ALWAYS FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS

Where do I begin?I would say when rock and roll first came into my life...circa 1955, I was 9 years old...until then I listened to mum and dad's collection of LP's which I sorta liked a bit...They liked Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby etc and while I didn't mind a few the rest I found uninteresting.....Then it happened, I was listening to our big valve radio in our lounge room waiting for the serials to start, when I heard "ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK" ....Wow, I thought that is fantastic..To me it sounded like Benny Goodman on steroids. I lived in Brisbane and I suppose we were the last major city to 'get with it'...I can't remember which radio station was first to play rock, but I thought blow my serials as I hunted the dial for more of the same...

About a week later my best friend two doors down, Tony, came up to our house and said "I just bought Bill Haley's new hit record, come to my house and I will play it ..Tony was three years older than me and he had a brand new portable pink and black record player..His old man was a very successful bookie and spoiled the two kids with gifts like that..I think it cost 39 guineas which was a fortune in the 50's .It had three speeds 33 1/3 rd., 45., and 78. Tony brought out the big 78 version of the record and put it on and turned the little record player up full belt and that was the first time I had ever heard a rock song played on a grammar phone...PLAYED?..lol..we played it over and over and over...We were both hooked...I said to me mate, 'What is on the other side?" flip side came in with disc jockey talk..

The other side was a song called 'Thirteen Women".while not as good we played it over and over again as well..We liked the song more when we found it had been banned from the radio for being to risque. ..The song was about a bloke who was the only man in town with thirteen women...that was it..lol....We never told our parents that we had the record, just in case..We told all our mates at school and they paid Tony a tray to listen to this banned record after school....my, haven't things changed..

From there rock and roll took over the air waves. In 1956 Elvis burst on the scene along with hundreds of new bands and singers as well,all getting into the new music scene R.O.C.K.... The first record LP I ever owned was one by Buddy Knox. Mum bought it for me as a birthday present in 1957. I loved his song Party Doll and that was on the record...In 1957 Buddy Holly and the King ruled the air waves..There was a bloke in Australia called Lee Gordon, and he jumped on the band wagon a brought these new stars to Australia..There are far to many to list who I saw at the old Brisbane stadium...just a few..Bill Haley and the Comets, Freddie Bell and the Bell Boys, Little Richard, Ricky Nelson,Crash Craddock, The Platters. Jerry Lee Lewis, Paul Anka and who can forget Buddy Holly. I saw him at Cloudland in '58 on the bill were Jerry Lee, Paul Anka, and our own JOK , who came out on the stage with a bright yellow suit..You may ask how did I get to these concerts when I was so young. With my mate Tony or mum who I talked into going..I don't think I missed an act in the 50's...The tickets were cheap compared to today's prices ,about a quid I think..

Ok, so that was my intro into rock...The same old story persists however like our parents who did not like this Devil music .We don't like Hip Hop......Come 1960 I was ready to start high school but all I wanted to be was a rock and roller in a band. My dad sent me off to Churchie a top private school in Brisbane to begin my education..I though if I am going to be in a band I need a guitar and some lessons..I conned dad into buying me an acoustic guitar which I fitted with an electric pick up I told him I was joining the school band...I bought a small 5 watt amp and I was away.. A friend of mine Ken Adler, who later on became a surfing champion in Australia also had bought a guitar and he wanted to learn too..

I had bought my guitar at Ford's at the Gabba from a bloke called Malcolm and next door their was the Hawaiian club who taught music..To cut a long story short my teacher taught me the very basics and the first song he taught me to play was, Rolf Harris's Six White Boomers..Hardly the type of music a future rock star (lol) wanted to play. I left, as did my mate Ken who hung up his guitar forever to concentrate on surfing. Me, I listened to the radio and records and became self taught..In 1961 I was 15 and joined my first band at school. I can only remember one of the blokes name in the band, Greg West and he played bass.We played our first hop at St. Mary's church at Kangaroo Point..it was a love job and I played lead. Our repertoire was about 10 songs all instrumentals. I learnt to play them by listening to the records. I remember going on stage, with my old guitar and shared an amp with our rhythm guitarist. It was 15 watts. The very first song we played was Red River Rock, and as we played it I though to myself how is this!! I knew in my heart that this was my dream to be in a great rock band..the night was a success ,it was a girls birthday party, and I did not why at the time the girls hung around us..dumb Thor..lol I learnt later on why....

The name of our group was the "Churchie's" after our school. I stayed with them till 1963 ,one of the blokes left and we broke up...I was still determined to be in a band and practised my technique till I was better than 'Chet' lol. In 1964 my luck changed.

In my English class there was a young bloke who sat behind me called Mike. He had bright red hair and we soon discover we both played the guitar and we wanted to form a band. Ok, so we both decided to bring our gear to school and have a hit out in the school hall..I was 17 and had a drivers licence and an Austin A30...yep in that terrible brown colour...I bought my guitar and amp into school in my car (I had upgraded by this time to an elect slab guitar and a 15 watt amplifier..GOOD STUFF...lol) I know my guitar was not much good but it looked like a FENDER..Mike got his gear to school courtesy of his parents. He was 16 and did not have a drivers licence yet

So that afternoon we had our first hit out.I thought I was good but Mike dazzled me with Guitar Boogie Shuffle and Flingel Bunt. I played the Shadows ,Round and Round, and of course Apache. Mike had a Yamaha guitar which I was very envious of and a huge home made amp. That afternoon we decided we would form OUR first band together...I knew a friend of mine Clive who played bass and another mate of mine Alan who played drums. We were away.

Our first first practice session was at my house at Greenslopes. I picked Mike up from his house a Kalinga on the other side of town . We hit it off so well and by the end of our session we had 10 instrumentals that sounded good . From then on we practised at Clive's place at Graceville. Once again I picked the boy up with his huge amp which swamped the back seat of my A30. The amp would sometimes break into 4BC, a local radio station when we were playing There was a zac toll on the Indoorooplilly Bridge to get to Clive's and Mike always said I will get it next time...Are you beginning to wonder why I keep bringing Mike up all the time...read on and become enlightened..

So our first engagement came up. A girls 21 st. birthday party and we were getting a quid each. We arrived early and set up but Mike was a no show.I tried to contact him (pre mobile) but his phone rang out..We struggled through..we had practised as a four piece and I had to do the lead. Nobody seemed to notice and when we finished the girl gave us our four quid.. We did our repertoire of 20 instrumentals build up from 10 and I even sang about four songs in ( E A and B7 )which they liked..I went home furious at Mike because of his rudeness that night. I was sort of leader of our group which we called The Catism, made up from the first letters of our names plus two more to make it sound better .....Just like ABBA...lol.

I rang Mike in the morning and 'got up him'..He said he sick and didn't have a phone number to ring ,which was a load of bull shit.. He had a girlfriend at the time and they argued all the time and I knew that was the reason for his NO SHOW. He was trying to patch things up with her after another argument.. So we soldiered on for a while mostly playing at private parties and RSL's. They were a lot different then, just a shed where they served grog and everybody got drunk....Mike continue with his no shows a lot of the time and we were forced to sack him..BIG MISTAKE THOR...

I decided to start a fresh with Clive, and we joined a band called The Dwellers.. We hit the spot straight away and had great early success playing at The Boat House , TC's, The Primitiff , Bishop Island, Greenmount on the beach and heaps more places .We only played covers plus a couple I had written.We were into The Kinks.. The Stones..The Beatles...Herman's Hermits and we tried to be unique with our sound. Our singer was Julian Jones who was 14 and had a great voice. Julian is still singing today but jazz is his chosen field. In late '65 I had a girlfriend, drop down dead gorgeous and I unfortunately got her pregnant...mmm. Her father was a lovely bloke and at his insistence (lol) I got married..I was 18 and she was 16..too young to get married, but what could they do,they were going to have a baby..as the song goes...So here I was with my girl, no real job, and a baby on the way. I bit the bullet and got a job...I got a job as a chalker at the Stock Exchange in Creek Street... I continued playing with the band until 1966. We had had a son by this time and my wife said to me I want you to give the band up..I was shattered..music was my life and making it was all I ever wanted to do.

We had a big argument and I said I can do both, a job like I had to do, for the money ,and playing in a band and writing songs which I was very good at and I knew that one day I would make it in music..NO she said, the band or me..She was the most jealous girl I had ever met and that is why she made me give it up I am sure... because of all the young girls that hung around us..so there ended my dream of becoming a rock star...lol..sad..

Now here I was totally at sea. I watched The Dweller's blossom with no me. One day out of the blue Mike rang me up and said he was going to England to join a band and wanted me to go with him. He told me he had free passage over on a ship if he supplied the entertainment. My hear skipped a beat, but alas I told him I couldn't as I was married with a child. My wife was English and I asked her would she like to go on a trip of a life time..She said no, and that my friends was the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life.. I knew in my heart that I had missed my dream .I think Shakespeare said something like "there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at he flood leads on to fortune, omitted all the the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.." My tide came and went, and I was on the out going tide.

Now let me tell you about Mike Chapman. He joined a band in England called Tangerine Peel but they had little success .He had to get a job as a waiter at a club to survive and there he met a bloke called Nick. Nick came from a wealth family and soon Mike had moved in with him as a lodger.. Mike realised then that he had to do something to get back into music. Nick fancied himself as poet,so they decided to start writing songs together..They wrote so many and went around all the studios trying to flog them, without success. Then the magic happened. They had written a song called TomTom Turn Around and it was picked up by the New World Trio and became a monster hit..from there his career blossomed and he and Nick became (Chinn and Chapman). Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman; one of the most successful song writing team in the world.....They wrote all the songs for The Sweet, Suzi Quatro,, Smokey..Racey, Mud,Huey Lewis and The News . Mike in his own right wrote two classics, Tina Turner's Simply The Best, and Tony Basil's ..Hey Mickey..

I could not believe it when I heard of his initial success He never wrote a song when in The Catism but co wrote one with me called "Being Unkind".I still have it and it is unrecorded...I am a songwriter and have been writing since I was 13 yrs of age. I have only ever released 5 of my songs and they all did well..I know in my heart that if I had gone to England it would have been (Chapman and Eriksen).In his story on Google he said that he was the driving force behind the songwriting team, and Nicky was a drunken passenger most of he time..Mike dumped him in the 80's.

He also became one of the world's best producers..He produced for Blondie,Rod Stewart, Pat Benetar, Baby Animals ,The Knack.,Australian Crawl, Bow Wow Wow, and ABBA plus many more groups.

Mike lives in America now and is worth $790,000,000 million, No, not to many noughts....I kept in touch with Mike by letter in the seventies, and the last thing he told me that he had married a film star and paid to have the HOLLYWOOD sign fixed up and he was living in a big house in Beverly Hills..I have tried again since but with no success. About three months ago our old high school managed to find him . They want to invite him out to open a new music hall at "Churchie" The first thing he asked them was how is my old mate Thor going? ...Oh, Mike we would have made it in the song writing business together..I have over 200 songs ready to go, but being just a song writer these days doesn't cut the mustard....I should have "followed my dream" like Mike...He made it and I did not...I still am writing songs and I know I have a number one song in my kitty there somewhere, but how do I get a believer to listen....

PS. Christine and I did not go the distance..There is another story there so if you like this one I shall finish off my music career in another story...

Cheers

Thor Eriksen...