From my upcoming memoir of my former life in the late 60s
The ever increasing sales and popularity of the magazine meant we needed more feature writers, but more to the point, we needed more room for the ever expanding staff. Hence the move to 7 Myrtle Street, Crows Nest, a spacious North Sydney suburban cottage with 5 rooms and a small kitchen out the back. Two new writers joined the Go-Set team, musician and journalist Greg Quill (of Country Radio/ “Gypsy Queen” fame) and the very erudite and knowledgeable Michael Edmonds.
The head honchoes of Melbourne Go-Set wanted the magazine to be more current and relevant to the changing music scene coming through from the UK and the US. The teenybopper image needed an upgrade to cover the more serious and progressive music. A lift out called CORE was introduced promoting bands like Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, The Band, Pink Floyd, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, The Who as well as blues, soul, psychedelic rock, acid rock, surf rock, and anything left of centre. This is the area where Greg and Michael excelled bringing musical intelligence to the magazine and appealing to a more informed reader.
Donnie Sutherland was a hoot to work with, always bringing hilarious tales of his dubious weekend happenings at the horse races, his DJ adventures at the discos and dances which led to a new female love interest every week. He would dictate his column to me as I typed and corrected spelling and grammar as we went along. Sydney Publicist Dianna O’Neill remembers Donnie chasing her around my desk one time when she wagged school to come hang out at the office. Needless to say she had a very short sports uniform on and was a little cutie pie. Bad boy Donnie!
The other one who always caused a huge kerfuffle when he visited the Sydney office was Molly Meldrum. He was managing Russell Morris who was killing it on the charts and in the music venues all over Australia with hit after hit. The Real Thing, Hush, Wings of an Eagle – Russell was unstoppable, and a lovely human being as well. Molly had to be the centre of attention of course and wreaked havoc with his entourage in tow. The loud hysterical laughter, weird wonderful stories and risqué camp jokes were highly entertaining, but it was impossible to get any work done with Molly around. Molly was a one off personality – “what you see is what you get” as the nation saw when he fronted Countdown in later years. Thankfully he is still with us....God love him!
