Song Of The Day 7/9/2013: Skyhooks - "Living In the '70s"

Australian '70s Music Week: We arrive in Skyhooks' lair. Skyhooks came with great fanfare and produced a few of the biggest selling Australian albums of all time, including their manic, glam-baiting debut Living In The '70s in 1974. Our Australian operative Colin Donald explains:

Skyhooks were sensational and controversial. In the early '70s Australian radio listeners had heard very few songs mentioning sex or drugs, but when their debut album Living in the 70s came out people were astonished. Not only were such forbidden topics the focus of many songs, they assured peope it was all going down every weekend right in your own area. 

Skyhooks were cheeky and showy and good musically. They gave a voice to local youth, even if many songs were banned. They had a popular singer in Shirley Strachan (real name = Graeme -- a carpenter) who eventually went solo and then on to a successful TV career. Another band member, guitarist Red Symons, also moved into TV and radio, where he still has a career playing a sarcastic character too intelligent for all the nonsense occuring around him. As an actor, I once performed a scene with Red in the unreleased film The Incurable Romantic. Yes, he is aloof.

Shirley Strachan went to a local high school. At the time my sister was a besotted fan and she would stake out houses where he might live. She had no luck. Shirley left us after crashing his helicopter many years ago.

All-Music Guide says Skyhooks were originally meant as parodists of glam music, for a really telling reason: "The glitter rock period of music did not sit well with Australian music, which is steeped in singers and bands having to be able to cut it in front of an audience." Skyhooks burst through that wall with good-natured, location-specific songs about sex (both straight and gay), drugs, suburban boredom and disaffection. It worked, and they became superstars with nearly as much importance to Australia as the Beatles had to everyone else. Skyhooks sloughed it out for three albums with Strachan, who left to pursue a solo career.

They made their fourth and final album in 1980, and upon breaking up, Skyhooks took out a full-page advertisement in the Australian music press that read "Why don't you all get fucked?" America, I'm very disappointed in you that you couldn't find a place in your hearts for these guys.