40 years ago this month, Skyhooks released their first record with new lead singer Tony Williams. The band was struggling without Shirley Strachan upfront, but “Over The Border” was a ripsnorting rocker with a killer hook and brave political sentiment that deserved a better response than it got.
Music changed quickly in the 70s. Not as quickly as it had in the 60s, but still very quickly. Skyhooks were the biggest band in Australia in 1975, with an image, sound and lyrical thrust that would never have got a look in a few years earlier. But a few years later things were different again. Disco and Punk/New Wave were fighting it out for our hearts and minds, and the streamlined pub rock sounds of Cold Chisel, The Angels, Sports, etc. were dominating on the live front. Even the band that had once outweirded the ‘hooks, Split Enz, had managed to tailor their aesthetic to catch new wave and have their first real hit with “I See Red”.
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But Skyhooks, so well established as one thing, struggled to become another. They’d been distracted by an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to crack the States, and of course, they’d lost guitarist Red Symons in early 1977, after their third album Straight In a Gay Gay World. His replacement Bob Spencer, of Sydney hard-rockers Finch, had toughened up their sound considerably but the incredible "Women In Uniform", with its punkish/metallic energy, had been the only hit off their ’78 album Guilty Until Proven Insane. By this point, the band was reduced to working the pubs – a level they’d pretty much skipped on their rapid rise from church halls and uni shows to the major concert halls around the country. The underrated double live album Live! Be In It – which included recordings from venues as wide-ranging as the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and the Council Club Hotel, and which clearly depicted the band’s glam-free look on the cover – barely cracked the Top 100. And then, of course, Shirl, whose siren-like voice so suited the harder material, decided he’d had enough.
The band regrouped quickly, picking up singer Tony Williams, who’d previously worked with Greg Macainsh in Rueben Tice earlier in the 70s. Williams’ voice was nothing like Shirl’s – very few were, although the band’s original mentor Ross Wilson, whom some pundits had thought might’ve got the job, was within range. (As was Jane Clifton of Stiletto, who had followed Skyhooks out of the Carlton scene.) Williams’ tougher voice did probably suit the pubs, but initial shows early in ’79 received mixed reviews.
“Over The Border” was released in April ’79, and really should have consolidated the band’s new line-up and direction. A terrific straight-ahead hard rocker (ironically with a guitar hook that sounded tailor-made for Shirl to wail) that should’ve put Skyhooks in good stead with the ascendant Angels, the on-the-cusp Chisel and fast-rising Oils, “Over the Border” scraped into the Top 40 but was not enough to turn the tide for the ‘hooks. The political sentiment – the song was a direct criticism of the police state that Queensland had become under long-standing Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen – was either a brave or foolhardy move on the band’s behalf. The song possibly revealed songwriter Macainsh’s desire to be seen as as relevant as politically oriented punks like The Clash. Certainly, some of the band’s old mates on the Carlton scene had taken notice of punk, and Macainsh himself had fallen in love with the Ramones early on while on tour in the States, and had even produced Nick Cave’s first band the Boys Next Door for Mushroom’s short-lived punk arm Suicide Records. But “Over The Border” stood bravely and alone of the Australian music landscape in its overt politicsm (unless you count contemporary underground releases like “Task Force” by Brisbane punks Razar and “Dirty Lies” by Carlton’s Ramones-loving News). It wasn’t until Midnight Oil - whose Peter Garrett was a massive ‘hooks fan - found their overtly political voice with Place Without A Postcard in 1981 that the Australian pop and rock mainstream heard anything else like it.
Skyhooks eventually followed up “Over The Border” with their fraught final album Hot For The Orient in 1980. But that’s another story, and not a particularly happy one, which we might come back to later. In the meantime, crank up “Over the Border” and remember the time when Skyhooks fought the law and the law won.
