Twilight Zone - Golden Earring

Music is best consumed as a live experience.  Shitty pub, covers band playing the same old Classic FM rock hits?  Sure, you’ll see better gigs, but there is something compelling about watching people play their instruments, eyeballing the singer as they try to impress you with their stuff.

1985 and 14-year-old me.  Dad was on Stradbroke Island staying with his Uncle Dubby.  Dubby was a retired merchant seaman, a bachelor living in a big old house near the beach.  Only 6 years older than Dad, their relationship was more like mates, than nephew and uncle.  For a week of school holidays, I was sent over the Stradbroke.

Mum drove me to Cleveland and dropped me at the barge. I travelled by myself for the one-hour trip.  My mum was very protective.  This freedom felt like a big deal at the time.  I remember leaning on the rail, watching the water going past and realising that I was my own.  I didn’t know anyone on the barge.  Nearby some girls my age were talking and looking at me.  I wanted to talk to them, but I went back to looking at the water.

On the island, Dad met me and we went fishing.  I filled a sandbag from the beach and slung it over my shoulders so I could do squats.  The rowing coach had told us to spend the holidays squatting sandbags.  I was good at doing what I was told and being at the beach was no reason to skip squats.  We walked down the beach and Dad pointed out the topless bathers.  I’d noticed them already.  I felt awkward.  Maybe he did too.

Late in the week, Dad and I and Dubby went to the Point Lookout Hotel for dinner.  Steak and chips. Busy pub, men drinking and talking. I was among the company of men.  After dinner, I played pool with the son of the local bookie.  I'd grown up with a pool table in the house.  I'd be playing since I could reach the table standing on a chair.  I was pretty good, but in public, in a pub against an adult, with men drinking all around me, I choked and barely sank a ball.  

Next to the public bar was the nightclub.  Inside a live band was playing.  Dad asked me if I wanted to see them and there was no more welcome suggestion I’d ever heard.  At the door to the club, my Dad explained to the bouncer that I was his son, I wasn’t going to drink, I just wanted to see the band.  He laboured the point about me being his son quite a bit, he was concerned that people would assume he was an older man going about having an inappropriate relationship with a teenage boy.

The band were local guys cranking out Credence, Kinks, Stones and a bit of Oz rock.  I stood over on the left-hand side, about 5 feet back from the stage.  Nobody was dancing, most people were at tables drinking pots of XXXX, talking among themselves.  Maybe they were waiting for the band to finish and for the disco to start.

Even so, these guys were enthusiastic and momentum built.  Toward the end of the set, they announced that a local kid had been learning the drums and tonight they were going to let him play.  Out of the audience stepped a rangy, mullet-haired bloke, probably only three or four years older than me. 

He counted them in – 1,2,3,4.  Then WHAM.  He hit that drum kit so hard, far harder than their own drummer had been doing for the previous hour.  That kinetic enthusiasm seemed to drive the band to be louder, tighter, better.

They played Twilight Zone by Golden Earring.  The rhythm pulsed around me and it was the first time I’d ever felt bass and drums go off inside of me.  Only 5 feet away the beads of sweat were rolling off the singer’s face and he caught my eye, saw my big grin and look of wonder.  14-year-old rock n roll moment.  And then he gave me a wink.  I was hooked on live music.