I came to Australia 13 Aug 1967, haha I met Wally Mudd at the Oxford Hotel on a Thursday night to play with the SWD's maybe 2 weeks before that Shane Duckham let me and Bob? and a NZ drummer Warwick Lee play a set in one of their breaks at the Oxford. Bob ? (lived with his mum in Jersey Rd., Woollahra) great guy must have arranged it. Terry Wilkins was playing gtr with Shane Duckham abt a week later Terry showed up to a party at our flat in Liverpool St and we jammed a bit on acoustic gtrs then the following week he came by and asked me would I play with the SWD's at the Oxford that week 'cos their gtr player had gone to Melbourne and couldn't get back to do the gig so yeah I went there and met Wally and Darryl Mckenzie haha and away we went they asked me to stay on and I guess that wuz the break I'd been waiting for !
I had seen SWD's play at the Oxford before I joined them Paul Wyld was playing an upright piano at the windows end and his girl friend Kathy (James)? was sitting on the piano watching him play. Rod was the bass player the drummer was a guy called 'Hutch' in the photo you have of Rod I can see by the shape of the windows 'curved' at the top, that is upstairs at the Oxford Hotel this would've been late 1967
hmmmm Lynne when I came back from a short visit to the UK in 68/69 Terry and Darryl asked me if I'd like to play 3 pce with them of course I said yes! me and Terry started writing songs abt 15 or so and he thought we oughta be called Quill I sez gee why ? he sez 'cos we pen our own sonnngs! ........ya..... yeah okay I get it we got a gig, a residency at the Kings Cross BBQ top of the Cross opp William St working for a really nice guy Mr SS Freidler, apart from the originals we were playing songs like 'Shake Rattle and Roll' and some other standards we only had abt 22 songs in total luckily the crowd was constantly driftin' in and out changing oh yeah we had some Donovan tunes as well we played that repertoire right thru abt 5 times a night Mr Freidler was always saying " hey boys can ya play that 'hey rabbi' song again" 'hey rabbi' ? haha "yeah okay Mr Freidler haha, we never ever found out wot song he meant. We had another song 'East Side of the City' the Aborigine girls asked for that as well all the time. we were only there maybe 3 weeks when Terry told us Joan Whitty had offered us a residency at Adam's Apple cnr Oxford and Crown Sts on 5th floor premises opening out onto the roof Tully ex Levi' Smiths Clefs were moving on apparently, Mr Freidler was sad to see us go and came along one night to see us play in the meantime and I'm not sure how it came about but Wally, Paul, Larry, Jim and Chris got the gig at the Kings Cross BBQ and changed their name from SWD to Matchbox. I only went there that one night to hear them and wuz sitting with you and Terry Wilkins. Lynne haha ( I was amazed to hear Wally singing "Obla Di Obla Dah" !!!! ).
Adrian Follington 'Ace' wuz later abt mid 1970. Ace, Bill Twyman, me and Grahame Lowndes had a country rock type band called Powderhorn thanks so much for all your interesting emails and photo's cheers Red