Barry Ferber and Mark Moffatt, Australian radio and music expats living in the US, died last week, having left a lasting impact on both industries.
Former General Manager of 4GG (Now 92.5 Triple M Gold) on the Gold Coast, Barry Ferber (main image – thanks to Greg Newman & Jocks’ Journal), died aged 83 at his home in Las Vegas.
Barry joined 4GG when the station opened in 1967 as an on air presenter, becoming assistant manager and later replacing Ralph Taylor as general manager until 1989.
Before moving to Queensland though, a teenage Barry was working in Melbourne on air at 3DB and received some tapes of this band from Liverpool.
He said in an interview with the Las Vegas Sun:
“This one publicist in London sent me these interviews and intros for people like Gerry and the Pacemakers and Dusty Springfield. He kept sending me tapes (not records) of a group called The Beatles.
I told him to quit sending me this stuff and he said they’re going to be big one day. So I had all these tapes piled up everywhere – hours and hours worth of tapes that had been sent to me over a year’s time.”
One day, a record came with a tape, on one side was “Please Please Me” and on the other was “I Want to Hold Your Hand.
So I stuck it on the turntable, played the intro, said “Here’s a new group from England.’ From that moment on everybody went nuts.”
He would interview them when they toured Australia in 1964, saying:
“I was the only person they knew in Australia at that time.”
He met them on the roof of the Southern Cross Hotel, then accompanying them to their room where they did the interview. They would conducted a press conference later that day, with Ferber’s interview already playing on 3DB.
Ferber maximised his involvement in instigating Beatle-mania in Australia, also writing, singing and releasing a single called The Bearded Beetle.
After 4GG Barry briefly was GM of 4BC, then worked in radio in Fiji before moving to the US in 1993 where he would work as an usher at the Mandalay Bay Theatre. He leaves behind his former wife Judith, two daughters Kate and Lucy and three grandchildren.
Australian musician and producer Mark Moffatt died on Friday September 6 in Nashville, Tennessee aged 74.
In the above post on his Facebook page, Mark’s wife, Lindsey, said:
“Moffatt was one of the most experienced and respected producers to emerge from Australia. He was also an accomplished musician, engineer, writer and a Grammy nominee. Producing more tracks in the APRA Top 30 Songs of All Time than any other single producer, Moffatt produced an astonishing 15 ARIA Hall of Fame inductees.
A proud Australian, Moffatt chased his musical passions from his hometown of Maryborough to Brisbane, then hopped a boat to the UK to work on London’s famed Denmark Street for several years. When he found himself back in Brisbane in 1976, the stars aligned and Moffatt’s production of The Saints’ “I’m Stranded” kicked his burgeoning career into overdrive.
Production stints with EMI and TCS Studios in Melbourne led him to Sydney in 1980, where he became Festival Records’ in-house producer, working on some of the biggest names in Australian music for more than a decade.
Moffatt relocated to Nashville in 1996 and quickly became part of its prolific music scene, helping countless Aussie artists as a mentor, producer, studio musician, and all-around coach. A fresh-faced Aussie artist coming to Nashville could find no better cheerleader and teacher than Mark Moffatt.
Moffatt’s overriding focus for the past two decades has been to bridge the international divide on behalf of the Americana Music Association, serving as its Board President for three terms, and educating everyone in his musical orbit on the complexities and history of this storied genre of music. He was a founding board member of the Americana Music Foundation, served for ten years as APRA’s Nashville Ambassador, and was awarded the CMA Global Achievement Award for his remarkable international efforts.
At the time of his death, Moffatt was putting the finishing touches on a full album for KILO, a band he formed with Australian rock singer John “Swanee” Swan, for which they have already released several music videos.
On the very day of his passing, Australian magazine The Music released an article hailing Moffatt as “an unsung hero of Australian music.” From The Saints to Keith Urban to Tim Finn to Yothu Yindi and well beyond, Mark Moffatt has influenced the Aussie—and world—music sphere in innumerable ways, and done so with the quiet confidence that only he could bring.”
Moffatt is survived by Lindsey, step-daughter Dana and two granddaughters, his son Geordie, and extended family in Australia.