AUSTRALIAN CRAWL

In 1978 if you’d wanted to invent a truly Australian group, you’d have invented Australian Crawl, five sun bronzed Aussies from middle to upper class backgrounds: possibly the first high profile band to draw their influences almost solely from their Australian predecessors ( in Australian Crawl’s case, groups like the Dingoes and Sports). Even the characteristic drawl in singer James Reyne’s vocals seemed to approximate an Australian accent.

It was a time when world music was going disco crazy. The first recession in the music business since the arrival of ‘popular music’ saw many international labels trimming their rosters, and Australia took its eyes off the world charts and trends to enjoy the music being played in our own backyard. That recession was a boom period for Australian music. One of the bands at the centre of that boom was Australian Crawl.

They grew up in the Mornington Peninsula suburb of Mt.Eliza on the outskirts of Melbourne, where judges and diplomats raised their young families in a pseudo rural setting within driving distance of the city. While their bored parents attended cocktail parties the bored children surfed and smoked marijuana. For extra fun this particular group of friends also formed a band to entertain their friends. Their first attempt at a band Spiff Roach (!) ended up as the core for Australian Crawl.

Once the band’s escalating popularity brought them into the city they caught the attention of Little River Band’s guitarist David Briggs, who helped them to a recording contract and produced their first single. If Australian Crawl had been an English band they might have handled the subject matter like a Sex Pistols or a Stranglers, with anger and vitriol. But this was an Australian group from Mornington, and they looked at their parents’ world with sarcasm and self-effacing humour. The result was a hit single called ‘Beautiful People’.

While on stage they were these handsome Australian hunks – everything the girls in the audience could want - there was also something brattish and arrogant about them – everything the guys wanted to be. Within eighteen months of their first gig they were the most popular band in the country, on the strength of their first album and its title single, ‘The Boys Light Up’, teenage rebellion in the suburbs dressed up in an accessible chant-along pop songs. The album spent more than 50 weeks in the Top 30 and sold five times platinum, one of the biggest selling Australian albums of the Eighties.

In keeping with their thinking-boys-just-wanting-to-have-fun image they called their second album ‘Sirocco’ after the yacht on which womanizing Errol Flynn got up to mischief. The album also contained the group’s ode to their hero, ‘Errol’. For this album the group had bolstered its musical strength by adding drummer Bill McDonough’s singer/guitarist/songwriter younger brother Guy.

1982’s ‘Sons Of Beaches’ album was recorded in Hawaii with expatriate Australian Mike Chapman (Blondie, Knack) producing. The idea was to come up with a record with which they might win an American audience. It gave them a tougher sound on record, but the album didn’t capture the group at their best, distracted by their Hawaiian surroundings. ‘Sons Of Beaches’ itself was a hit again, but the singles failed to score.

Tensions started to surface within the band. Bill McDonough left. Frustrated by American record companies’ indifference to their music the band entered the studio for an all-or-nothing session, and emerged with the ‘Semantics’ EP, and more specifically a song called ‘Reckless’, revealing a darker, more mature Australian Crawl. The boys had grown up. James Reyne’s voice wrapped itself around the song’s melody in a way that would become James’ trademark from now on. Thanks to ‘Reckless’ the ‘Semantics’ EP went to No.1. But America still couldn’t come to grips with it.

The beginning of the end of Australian Crawl came when the group was forced off the road with the hospitalisation and death of Guy McDonough in June 1984 of viral pneumonia. Australian Crawl regrouped for live performances and another album, which cost $40,000 to record and left them as the album title suggested, ‘Between A Rock And A Hard Place’. They should have split up there and then, especially when the album virtually failed to chart. But the band had to go out on tour for the next year to pay off its debts. Then they broke up, with a final concert on January 27 1986, released as an album called ‘The Final Wave’.

Singer James Reyne went on to a solo career.