’a residency at Surf Cityth‘e recalls, too, some ‘hilarious nights’ with Paul Thorpebest gig this country haseverhad’andwassolaoyningthemintheaisles.HoganinaBelAirhouserentedfromJoanCollins.And in other places, too. For the video introductions to his segments of the 2002Long Way To The Totpour he enlisted no less That’swherethefirstvolumeofhismemoirsstartst.hanBryanBrownandJackThompson.‘Iwantedto‘Asseixtsatnitdlethsuuggsgeasntds,rloifcek’wni’trohllT.’hTehAezyteccosntwinauseodnteoofbeBilly Thorpe’, says Brown. Thompson calls him a ‘firm friend.’ And so too, according to Thorpe, does Tpherofsoermy,etahrsroaurgehdvoacruiomuesnltiende-(uopr,s,pienrthoatphse,f1r9e7el0ys.BarryGibb,40yearsonfroTmeen Bea.tinterpreted)inThorpes’escondbook.IttakesitsESTPsknowthebestresrtasrieK,sBdnayeesatunt title from his signature songMost People I Knowobserve, and headwaiters call them by name. When Think That I’m Craz.yGiven its subject matter, the and a few friends drop into a restaurant in Thorpe book might just as well have been tSitelxed&ThugsNew York’s Little Italy, thpeadroneis all over him, & Rock’n’ro,llPart 2. takinghim to a private room for his special menu.
AustraliaPnsychological Type Review 1 MarchVol 6 No. 2004