00:00:00
Speaker 1: So delighted to speak to my next guest. I gotta be honest, put all the cards on the table because of my age. I wasn't familiar with this gentleman when he was absolutely hitting his straps here in Adelaide back in the seventies. But a person in the industry said to me, Peterhead is returning to Adelaide. He's doing some shows. You need to get him on the show because he is an extraordinary musician and has such a great career. But also here is a man with some stories to tell. I'm delighted to say he's on the show. Peter, lovely to have you on.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: Thank you muchly, and first and.
00:00:34
Speaker 1: Foremost, happy birthday eighty years of age only.
00:00:39
Speaker 2: A few days away, but thank you very much.
00:00:41
Speaker 1: I did the research when I was told that you were coming to town, and I thought, this is right up the five double a Ali, this is right in our listener wheelhouse, Peter, because what a career and what a life you have had. First and foremost, I love the idea that your name is Peterhead. But that's not your real name, is it name?
00:01:01
Speaker 2: Well, my real name was Peter Beadley, but I fifty years ago, I thought about forty years ago, I apologize. I thought it's time to leave Adelaide. Now changed the name, changed the city, start again. That's what I did. I went to Sydney to live, and I traveled around the world a bit, and so now I am legally Peter Ahead.
00:01:28
Speaker 1: Was it because of your love for the suburb? What was the.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: Marlene Richards, who's a friend of mine from way back, we did kigs together at the age of thirteen. I was talking to her mother one day and she said, I've always been a Peterhead girl because she lived to Peterhead. And when she said that clicked with me. I said, that's what peterad.
00:01:50
Speaker 1: That is a great name. So you are a rock musician, you're a piano player, you're a much loved and respected singer songwriter. I thought this would be a nice because you're doing a couple of shows. You're doing the Trinity Sessions tomorrow night, aren't you.
00:02:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, every show is totally different Trinity Sessions. There's mainly a songwriter's venue, which is fantastic for me because I've written quite a few little songs about Adelaide that not many people have heard, and so it's going to be a delight to be able to present them into people who evidently listen.
00:02:26
Speaker 1: And then you're doing the Semaphore Workers Club on Sunday.
00:02:31
Speaker 2: And that would be totally different. That's a rock and roll dance. Yes, So we're doing a few covers there and just letting it all hang out and it'll be straight rock and roll. And then on the Saturday night, I'm doing the House of the Rising Sun in Auburn, and that's going to be a piano dart so I'll do almost Billy Joels and Milton Johnson, totally different reperture again, so every night it's.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: A totally different well done well. I thought it'd be great a to celebrate you, to wish your happy birthday and let people know that someone of your ilk has returned home, you know, Prodigal Son returning home to perform for the masses, which we like. But it might just be fun for people from a nostalgic point of view to remember some of the names of bands and people that you worked in because you were in headband. Of course, the progressive rock band what in the early seventies.
00:03:22
Speaker 2: Ah, yeah, that only lasted for about three years, but it was a great deal of band and we just traveled around Australia a lot and we worked with the Rolling Stones for a week and support to Elton John here Memorial Driver. I think it was Elton's first gig in Australia. Really wow.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: I mean that's a great resume in itself. And you had a well known player of the Angels and Chris Bailey and that band too, so well, what a great time for your early seventies rock band Stones. Elton John left to that.
00:04:01
Speaker 2: Because we were like a brother band with Fraternity. We had the same manager as Fraternity, so I meant I hung up with Bond Scott and Fraternity band for about four years, yes, in each other's pockets.
00:04:19
Speaker 1: And then you're in another band with Bond Words you're the mount Lofty Rangers.
00:04:22
Speaker 2: And then when Fraternity folded at the same time as Headband, I thought, what we can do now? The same with Bond you know we'll go what do we do to survive? So we put together another band and called them about Lofty Rangers and that we can corporate all of head Band and half of Fraternity as well.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: He's such a weird figure, Peter Bond Scott. What was he like when you knew him and played.
00:04:50
Speaker 2: But he's a wonderful guys a lot of time. The only negative was he drinking all the time. When you're twenty years old, you think you're in destructively and I thought it was too that I've survived and Bond didn't. Great pity.
00:05:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that band, the Mount Lofty Rangers, I was looking at the history too. Bond wasn't one of the only sort of well known names in that band that you had for a period of time. Is it true? Glenn Sharrick and Robin Archer both performed with you.
00:05:23
Speaker 2: In that Yeah. I think Robin was the main one because we worked together down the Old Lion Hotel for many years. But we got Bond down the old line too, and that went on for a couple of years. And when that that's right. There was a certain rehearsal that Bond came to and he had a fight with his wife on the day and something You've taken the rent money and spend it on or something, and so there was a big fight that happened and he came to rehearsal said I can't stay here. I'm going down and getting pissed.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: And.
00:06:08
Speaker 2: He just stormed out and he nearly killed himself. He got on his noted bike, he got run over and he's in hospital for months. And then it's really weird. His old friend Vince Lovegrove, who used to sing with Valentine's Vince, has started off an agency here in and they called Javan and jo Van booked a C d C with their previous singer and Bottom and I got the job putting up posts. So we were running around Adelaid at three o'clock in the morning with a bag of glue and rushes and singing up posts for ac DC. And Bob was saying, who are these here? They're singing's not very good. I'll have to let them know. Then he ended up driving them around. They kept on them, talking to him, saying, listener, I can see I can do better than the guy you got. They eventually gave him a chance. I think they set up a gig in Bruce House Seller and he just knocked them out.
00:07:21
Speaker 1: Wow, magic happens.
00:07:23
Speaker 2: This old guy. But he got to offer. Yeah, oh my lord, he did a story, perfect, perfect singer.
00:07:33
Speaker 1: For the great Peter Heades. My guess he's returned to Adelaide to do some shows. Friday at the Trinity Session Sunday at the Semaphore Workers Club, with a piano show in the middle of that too. You mentioned thirteen Peter when you were performing. You're playing piano professionally here in Adelaide, in Adelaide's first rock and roll band. So that's Johnny Mack and the Macmen, Yes, sirir.
00:07:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe Johnny macer is still playing. It's ninety three or I had him.
00:08:02
Speaker 1: In the studio at the end of last year and he's still amazing, and he looks great and like yourself, he's such a great storyteller.
00:08:11
Speaker 2: Real I'm all that. It's very grateful to Johnny for starting me off when I was still in school. I was working four nights a week and the school week's up quite a bit, but I'll always thanking for giving me my start.
00:08:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, you accompanied show girls at the infamous Heinley Street institution LaBelle. Tell me about LaBelle, Well.
00:08:38
Speaker 2: I've read a song about it, Heaven and Hill at LaBelle, but Boyle Girl, it's hard to tell it. Quite a few trainies, so it's a lot of fun. I got to play Hammond Organ there for the first time that they had one just as a resident thing. And I've never played Hammond before, so that was my introduction. And then I started playing Hammon with Deadband and it was a totally different thing. It's rock and roller then, and I did that at the end of school. I was a professional, back into the strippers a couple of years.
00:09:20
Speaker 1: What a lot. We were just talking about John Farnham. You would have played with the young Johnny Farnham in that period too.
00:09:27
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, But he spent about a year as Johnny Farner's musical director almost. In fact, I wrote out a whole night of performing for him. I wrote a fourteen different charts for a ten piece officer, which he took with into Sydney to start work. And as I said, this is back when we were twenty and I've never seen him since, never had any communication since. There was an intense year where we played around Adelaide, mainly at the Andale Shopping Center and Marion Shopping Center like that. Wow, And he started off doing songs like Sadie and Big Corny. He bentually got embarrassed about it and one day he started he turned up singing Help by the Beatles.
00:10:25
Speaker 1: That's what we were just talking about yeah, and then his career just explodes. It's amazing, isn't it. Oh my lord, it's so great. It's so great. We talked about headband. We talked about obviously the Mountain Lofty Rangers there too. I saw you were the piano bar artiste, so you did number. You're so versatile, Peter. That's the thing too, like at the Adelaid Festival Theater. So you played music for a long time here in Adelaide and then eventually moved on to Sydney.
00:10:53
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right. Yeah, first forty years in Adelaide. In the last forty years basically in Sydney, but a little bit of England, China and America as well.
00:11:04
Speaker 1: So your home, I guess, not just to perform, catch up with friends, see people for your radios.
00:11:09
Speaker 2: Well, the two people that I'm playing with this band, Chris Finan and Mark Meyer, both played in the Mount Lofty Rangers and we all view gone. So yeah, we're catching up. We haven't played together since then. He's a great time. I'm prisons right now.
00:11:29
Speaker 1: Excellent. Is Ron playing with you guys too? Across the weekend Cosmider Yeah, yeah, thank you. That's Nicky's father isn't it Nikki Cosmoto's father? I think okay, I think it might be. She's a lovely and amazing talented performer herself. I must be she was. Yeah, absolutely, And even if it is, his granddaughter is amazing too. They both sing in Adelaide, which is terrific. And is there a book? I'm told there's a book that we might be able to check out your life into. It's called Headism, Headonism, excell.
00:12:07
Speaker 2: Take me, me and the guy who wrote it the last four years to get done, and finally done. It's sold about for copies, so I don't think it's.
00:12:17
Speaker 1: Eddie left Oh okay, you're going to do a reprint. Can people get a copy of it somewhere?
00:12:21
Speaker 2: Or I've bought six copies here for any codies desperate?
00:12:26
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, hey, people want to know the story that I'm sure there are five double A listeners Peter right now who are ticking things off as you talk, remembering Headband, remembering the Lofty Rangers, remembering the LaBelle perhaps or maybe not. They don't want to admit that, you know, Johnny Mack and the Macment, all of these great memories floating back. Well, it's lovely to have you home. Thank you for taking our call. I hope you have some great shows across the weekend, and you know, I hope you sell the books that you have there, and I'm sure it'll be a great thrill for people who remember seeing you and enjoying you fifty years ago, or the best part, doing it again this weekend.
00:13:01
Speaker 2: I appreciate it very much. I really love the radio and what they do, so thank you very much.
00:13:08
Speaker 1: Lovely Dementia, thanks so much, enjoy your time home and again, happy birthday. Thank you the very best. Peterhead. There you go, musical blast from the past.
Speaker 1: So delighted to speak to my next guest. I gotta be honest, put all the cards on the table because of my age. I wasn't familiar with this gentleman when he was absolutely hitting his straps here in Adelaide back in the seventies. But a person in the industry said to me, Peterhead is returning to Adelaide. He's doing some shows. You need to get him on the show because he is an extraordinary musician and has such a great career. But also here is a man with some stories to tell. I'm delighted to say he's on the show. Peter, lovely to have you on.
00:00:33
Speaker 2: Thank you muchly, and first and.
00:00:34
Speaker 1: Foremost, happy birthday eighty years of age only.
00:00:39
Speaker 2: A few days away, but thank you very much.
00:00:41
Speaker 1: I did the research when I was told that you were coming to town, and I thought, this is right up the five double a Ali, this is right in our listener wheelhouse, Peter, because what a career and what a life you have had. First and foremost, I love the idea that your name is Peterhead. But that's not your real name, is it name?
00:01:01
Speaker 2: Well, my real name was Peter Beadley, but I fifty years ago, I thought about forty years ago, I apologize. I thought it's time to leave Adelaide. Now changed the name, changed the city, start again. That's what I did. I went to Sydney to live, and I traveled around the world a bit, and so now I am legally Peter Ahead.
00:01:28
Speaker 1: Was it because of your love for the suburb? What was the.
00:01:32
Speaker 2: Marlene Richards, who's a friend of mine from way back, we did kigs together at the age of thirteen. I was talking to her mother one day and she said, I've always been a Peterhead girl because she lived to Peterhead. And when she said that clicked with me. I said, that's what peterad.
00:01:50
Speaker 1: That is a great name. So you are a rock musician, you're a piano player, you're a much loved and respected singer songwriter. I thought this would be a nice because you're doing a couple of shows. You're doing the Trinity Sessions tomorrow night, aren't you.
00:02:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, every show is totally different Trinity Sessions. There's mainly a songwriter's venue, which is fantastic for me because I've written quite a few little songs about Adelaide that not many people have heard, and so it's going to be a delight to be able to present them into people who evidently listen.
00:02:26
Speaker 1: And then you're doing the Semaphore Workers Club on Sunday.
00:02:31
Speaker 2: And that would be totally different. That's a rock and roll dance. Yes, So we're doing a few covers there and just letting it all hang out and it'll be straight rock and roll. And then on the Saturday night, I'm doing the House of the Rising Sun in Auburn, and that's going to be a piano dart so I'll do almost Billy Joels and Milton Johnson, totally different reperture again, so every night it's.
00:02:59
Speaker 1: A totally different well done well. I thought it'd be great a to celebrate you, to wish your happy birthday and let people know that someone of your ilk has returned home, you know, Prodigal Son returning home to perform for the masses, which we like. But it might just be fun for people from a nostalgic point of view to remember some of the names of bands and people that you worked in because you were in headband. Of course, the progressive rock band what in the early seventies.
00:03:22
Speaker 2: Ah, yeah, that only lasted for about three years, but it was a great deal of band and we just traveled around Australia a lot and we worked with the Rolling Stones for a week and support to Elton John here Memorial Driver. I think it was Elton's first gig in Australia. Really wow.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: I mean that's a great resume in itself. And you had a well known player of the Angels and Chris Bailey and that band too, so well, what a great time for your early seventies rock band Stones. Elton John left to that.
00:04:01
Speaker 2: Because we were like a brother band with Fraternity. We had the same manager as Fraternity, so I meant I hung up with Bond Scott and Fraternity band for about four years, yes, in each other's pockets.
00:04:19
Speaker 1: And then you're in another band with Bond Words you're the mount Lofty Rangers.
00:04:22
Speaker 2: And then when Fraternity folded at the same time as Headband, I thought, what we can do now? The same with Bond you know we'll go what do we do to survive? So we put together another band and called them about Lofty Rangers and that we can corporate all of head Band and half of Fraternity as well.
00:04:44
Speaker 1: He's such a weird figure, Peter Bond Scott. What was he like when you knew him and played.
00:04:50
Speaker 2: But he's a wonderful guys a lot of time. The only negative was he drinking all the time. When you're twenty years old, you think you're in destructively and I thought it was too that I've survived and Bond didn't. Great pity.
00:05:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that band, the Mount Lofty Rangers, I was looking at the history too. Bond wasn't one of the only sort of well known names in that band that you had for a period of time. Is it true? Glenn Sharrick and Robin Archer both performed with you.
00:05:23
Speaker 2: In that Yeah. I think Robin was the main one because we worked together down the Old Lion Hotel for many years. But we got Bond down the old line too, and that went on for a couple of years. And when that that's right. There was a certain rehearsal that Bond came to and he had a fight with his wife on the day and something You've taken the rent money and spend it on or something, and so there was a big fight that happened and he came to rehearsal said I can't stay here. I'm going down and getting pissed.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: And.
00:06:08
Speaker 2: He just stormed out and he nearly killed himself. He got on his noted bike, he got run over and he's in hospital for months. And then it's really weird. His old friend Vince Lovegrove, who used to sing with Valentine's Vince, has started off an agency here in and they called Javan and jo Van booked a C d C with their previous singer and Bottom and I got the job putting up posts. So we were running around Adelaid at three o'clock in the morning with a bag of glue and rushes and singing up posts for ac DC. And Bob was saying, who are these here? They're singing's not very good. I'll have to let them know. Then he ended up driving them around. They kept on them, talking to him, saying, listener, I can see I can do better than the guy you got. They eventually gave him a chance. I think they set up a gig in Bruce House Seller and he just knocked them out.
00:07:21
Speaker 1: Wow, magic happens.
00:07:23
Speaker 2: This old guy. But he got to offer. Yeah, oh my lord, he did a story, perfect, perfect singer.
00:07:33
Speaker 1: For the great Peter Heades. My guess he's returned to Adelaide to do some shows. Friday at the Trinity Session Sunday at the Semaphore Workers Club, with a piano show in the middle of that too. You mentioned thirteen Peter when you were performing. You're playing piano professionally here in Adelaide, in Adelaide's first rock and roll band. So that's Johnny Mack and the Macmen, Yes, sirir.
00:07:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe Johnny macer is still playing. It's ninety three or I had him.
00:08:02
Speaker 1: In the studio at the end of last year and he's still amazing, and he looks great and like yourself, he's such a great storyteller.
00:08:11
Speaker 2: Real I'm all that. It's very grateful to Johnny for starting me off when I was still in school. I was working four nights a week and the school week's up quite a bit, but I'll always thanking for giving me my start.
00:08:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, you accompanied show girls at the infamous Heinley Street institution LaBelle. Tell me about LaBelle, Well.
00:08:38
Speaker 2: I've read a song about it, Heaven and Hill at LaBelle, but Boyle Girl, it's hard to tell it. Quite a few trainies, so it's a lot of fun. I got to play Hammond Organ there for the first time that they had one just as a resident thing. And I've never played Hammond before, so that was my introduction. And then I started playing Hammon with Deadband and it was a totally different thing. It's rock and roller then, and I did that at the end of school. I was a professional, back into the strippers a couple of years.
00:09:20
Speaker 1: What a lot. We were just talking about John Farnham. You would have played with the young Johnny Farnham in that period too.
00:09:27
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, But he spent about a year as Johnny Farner's musical director almost. In fact, I wrote out a whole night of performing for him. I wrote a fourteen different charts for a ten piece officer, which he took with into Sydney to start work. And as I said, this is back when we were twenty and I've never seen him since, never had any communication since. There was an intense year where we played around Adelaide, mainly at the Andale Shopping Center and Marion Shopping Center like that. Wow, And he started off doing songs like Sadie and Big Corny. He bentually got embarrassed about it and one day he started he turned up singing Help by the Beatles.
00:10:25
Speaker 1: That's what we were just talking about yeah, and then his career just explodes. It's amazing, isn't it. Oh my lord, it's so great. It's so great. We talked about headband. We talked about obviously the Mountain Lofty Rangers there too. I saw you were the piano bar artiste, so you did number. You're so versatile, Peter. That's the thing too, like at the Adelaid Festival Theater. So you played music for a long time here in Adelaide and then eventually moved on to Sydney.
00:10:53
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right. Yeah, first forty years in Adelaide. In the last forty years basically in Sydney, but a little bit of England, China and America as well.
00:11:04
Speaker 1: So your home, I guess, not just to perform, catch up with friends, see people for your radios.
00:11:09
Speaker 2: Well, the two people that I'm playing with this band, Chris Finan and Mark Meyer, both played in the Mount Lofty Rangers and we all view gone. So yeah, we're catching up. We haven't played together since then. He's a great time. I'm prisons right now.
00:11:29
Speaker 1: Excellent. Is Ron playing with you guys too? Across the weekend Cosmider Yeah, yeah, thank you. That's Nicky's father isn't it Nikki Cosmoto's father? I think okay, I think it might be. She's a lovely and amazing talented performer herself. I must be she was. Yeah, absolutely, And even if it is, his granddaughter is amazing too. They both sing in Adelaide, which is terrific. And is there a book? I'm told there's a book that we might be able to check out your life into. It's called Headism, Headonism, excell.
00:12:07
Speaker 2: Take me, me and the guy who wrote it the last four years to get done, and finally done. It's sold about for copies, so I don't think it's.
00:12:17
Speaker 1: Eddie left Oh okay, you're going to do a reprint. Can people get a copy of it somewhere?
00:12:21
Speaker 2: Or I've bought six copies here for any codies desperate?
00:12:26
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, hey, people want to know the story that I'm sure there are five double A listeners Peter right now who are ticking things off as you talk, remembering Headband, remembering the Lofty Rangers, remembering the LaBelle perhaps or maybe not. They don't want to admit that, you know, Johnny Mack and the Macment, all of these great memories floating back. Well, it's lovely to have you home. Thank you for taking our call. I hope you have some great shows across the weekend, and you know, I hope you sell the books that you have there, and I'm sure it'll be a great thrill for people who remember seeing you and enjoying you fifty years ago, or the best part, doing it again this weekend.
00:13:01
Speaker 2: I appreciate it very much. I really love the radio and what they do, so thank you very much.
00:13:08
Speaker 1: Lovely Dementia, thanks so much, enjoy your time home and again, happy birthday. Thank you the very best. Peterhead. There you go, musical blast from the past.
