Warner preps 3CD 40th anniversary Skyhooks set

Warner Music Australia is to drop a 3CD deluxe set of Skyhooks material called Don’t You Believe What You’ve Seen Or You’ve Heard on October 30.

The 44-tracks celebrates 40 years of “Hooks hysteria” with extra tracks included in the remastered Living In The ‘70s and Ego Is Not A Dirty Word, never-heard demos and live recordings. The band was signed to Mushroom/ Festival, now owned by Warner.

The set focuses on the 1974/5 era, when Skyhooks were a cultural phenomenon. They reflected post-Sunbury and post-Gough Whitlam changes in Australians’ attitudes about their place in the world. They bridged the gap between glam pop and alternate theatre, aided by the coming of colour TV (and Countdown) and triple j and community radio. They were not the first rock act to sing about modern day Australian experiences using name-checking Australian locales, but they were the most successful at the time.

The first album Living In The ‘70s, half of which was banned on commercial radio for lyrical content, sold 300,000 copies – unprecedented at the time for an Australian act. Half the copies sold on cassette format, such was their following in the surfing community. It cost $13,000 to make. Aided by hit singles as the title track and Horror Movie, the album stayed at #1 nationally for 16 weeks and six months in hometown Melbourne. Ego Is Not A Dirty Word spent 11 weeks at #1 and spawned hits as the title track, All My Friends Are Getting Married and Million Dollar Riff.

Don’t You Believe What You’ve Seen Or You’ve Heard was masterminded by Skyhooks co-founder, bassist and main songwriter Greg Macainsh, as well as Warner’s Creative A&R for Commercial Marketing David Laing and Peter Green of the Skyhooks fan club. Guitarist Bongo Starkie was also involved, with former LRB guitarist David Briggs handling the mastering and one time Boom Crash Opera member Greg O’Connor the artwork.

Living in the ‘70s includes demos of Horror Movie, Carlton (Lygon Street Limbo), Hey What’s The Matter and Don't Suck it and the b-side Broken Gin Bottle.

Added to Ego are demos for Love on the Radio, Smartarse Songwriters, Saturday Night, The Other Side and Sweet Sister.

The Horror Movie and The Other Side demos include original verses that were edited from the final cut.

CD3 is Skyhooks In Concert 1974-75 with tracks from Sydney Opera House (September 15 1974), Sydney State Theatre (April 12 1975), Her Majesty’s Theatre Adelaide (July 9 1975), Reefer Cabaret, Ormond Hall, Melbourne (December 31 1975) and Festival Hall Melbourne (July 3 1975).

Laing recalled to TMN, “Greg spent countless hours going through live tapes and trawling through boxes of tapes, tape archive lists and photos of tape boxes … all in the search for best possible tapes.”

Green revealed to TMN that the Private Eye recording was found from the six Her Majesty’s Theatre shows. In fact the band’s hit live version of Let It Rock from March 1976 was actually from the Adelaide shows, and not Melbourne as stated on the single. One of the Adelaide tapes was accidentally mislabelled Melbourne’s Reefer Cabaret.

Although rumours of a Skyhooks reunion show (or shows) are denied, the band is about to make an announcement of an event or project shortly.