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Three

TIMES UNLIMITED

Beeb (playing his homemade bass guitar), Darryl and Ted

On weekends I started to hang out and make friends in the Christies Beach and Port Noarlunga areas, about twenty miles from Adelaide. Every weekend I hitchhiked there and crashed the night at someone’s place. If for some reason I couldn’t find somewhere to sleep, I slept on the beach under the Port Noarlunga jetty or in bus shelters. On winter nights I froze my arse off trying to keep warm in my black duffle coat and sleeping on hard bus shelter benches. I didn’t care though, it beat hitchhiking all the way back home to Netley.

I got to know so many people through hanging out in Port Noarlunga during the day and going to dances at the Masonic Hall in Christies Beach at night. Popular up and coming bands like The Masters Apprentices, The Others, Blues, Rags and Hollers played at the Masonic Hall on Saturday nights.

Sometimes a local band like The Mermen would play. The Mermen had an unusual lineup because they had two lead singers, one of whom was Darryl Cotton. Malcolm ‘Rick’ Brewer was their drummer and he lived in McLaren Vale, a suburb near Christies Beach and Port Noarlunga.

John D’Arcy, Gordon Rawson and I kept rehearsing and we added Ted Higgins (who later became Zoot’s first drummer) on drums. Ted lived in Port Noarlunga with his mum and sisters and had his own bedroom out the back, separate from the house. This is where we rehearsed. His bedroom was big enough that we could fit his drums as well as a couple of amplifiers. I wasn’t playing an instrument at that time so by default I became the lead singer. We found a bass player in David Murdoch, a little guy who wore glasses. We practised and practised, learning our favourite songs until we had a set list long enough to go out and perform for the very first time.

We named our band Times Unlimited. Our first performance was at a dance that was held in the Plympton Scout Hall on Marion Road. The gig was an embarrassing night to say the least because we made lots of mistakes, with the guys playing wrong chords and me forgetting the words. It was awful! David Murdoch, our bass player, was so disgusted with the way we played that he promptly quit. When the band was discussing this later, I asked, “Well, what are we going to do now?”

John looked at me and said, “You’ll have to learn to play bass guitar and sing at the same time, lad.” He made it sound so simple! I didn’t own a bass guitar, let alone an amplifier, but we just bulldozed ahead.

We asked my dad to help shape the body of a bass guitar from plywood. John knew how to measure exactly where to lay the frets on the neck and we slapped a few coats of shellac on it for the finish. We bought a cheap pickup (a pickup is a transducer that captures or senses mechanical vibrations produced by musical instruments, particularly stringed instruments such as the electric and bass guitar) and we positioned it where we would get the optimum sound out of the bass.

When we finished building the bass, I had my work cut out for me. I sat down in front of my Kriesler record player and started picking off the bass lines to every song we had been rehearsing. When I had a few songs under my belt we rehearsed them that weekend, and so it continued until I had learned every one of the songs in our set. This may sound like a difficult task – but I was at that age where nothing seemed impossible. The thought, Gee, I don’t think I can do this, never occurred to me. I did it because I loved it.

I still didn’t know if I could play bass and sing at the same time but it became easier with every rehearsal. Much more importantly, through learning to pick what were sometimes difficult bass lines off records, my ear training had begun and that would serve me greatly in the years to come.

I needed a bass amplifier but I didn’t have the money to buy one. As I was still under twenty-one, I asked my parents if they would sign a hire purchase agreement on a Goldentone bass amplifier from one of Adelaide’s music shops. They agreed.

Now I was really cruising. I had my homemade bass guitar and a Goldentone bass amp. It was with this combination that I played all of our earliest live shows in the Christies Beach and Port Noarlunga areas.

Ted Higgins remembers:

When Times Unlimited was formed and we started playing shows, we’d go to the local Masonic Hall on a Saturday night where a guy called Paddy and an English bloke used to hold dances and bring good bands in.

We went to see The Mermen and that’s where we saw Darryl Cotton. We discussed afterwards that for the band to become popular we had to have a good-looking lead singer, a front man who the chicks would like. After we spoke to him, he said he would consider it.

However, we still advertised for a lead singer. Jim Keays applied but John D’Arcy didn’t like him because he was from Elizabeth. I remember John saying he wouldn’t drive all that way for practices and that he thought Jim’s voice sounded like shit. I liked him because he was a good-looking guy.

At Willunga High, every girl at school wanted to go out with Darryl Cotton and, after continually talking to him, he decided to join our band.

I wasn’t very keen on lead singers because they didn’t have to buy any gear. To my mind, they just stood there and sang. It took some time for John D’Arcy to convince me that Darryl would be an asset to the band, that with him as our lead singer we could move up to the next level.

Eventually, I came around because we were limited in what we could achieve with just the four of us. Gordon, John and I all sang but it took the focus off playing our instruments. Plus none of us felt really comfortable talking to an audience and that’s where I realised lead singers earn their weight in gold. Darryl was a good-looking guy and he was a chick magnet. When he joined as our lead singer we decided to change the band’s name.

DOWN THE LINE

Darryl Cotton was born at Henley Beach Private Hospital in Adelaide on September 4, 1949. In his early years he sang in the school choir and one year they were chosen to participate in John Martin’s Christmas Pageant. John Martin’s was a well known department store in Adelaide. Darryl’s ambition was to become a school teacher and, like me, he also went to see Elvis Presley movies, not with his mother but with his aunts; his mother had a couple of much younger sisters who were around the same age as he was.

Rick Brewer happened to overhear him singing ‘Ferry Cross The Mersey’ to himself in a coffee shop in Port Noarlunga one day. Rick thought Darryl had a really good voice and invited him to join his group, The Mermen.

Darryl was the first person to call me ‘Beeb’. He shortened B.B. to Beeb. From the time we met that has remained my nickname. I also took the first part of my surname and shortened it from Bertelkamp to Birtles, anglicising the spelling. From that time on, Beeb Birtles was my professional name.

All of us, including Darryl, were still mad Hollies fans and on their latest album they had a song called ‘Down The Line’. We changed our name from Times Unlimited to Down The Line, though the new name didn’t last long.

Being the kind of inquisitive musician who always wants to know who wrote the song, I have since found out that ‘Down The Line’ was actually called ‘Go Go Go (Down The Line)’ and it was the very first song Roy Orbison ever wrote.

Gordon Rawson left the band. At one particular rehearsal we could tell he was in a really bad mood and he threw his guitar down. We had seen these moods before but somehow it came to a head that day. Not that I’m being critical because I can be the moodiest prick of all at times! I think I inherited that from my dad because his moods could swing one way or the other at the drop of a hat. Anyway, on this particular day we either asked Gordon to leave the band or he quit.

Gordon remembers that day:

I had had a fight with Bev, my girlfriend. I had a bit of a rejection problem in those days. In more recent times while suffering some depression it was traced back to 1965, probably to do with my father’s death. The music used to help get me through.

Our band started gaining a following in the Christies Beach and Port Noarlunga areas. Word was getting around. One weekend, two guys from Elizabeth approached us about management. They were checking out new bands to play at some dances they were promoting in the Elizabeth area.

One of the guys was Doc Neeson and the other was a friend of his, Alan Hale. They said they thought we had a lot of potential but they didn’t like our name.

Doc said, “Why don’t you call yourselves something like Zoot, a short punchy name that doesn’t mean anything?”

I’ve since read that Doc’s inspiration came from his admiration for the English singer Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band. We looked at each other questioningly and thought, What kind of a name is that? The guys left and we never heard from them again. We kept throwing the Zoot idea around and at some point decided that, yes, it was kind of a cool name. From then on we became known as Zoot.

John Rose, the drummer for Five Sided Circle, remembers this:

I was already playing in Five Sided Circle during the early days of Zoot. One Saturday morning our bass player rang excitedly to tell me of a fabulous new band he’d seen at the Port Noarlunga Institute and how he couldn’t get over the great harmony vocals, in particular the way that John D’Arcy could sing ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ by The Beatles. The following night I confirmed this while watching Zoot’s first night at a real local breeding ground for bands called Beat Basement.

Five Sided Circle had lots of gigs lined up and people were always asking us to recommend new bands. Naturally, we recommended Zoot and not long after we were playing shows together. Within a short time, Zoot had surpassed our ambitions and moved to Melbourne. The bastards!

Lots of my music friends in Adelaide would say: “Hey, wouldn’t it be fantastic if we became popular all over Australia and got on the telly and everything?” And I would think: Popular all over Australia? Forget that, I want to be playing music all over the world. I always had big dreams.

THE APPRENTICE

Through my dad’s contacts in the building trade, he arranged for me to get a job as an apprentice with a ceramic tiling company. He knew a German man by the name of Gunther who owned The North Adelaide Tiling Company. Right from the start, I think Gunther was reluctant to give me a try, but for my dad’s sake he did.

For the next two years I worked for the various ceramic tile layers who worked for Gunther. I learned how to mix cement and cut ceramic tiles to size. I soaked the ceramic tiles in buckets of water and got everything ready for them to tile shower stalls, bathroom walls and floors as well as kitchens. Occasionally we worked on the street, tiling the front of shops.

I’ve never been a lazy guy so I didn’t mind the hard work. At that time I still didn’t own a car so Dad would drop me off on a particular street corner and whoever I was working with that week would pick me up and give me a ride to the job site. I worked during the day and at night played with Zoot. I was making more money playing in the band than I was as an apprentice. When I think back to those days I don’t know how I kept it up.

I regret the way I treated my mother during these years. I was very disrespectful and I’m ashamed of the way I yelled at her at times. She would come in to wake me in the mornings and I would scream at her to get out of my room, shut the door and leave me alone.

Thinking back on all that now, the only possible excuse I have is that I must have been so tired from working all day and playing music late into the night that I was totally exhausted. I was truly beat when I climbed into bed at night. But still, I can’t believe what a prick I was to her during those years.

It wasn’t unusual for me to come home from work, jump straight into the shower and immediately head out the door again for a gig. There wasn’t enough time to sit down and eat dinner. I’m sure my mother was worried about me, though she never really said anything.

Towards the end of my time as an apprentice I was given small jobs to do by myself. Most of them were tiling windowsills and kitchens. I was never very fast because I cared more about doing an excellent job. But all Gunther cared about was getting the job done so he could invoice the builder. The fact that I was slow must have really frustrated him. He complained about me taking too long. One day when he confronted me about this, I’d had enough and I quit.

After quitting the tile business, I got a job at the Chrysler car factory in Christies Beach, drilling holes in parts for car doors. During the week I stayed at Christies Beach, sleeping on the floor of Darryl Cotton’s bedroom at his parents’ place so I wouldn’t have far to go to work. I can’t say I exactly leapt out of bed every morning, eager to go to the factory. By this time, Zoot had become the number one band in Adelaide and we were thinking about going professional. Drilling holes in car doors was not part of the dream!