This month we celebrate the 40th anniversary of what was at the time one of the most anticipated debut albums in Australian history. So anticipated in fact that Mushroom Records released it in a generic white sleeve - with the promise that punters could swap that sleeve for the real cover when it was ready - because they couldn't wait for the artwork to be finished. The Ferrets' Dreams Of A Love ultimately didn't commercially live up to the massive success of the band's "Don't Fall In Love" single, but it did achieve Gold sales and remains one of Australia's most enjoyable albums of the era, and a stand out in the short but illustrious list of records produced by Molly Meldrum.

Molly's involvement with the band is as legendary as the artwork delays. Molly 'discovered' the Ferrets; he heard a demo and declared the song "Just Like The Stars" to be the best thing since the Beatles. He convinced Michael Gudinski to sign them, then set to producing their album. It took him a while. So long in fact that he was ultimately credited as "Willie Everfinish" on the finished product. But it's a great sounding record. 

The Ferrets, of course, were the baby of singer/songwriter/guitarist Billy Miller, and famously featured his two sisters on backing vocals (and Rick Brewster from Zoot on drums). You can read all about Billy's early days in Part One of our interview with him from last year, here, a piece that Billy reckons was so well received he’s keeping the rest under wraps for his memoirs.

To celebrate 40 years of Dreams Of A Love, we present a number of wonderful videos, including the original film clip for the albums second hit, the Top 30 "Janie Mae", and a stunning and fully orchestrated live version of the album's title track from a Nightmoves Live concert at Melbourne’s Palais Theatre. We've also found a rare Countdown performance of Molly's fave "Just Like The Stars".

To kick our show off though, we've got a wonderful (if slightly lo-fi) live performance of "Don't Fall In Love", taken from the launch of Billy's latest solo album back in 2015. The performance features both Paul Kelly and Rebecca Barnard on backing vocals (fact: Billy Miller co-wrote a number of songs on Paul's mega-successful new album Life Is Fine), and the band includes Rockwiz's James Black and the Models' Andrew Duffield, both on keyboards, together with Billy’s regular outfit the Love Brothers, which features his son Eduardo on lead guitar, Paul Kelly regular Bill McDonald on bass, and Oz Rock legend John Annas (Kevin Borich, Renee Geyer, Brod Smith etc) on drums.

We urge you to check out this great performance to get an idea of how great Billy still is in performance. If you get a chance to see him live (and he still plays in Melbourne regularly) don't miss out.

You can listen to Dreams Of A Love on Spotify...

And the Ferrets’ second and final album Fame At Any Price

-DL