IAN "MOLLY" MELDRUM

IAN “MOLLY” MELDRUM – THE ULTIMATE MUSIC FAN

By Jeff Jenkins

“There are chance meetings with strangers,” Dostoevsky wrote, “that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.”

On a cold morning in 1962, as the bus rumbles down Barkly Street in St Kilda, two teenagers, on their morning commute, notice each other but don’t utter a word.

A couple of weeks later, the older boy knocks on the younger boy’s door and they speak for the very first time.

“Look, um, er,” he says, “I dropped a book on the bus this morning and I can’t find it.”

“My name’s Ian,” he adds when the younger boy offers him a cup of tea. “I live with my aunts above the milk bar over the road and I need to get away from them for a while. They’re hassling me about my studies, saying that I go out partying too much. Would it be possible for me to come and stay with you for a couple of weeks?”

Nine years later, Ian Meldrum was still living with Ronnie Burns and his family.

Little did he know it at the time but that chance meeting on the bus was Ian Meldrum’s entrée into the music world. After growing up in country Victoria, in Quambatook and Kyabram, the Burns home, at 3/98 Barkly Street, became the centre of Ian’s new life.

Ronnie’s older brother, Frank, was the drummer in a band, and Ronnie would soon become lead singer of The Flies, who supported The Rolling Stones on their first Australian tour.

Ian shared a passion for musical theatre with Ronnie’s mum, whom he called Aunty Edna. Ian’s first TV appearance was a talent segment on their favourite show, In Melbourne Tonight with Graham Kennedy and Bert Newton. Wearing a top hat and scarf, he mimed Noel Coward’s ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’.

He was gonged.

Before they watched IMT, Ian and Ronnie would tune their transistor to Stan “The Man” Rofe’s radio show on 3KZ.

“Hi-de-hi, Victoria, yours truly, Stan the Man, Melbourne’s rocky jockey – winning, chinning and grinning. Welcome to our swingin’ soiree …”

For young people, Stan was king of the airwaves. He was the first DJ to play Johnny O’Keefe, and he was also instrumental in the careers of Normie Rowe, Russell Morris, Johnny Chester and Ronnie Burns.

When The Flies went to 3KZ to do an interview with Stan, Ian snuck in, pretending to be a roadie. Ian and Stan became great friends and Ian would later call him his “mentor” – and Stan would play a significant part in his story. More on that later.

Recalling Ian Meldrum’s days as a “roadie”, The Groop’s keyboard player Brian Cadd remembers Ian accompanying the band to the UK, ostensibly as their roadie, “though I can’t recall him carrying anything except drinks.”

It was The Groop’s manager, Tony Dickstein, who showed Ian a copy of Australia’s first major weekly music paper, Go-Set, which hit the streets on February 2, 1966 calling itself “The Teen & Twenties Newspaper”.

The paper was started by two university students – Phillip Frazer and Tony Schauble, who had experience producing the Monash University paper, Lot’s Wife – and Peter Raphael, manager of Melbourne band The Moods.

Schauble penned the opening editorial: “Go-Set is Going. Going for you and everything you want. Going all out to capture the imagination of the Movers. Now’s the time to really break loose. Let’s hear it right from the bottom of your inhibitions. This is one time the oldies don’t have any say in it. Make your mark in the world and shout it out loud: Go-Set!”

Ian Meldrum dreamed of being a record producer, but he became a rock journalist when he started hanging around the Go-Set office on Charnwood Crescent in St Kilda. Frazer recalls Ian was sweeping the floor when they met.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I just … I love your magazine, so, I, um … I just wanted to help.”

Soon after, Frazer asked Ian if he could organise a photo shoot with Ronnie Burns. Ian wrote the words accompanying the picture, which ran at the bottom of page 15 in Go-Set on July 20, 1966.

His first bylined story was page one of Go-Set’s next issue: “Twilights Take National Title. Ex-Adelaide Group Win Hoadley’s Battle Of The Sounds by Go-Set’s Roving Reporter Ian Meldrum”.

“‘Whoopee-ee-ee’ was the reaction of Glenn (Twilights lead singer) on winning the National Battle of the Sounds, watched by a crowd of thousands of screaming teenagers,” wrote Ian, who claimed the atmosphere at Melbourne’s Festival Hall was “the best since The Beatles.”

Ian used the pages of Go-Set to promote the local scene. The November 2, 1966 issue featured the cover-line: “Ian Meldrum Reports ‘Australian Groups Better Than American’ says Tim Rooney”.

“Tim Rooney, the 19-year-old son of Mickey Rooney, accompanied his father to Australia for a holiday and spent his time looking at the Australian pop scene,” Ian revealed. “I asked his impressions and he said that he felt that the Australian groups were even better than most American groups, they had a lot more polish and thumped out a better sound.”

Also in 1966, Ian covered a big TV story for Go-Set when the cast of Kommotion quit to protest the sacking of producer David Joseph. The show’s new producer, Al Maricic, suggested that Ian should try out for the new cast, but Ian laughed and said he wasn’t interested in a television career.

When he told Phillip Frazer about the offer, his boss said, “You should audition, it would be good for the paper if you were on TV.”

A few days later, Ian became a Kommotion mimer, alongside his friends Tony Healey and Keith Millar, Denise Drysdale, Maryanne (Chantal) Contouri, Maggie Stewart (who would later marry Ronnie Burns), and Bob Pritchard (who would become a major businessman, including a stint as marketing director for Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket and co-owner of the Sydney Swans).

Lily Brett raved about Ian’s Kommotion performances in Go-Set: “What else can we say? This loveable boy brings just the right touch of the old vaudeville into Kommotion.”

But Ian admitted he struggled on the show, which, in a world before music videos, had young people miming the hits of the day. He rehearsed at home, in front of the mirror, learning some basic dance routines, such as the Monkey and the Arrow, but struggled to get them right. He was also not good at remembering the lyrics to his songs, which included ‘Winchester Cathedral’, ‘Lil’ Red Riding Hood’, ‘The Hair On My Chinny Chin Chin’, ‘Lady Godiva’, ‘Knight In Rusty Armour’ and ‘Why Don’t Women Like Me?’

But he was paid $35 a week and he enjoyed being recognised. He felt like “one of The Beatles” when he signed his first autograph when the Kommotion cast did an appearance at Myer, though he was not happy that the Saturday schedule meant he couldn’t see his beloved St Kilda play. When he left the taping of the show early to see the Saints win their only premiership in 1966, he thought his TV career was over. But he was still on air more than 50 years later.

Ian’s news pieces for Go-Set evolved into a column, “Ian Meldrum Listens Thru Keyholes”. “I hate to admit it,” he wrote, “but my daily diet is gossip and how I enjoy it.”

In his column, Ian created a playful rivalry with his friend and mentor Stan Rofe, who switched to 3UZ in 1965, and also became a Go-Set columnist.

“I must say that Stanley Rofe has got a cheek,” Ian wrote in one issue. “How dare he criticise me for not wearing shoes to certain receptions. I mean, who’s Stan Rofe to talk – it’s much better than the pantyhose that he gets around in.”

Stan responded in his Tonic column: “The last time I saw a mouth like Meldrum’s there was a fish hook in it … I even heard Ronnie Burns say the other day that Ian Meldrum is so silly he thinks that a blueprint is a dirty picture.”

On a Tuesday in 1967, Stan was in his Bourke Street office at 3UZ, pondering what he would write in that week’s Go-Set. As he paced around the room, Ian Buckland, who also worked at UZ, was sitting at the typewriter. Next to him was the office boy, Frank Howson, cousin of John-Michael Howson.

While reading the latest edition of the pop paper, Stan stopped at Ian Meldrum’s column. “Look at what he’s said about me this week!” he bellowed, throwing the paper on the desk. “How can I get him back?”

After a few suggestions, Frank said, “Why not give him a girl’s name, something that goes with Meldrum?”

“Terrific,” Stan smiled, “that’ll get right up his nose!”

Stan dictated the column as Ian Buckland typed. When Stan came to Ian Meldrum’s name, he said, “Let’s call him Mildred.” But for some reason, Ian typed “Molly” instead.

Suddenly, Ian Meldrum had become Molly Meldrum, and Australian music would never be the same.

While writing for Go-Set, Ian became a fan of a Melbourne band named Somebody’s Image, fronted by Russell Morris. He became their manager, got them a record deal, and produced their first hit, a cover of Joe South’s ‘Hush’. And when Russell decided to go solo, Ian found his first single – ‘The Real Thing’, written by Johnny Young.

It was initially a simple acoustic track. “John saw it as a version of ‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ by Status Quo,” Russell recalls. “Ian saw it as something completely different – he turned it into his own, creating a psychedelic masterpiece, his from beginning to end.”

“It was the first time I’d seen production turn into obsession,” says Brian Cadd, who played on the track. “The song just grew and grew. ‘The Real Thing’ became the living thing. It was like an alien monster in the basement.”

The song took four weeks to make – at a time when artists would record entire albums in just two days.

‘The Real Thing’ – the first Australian single to run for more than six minutes – was released in March 1969. Ed Nimmervoll reviewed the song in Go-Set: “Out of a dismal local record scene emerges the best produced and performed local single of all time. There’ll be no more excuses for inferior local stuff now. We have our yardstick.”

Ian McFarlane, the author of The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop, hailed “Meldrum’s wizard’s brew of audacious studio embellishments”, calling ‘The Real Thing’ “one of the most astonishing pop productions of the entire 1960s”.

Reflecting on Molly’s tenure as his manager, Morris says: “At times, being managed by Ian was akin to being managed by a combination of Noel Coward, Keith Moon, Edna Everage and Brian Epstein. Mad, creative, chaotic and brilliant are a few of the adjectives that come to mind.”

Molly jokes that his epitaph will be:
Ooh ma ma ma mow.

The memorable line in ‘The Real Thing’ was never intended to be a lyric. When Molly was explaining where the Hendrix-like guitar line would go, guitarist Don Mudie was not at the studio, so Molly imitated a guitar: “Ooh ma ma ma mow”.

Molly also produced The Masters Apprentices’ third single, ‘Living In A Child’s Dream’, which hit the Top 10 in Melbourne and Sydney, and won Song of the Year in the Go-Set Pop Poll. “Ian was quite different in the studio,” Masters singer Jim Keays later explained. “He doesn’t know one knob from another. His production is something like, ‘Can you make it sound more purple?’ Somehow, miraculously, he would get what he wanted.”

In Go-Set’s final year, 1974, two young TV producers, Michael Shrimpton and Robbie Weekes, were charged with the mission of creating a music show to deliver a young audience to the ABC. When they met at South Yarra’s Botanical Hotel to discuss the program, they hit a stumbling block: who would book the bands for the show?

At that moment, Molly’s white Celica mounted the kerb and he ran into the hotel to buy a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

That random encounter – a reunion with Weekes, who had been a Kommotion director – led to Molly becoming Countdown’s talent coordinator. The show was initially commissioned for just six shows; it ran for nearly 13 years.

It was Countdown that cemented the Molly Meldrum legend. He delivered exclusive interviews with ABBA, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart and Elton John (who would later call Molly “the best thing that ever happened to Australian music”). And Countdown gave acts such as Madonna, Blondie, Duran Duran and John Cougar Mellencamp their first big hits.

Molly’s idiosyncratic interviewing style endeared him to artists and viewers. “A journalist asked Michael Shrimpton if he could sum Molly up,” Robbie Weekes recalls, “and Michael had a lovely description: ‘A collection of nouns searching for a verb.’”

Molly and Countdown are the only non-recording artists in the ARIA Hall of Fame. They were inducted in 2014. Molly was also inducted into the TV Week Logies Hall of Fame in 2012.

After 13 years of Countdown, Molly moved on to Hey Hey It’s Saturday for 12 years, where his Humdrum segment was renamed Molly’s Melodrama. But the formula stayed the same, with Molly delivering the big interviews as well as promoting young Australian talent.

Molly also started a record label, Melodian, with his good friend Michael Gudinski. Molly discovered Indecent Obsession, who had a Top 40 hit in the US, and he signed Peter Andre live on national TV. The artist repaid the faith, delivering three number one singles and a number one album in the UK.

Gudinski and Molly had been mates since the ’70s, a decade that saw Molly produce an album for one of Mushroom’s bands, The Ferrets. He took so long to deliver the record, he was credited as Willie Everfinish.

In 2016, Gudinski’s Mushroom Pictures produced the mini-series Molly. “To this day, nobody has had a more positive or powerful role in bringing contemporary music, especially Australian music, to our attention,” Gudinski said of Molly. “It could be said that Molly has certainly done his bit to stitch together the fabric of our society.”

Molly and Gudinski were also driving forces behind the creation of the Australian Music Vault to which they both became founding patrons. “It’s an absolute dream come true,” Molly said when the Vault was launched in 2017.

“I want people to walk in, take it all in and go, ‘Okay, these people did that, now what can I do?’”

Ian “Molly” Meldrum is often called the Peter Pan of pop, and his passion for promoting young Australian talent remains undimmed.

“I haven’t grown up,” he once told The Age. “Grown-ups are closed-minded. They tend to be bigoted and narrow. I’m still a kid and I relate to all those kids out there … They have no fear of me because they know I like them and maybe even understand them. They treat me as their mad uncle.”

As TISM’s Ron Hitler-Barassi said, “Molly’s long suit is enthusiasm, and you gotta love somebody with enthusiasm. You can’t hate Molly Meldrum, because he is the ultimate rock ’n’ roll fan.”

Jeff Jenkins is the co-author of Ian “Molly” Meldrum’s memoirs, The Never, Um, Ever Ending Story and Ah Well, Nobody’s Perfect.