In the space of just three weeks we have lost three Australian musical icons and the palette of our cultural landscape is greyer for their absence.
The musical pedigrees of Archie Roach, Judith Durham and Olivia Newton-John could not have been more different, yet they shared a quality unique to all popular singers — they gave us something of their soul and in doing so placed a marker in time for all of us.
When Judith’s soaring voice appeared on the horizon with I’ll Never Find Another You and Georgy Girl the world was suddenly sunnier, as Australian performers took their place on the world stage.
To me, as a young British teenager, Australia was a strange and faraway place, but Judith’s made it shimmer with joyful possibilities.
Similarly Olivia’s sunshine smile and sweet voice was a slice of Australian summer during the darkness of punk and the counterculture. As angry and rebellious as you wanted to be, you couldn’t help but melt when you heard her voice. I also remember her honeyed version of the murder ballad Banks of the Ohio as a surreal blend of death and beauty. She became a global star, and a compassionate advocate for cancer battlers, but never lost her Australian girl-next-door sweetness.
When I arrived in Australia in 1992, Archie’s debut single Took The Children Away was still fresh on the airwaves. For me it pricked a soap bubble to reveal a darker reality to this Shangri-La of a place. For a new immigrant with postcards of Ramsay St blue skies and white beaches in the back pockets of his mind, Archie’s spear of truth opened a window on to the pain of the Stolen Generations and the devastating effects of white colonialism.
The legacy of these three very different singers shows just how powerful music can be as a talisman of emotion in our lives.
Which brings me to another sad loss — smaller in significance and more local perhaps than the above giants, but nonetheless just as important in providing markers for our lives.
Next Tuesday, after 416 episodes, our now Deputy Mayor Anthony Brophy presents his final Vinyl Vault section on ABC radio presenter Matt Dowling’s breakfast show.
For the past 11 years, ‘Broph’ has dug out sometimes forgotten or obscure musical memories of the past 60 years of popular music.
Before retirement made me lazy, I would begin every Tuesday at 7.45am listening to Broph’s encyclopaedic knowledge of pop history signalled with a signature creaking door opening on to a dusty cellar of memories.
With his passion and breathless delivery, Broph has treated us to reminders of one-hit-wonder love songs, bands and solo artists from the 1960s to more recent years.
We’ve had almost forgotten big hitters such as Bread, 1927, ELO, Lloyd Cole, Midge Ure, Ray Parker Junior or Jim Reeves, and then some perhaps best forgotten chewing gum ditties such as Middle of the Road’s Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep.
Love them or hate them, each taps a mainline to a place, a feeling or a moment in time for anyone who has lived with music as a backdrop to their life — which I think would be most of us.
So here’s a thank-you to Broph for 11 years of memory markers, and a salute to Judith, Olivia and Archie for making them in the first place.
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