Tracks

  1. Chinese Eyes
  2. Unpublished Critics
  3. Love Boys
  4. White Limbo
  5. Oh No Not You Again
  6. Daughters Of The Northern Coast
  7. Big Fish In A Small Pond
  8. That’s Fine By Me
  9. Lakeside
  10. Beautiful People
  11. Six Days On The Road
  12. Live Now Pay Later
  13. Downhearted
  14. Trusting You
  15. Indisposed
  16. Errol
  17. Things Don’t Seem

Crew

George Alexander
audio

Thanks to Greg Noakes for the photos, Nprint for the cover artwork, Phil Dracoulis for the mastering and Russell Morris and the Rubes for supporting roadies and crew.

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Australian Crawl: Live At Billboard 1981 was recorded as the band from Victoria’s surf coast Mornington Peninsula, hit its strides as a live act.

They consisted of singer James Reyne, drummer Bill McDonough, rhythm guitar and vocals Guy McDonough, bassist Paul Williams, lead guitarist Simon Binks and rhythm guitarist Brad Robinson.

Their healthy swimming and surfing passions initially gave the band a surfer and college student following before they became household names.

By the time of the Billboard show, Australian Crawl had sold 600,000 copies of their first two albums The Boys Light Up and Sirocco, and voted the most popular group at the 1981 Countdown Awards.

They were breaking attendance records at clubs around the country. They drew 100,000 to Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne and 90,000 to The Domain in Sydney.

Paul Williams commented on how they sounded circa the Billboard show: “We were very confident. We lived for those shows. We were a rock band with a rock show. We leaped out at the gates with the first song. We were always working on the set to make it more exciting.

“We were genuinely into the excitement of the show. Brad Robinson would lift you just through his body language on stage, all 6’3” of him primal screaming.

“James would be running around, jumping up and down, vicing up the crowd, running over and shouting in your ear.

“In the meantime, the bass had to be rock solid and the drums had to swing.”

Between the first two albums, Crawl expanded to a six piece with the addition in October 1980 of Guy McDonough as guitarist, singer and songwriter.

Guy was a long time friend of some of the band, and brother of Bill McDonough.

Guy, Bill and Sean Higgins had written the gorgeous ‘Downhearted’ on the first album.

For Sirocco, named after Tasmanian-born Hollywood hell-raiser Errol Flynn, Guy had written  five of the eleven tracks, all the singles and onstage shared frontman duties.

He was a tough no-nonsense individual who changed the social dynamics of the band,

Bill McDonough recollects, “Guy was brought in to broaden our song writing and assist in lead vocals and backing vocals.

“He was such a great songwriter and a great singer. He added a lot of credibility to the band.

“He took a lot of pressure off James Reyne who after the success of The Boys Light Up album was feeing the pinch.

“He was quite charismatic, like James, but in a different way. In a lot of ways he was the musical and social glue of Crawl.”

The 20 songs on Australian Crawl: Live At Billboard ’81 include all their hits at the time, as ‘Beautiful People’, ‘Downhearted’, ‘Errol’, ‘Things Don’t Seem’, ‘Lakeside’ and ‘Oh No Not You Again’.

There are also album standouts as ‘Unpublished Critics’ (written by Reyne and Williams), ‘Indisposed’ and ‘Love Boys’ (which Bill wrote about two of their road crew), reviews of the next album (‘Daughters Of The Northern Coast’ got its first airing this night) and crowd-punching covers as ‘Six Days On The Road’ and ‘Slow Down’.

The year after, Crawl went on to have another #1 album with their third album Sons Of Beaches.

Bill left in 1983 after clashes with Reyne, Guy died in mid-1984 aged 28, Paul Williams left during the making of the third album because “it was not a band I wanted to be in any more” and Australian Crawl broke up in early 1986.