John Waters came over to Australia as a young adult on a working holiday and never left. He would become one of our best recognised actors on stage and screen, and with old and young, after nearly two decades on the ABC TV children’s program Play School. With so many acting credits to his name, the singer, guitarist and songwriter that he would have described himself as when he arrived moved somewhat into the background around other priorities.
John Waters
Music is still as much a part of him as breathing. In his formative years, Radio Luxembourg, John evocatively described listening to it under the bed covers via transistor radio lest his parents hear, opened up a whole new world:
“The music that moves us and continues to move us all our life, is the music we loved as teenagers and young adults, when we almost thought of the music before anything else. It was the soundtrack of our lives when we were discovering love, sex, things we believed in, politics, all sorts of issues, and those songs all reflected that. They never leave us for that reason.”
Radio Luxenbourg was a precursor to pirate radio, and the Australian iconic DJs that we were introduced to as a result like Graham Webb, Ian MacRae and John Kerr. When the British Government allowed the BBC a monopoly broadcasting licence, no commercial broadcasting was available, or external sponsored airtime. To circumvent this, that monopoly lasted 50 years, up until 1973, a former British Air Force Captain called Leonard Plugge set up his own International Broadcasting Company, which leased time on transmitters in continental Europe courtesy of the independent principality of Luxembourg and including the most powerful privately owned transmitter, and resold it as sponsored programs, in English, aimed at the UK audience.
Radio Luxembourg then enjoyed its own monopoly of English-language commercial radio programming until March 1964, when pirate radio station Radio Caroline began broadcasting from a ship anchored off the England’s Essex coast.
For John, Radio Luxembourg gave him access to US acts, and to some that he was lucky enough to get to see and hear up close:
“I lived in south west London, where I was born and grew up. In Twickenham, there was an island in the middle of the river, called Eel Pie Island, and that was the name of the venue. It was converted boat shed and the local London bands, all of them, played there. The Small Faces, The Kinks, The Who, early Rolling Stones, who had a residency at the Crawdaddy in Richmond, which was just down the road.
I was very lucky to be there, when I was actually underage, and going to that venue. That’s where I heard some of these artists. Then listening to the records was great because I’d actually seen these people on stage.
Chris Farlowe doing Out of Time. He was one of my favorite singers of the era, a British soul singer who was discovered by Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones manager. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger wrote that song for him, as well as recording it themselves. I love doing that because it means so much to me, and I’m actually surprised at how many of the audience really know it too. It’s one of the songs that really rocks in this show, and The Small Faces. Steve Marriott, their front man, who tragically died in a in a house fire, he was he was rock n roll personified. Little guy, huge voice. He lived on the edge and was the real deal. All of their music was fabulous.”
This new show, also featuring Waters’ regular collaborator Stewart D’Arrietta and the Chartbusters (pictured above), kicks off with The Who’s My Generation (‘instantly recognisable and the right way to do it) and will included powerhouse bands of the era (Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks, To Love Somebody by the Bee Gees) alongside mighty one hit wonders like Thunderclap Newman and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown‘s Fire (which John and I did a sterling Zoom rendition of).
Many of you will have seen John’s long running John Lennon tribute Looking Through a Glass Onion. That, also with Stewart, was carefully scripted and co-ordinated. Radio Luxembourg allows John the freedom, like a true pirate radio DJ, of filling in the spaces between the classics with stories, memories and his passion for the music of the era.
The audience isn’t just the people who lived in those times either.
“The recording industry in this day and age didn’t sit at home making music digitally and just sending it out. They went out six nights a week and played gigs. That’s why this music has this life to it. And while the art of the live band has never really died out, young people get to experience it differently.
While we play the songs more or less with the kind of the instrumentation that they had, we’ve got a we’ve got a technological advantage that the bands of the 60s didn’t have, but it’s all just kind of raw and live. There’s some pretty good people out there performing today. But this music, I would say this is about as good as it gets.”
Radio Luxembourg kick off at venues around Australia from January 10, 2025. More information and locations near you can be found here: https://radioluxembourglive.com/