The Age newspaper,
August 8th 1998

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He remembers the mood of the times. "There was a full moon one night over Melbourne," he says. "They were playing Blackboard Jungle simultaneously in about half-a-dozen theatres. The kids went mad. They were ripping seats up. I was sitting in the Waratah Theatre in Moonee Ponds. It happened there, too. The papers were shocked and horrified. Teenagers all of a sudden became important. They suddenly realised they had a bit of power. That was the genesis of how it has become ever since."

Peter Robinson, 57, met Frith on a train home to Pascoe Vale one night. He was playing double bass with the Victorian Symphony Orchestra at the time. "I had my bass. He said, 'Well, why don't you come and play with me? I've got a rock band.' I said, 'What's that?' " Robinsons parents were not too impressed when he swapped to a makeshift electric bass a slab of wood strung with piano wire constructed by Bell. They had their own ideas on rock 'n' roll. "They actually threw me out of the house, took all the stuff in my room, threw it on the front lawn," says Robinson.

He rang Robertson, who plays keyboards in the band. "He came to get me in his little green van. Put all my records, my record player, and my clothes and books and stuff, and I went off to live in a flat with a couple of guys.

"My mum said to me, `The last thing I ever expected would happen to me was my son would go and play the devil's music and join a rock 'n' roll band.' It was pretty serious stuff in those days. All these rebels running around the streets. And that was how I joined the Thunderbirds. I had nowhere to live."

Bell was a classically trained violinist before turning to guitar. "I was involved in a church group and Bible study class and I found very quickly that, once I started playing rock 'n' roll, a lot of people who I thought were really good friends from the church wiped me like a dirty nose."

For a while, they were resident at the old Earl's Court, in St Kilda. Frith was afraid to walk the streets. "Back in the late '50s, there were bodgies (male) and widgies (female)," Frith recalls. "They had long hair and Canadian jackets, draped suits, very wide and very long and often a key chain hanging down. Blue suede shoes, thick crepe soles.

"They used to wear 'ming blue' suits. That was the color. And 'Presley purple' was one they tried to foist upon the people. Widgies had short, bobbed hair and ducktails slicked back similar to the boys. And tight dresses. They had to pass an initiation ceremony that the budgies thought up, which I won't go into in any great detail, except that it involved quite a few budgies."

It was while playing at Preston Town Hall that they encountered the Sharpies. Robinson remembers them as "like a gang that used to wear top-notch clothing. Boxer coats, little cashmere polo shirts, very well-tailored pants. And everyone got hand-tailored pointy shoes from the Italian shops in Brunswick or Smith Streets."

The Thunderbirds graduated from green shirts with white stripes to red coats with black lapels and, finally, black suits. "We decided we'd be menacing, sophisticated," Frith says. They have had similar suits made since they decided to play together again.

Bource and his wife, Liz, are organising this month's show. Robinson is looking after publicity. Robertson has the job of sending out the mail. "In other words, we're all just pitching in, " says Frith, who laughingly describes himself as "the executive supremo…and bulllshit artist".

He is adamant that they are not trying to relive the past. "As far as we are concerned, it's just another day at the office," he says laughing. "We played up then. Then there was a bit of a break. Thirty years or something. And now we've just picked it up."

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