Still crazy after all these years

Philip L Kerr ([e-mail])

Description

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 ...

Informations

• Publié par: Veam
• Nombre de lectures: 106
• Langue: English

Extrait

 

Stillcrazyafter allthese  years  Billy 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 associatseedn sation:s  These ... 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 that Even those ESPs who enjoy writing and publishing performances had to reflect the physicality are always aware of their potential audience. They of the music in a sonic experience that had needr esponsive 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 just Keirsey and Marilyn Bates, are habitually ‘directed love to play! peorTh’ e.ncieuda rieht sdrawot init bg,hin wrs no ti ylicilon te is exp red  styl cn-eectns’a duei o ls aut in Billy Thorpe his 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 At rock concerts in the 1970s you’d see me crouche p o d f e   r t f h o a r t  m e e r r a     a a n re d     o a f u  t d h ie e  n ‘ c p e e .’ r   s T o h n o a r l  p r e e ’ l s a   t o io w n n s   h m ip e   m be or y i o e n s  d  in front of the stage, camera in hand, snapping away  ’ happily. At one show I got lucky and was invited up b   and and ‘  audience.’ ‘That’s all it’s ever been for me,  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 smell of romance, advenet, uorld leather and velvet.  To me it’s like an aphrodisiac.

Australi aPnsychological Type R   e    v    i   e     w Vol 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 early Sexandthugs... years, he says, he was a ‘proper schoolboy.’ But that all changed when, aged 9, he emigrated to Brisban T e wo girls for every bo ys!ing Jan and Dean in their with his family and ‘became an Australian.’ Indeed, 1   963 hit ‘Surf City.’ In the first volume of his memoirs  he 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 popular rnmf , says Otto Kroeger, and prefer getting on with things to ‘studying them  male fantasy, sharing his flat—and his favours—with  into submission.’ Thorpe,u ter to type, says he hated  two young women. In his second volume he goes one  high school. Apart, that is, from playing drums in the  (or four!) better, with an account of a wild weekend  military band: he ‘loved the power and tribal rhythm. i ’  n a hotel with six uninhibited flight attendants:  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 an aeve m yr de r k a o b t   n n i nd i I  a w r a o l uing dancerthi-s Tnd aestinap ,tef  gigoynuiS xre d. am’snet w s.  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 what conflicts 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 never n  is hiorsp tsd woicgn .aRtnylroadtry counn a  sa( pu pop sretn ueeqfr ) rewet  inatamo.yse encou And the any doubt. car on a dark and stormy night, Thorpe runs down   Thorpe’s direction was set at the age of 10 when h a e     young woman. He carries her back to her house  saw the self-described ‘Wild One’, Johnny O’Keefe,  a h n e  d h ,  a a s s     t s o h  r e e ’s m  w ov et e     t a h ll r   o o u f  g h h e   r f   r c o lo m t   h t e h s e .     rain, of course  at 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 By the age of 11 Thorpe was singing in pubs. When r   uns her a bath, and one thing leads to another ...  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’se n Beat  ‘family responsibilities may at times be given and , performing with homegrown heroes such as O’Keefe and Col  second priority.’ Thorpheo, wever, opens his book  Joye, and with top-line touring acts of the calibre of Most 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 t In h   e t   h a e s   p p i r r e in se g  n y c o e u  o n f g  t  e h n e t s e e rn   t c ea o ri  n lo s o u k m e m d, a  l t i e st  p e e n r e f d o   r a m n e d r   s  and drugs at a country house near Macon, Georgia,  Thorpe gets the come-on from an attractive young l T e h a o r r n p e e d   . w  ‘I o  s u t ld ol  l e a   t al e l r     o a f  d m m y i   t. e   a A rl p i p er e   a s r t i u n ff g     fr w o it m h    h O i ’K m e  o ef n e   ’,  woman—‘Miss Georgia, or should have been’—he  gallantly resists. Well, that’s what he says ... Teen Bea twere a trio of gawky local kids, the Gibb Brothers. Later they took brother Barry’s initials,  ESTPs are ‘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   Tom Jones and Roger Miller. They end up drinking  K h i is n   g e s a   r C l r y o  t s e s e  a n n s  d T  ‘ h t o h r a p t  e w  fi a r s s   t i   t’ s , a  h w e     t s h a e y  b s. r   i B g y h   t t  l h ig e  h a ts g   e o   f o   f w   ith a local police sergeant (‘I’ve always gotten on  16 he was living there amid all the action. Linking  famously with coppers’, says the ESTP charmer) and up with the first incarnation of The Aztecs, he snared ‘   getting laid by some of btheest -looking girls in town.’  a residency at Surf Cityth—‘e  recalls, too, some ‘hilarious nights’ with Paul Thorpe best gig this country has ever had’—and was solaoyni ng them in the aisles.  Hogan in a Bel Air house rented from Joan Collins.  And in other places, too.  For the video introductions to his segments of the 2002Long Way To The T otpour he enlisted no less That’s where the first volume of his memoirs starts t .  han Bryan Brown and Jack Thompson. ‘I wanted to  ‘ A s s e  i x t   s a  t n it d l   e t   h s u u g g s g   e a s n t d s   , r  l o if c e k   ’ w n i ’ t ro h l   l T .’ h  T e  h A e z y t   e c c o s n   t w in a u s  e o d n  t e o     of b   eBilly Thorpe’, says Brown. Thompson calls him a ‘firm friend.’ And so too, according to Thorpe, does T p h er o f s o e r   m y , e  t a h rs r   o a u r g e  h d  v o a c r u io m u e s n  l t i e n d e   - ( u o p r, s   ,  p i e n r t h o  a t p h s e ,    f 1 r 9 e 7 el 0 y s   .  Barry Gibb, 40 years on froTmee n Bea.t  interpreted) in Thorpes’es cond book. It takes its  ESTPs know the best resrtasrieK ,sB dna ye esatunt title from his signature songMost People I Know observe, 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 tSitelxe d& Thugs New York’s Little Italy, thpea droneis all over him, & Rock’n’ro,ll Part 2 . taking him to a private room for his special menu.

Australi aPnsychological Type R   e    v    i   e     w  1 MarchVol 6 No. 2004