Surf Off / Rock On for ’72 State Titles

In the 70s Scarborough surfer Errol Considine was a journalist with a daily newspaper (Daily News), surf magazine (West Country Surf) and a National Rock Newsletter (Go-Set).

This is Errol’s story about a rock concert held in the South West in conjunction with the 1972 State Surfing Titles.

Surf Off / Rock On for ’72 State Titles

Home grown soundtracks for our lives

by Errol Considine

As dawn broke over Surfers’ Point and Mainbreak for the 1972 March State Titles it was all bad news for contestants.

“The Saturday started really badly with no surf at Margaret River …The surf had been good all week but when the contest came around the waves just weren’t there and surfers were greeted by a two foot slop occasionally surging over the Margaret River reef.”

Source: ‘GoSet’ rock newspaper 18 March 1972

While the waves were a flop, that Saturday night was a different story. A new chapter in WA State Titles weekend history was recorded with the staging of the first ever full scale rock concert held for the championships event. It was an audience smash and a financial bomb!

The gig was the brainchild of Peter Bevan. In ’71, PB was named by WA Surf Riders’ Association (WASRA) as ‘WA Surfer of the Year’, awarded for his contributions both in and out of the water: Spring titles Open Men’s finalist; president of West End Board Club; main organiser of the first three-way Interclub event down south; main driver and creative director behind upgrading ‘West Country Surf’ magazine; and a top-ranked event judge. He pipped fellow nominees Craig Bettenay and Ian Cairns for the coveted honour.

So around this time, PB was firing with ideas and drive to get stuff happening …and dragging the rest of us along with him…

Chuck Morton-Stewart and I were working as cadet journos at WA Newspapers – Peter was in the Press Art department and drafted us scribblers in to try and generate some pre-event marketing and later join the grunt labour for the concert set-up and running.

Our Hale School surfing buddy Gus McPhee was co-opted in to make the music happen – as business and road manager for the legendary Perth blues band, “Sid Rumpo”. He’d also previously been the roadie for second band on the billing, “Lucy Crown”.

Sid Rumpo had been formed in about September 1972. Lead singer and lead guitarist Bob Searles, a bodyboarder, had also been at Hale School with PB and Gus. Other members were co lead guitarist and harp player John Hood, Owen Hughes on base, drummer Noel Herridge and Ken Wallace on keyboards and percussion. John and Owen had been in the seminal early Perth blues band, “Jelly Roll Bakers”.

Lucy Crown featured ex Jelly Roll Bakers’ members Steve Tallis on vocals and drummer Reg Zar, along with his brother and master harmonica player, Ivan. On lead guitar, was John Meyer, who later forged a lauded national profile playing with Rose Tattoo, Chain and Saracen. John passed away in Perth in 2020:  www.guitargods.com.au/guitarists/john-meyer.html

…but I digress …

PB did a great poster, featuring a black-and-white Sid Rumpo photo, which we plastered all over Perth to generate awareness and drive attendance. A poster blitz was one of the main ways event marketing was done back then …especially if you couldn’t afford paid advertising.

I handled copywriting for the poster and used some lyrics from US blues band “Bacon Fat” and their song, “Travelling South”: “I’m travelling south baby, if you will go my way…”. Rumpo were also doing a cover version of the song in the group’s early days.

Trying to generate some pre-event publicity, I pitched some promotional blurb to the local editor of the then national rock newspaper, GoSet, She asked me to also write a post-show piece for later publication.

So, while we had kicked some promotional goals and got the buzz happening, the collective ‘brains-trust’ didn’t quite think through some of the practicalities or logistics. Such as on-the-ground stuff like box office security, i.e., how were we going to get people to pay to get in?

That had to wait until we went into collective mini panic mode on the afternoon of the concert …and it was an Epic Fail!

I reported in GoSet: 

“With no waves to occupy them, a band of willing workers from the W.A. Surf Riders’ Association set off for D’Espessis farm at Dunsborough where they had planned their cabaret concert.

“A sweaty band of friends got grimy in a hot mid-afternoon sun… erecting floodlights, setting up stages and amps along with P.A. systems …”

But the location reported in 1972 wasn’t actually what occurred …as I found out in 2021 when researching this piece for SDS!

The event was originally set to be staged on the D’Espeissis’ farm, on the Cape Naturaliste road. When we first started driving down south every weekend in the late 60s, PB was going to art school with Jane D’Espeissis. We used to go to the farmhouse and have a cup of tea with her parents – lovely people – and get the key for the gate so we could drive along one of the fence lines of their property, which ran right up to the beach at Rocky Point. It was great. No walking and usually nobody else there to share the waves.

But as the rock gig weekend grew closer, the D’Espeissis became concerned about the risks of gates being left open and their prize bulls being in peril. They kindly helped get the owner of the farm next door, who had no livestock issues, to let us use some of his land.

On the big day, a crowd of some 500 turned up to rock on. And they sure did. High on the stoke …and other herbals… but oblivious to the hip-pocket wipe out bearing down on the organisers!

Crew we knew and eye-balled generally paid up the entrance fee but most people jumped or side-stepped the flimsy ‘security’ fence we’d hastily erected. And we had no system in place to show who had paid! …all a bit disastrous…

And then there was the refreshments – another not so perfect result.

We got Murray McHenry, whose family owned and ran ‘Steve’s’ (Nedlands Park) pub – where we used to often go for weekend sessions to watch Sid Rumpo and other bands play – to supply the beer and other drinks.

Bit of a communication mix-up and the bevvies arrived in an unrefrigerated truck. The beer was HOT… arrggghh …she-ite …panic stations!!

Emergency run into Dunsborough to grab all the ice we could to desperately try to cool down a bunch of 18 gallon kegs – not very successfully. Grog and softies sales, which had been a big part of the cost-covering plans, were therefore to be another financial fail. On a steamy night, there was unsurprisingly not the bumper demand anticipated for ‘cool-ish’ beer or tepid Coca-Cola!

Peter Bevan had personally underwritten the whole thing …and so it cost him a bomb out of his own pocket. The band came pretty cheap at $120 for five guys, plus roadies, band bus etc …but hiring a haulage truck and driver to bring the grog down from Perth cost a motzah.

Despite all that, it all turned out like a bit of a kinda’ mini Woodstock …we had a bit of early rain, slush but nobody seemed to care too much; sure, the food ran out too quick; and the organising fell apart a bit on some of the logistics; but everybody had a memorable and fun time – seven hours of great music and shared down south country soul vibe.

In those days of pre-computerised printing, story copy had to be re-typed by an operator into hot metal type. The process led to inevitable transcribing errors. Checking by sub-editors or proof readers was obviously in short supply at the national rock sheet, as the published piece has a string of spelling gaffes and typos!

In the concluding paragraphs in GoSet, I wrote:

“…as the hour crept into Sunday, the… Yallingup rock show petered out in a climactic finale of dust, traffic jams in paddocks and the inevitable cleaning-up…

“There were many hassles for the organisers …but the cops were rapt with the lack of trouble. It was only when some of the oldies arrived with a bent to stir the ‘long hairs’ there was trouble. Otherwise, it was fine.”

Decades later, when serving on the Surfing WA board, the Drug Aware Pro comp week initially included a rock show in some paddocks near Margaret River. The event organisation was highly professional and everybody who attended actually paid! And the cops were again pleased with no trouble on site. But my mind went back to how that link between contest surfing and music first rocked the Capes coast …the striving and the stuff ups.

’72 State Titles Results

After the no-swell washout of the first day of competition at Margaret River, a cross-check through Ric Chan’s image archives from the 1972 event show the heats and finals were run at Lefthanders and Yallingup. The championships results (according Surfing Australia’s “A Complete History of Surfboard Riding in Australia” by Phil Jarratt) are recorded as:

Men’s: 1. George Simpson; 2. Tony Hardy; 3. Phil Taylor.

Junior Men’s: 1. Paul Woods; 2. Barry Day; 3. Mark O’Callaghan. 

Both ’71 and ’73 contests included ‘Senior Men’s’ division. But not ’72 (according to the same published results). So, maybe the seniors’ division got ditched that year, due to the shortage of time after the flat start saw that full day of competition having to be cancelled …

Surfing crew & the music scene … back then

Back in those days before mortgages, kids etc … if we weren’t chasing waves, we were chasing around Perth’s vibrant pubs’ live music scene: the White Sands hotel at Scarborough, The Swanbourne (“Swanny”), Knutsford Arms in Mount Lawley, Nedlands Park (“Steve’s”) and the Shenton Park (“Shents”). And later The Governor Broome hotel in Northbridge – now site of the State Theatre Centre.

We developed musical tastes and followed bands that played our stuff. Which for me and my closest surf buddies and ex school mates was Blues – starting in 1968 with a cult like following of “Jelly Roll Bakers”, playing at The Gaslight Club off Howard Street in the city, past midnight on Friday or Saturday nights.  We then followed some of the band members as they split and went into different groups in the following years – King Biscuit, Juke, Mud …and some of them became friends.

The members of Sid Rumpo and Lucy Crown could now be considered to be seminal figures in the evolution in Perth blues and rock music.

After the very early days of Top 40 pop covers bands, these groups transitioned to feature much more accomplished musicians who began creating great original music. They arguably laid the foundations for later Perth bands like the Farris Brothers (INXS).

[ * Photographer Graeme Webber is credited as a pioneer of Australian rock history photography – particularly with “Juke Magazine” – including some of the earliest pictures of AC DC, Stevie Wright (from the Easybeats), Daddy Cool, John Paul Young and Australian Crawl. ]

In May 1972, Sid Rumpo won Hoadley’s Battle of the Bands and headed off to Melbourne to crack the national scene. Their appearance at the famed Sunbury rock festival in January ‘73 was incendiary and national audiences began to sit up and take notice of the multi-talented boys from Perth. Rumpo later recorded an album for Mushroom Records, “First Offense”, and featured on now rare vinyl compilation LPs from Sunbury in January ’73 and ’74.  A few videos and audio clips of Rumpo’s performances are still accessible online. They were bloody awesome live.

John Hood left Rumpo before their album was recorded. He featured in other bands such as Bitch, The Roosters, Paul Daly and The Fundamentals, plus the popular combo, The Elks. He was also one of the founding partners in the famed “78 Records” in Perth city – sadly shutdown just a couple of years ago after finally succumbing to the age of the digital download.

John is still making music in 2021. He taught guitar and harmonica over years, and in more recent times has authored two great books: “For the Love of Music” and “Immersed in the Blues”. The books are available to buy, along with some great free music downloads, on:  www.jhredguitar.com

Steve Tallis has continued making music over the decades since Lucy Crown and our down south show. He progressed into many different world music forms. Steve’s musical bio includes shared billings with an astounding array of legendary performers and groups – from Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton and Paul Kelly, to The Easybeats and Daddy Cool. Check him out at:  www.stevetallis.com

ENDS

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