Skyhooks First Ever Show Was 50 Years Ago Today (16 April 1973)

It’s a big day in Skyhooks history. Skyhooks performed for the very first time ever at St Judes Hall in Lygon St, Carlton on 16 April 1973. The ticket price was $1.20.

The Skyhooks line-up on the day was:

Steve Hill (Vocals)
Greg Macainsh (Bass)
Peter Starkie (Guitar). (Bongo’s older brother)
Peter Inglis (Guitar)
Fred Strauks (Drums)

Steve Hill was later replaced by Graeme ‘Shirley’ Strachan, Peter Starkie by his brother Bob ‘Bongo’ Starkie and Peter Inglis by Red Symons.

While there is no footage of the first show, the seventh show was captured on tape by a young Bob Starkie, before he joined the band.

While undocumented, Skyhooks historian Peter Green tells Noise11.com that in the early days Skyhooks covered ‘Little Richard’s ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ and Chuck Berry’s ‘Let It Rock’. A live version of ‘Let It Rock’ recorded in December 1975 in Melbourne was later released in 1976 as a single and reached no 26 on the Australian chart.

Early setlist songs that made it to albums included ‘Love On The Radio’ (Ego Is Not A Dirty Word), ‘Saturday Night’ (Ego Is Not A Dirty Word), ‘The Other Side’ (Ego Is Not A Dirty Word), ‘Toorak Cowboy’ (Living In The 70s), ‘All My Friends Are Getting Married’ (Living In the 70s) and ‘Motorcycle Bitch’ (Living In the 70s).

Another popular setlist song from those early days was ‘Sweet Sister’ which didn’t make an album but was later included as a bonus track on the 2015 reissue of ‘Ego Is Not A Dirty’.

The band played an early unsanitised version of ‘Blue Jeans’, at the seventh show recorded by Bob, with the original lyrics “everybody’s wearing blue jeans, everybody’s having wet dreams”. The words were later changed for the recorded version from “wet dreams” to “daydreams”.

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