Vale Lobby Loyde

It was scarcely over two months ago that I wrote an obituary for another giant of the Australian music industry - Billy Thorpe.

A name that will forever be linked to Thorpe is that of Lobby Loyde.

Loyde was at one stage a member of Thorpe's band, The Aztecs, and is the guitarist who is credited with having taught Thorpe how to beef up his playing.

Thorpe learned the guitar relatively late in his career, being merely the vocalist for the first few incarnations of The Aztecs. Thorpe wrote in one of his books that he was forced to learn the guitar when a guitarist dropped out, leaving him to carry on as guitarist and vocalist in the band at relatively short notice. Not long after this, Loyde joined the Aztecs, and is widely credited with having encouraged Thorpe to adopt the loud playing style that he was known for.

Loyde left soon after, but Thorpe and The Aztecs rocketed into their "purple patch" as it were, culminating with their now legendary set at the Sunbury music festival.

Loyde went his own way and formed a band called The Coloured Balls, which churned a psychedelic classic in the album, Ball Power, issued in 1973. This was a harder edged version of psychedelia than that which had done the rounds of Europe and North America, and is said to have pre-empted punk in it's intensity a good 3 years prior.

Sadly, however, they soon became the band of choice for Melbourne's then-burgeoning skinhead scene which, themselves, sprang out of the sharps scene. Loyde was not comfortable with this and fled to the UK where he developed a cult following, wrote a science fiction novel (since lost) and recorded a soundtrack album for the novel.

The master tapes of this album were released in Australia in 2007.

Loyde returned to Australia and briefly played bass with Rose Tattoo. He rejoined the band on guitar in 2006 after the death of the late Pete Wells. He was near terminal with cancer at this stage.

Tattoo vocalist Angry Anderson said this about Loyde, when he was inducted into the ARIA hall of fame:

More than anyone else, Lobby helped create the Australian guitar sound. Long before Angus (Young) or Billy Thorpe or the Angels or Rose Tattoo. Lobby inspired Australian bands to step forward and play as loud and aggressively as they could. People are still trying to copy it today.

Incidentally, Rose Tattoo have not had a good time of late. Wells himself died in 2006, and so did original bass player, Ian Rilen.

But anyway, it's a sad day for Australian rock and roll.

RIP.

Vale Billy Thorpe

Australia lost another musical icon today with the death of Billy Thorpe.

He was rushed to St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney with a heart attack, but died in the emergency room. He was 60 years old.

Billy "Thorpie" Thorpe effectively invented the genre known as "Oz Rock", which would be refined by musicians as diverse as Cold Chisel, Hunters and Collectors and The Angels, would be taken to the world by AC/DC and nearly killed-off completely by the likes of Noiseworks and the Screaming Jets.

Oz Rock, a grunty riff-based genre, was mainly four-to-the-floor, balls-to-the-wall rock and roll, with one foot firmly in boogie territory and the other pounding out a sensible mid-paced rhythm while very occasionally straying into the blues, reggae, country and, from time to time, unexpected weird shit.

It appears to have been going through something of a revival, lately, with the likes of Airbourne and The Casanovas getting a lot of airplay.

Jet are also known to be straying into that territory. The Living End and You Am I have been unashamedly showing their love for Oz Rock for some time now.

Thorpe, with his band the Aztecs, headlined the notorious Sunbury music festival of 1972, (regarded as Australia's Woodstock but not nearly as innocent), and almost overnight terminated the then preoccupation that Australia had with pre-fabricated pop-stars. Popular Australian music was to remain musician-focused until at least the 1980s.

Former member of the Aztecs, Lobby Loyde, himself inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame last year was diagnosed with cancer, and should, by rights have died first.

When he goes, it will be an exceptionally sad end to a remarkable period of Australian music.

Thorpe will certainly be missed. RIP.