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July 14, 2024 13 mins

Clairsy & Lisa are looking back at the Perth Pub Scene from the 80s and started by chatting to former V Capri drummer Alan Simpson who dominated the charts back in the day plus the reason the band said no to Kylie Minogue recording a version of Haunting Me.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We would be seeing a Men at Work song to
twelve hundred people. The Men at Work began on the road.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
So I don't need did the people party in the venues,
but the bands it was.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
A way of cozy and Lisa's pub drawl.

Speaker 3 (00:11):
We have a new feature that over the next couple
of weeks, so we're gonna celebrate at this time taking
a look at the Perth pub and band scene back
in the day. Yeah, late seventies, through the eighties, the.

Speaker 4 (00:24):
Eighties, even into the early nineties. But what a city
it's been. I mean, we did have a reputation as
a cover band city for a long time. Yeah, also
been a lot of great originals.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
We've been a lot of great originals the city of
ours music and our first guest is going to be
one of those, Alan Simpson from V Capri.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
There anyone bigger in the eighties than V Capri with
their sensational mullets and their fans, with maybe four hundred
girls down the front of the stage, and they were
on countdown more than once and they had multiple number
ones here in Perth.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Good morning on good morning, are you good? Welcome? How
good was it hearing that on the radio? Last time
we heard that on the radio.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well, I don't play that song every day, so it's
been a while, but it was at number one.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Hit there guy, it was absolutely not only one.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
What was it like being one in one of the
biggest bands in Perth in the eighties.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
It was hard, I'll tell you. You have to get
up about twelve o'clock during the day, go straight to
the beach, work on him suntan and then that's about
it really, I suppose until the weekend came around and
then off we went Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
Yeah, and those crowds made were they were just incredible.
I mean the Nook and Burrow with their Nook and
Busters and one of them.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
The crowds at the Overflow absolutely big.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, well there was back then. There was lots of big, big,
big venues. I had the morning we played at the
Florea Friday, the Overflow which was the Look and Borough
yes Saturday, and then the Rappeles on Sunday sessions. So
they were they were big dayes, that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
What was your favorite venue to play, Ash.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
I think the Pinnacle was the Overflown. Everyone thought that
was the yeah, because it was so big that we
held the record. We had about two thy two hundred
and there and it was only licensed for about fifteen hundred.
And the cops did turn up one night and there
was cash going everywhere. I can tell you there was
all the doors are open, and it was it was

(02:22):
pretty big. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:24):
I walked into one of those gigs one night and
I reckon there was six hundred girls down the front
and all the jealous boyfriends up the back.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
You must have gotten used to seeing.

Speaker 4 (02:30):
That you were the other back, of course, those absolutely, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
It was yeah, well it was. I mean we sort
of modeled ourselves. Look, as you do the history of music,
the best looking bands really get the most girls. And
there was five recently good looking blokes in the band,
and and you know, we didn't make ourselves available. Put
it that way.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
You know what else you're embraced from the time, the
lofty hair we you know, you and me and the
rest of us, we are responsible for that hole on
the ozone lad that we had back there with all
the hairspray.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, well it wasn't just a never used hit right now,
But of course we always get the streaks in the hair,
you know, the mullet was always good, you know, in
between sets, you know you want to write down the
back and we have a break and get the head
dryer out and puffing up. We couldn't go on look
at all wet and shaggy, so you know, we always

(03:26):
get a head right close by.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
I reckon, you might have done some shopping at Renoise.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
All yeah, jacket.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
I think they. I think they sponsored us at some point.
I did, well, we were quite fashion. Itons is not absolutely.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, Actually who had the best mallet? Mine? Was it
Lance or Todd? What do you reckon? Was the revote?

Speaker 2 (03:51):
I agree, different stages, you know, I always had a
limit of the half hour it goes. But I mean
Lance was pretty good. God Todd towards the end he
really buffed it up pretty big. And Nick was always
there as well, and I were always pretty controlled. We

(04:12):
didn't we didn't. We didn't need to put so much
emphasis on the heads to get the check.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Okay, Alan, tell us about the Nook and Busters.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Okay, Nook and Busters was always a long weekend. It
was like a Sunday session or a Monday. Whoever the
biggest whoever the biggest band was at the time, used
to basically underwrite it. Uh so we you know, we
did quite a few times. So we would play the
other bands a fee to play there with us, and
then we take the door. So you'd start about four
o'clock and you go through to about I suppose, and

(04:47):
you know that with this pack, weques going to right
around the place. Uh they didn't have the Florida they
did one as well, Raffles, Rippers and all those there
was that was the thing to put. You know, this
was a lot notch as Vaga pre There's a lot
of big bands around back then. Week Yeah, we were
the most remembered because we invested our money quite well
back into the band, you know, with video clips and

(05:10):
recordings and albums and stuff like that, where a lot
of other bands probably invested in cigarette papers.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
What was it like because Molly couldn't resist getting on Countdown?
Of course because of the West Australian hits, you had
the number ones. What was it like going on Countdown
for the first time?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Ah, well, it was a bit of a disappointment really
because he wasn't even there. It was all pre taped.
Nick and Todd were stuck in Sydney and the other
three of us were in Melbourne. Now, I don't sing
at all ight, and they said, look, we'll get half
of the film clip done before the other two turn up,

(05:49):
and then we'll add them into it and make up
the clip to make out its live. We go okay,
and so I had to pretend to do harmonies. There
is a video clip on YouTube with me and a
night of Purple Top looking so interested in doing these
harmonies with Rams, and I think it was Gaby in there.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
You mentioned, of course there were some really great bands
around in Perth at the time. Who were some of
your favorites that were playing around the pubs?

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Well, I mean Perfect Strangers was kind of opposition. They
were signed to CBS back in the day and we
were signed to munch Room Records. The friends were always good,
They were always the early Fingerprints, were early loaded Dice
were in early before us, so they were the ones
that we grew up sort of looking at. The boys
of course were another one Wooker, the love Wooker, watching

(06:40):
Steve Wench and you know, and because now the famous
Gary Dunn on guitar then, I mean, jeez, Flying Foster
Relies was very good. If you went to a Fosie gig,
the audience participation with those guys Alf and Richard. They
were just so good to get in the cloud, to
shape this, take their tail feathers and.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Do whatever they wanted, didn't I just like Jack and
I would blues. I love that.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yeah, yeah, well they sort of starlet it around that,
you know.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
Yeah, well we're going to be talking to a lot
of those people over the next week or two. Some
of the names you mentioned, some some famous Perth rock names.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah. Well, it was great, It was great times. It
was a big scene. You know. All we had to
do back in those days was you had to go
to either the movies, you know, or you go to
the beach, or we go to the pubs. Up until
up until the late eighties, that was really all you
had to do. And you know, there were so many bands.

(07:38):
If you pulled two or three hundred or four hundred,
you were just an average band. If you got up
to about eight or nine hundred, you had potential. But
then the big ones is to fall a minimum of
say fifteen hundred people, and then to do that three
nights a week. Well, every every venue wanted that. The
money that was being changed over the bars. Back in
those days, it was incredible.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Vakapri had their own merchandise. Were you a bit of
a pioneer for that side of things because not all
the bands had merch Well.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah, we were pretty clever with the marketing. I was
always a salesman, you know, looking forward to the band
and even afterwards. So you know, we were doing well
in the pubs and I said, look, we need to
step it up a bit. We should start doing our
own songs. But none of us had written a song,
so we had a crack out. I got involved with
Mick I think it was, and Lance and we wrote

(08:30):
the first song and we didn't have a B side,
and I said, well we don't need a B side.
No one plays the bloody B side and they said,
well are we going to do? I said, we'll put
a picture of ourselves on the back. So we had
these forty five singles back in the day, the little
forty five, and all the guys were in the office
and we were putting the stickers on the back. It
was black and white the first one and that reached

(08:52):
about number twenty round that mark in Perth, and then
I said there was no point doing singles unless we
can get the people to buy, and pub people don't
really buy, and that's you cool. So I said, we
need to get to the schools to the kids. The
next minute there's jos He was dour manager, was got
great dead. He set up there every week. We'd be

(09:13):
working twice a week, full set up, full pa with
the crew and everything at the high schools. And then
we're handing out these photos of ourselves looking glamorous and
the po Box number on it. The next minute they're
all writing saying I love Lance, I love Good or whatever,
and so we got their details and we suspen in
the merchandise form and I can remember we did the

(09:34):
next single, which was haunting me. That was probably our
biggest song, and we said to them, look, you know,
we've got a new single coming out. We had about
two thousand kids in this in this Span club, and
we said we'd love to get back in the charts
again and maybe get a bit higher if you could
order the song before it, you know, pre order it.

(09:54):
So then the single comes out again no B side,
so we stepped it up and put a color photo
on the back of and there was stickers and then
what we did was they did. They ordered it. So
as soon as that record it hit the record stores,
it was sold out. So we debuted first week in
at number one.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Speaking of Haunting Me, I love How, it features in
one of the most famous scenes in Australian soaple history.
It plays over Kylie Minogue's final episode of Neighbors.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
But there is a Kylie Minogue story.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah, what do you go down?

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Right? Well, we met Kylie about nineteen eighty four, late
eighty FOURDS. Here's this little kid. You've got to remember
the times, all right. There was no Internet, there was
no social media, no texting, no phones. It was just
like someone to ring you on your home phone if
you're lucky, or you get a letter. And we had
no idea what was going on in England. One day

(10:52):
we get a phone call from Mushroom Records and they
said we had a group meeting there in the office
with desk and there's Amanda Pelman from Mushroom and she said,
he goes, we've got Toylie Minogue wants to record Haunting Me.
And we go, who I we Minogue, that little chick

(11:16):
on Neighbors. Because you've got to remember, we thought we
were the coolest of the cool We had the look,
we had the sound, we had the money. We were
like they were vertically untouchable. And we said, well, Todd
had the initial decision to say no because he wrote it,
and then he goes not. We go yeah, yea, nada.
We don't want her recording out song. That would be ridiculous.

(11:38):
So of course, back in the day the forty five singles,
when they released those, they used to have fifteen percent
woryalties of the sale of the record and that was
split between a side and the b died and Coyleie
released her debut singles through stock Ache and Waterman and
saw the potential in that girl and they did. She

(12:01):
did the Locomotion and it only went number one in
seventeen countries. So, yeah, you're going to messine how much
money is?

Speaker 1 (12:12):
What do you do?

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Well? I mean the band, the band wouldn't have made
anything out of it. But the guys that wrote the song,
Todd and Landstone pretty missed out on the shipload of
money probably.

Speaker 4 (12:22):
And I've Got You're going to have Goodinsky was a
rock guy forever and then signed Kylie. That was quite
astounding at the time. Metopolo, Oh yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Had I heard Michael Gadinski in my laundry and stuff,
but he flew over. He saw we debut at number one,
and he's he is pricked, Ublement. I'm coming over and
that's the answer on the signs as well. But they
went with perfect strangers and went with us.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Well on that note, great memories, mate, Alan, Great memories.
It's been really good reminiscing with you this morning about
VKA pri.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Well, they're just the good stories I can tell.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
Imagine, Okay, more than more stories bread the other day, Alan,
thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Thanks man, did memory reminisce all this
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