Recollections of "The Big Show" The DC5s 1965 Tour of Australia
Lenny Davidson
I have several main memories of our tour to Australia, but strangely none of them about the actual concerts. Contracting the "Delhi Belly" on the way out to Perth, which nearly got the tour cancelled is one. We got it by simply drinking out of a bottle; it was as easy as that. I also had an uncle who'd lived in Oz for 20 years and he'd warned me (or scared me) about the spiders. “We have spiders that can kill you in 20 seconds" he'd told me, which had made me quite apprehensive. When we flew into Perth and checked into the Hotel we found a huge spider in the middle of our hotel room floor. We stood on chairs and shouted for help till someone came and removed it. I never did find out whether it was poisonous or not!
I remember spending a free day with Mike who had made friends with some guys from a snorkelling club. They took us to Bondi beach to go snorkelling with them. Mike put all gear on and went in but I'd seen signs all along the beach warning about shark attacks so I stayed on the beach and watched them! When we were in Melbourne, the tour people arranged for us to go to Melbourne Zoo and I have a lot of cine film, which I've put on video of all five of us feeding kangaroos etc.
We flew to New Zealand afterwards and it was strange to find that everything closed there at 10pm. Therefore after a concert you couldn't go out for a meal or a quiet drink as everything was shut! It made for some very quiet nights.
Flying back home Rick and I were on a separate flight to the other guys and we had to circle Heathrow several times as the planes undercarriage wouldn't come down. When we saw the rest of the guys a few days later we told them about it only to find their trip home had been far more frightening.
Judith Durham of “The Seekers”
I wasn't a big fan of rock and roll music in general really. I was very shy of the rock scene and found it a bit raucous. It’s with hindsight that I’ve realised many of the tunes were really catchy.
The tour itself was contrived as a way for The Seekers to quickly get back to Australia to see our parents and families, as we had all been away from Australia for a whole year by then, and had originally left only for a ten week trip. We all knew it was an unsuitable combination to have us, a folk group, on tour with the DC5 however the DC5 went down great everywhere. They gave the crowd what it wanted.
In those days, I hardly left my dressing room so I never saw them perform. I could hear the reaction and the music over the P.A. in the dressing rooms mainly.The DC5 guys were great to me when you think about it, considering I was just a "folky" in their eyes. I think they all probably viewed me as a “little sister”, like The Seekers boys seemed to treat me. When the journalist asked me to sit on Dave Clark's knee for that photo, I couldn't believe Dave agreed so readily and was so nice to me. I thought Dave was so good looking and I just didn't feel I was the kind of girl who should be sitting on his knee. It was a bit like that when I joined The Seekers, I thought I wasn't pretty and slim enough to be in the group because all the boys were so good looking. While the photo was being taken, I was desperately trying to make myself as light as I could, so he wouldn’t realise how big I was!!!
Denis Payton
I remember our Australian tour well, I thought it was very Americanised at the time but I'm not so sure that it is still the same, I think it probably has its own identity now. We went out there in their winter, which turned out to be the equivalent of our summer! I recall the concert venues being so hot and humid.
“The Seekers” were great people and Judith Durham had a great voice, in fact she still has, it has a remarkable quality and still sounds "fresh”.
After we toured Australia we went on to New Zealand before returning via Hong Kong. For some reason Rick and Lenny went on ahead on a different flight so myself, Dave, Mike and the two roadies, John Burgess and Mike Hewitson came back on an Air India Boeing 707. We flew through a major electrical storm and our plane was struck by lightning, we immediately nose-dived. The plane was going down at an incredible speed and accelerating all the time, we dropped about ten thousand feet. People were screaming and it was very frightening. We were seated near the rear and I remember that I was holding a bottle of Coke in one hand and a glass in the other. I let go of the glass but as we were diving so fast it didn't drop to the floor it actually floated! Eventually the pilot pulled us up and we made an emergency landing at a desert airstrip. They gave us food and shelter in marquees, while they examined the plane under huge arc lights. They decided that the plane was too damaged to continue and had to get us another aircraft. The lightening strike had knocked out all the rivets from the wings of the aircraft; it was a miracle that the wings hadn't come off in the dive. I later spoke to the pilot, "That was brilliant flying", I thanked him. He just looked up, smiled and said "luck!!!"
Murray Wallace
It was my older brother who had tickets to the concert, and as I had just started full time employment I was able to purchase a ticket from him. The concert was held at the Capitol theatre which was Perth’s largest seating venue with a capacity of 3000. As I recall the first half of the show was The Seekers and the DC5 the second half. The expectation of hearing and seeing the DC5 caused me to this day to completely forget the first half of the concert. The Seekers in their own right were a great national and international group, but it was not my style of music, I was there to hear rock.
The show was introduced by Perth's leading DJ of the time, Paul Gardine and as the curtain was raised all hell broke loose which one will never forget. The first number was "Big Noise from Winnetka" and loud! The drum kit of flashing lights was awesome to a 15 year old kid and I was swept away with the euphoria, so much so I didn't realise that half the seats in front of me were now empty as the crowd had rushed to the front of the stage. My only time of hearing girls scream was previously at The Beatles movie "A Hard Days Night", and this crowd had gone crazy! I think the one moment of the concert that I can remember vividly, was Dave introducing their new single "Come Home" and the lights were dimmed to a background of soft blue and the spotlight on Mike. As their first bracket of songs were “belters” this slow number caught the audience by surprise as it had not been released or heard in Australia before. Denis was standing at the front twisting this strange instrument (cabasa) that many of us had not seen before. The next sets of numbers were all rocking ones to the shows end. The show finished with girls still screaming, sobbing and crying. On my way home we had to walk past the hotel that the DC5 were in. As the concert hall and the hotel were only a couple of hundred metres apart a group of about 100 screaming fans had gathered chanting "We want Dave" and the DC5 obliged by coming to their window to acknowledge the crowd. It was a night to remember!"
Rick Huxley
I remember the Australia tour well... I really liked the country. We didn't get off to a great start though as we had a thirty-six hour flight over there along with The Seekers. We had several stops on route, one of which was Delhi. It was there that Lenny and I went down with the infamous "Delhi Belly" which lasted well into the first week of the Australian tour.
The Seekers were a great bunch of people, although we were poles apart musically. I got on really well with Keith Potger and Bruce Woodley. Atholl and Judith were both very shy and quiet but Keith and Bruce were typical Aussies who loved to go out after the show for a beer and I often tagged along with them. I know we travelled with them to Australia as they were returning home after a successful spell in England but I can't recall travelling with them as we toured around. I can only remember that we just used ordinary scheduled flights to make our way from city to city.
We didn't have a lot of free time on that tour but we did have time to celebrate one of Lenny's birthdays, it might have even been his twenty-first. We also managed to meet a few old friends from back home. In the late 50's a lot of Brits emigrated out to both Australia and New Zealand using "Assisted Passages" and while we were in Melbourne we met up with some of Dave’s friends who used to live in Tottenham and later with an old school pal of mine who had gone out to Auckland. It's quite strange travelling ten thousand miles to meet someone from your hometown.
Doug Osbourne of "The Henchmen"
I remember the DC5 were top billing (last act on the show) and that Dave had this strobe light in his bass drum, so that each time he hit the foot-pedal the lights would flash. They saved this up until the last few numbers and especially for "Glad All Over" which they finished the show with. It was their big finale number, as it was their big hit at the time. They sounded great, just like their recorded sound, which in those days was something as recording studios often covered up a lot of vocal and musical deficiencies. But their sound was really good; the lead guitarist used an "echolette" on his amp, which gave a good effect. The crowd loved them! I also seem to remember that they were dressed in Salmon coloured suits... very snappy! The jackets were a bit like The Beatles style of collar, which were all the rage then anyway.
