© Malcolm J. Turnbull

[page 7of 8]
   
Shearston recorded ‘We Are Going to Freedom’ with members of what became ATSIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Commission) and the song was adopted at the Council’s 1966 Federal conference. ‘Old Bulli’ attacked safety conditions within the mining industry. Fears of legal action by BHP resulted in the song being deleted from the LP Gary Shearston Sings His Songs - and the end of a furious Shearston’s contract with CBS. On Abreaction, which he subsequently recorded for Festival, he caustically parodied Australia’s subservience to Uncle Sam in classic cowboy & Indian terms: “Now all the way with Chief Warcloud is the promise you’ve given to me, and Snake-in-the-Grass and Screaming Eagle will be your security” [  ‘Last Night I Had the Strangest Delirium Tremendous’]. Although, in hindsight, the bulk of Shearston’s 60s output cannot be classified as protest, he was branded by Australian Broadside and ‘Old Bulli’, so much so that he was declared an undesirable alien by American authorities and refused entry to the U.S. where he had been offered a contract by Peter Paul & Mary’s management team. (Shearston opted instead to settle in Britain where he had a major hit with the Cole Porter standard ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ in 1974. He returned to Australia at the end of the 1980s).  

Meanwhile, Don Henderson, gravitating between Brisbane and Sydney recorded One Out with The Union Singers. Straight-out topical material emanated from writers as diverse as Clem Parkinson, Lyell Sayer (‘The F111’), Ken Mansell (‘The Westgate Bridge Disaster’) and John Lavery (‘The War Song’). By mid-decade though, songwriters were feeling increasingly constrained by the limitations of the protest sub-genre. The prolific Ken Mansell suggested that such (negative) songs had little appeal for audiences more keen to listen to The Beatles. Martyn Wyndham-Read claimed that the majority of protest songs were mere broadsheets sorely lacking in the poetic quality of great traditional ballads. Shearston sent-up what he saw as the banality of some protest songs with a tongue-in-cheek ditty which castigated two-chord accompaniments, “the cultivation of abstract words to an end” and “the cultivation of semi-incoherence as a virtue” [Australian Tradition, March 1966 & Dec 1967]. Mick Counihan insists that, by and large, Australian protest songs of the era were not “music to move the spirit”. Most of them were “politically dumb songs of the ‘Mother, don't let your babies grow up to be imperialist fodder in Vietnam” ilk. (Harry Robertson once suggested that the “over-exposure of imported protest songs submerged the identity and reduced the effectiveness of Australian protest songs”). Mary Traynor disagrees strongly, maintaining: “even the trite material of the period had something to say ... It was a time when we were questioning war, how we were being conned by government”. The staunchly pro-protest Tomasetti has argued that attempts to devalue such songs ignored the fact that protest “affirms aspects of life at the other extreme from the thing being opposed ... smiling babies, flowers, crops, dancing, skies empty of all but clouds and work whose end is neither deception nor death”. “I never think a song can stop a war”, Phyl Vinnicombe [Lobl] once wrote, “but if it makes people more sensitive and more responsive to peoples’ thoughts, this is a help in itself” [Australian Tradition, Dec 1967 & June 1968].

 No study of the great revival would be complete without brief reference to its darker side. The revival played itself out against a backdrop of the national and international events of the 60s, and its participants were products (sometimes victims) of the era. The majority were teenagers and young adults, brought up within the blandness and relative stability of the 1950s, and trying to come to terms with rapid social change and shifting conceptions of their own place in the wider environment. Traditional folkmusic and contemporary songwriting within the folk idiom appealed directly to deeply idealistic, emotionally vulnerable young people, some of whom found themselves overwhelmed by the contradictions of the 60s. Don Ayrton’s was a tragic case. Tortured as he was by a drug habit he had acquired while working in South Africa in the 50s, and beset by alcoholism, his premature death was greeted by his friends with a mixture of sadness and relief. (Brian Mooney remembers that permission was obtained for Ayrton’s ashes to be scattered  in Queensland rainforest and that a tape of Mooney singing ‘The Parting Glass’ was planned as a feature of the ceremony. On the day, the tape recorder refused to function on cue but, uncannily, just as the mourners were walking away from the grave, the tape started, seemingly by itself).   Undoubtedly the intimacy and introspection nurtured and encouraged by the folk scene contributed to a high incidence within the community of mental collapse or ongoing psychiatric illness. In some cases, the failure ever to recapture the magic, innocence and simplicity of the period (at its best) has left permanent scars. For some, the loss of  star status or public recognition in the wake of the folk boom, and/or envy at the success of other artists, have resulted in long-term resentment.

Particularly glaring has been the high incidence of problem drinking or alcoholism among 60s performers. Where drugs were much less in evidence during the boom than they would be later in the decade (and subsequently), alcohol was always a part of the social and party scene surrounding folksinging. The coffee lounges themselves were predominantly - and officially - dry but Traynors performers, for example, would often “hang out” at local pubs between sets, and it was not uncommon for some of them to be “rather too primed” by the last bracket of the evening. “Booze” subsequently became a non-detachable adjunct to performance with the move to pub clubs. Overindulgence in alcohol might be deemed characteristic of socialisation in general in Australia, and (as Bernard Bolan suggests) our estimate of its impact on the folk community has been coloured somewhat by the premature deaths of identities such as Ayrton, Colin Dryden and Declan Affley, or the admission by other well-known heavy-drinkers that they are lucky to be still living. Even so, informed sources recall that “everybody associated folkmusic with drinking” and that the male folksinger (in particular, the male traditional singer) faced considerable pressure to live up to the “mighty drinker” stereotype. Audience members who enjoyed sitting around the bar with a charismatic larger-than-life performer, imbibing his songs and stories along with the ale, usually failed to realise that the singer probably went through the same well-oiled social ritual night after night. “There was no way [such a singer] could not become a drunk”. Inevitably he would “write himself off” and have to be taken home, usually by his wife or long-suffering woman partner.

For all the romantic mistiness which surrounds our recollections of the 60s, there is no denying that the lot of the folksinger’s partner could be pretty tough. Taken further, the 60s was clearly a less than ideal time for women and minority groups, and the folk scene unblushingly perpetuated inequities. While some commentators believe that coffee lounges like Traynors served as a social and sexual leveller, others shudder at memories of the insensitivity - even exploitation - which went on there. The fact that the Troubadour, for instance, “was full of 16 year old sheilas who thought ‘bearded Australian bushman’, that’s the hottest thing I’ve ever seen”, seemed reason enough for Don Henderson to turn up nightly and try out his latest song creation [NLA Interview]. Possibly it was asking too much of Byronic folk-poets not to take advantage of adoring young girl fans, yet being defined and dismissed merely as being “with the singer” was an inexcusable devaluation - albeit one typical of the times. The scene was indisputably male-dominated. (Glen Tomasetti once debated with fellow-feminist Wendy Lowenstein the inherent contradiction in promoting male singers and songwriters in Australian Tradition). Lynne St John suggests that women singers worked within distinct parameters; opportunities for them to record, for example, were quantitatively fewer than for men. Tomasetti, Shirley Jacobs and Somerset were among the few Melbourne women who recorded significantly during the period in question. (The devaluation and lack of acknowledgment of women’s contribution to the 60s revival seem to have persisted. A few years ago a workshop celebrating women pioneers of the Australian folk scene, at the National Folk Festival, was cancelled due to lack of interest). Blatant sexism and homophobia were glaringly apparent within Anglo-Celtic milieux, seemingly “to be expected” of the cliched, macho, beer-drinking traditionalist balladeer. (Even 35-40 years on, very few gay folksingers are “out” in Australia). There were only token acknowledgments of indigenous issues (isolated song contributions by Shearston, Leyden, Vinnicombe and Kitamura, or occasional redirection of concert funds to the Aboriginal Advancement League) or of green issues (although Frank Povah’s ‘Electricity Blues’, attacking the damming of Tasmania’s Lake Pedder, did predate the ‘Save the Franklin’ campaign by 15 years).

Tasmanian singer-songwriter John Lavery concedes that the liberality of the folk community had its limits. In hindsight, subscription to a free love ethos often simply became an excuse to exploit someone, while, to a large extent, issues of gender or sexuality “were not on the table”. Yet Lavery and other veterans believe the community (and 60s youth in general) should not be judged too harshly. Within context of the very conservative Australia of the time, “we were open-minded”. Particularly in remote outposts like Tasmania (argues Lavery), youthful folksingers and activists represented the first wave of dissent. Unlike the major mainland metropolises, there was no readily accessible radical sub-culture. Older bohemians were few and a bit too eccentric and unapproachable for most conservatively-reared fledgling free-thinkers to draw on. “We seemed to be the first ... we were all so young ... We were very much babes in the wood, finding our feet”. Vietnam - and associated questions of war and peace - rightly dominated the agenda. Many young activists were displaying considerable courage by opposing Federal Government policy (and their elders) and totally rejecting the values they had been brought up with. Accordingly, also taking on board women’s lib, gay and land rights, and green issues was something of a quantum leap, beyond the capacity of most kids of the time. In fairness, it should be stressed that people who were involved with folkmusic in the 1960s have frequently been in the vanguard of social change in the years since 1972.           

                             

[ next - - -> ]