Press From Australia

Gerry's local pub, The Kings Head, held the wake

Gerry's girls meet for the first time

How many different outrageous Gerry stories can be told in a few hours?

I went back to say a final goodbye to Gerry

the next night just before I was supposed to leave.

It was a rising beautiful full moon over the cemetery.

Cold but very clear

The cemetery closed at 4PM. There was a kid from Sydney

walking by who stopped and we talked for a bit.

His parent's probably knew Gerry's music he thought.

His broad Australian accent seemed very fitting for the moment

4pm

Tribute handed out.

They asked me to say a few words about Gerry at the service.
I'm not exactly sure what I said. I had written a few notes which I ignored.
I knew all this stuff about Gerry being called "the Loved One" did not seem quite
right to me. Why did everybody love Gerry? It was because he gave out so much love.
Gerry was really the "Everlovin Man"

Apart from "Sad Dark Eyes" which was the Loved Ones "split up" song, I never wrote a song with Gerry that did not have the word love in the title.
I have not wriiten one since with love in the title.

Dawn on the Thames Dec 14th

Across from my Hotel

Gound Zero

Hits a bit harder when you see the box

Recieved this from Kim

" We always suspected Gerry was the culprit in spreading the rumour theat he was Barry Humphries' brother. He may as well have been for the Peter Pan effect he had on thousands of kids locked up in the suburbs. It was a call of the wild that was heard in the mid sixties and contributed in no small way to a mass exodus from the sleepy dreams of many parents. We were teenagers playing Jazz, already fans of Dame Edna and along came Gerry! It was like the second coming with a very wild, hilarious Jesus. I have had a tough secret service agent break down in tears and thank Gerry and the Band for getting him out of Murrumbeena and saving him from a dreary fate. Our next Prime Minister's favourite singer of all time? Gerry.
If you are listening Gerry-- just f*** off and enjoy the trip. Bright lights are good. Keep away from dull lights. Be quick. Sing. Play. Be Amazed."

Setting up the PA - Gerry's brother Steve put the music together -all good stuff

Venue Looks Good

(Frank didn't book it)

Got 5 Songs from Rob
"Friends" it is - like Gerry knew what was coming.

"I love my friends, right to the end"

I Need to get some sort of small p.a. to play it

- Got to get to LAX by 8 AM - Monday peak on 405 FWY

Gerry Humphrys is how he spells his name -the press always get it wrong

(Brian Humphrys-Hunt was the local pub singer)

He knows he's laid next to the prison He would laugh. We played "Saint James Infirmary" and later "Didn't He Ramble" when a friend died.

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This post turned up - from Keith Glass - always a good man:

Brighton Rock
"The girls go crazy about the way I walk".

Gerry Humphreys and 'the Bayside thing'. (written by an old friend of Go Away Please, the founder of the Misssing Link Record Shop and Record Label - Keith Glasss)

When emails started flying in, saying Gerry Humphreys had died at only 62, my mind immediately went back not so much to The Loved Ones but to his previous outfit The Red Onions and their sway over the southern suburbs of Melbourne in the early 1960’s.It has never been properly publicly documented just how much influence and effect this band had on the whole area, musically speaking (although Melbourne pianist Tim Stevens did his Melbourne University Ph.D. in 1997, on 'The Origins Development of Significance of the Red Onions Jazz Band 1960-1996 ).Drawn largely from the Sandringham/Brighton area the members explored the moldy world of New Orleans inspired traditional jazz and infused it with their own vitality and zany sense of humour.Scoring Gerry as a clarinet wielding sometime bluesy shouter was a bonus.Brett Iggulden (trumpet) Bill Howard (trombone) and Allan Browne (drums) were the musical mainstays but Brett’s sister ‘Sweet Sal’ (who later married Browne and became a clothes designer) was a groovy addition on washboard, while from my high school came piano player John Pike and beatnik Kym ‘Emu’ Lynch the tuba-man (or was it Sousaphone?).Every weekend in pre Beatles days The Onions would pack houses in church and community halls at such venues as Collegiates, Beale Street, Opus and for a while, their own venue The Onion Patch in Oakleigh.Some of these were total 'dens of iniquity' with low lighting and a lot of heavy petting going on in the mostly underage crowd.There was also trouble in the streets outside, with Jazzers having to run the gauntlet with antagonistic Rockers from nearby town hall dances who wanted to cause 'the longhaired poofters' bodily harm.No record collection was complete without the first The Red Onions (4 track EP) on the EAST record label, or Frank Johnson’s band's version of Sweet Patootie on SWAGGIE, and Barry Humphries' Wild Life In Suburbia on SCORE.Gerry was no relation to Barry - as has sometimes been suggested. Also he did not later work on various English movies as a sound technician – that was someone else with the same name.Also, contrary to some accounts, The Red Onions never became The Loved Ones.Rather, three members, Gerry, Kym and later pianist Ian ‘Rocker’ Clyne saw the writing on the wall and decided to form an r&b group.This wasn’t such a stretch as you might imagine.Gerry was already singing in a sort of Satchmo/Cab Calloway style on such favourites as Ice Cream (You Scream) and The Girls Go Crazy, Clyne was demolishing pianos (and stages) with his pumping hands and feet while Lynch had grabbed a bass guitar and (as I found out in a pre-Loved Ones jam with him) had worked out how to play tuba runs on it.So the split came but The Onions persevered – two decades on, some of them were playing Bop – that is roughly about the same length of development of the original 'history of jazz', only 40 years on.The Loved Ones enlisted Rob Lovett on guitar and Gavin Anderson on drums and set forth to make their mark on the burgeoning Melbourne teen dance scene by now totally over-run with guitar bands containing many who had forsaken their 'Jazzer' heritage - Ross Wilson and Richard Franklin from The Pink Finks for instance. Later, Franklin (now a film director) first hit the sculls and traps in teenage dixieologists Merino And His Men, while Wilson was first influenced musically by his trumpet playing father.I was there at the first big Loved Ones gig. My band The Rising Sons were also playing that night at The Beaumaris Civic Centre or ‘Stonehenge’ as it was called.The Loved Ones came on wearing shirts like I’d never seen before. Closer examination revealed they were hand-drawn designs on basic white shirts giving the group a unique appearance to match their quirky sound.I was impressed by the look, but recall being not too impressed by the group. That might have been teenage cool – I don’t know. I do remember a scant few weeks later hearing 'The Loved One' shouting out of the radio and the shock of hearing something so unusual and original and just plain great – it was impressive especially given the renowned primitive recording facilities of W&G Records.Even more impressive - it became a pretty big hit. Everlovin’ Man consolidated their stature and suddenly they were out of our league.Both songs were towering achievements I think coming from the twin power of Gerry’s voice and Clyne’s musical prowess.A third good song Sad Dark Eyes was a more studied, Yardbird-ish effort that proved they were fast learners. Not fast enough though to make the album Magic Box more than a pretty slipshod effort not helped by changes in line-up, the group’s hectic touring schedule and the quickie recording mentality of the era.Years later while running my record shop I became aware that Magic Box was still 'in catalogue', which is just as well because We were selling it by the boxload and when stocks were running low I used to phone up W&G Records director Bruce Gillespie for some stock and he’d press up 50 copies just for us!I probably never spent more than a few minutes ever talking to Gerry. I knew others around him much better. For example Mike Edwards and Ross Hannaford who made up the core of Gerry And The Joy Boys the loose wacky outfit that served Humphreys through the post Loved Ones days. Gerry’s wife Claire was also a frequent visitor to our house in Sydney when I was living there while in HAIR 1969/70 – we’d have a post-show gathering more than a few times a week. I don’t remember ever discussing why she was in Sydney, he in Melbourne. Wish I had asked.I didn’t see the 80’s re-union tour, and only heard via mutual friends such as Allan Mitelman that Gerry recently wasn’t doing too well.Oddly enough, the image of him that still comes first to my mind is as a focal point of The Onions, striding the stage with authority and yelling through the small house PA _“The girls go crazy about the way I walk.”

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At my second practice with the Onions Gerry and I talked Dylan Thomas - August Bank Holiday

http://www.undermilkwood.net/prose_holidaymemory.html

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this is Polperro where Gerry recently wrote "I Love My Friends" with Rob

When I was about 13, I first encountered Gerry
It was around the Melbourne Folk Scene
Tom Lazar’s Reata and Little Reata restaurants
The Emerald Hill Theatre, where the big name stars were
Glenn Tomasetti
Trevor Lucas
Brian Mooney
Margret Roadknight
Martyn Wyndham-Read

Other Places

Frank Traynor's.
Jazz Center 44 and the Arab down at Lorne

Gerry sang, played clarinet, read a bit of poetry.
Adrian Rawlins’ was about too
I played piano with trumpet player John Hawes (at the Purple Eye) – who taught me my first 12 bar blues, so that gave me a little bit of credibility – although still at Scotch College, and a few nights with John Bye’s Bay City Jazz band gave me enough “Bayside” credibility to take John Pike’s place in the Red Onions This was where I really got to know Gerry. I remember he seemed really old – he was 18 and allowed to drink.

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INXS Andrew Farriss paid tribute to the music veteran on Tuesday, saying: " On behalf of INXS, I would like to express our deep sorrow at the loss of Gerry Humphries, a true musical pioneer, one of the great original Australian rock singers. His influence lives on."

INXS drummer Jon Farriss added, "Gerry was a pioneer in Australian music, totally ahead of his time. Gerry was an incredible talent and will be deeply missed. Thank you for your vision."