March 2025

GET TO KNOW…BERNIE HAYES

Nic: What was the home stereo like in your house when you were a kid?

Bernie: There was a portable record player up high in the cupboard just inside the front door with just a couple of albums that I can remember: Danny Kaye, which was great, and the Everly Brothers, which was formative. But the real stereo, in fact mono, in the house was the big old brown Bakelite electric radio that sat on a narrow rail between the lounge room and the kitchen. That was mostly on, all day, every day, and in spite of being knocked off the rail so many times that you could see its inner workings, it survived into my adulthood. As Mum would say, don’t play with the football in the house.

 

Nic: What was your parent’s taste in music like? Did they play records?

Bernie: Mum’s taste in music I think was pretty boundless and if I was after lyrics to an ‘old’ tune she could be relied upon to scribble them out for me off the top of her head. Dad loved all the Australian/Irish bushranger/folk tunes and would sing us to sleep with them, but the request he would make most often, later when I was doing shows, is “Saturday Night At The Movies”. He also wasn’t averse to breaking into the odd Dean Martin tune.

 

Nic: What was the first record you bought? And do you remember where from? When did you start collecting records?

Bernie: I traded one of my sister Kerry’s Monkees singles for a Tommy Roe single, “Sweet Pea”, when I was about ten, but that was more about talking to the girl next door. The first things I bought that I can remember, and probably with Christmas money from my Nan, were from Abels in Manuka and they were Quadrophenia and Bitches Brew. Having sold all my albums in times of need, I’ve lost all that early stuff, but I’m slowly re-finding them and can tell you that some of them don’t live up to the memories.

 

Nic: What were your go-to record stores in Canberra?

Bernie: Was it called The In Shop in Green Square Kingston? It had a cubicle in the middle of the room where you could look through a slot and see all the psychedelic posters lit by ultraviolet light. I got some cool EPs from Bouchiers, also in Kingston, but left them at a party my brothers took me to and it seems like it wasn’t cool to ask for them back. Stores in Civic, whose names I don’t remember, one was Homecrafts maybe? I remember finding two Django Rheinhardt albums on the Swaggie label at one of the Civic stores. I loved those records.

 

Nic: Who were your favourite bands/singers when you were in Primary School?

Bernie: British pop/rock: Traffic, the Beatles, the Stones, Hendrix, Cream – all the classics. At Narrabundah High there was a lot of love for Australian bands like Chain, Khavis Jute, Blackfeather, La De Das, Spectrum/Indelible Murtceps/Ariel, and the band cohort which was mostly a couple of years older than me played that kind of blues-infused rock. While I could enjoy that stuff, it was never really my thing. I had one particular friend, Peter Landy, who made recordings of American jazzy stuff on reel-to-reel from some radio feed he had found. A bunch of us would go to his parent’s house and sit around the walls of a kind of rumpus room and listen reverently to these recordings while passing a purloined bottle of Galliano or Southern Comfort around the room, each having a capful in turn. Back at home, meanwhile, my brothers were serving up ‘prog’ in the form of Yes, Van Der Graf Generator, Genesis etc, but also Joni Mitchell. John Martyn, Richard Thompson, Neil Young, the Eagles, Leonard Cohen, and that stuff was what I really liked, partly because I could learn the songs, I guess. I’ve realised I place a lot of value in a good melody.

Nic: In the States, a lot of budding musicians had their ‘wake up moment’ when the Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964. What was yours?

Bernie: I don’t think I had a wake-up moment. I was spoon-fed amazing music by my extremely switched in and on big brothers, from that Ground Zero Beatles time, till my brothers eventually left home in the back half of the 70s.

Nic: Now some radio questions. When I was a kid, it was 2CA, then 2CC and 2XX soon after. How ‘bout you?

Bernie: 2CA would have a competition to pick the Top Ten each week. My brothers and their mates sent in an avalanche of possible results from the Top 40 and nailed the result, but were cruelly disqualified for their efforts because it was deemed to be cheating. I assume my radio progression was like yours, Nic.

 

Nic: You’d have a better memory than me of GTK. I have the Bee Gees singing “Run To Me” – in black and white – standing around a piano, etched in my mind. Any other music shows you remember when you were a kid?

Bernie: We saw GTK without fail. In retrospect, it was a phenomenal leg up for Australian bands as was Bandstand before it. There was also a show called Hullaballoo on the ABC which had good Australian music stuff. Oddly, a non-Australian clip that comes to mind is Joe Cocker doing ‘Cry Me A River’ on GTK. It was too exciting.

 

Nic: Did you go to those open-air concerts in the 70s? Like the ones at Philip Oval.

Bernie: I wanted to say yes, but I can’t picture myself there so possibly no.

 

Nic: Were there any local Canberra bands you liked when you were in High School?

Bernie: There was a band I really loved called The Ritz. Fantastic players, great taste in covers, and a smattering of excellent original songs. I was snuck into so many of their shows as a 15-year-old and given a middy to sip on for the duration because to not have a beer would have looked weird. Bands that did the rounds of school dances like Rigby and Snibbo were pretty ideal for the task at hand. A bit later in the ‘70s, when everyone was wearing badges saying ‘Disco Sucks’, a band called Nightflight started up and played great disco tunes. I just thought it was a creative solution to the worry that live music was being bumped, so they get a gold star.

Nic: What was your first show you played? It was a duo, wasn’t it?

Bernie: When I was in 1st Year at Narrabundah High our music class was invited to perform at Queanbeyan High in a lunchtime concert. My friend Jon Deeble and I, both fledgling guitarists, played two songs together. One was Peter Paul and Mary’s ‘Jesus Met The Woman’ and I just can’t think of the other, but I know it had no more than three chords and I hope it was cooler than the other one. The next outing was at the Down To Earth Festival where my best friend, Simon Wrigley and I played a set with school mate Chris Gifford on drums and his brother Peter Gifford (who went on to star in Midnight Oil) on bass. The event was massive and largely nude, though on stage, clothes were worn. I could tell you more about Jim Cairns and Junie Morosi than you’d probably care to know. After that, Simon and I hit the talent nights which led to residencies in wine bars three nights a week while we were still at school.

 

Nic: Where would you buy your instruments from? What was your first guitar?

Bernie: My first guitar was given to me by my brother Mick who had got his first job out of high school in the public service. He said if I kept up playing for a year, he’d buy me a new Maton nylon-string guitar. In the end, he bought himself a new one and gave me his old one. I couldn’t have been happier and still have it, though it’s a bit ravaged. Later I would ogle at the amazing Maton guitars in Palings which included a 7 string George Golla model. I also liked to eye off the Flyte guitars in the glass cabinets at the Canberra Music Centre which was where I bought my first electric, a little hollow body Hofner Les Paul for $50.

 

Nic: Where did you rehearse in your early bands?

Bernie: Early band rehearsals were mostly in the traditional egg-carton lined  garages of leafy Canberra.

Nic: I saw you in the late 70s/early 80s when you were in In One Ear at the free shows in Garema Place and Commonwealth Gardens. How did those shows come about and can you remember what the pay was?

Bernie: The first band that I wrote a lot of songs for was called In One Ear. We seemed to get quite a few shows around town but I have no recollection of who booked them or if/what we got paid. I think any money went towards a PA that we bought for rehearsals and some shows. The Garema Place Band Extravaganzas were actually brilliant because they forced a lot of young musicians who would otherwise not find each other to mingle.

Nic: Canberra wasn’t really known as a place to make record. Where could you lay down some tracks for a demo tape of possible release?

Bernie: Simon Wrigley went and demo-ed a bunch of our own tunes at a place called Air Studios, I think, run by a great guy called Brian Fogwell. Years later, I recorded there again with Secret 7 and released a 45” cover of ‘Five O’Clock World’. Later on, we did some recording in at the 2XX studio which resulted in a 12” EP with songs from Secret 7, the Falling Joys and the Gadflys.

Nic: Any run-ins with the Canberra punks?

Band: Our band, In One Ear, was a bit hippy and a bit jazzy and pretty much at odds with Canberra’s burgeoning punk scene. I loved most of the punk bands. I thought the songwriting carried a lot of humour. They were almost uniformly great people but they were plagued by a fan base of theatrically violent, disaffected thugs. A lot of the fans burnt out or got out but most of the musos still turn up in bands around Sydney and beyond. Genuine lifers.

*****

Bernie Hayes has five albums on Half A Cow. He plays the occasional show with the Bernie Hayes Quartet, the Shouties, solo shows and also bass in Dog Trumpet.