Blackpool, Lancashire in England has long been famous as a holiday area with its beaches, piers, amusement parlors, night life and, of course, its well known landmark the Blackpool Tower (based on the Eiffel Tower). In the early 1960's, Blackpool was the home of a thriving beat group scene. Situated just 20 miles (30kms), as the crow flies, north of Liverpool, home of Merseybeat, it could hardly avoid the sounds coming from there. Two of Blackpool's most popular bands, The Rocking Vicars and The Wheels (originally from Belfast) were much admired by local musicians. One of the many groups spinning their web on the scene in Blackpool in 1963 were Bruce and The Spiders (cunningly named from the famous story of Scottish King Robert the Bruce and the spider).
Bruce and The Spiders (l .to r. above) were Dave Rossall (vocals, lead guitar), Stuart Macgarry (vocals, rhythm guitar), Peter Haliwell (drums, vocals) and Tom (Tommy) Ellison (bass - until 1966). Later, after Tom quit, Dave Fulcher (bass - 1966) replaced him. A four piece line-up with the standard two Strats, Precison bass, Ludwig drums and Vox amps, they are reputed to have been a great harmony band with Dave singing lead and Stuart and Pete harmonising with him. With this combination they performed songs such as Babys in Black, Baby Where Did Our Love Go, Rock 'n Roll Music, Unchained Melody, Kansas City and a few of the local Vicars and Wheels songs, while always being urged by their manager/agent Jeff Bates to keep performing the lastest hits. They were also known to be a truly professional band, clean cut and wearing suits, even to the extent that they actually paid tax ! They performed mainly in Blackpool at places such as the Lower Chambers, Rochdale Town Hall and the Fire Station. As well they supported acts such as The Hollies, did big ballrooms and other gigs, including strip clubs. In all likelihood they would have played as support band for The UK Rocking Vickers. Apparently they never released any records, however there is information to suggest that they may have cut a demo 45 at one stage.
Wollongong, on the shores of sunny New South Wales, Australia, is a long way from Blackpool, Lancashire. Twelve thousand miles distance by sea, in fact. They do have some similarities though, both being on the coast with beaches, and in the 1960's both had thriving music scenes. Wollongong had attracted many migrants in the great post WW2 wave, who had moved there to work at the big BHP Steelworks. So in the 1960's, Wollongong had a plethora of dances, discos, coffee houses & pubs that all vied for the patronage of the many baby-boomer teenagers of the area. As well it had a thriving University that contributed to this scene. The area, then, provided a great impetus and support for young rock bands.
In 1963 a band was formed in Wollongong called Donnie and The Drifters. This was made up Donnie (Adrian) Madden (vocals), John Neevordt (lead guitar) and brothers Sid Brassington (rhythm guitar) and Derrick Brassington (drums). There was no full time bass player although Klause Boch played with them occassionally. They cut one demo acetate of Cliff Richards "Move It" b/w "Jeopardy". Derrick Brassington was called up for his military National Service in April 1966.
With the permanent addition of Bill Munt on bass in 1964, who had had been in the Impalas, this band then changed its name to the The Finks and began playing R 'n B & Blues around Wollongong from 1964 to late 1966. In 1965 they made the grand finals of the National Battle of the Sounds. However after travelling to Melbourne for the final, the recording session that was their prize never eventuated. By April 1966 the lineup of The Finks was made up of Donnie Madden (vocals), Tony Kappen (lead guitar), Sid Brassington (rhythm guitar), Bill Munt (bass) and Dieter Glaser (drums). They often played on Saturday nights at Wollongong's biggest dance then, the Pioneer Hall, and at Zondraes Disco, and had a regular Friday night gig at the Warilla Hotel where they pulled an amazing and loyal crowd. Every three months they would do a dance over at the Mittagong Town Hall and later started to do guest spots at discos in Sydney. The Finks played covers of the hits of the day: Rolling Stones, Beatles Easybeats, Them, Who, Kinks, etc.
The Finks (l. to r.) - Laurie, Syd, Dieter, Tony and Adrian
Bill Munt left in Nov/Dec 1966 and was replaced shortly thereafter on bass by Laurie Hellyer. The Finks recorded with Ossie Byrne, who recorded The Bee Gees first major hit, "Spicks and Specks". Like the band, he was from Wollongong and had started out with a home studio in his garage in the suburb of Tarrawanna, set up with the mandatory egg boxes on the walls, and a pair of 2-track Revox tape-decks. His place was somewhat of a magnet for many a local young musician
All The Finks were experienced musicians and members had been in a number of local bands. Laurie Hellyer had played lead guitar in The Method (photo right) until he joined the Finks on bass. Dieter Glaser had been a conventionally trained drummer who had learned to play from printed music. His drumming has been described as with admiration, by Geoff Foster, drummer of then contemporaries (and sometime rivals !), The Marksmen, as comparable in style and expertise to Mitch Mitchell of Jimi Hendrix Experience. Tony Kappen had previously been in a band called The Seekers, whose peak of fame had been when they had won a heat of local TV station, Channel 4's talent show, "Starquest" in 1964. By January 1966 Tony was playing with The Living Dead.
r to l -. A pre-dogs collar Tony Kappen with Alan Sharpe, Gerry Seidemann and Peter O'Connell in The Seekers (there were no Judith Durham's in this band)
In 1966 Dave Rossall migrated to Australia from Blackpool with his parents and settled in Wollongong. One wonders what made him leave his band The Spiders, and come across the world to Australia. Maybe it was something as ordinary as his parents deciding to migrate and he, being a young bloke, came with them. It's probable Bruce and The Spiders, with whom he had been playing professionally since 1963 up until he left for Australia, had had their time, as bands generally do. The Merseybeat craze too, was losing its gloss by then. It seems his migration to Australia led to the the demise of that band. Stuart and Peter both stayed together, joining another Blackpool band,Lee Wade and The Wild Ones.
Photo - "Zondraes" - January 1966 - The Living Dead ripping into it for groovy fans - Tony Kappen on guitar (extreme right)
Zondrae King, owner of the Wollongong disco, "Zondrae's", has written that Dave Rossall had just arrived in the area and came to her disco and asked her advice as to the best musicians in the area. She suggested The Finks were one of the better ones. On joining The Finks he switched over to vocals only. It was he who taught them the stagecraft he'd learned in the UK and renamed them. Dave certainly used his considerable professional experience to good use to enable him to arrive in a new country, join a band, significantly influence its image and musical direction and have a record out within 12 months. However this may also be attributed to his father, George Rossall, who took over as band manager.
It's interesting to speculate on the origins of the band name in the first place. Harry Feeney of the UK Vicars apparently started using it as a stage name first before his band adopted the Vicars name. There's a song, "Reverend Mr Black" that Us folk group, The Kingston Trioput out as a single and that was a popular in 1962-63. This was j
ust around the time the UK RV's were formed. It should be noted that although it was a hit in Australia it never made the UK charts. Then again an Australian correspondent has asserted he knew for a fact that the Australian Rockin' Vicars got their name from a relative who was a church minister. However it's probably no coincidence that the band name emanated from Blackpool.
It is obviously no coincidence that two bands 12,000 miles apart should adopt such a radical name & image in the same era, although they were never really contemporaries. The UK Rocking Vickers broke up in early 1967, the year the Australian one started to hit its form. Their styles were dissimilar too. Based on their recordings and accounts of them, The UK Vicars had a harder edged, more 12 bar rock 'n roll, guitar based live sound, whereas Australia's lot had a warmer sound, playing more complex melodies, with a significant keyboard sound and more accent on harmonies, the latter no doubt gleened from Dave's earlier experience in Bruce & The Spiders.
One can see why it was actually a good move to use another bands name and image in that time before personal global communications, when travel took for 4 to 5 weeks by ocean liner and TV programming was limited. As well, the UK band although reasonably well known, indeed notorious, in their home country, never charted there, nor achieved any significant overseas fame (outside of touring Finland and the Soviet Union). Australia, because of its relative isolation then, was usually anything up to 2 years behind with music trends and influences at that time.
It wasn't the first time this had happened, two ex-roadies from the UK band The Birds (which included Ronnie Wood) migrated there and, claiming to have been members of the UK band, started a band, The Birds, in Perth. And then there was Melbourne band, The Flies ! No one knew then that there was an English band of the same name at the same time. Many a well known Australian artist of that era too, made their name by having hits which are still iconically identified with them. These were generally superior covers of minor or non-hits by then, unknown in Australia, UK bands/singers of the era and it is only in recent times that these have been identified.
All in all, the Australian Vicars seem to have succeeded in their bid to achieve some fame (notoriety) as they generated a fair bit of media attention and quite quickly started gigging, gained a record contract and released their first record. The story that almost the whole band had come over from the UK worked well and just added to their mystique. (and No !.... Dave was definitely never a member of the UK Rockin' Vickers although he apparently admired them a lot).
Obviously, as with their UK equivalent, their record company and some promoters, apparently felt rather uneasy in using the full name because, apart from their first release on the independent Zot label & Leedon label, where the band name is shown in full as Rev Black & The Rockin’ Vickers (even then they didn’t show it as Vicars), all their later releases had R. Black and The Rockin' V's(or very minor variations) on the label. The UK bands record/publishing company took a different tack with the name, and all their releases, (even on modern day CD releases), were under the moniker of"The Rocking Vickers" (which sort of sounded like a WW2 aircraft caught in a down draft).
Adopting a name with a religious nature was a very controversial move in Australia then, which was very conservative. Australian singer Normie Rowe had been the cause of much controversy by releasing a version of the show tune "It Ain't Neccesarily So " . This record was seen as inciting young people to question their religious beliefs (the media seemed to conveniently forget at the time it had been around since 1938 in a perfectly respectable (for adults) Broadway stage show. Schoolgirls in Catholic schools were banned from attending Normie's concerts or buying his records. In 1966 in Sydney, the band, Kevin Bible & The Book, had it's single, "Rockin' Pneumonia", banned by, the then, Catholic Church owned radio station, 2SM. So this was the climate in which Rev Black and cohorts sought fame.
Overseas in the attention getting stakes, the UK singer,Screaming Lord Sutch was shocking his audiences with his horror act. Johhny Kidd & the Pirates had been "Shakin' All Over" in pirate outfits and eye patches for a number of years. UK band The Snobs had been unsuccessfully trying to attract attention by dressing up in Georgian wigs and outfits. Closer to home, Sydney band The Showmen had dressed up in Elizabethan frills the year before to win a heat of the first major Australian Battle of the Sounds at Sydney Stadium. This was the latter part of the Merseybeat boom and bands were trying to attract attention by any and all means....growing yet longer hair, dying their hair different colours (such as Sydney band The Creatures), adopting outrageous costumes and names. This was a forerunnert to artists such as Skyhooks,Alice Cooper & David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust) in the 70s.
However, few, if any, Australian bands had adopted a themed stage dress at that stage. Dressing as ministers of religion was fairly radical by the standards of the times. To add to the mystique, they initially put out the story that the whole band had come over from the UK. This gave them a further attraction as Australia was still fully in the grip of its dreaded "cultural cringe" which always looked on overseas music & culture as being superior to the local product. However Laurie Hellyer has said this was just hype. Not entirely untrue either, he said, as all the other members were migrants except himself, who was the only Australian born member.
This
Site has been designed for 800x600 resolution and Macromedia
Flash Player 5.
________________________________________________________________________________
Wollongong, on the shores of sunny New South Wales, Australia, is a long way from Blackpool, Lancashire. Twelve thousand miles distance by sea, in fact. They do have some similarities though, both being on the coast with beaches, and in the 1960's both had thriving music scenes. Wollongong had attracted many migrants in the great post WW2 wave, who had moved there to work at the big BHP Steelworks. So in the 1960's, Wollongong had a plethora of dances, discos, coffee houses & pubs that all vied for the patronage of the many baby-boomer teenagers of the area. As well it had a thriving University that contributed to this scene. The area, then, provided a great impetus and support for young rock bands.
Mittagong Town Hall and later started to do guest spots at discos in Sydney. The Finks played covers of the hits of the day: Rolling Stones, Beatles Easybeats, Them, Who, Kinks, etc. 
Laurie Hellyer had played lead guitar in The Method (photo right) until he joined the Finks on bass. Dieter Glaser had been a conventionally trained drummer who had learned to play from printed music. His drumming has been described as with admiration, by Geoff Foster, drummer of then contemporaries (and sometime 
rivals !), 
It is obviously no coincidence that two bands 12,000 miles apart should adopt such a radical name & image in the same era, although they were never really contemporaries. The UK Rocking Vickers broke up in early 1967, the year the Australian one started to hit its form. Their styles were dissimilar too. Based on their recordings and accounts of them, The UK Vicars had a harder edged, more 12 bar rock 'n roll, guitar based live sound, whereas Australia's lot had a warmer sound, playing more complex melodies, with a significant keyboard sound and more accent on harmonies, the latter no doubt gleened from Dave's earlier experience in Bruce & The Spiders. 
Adopting a name with a religious nature was a very controversial move in Australia then, which was very conservative. Australian singer 
However, few, if any, Australian bands had adopted a themed stage dress at that stage. Dressing as ministers of religion was fairly radical by the standards of the times. To add to the mystique, they initially put out the story that the whole band had come over from the UK. This gave them a further attraction as Australia was still fully in the grip of its dreaded "cultural cringe" which always looked on overseas music & culture as being superior to the local product. However Laurie Hellyer has said this was just hype. Not entirely untrue either, he said, as all the other members were migrants except himself, who was the only Australian born member. 