Stewie Speer
Encyclopedia
Stewie Speer was an Australian jazz and rock drummer who is best known as a member of the 1960s-70s Australian group Max Merritt & The Meteors.
Like Charlie Watts
, Speer was one of many Australian musicians who began their career in jazz but later branched out into the pop/rock scene and, like other contemporary Australian jazz musicians who worked in popular music (e.g. Bob Bertles
, Bernie McGann
, Warren Daly, Bobby Gebert, Don Burrows
) Speer was known for his ability to work across many musical genres.
, Victoria
, Speer was one of the generation of distinguished Melbourne jazz drummers who came onto the music scene in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Alongside contemporaries like Len Barnard, John Sangster
, Laurie Thompson and Alan Turnbull
, Speer was strongly influenced by Melbourne's three leading "trad
" drummers, Bob Featherstone, Charlie Blott and Billy Hyde, who founded the well-known Australian music company that bears his name.
Throughout the 1950s Speer played the prevailing trad jazz style with Roger Bell, Bob Barnard, Frank Traynor
and others, but he was drawn irresistibly to bebop
, which had begun to filter across to Australia from the USA in the late 1940s.
Although 'trad' ruled the roost in Australian jazz well into the 1950s, both Speer and Charlie Blott amassed considerable collections of imported bebop records and both were avid fans of the new genre. Jazz historian Andrew Bisset
records that on returning home in the early hours after gigs, Speer and his friends, including sax player Splinter Reeves, would "... sneak in through the back window so as not to wake his mother and stay up until breakfast trying to work the records out."
returned from Europe and formed a new band with like-minded players—Speer, trumpeter Keith Hounslow, schoolboy pianist Dave Martin and bassist Barry Buckley
. Bisset remarks that in Speer, Brown found a drummer " ... who swung. Speers had beautiful time, especially on cymbal, hard and straight ahead, with the message on his kit 'Art Blakey For Pope'."
The Brian Brown Quintet were regulars at Horst Liepolt
's influential Jazz Centre 44 in St Kilda
, which operated from 1955 to 1960. As indicated by the 'Blakey for Pope' message on Speer's drum kit, the Quintet championed the more progressive (but less popular) east-coast style of modern jazz. At that time, the preferred genre was the "cool", west coast style epitomized by artists like Chet Baker
and Dave Brubeck
, who were then all the rage with modern jazz fans in Australia. The Brian Brown Quintet were enthusiastic ambassadors for bop, introducing Melburnians to music which was still largely unheard in Australia including artists like Charlie Parker
, Thelonious Monk
, Miles Davis
and Sonny Rollins
. Speer continued to work in 'trad' bands to earn a living, but he was a regular member of the Quintet until it split in 1960.
Move to Sydney
Speer then moved to Sydney and became a regular at local jazz haunts like Quo Vadis in Martin Place, Chequers and Sammy Lee's legendary Latin Quarter, where Jimmy Sloggett's band (which included Bernie McGann, Bob Bertles and Graham Morgan) was introducing Sydney club-goers to the latest sounds of soul music
and the revolutionary Motown beat. It was during this period that Speer succeeded New Zealand actor–drummer Bruno Lawrence
as the drummer in the Latin Quarter's resident band, after Bruno (who was soon to join The Meteors) fell ill with hepatitis
.
In the mid-Sixties, Speer was an integral part of the fertile scene that centred on the famous El Rocco Jazz Lounge in Kings Cross, playing with groups that included by John Sangster
, Judy Bailey
, pianist Col Nolan, clarinettist Don Burrows
, Warren Daly and others. Founded by Arthur James
in 1957, and developed by musicians including Sydney drummer John Pochee
from 1957–59, the converted plumber's shop at the top of William Street became the centre of modern jazz in Sydney in the 1960s.
Max Merritt & The Meteors
Stewie Speer might well have remained a respected but relatively little-known member of the Australian jazz scene had it not been for a series of coincidences that brought him together with Christchurch-born R&B singer Max Merritt
. Merritt had risen to the top of the New Zealand pop scene with his band The Meteors before moving to Australia in 1963. After a tough start, the group had enjoyed moderate success in Australia, becoming a popular draw on the Sydney circuit, but by the mid-1960s, with the beat boom starting to fade, their manager Graham Dent wanted to steer them into a career in cabaret
. Another enduring problem in the band was its frequent turnover of personnel—many prominent players passed through the ranks in the band's ten-year life to 1966, but none of its lineups lasted more than a year. By the end of 1966 the lineup had (briefly) settled down to long-serving guitarist Peter Williams, bassist Billy Kristian and drummer Bruno Lawrence
, but their recording career had stalled and they needed a change of direction to survive.
. Another stalwart of the Sydney jazz scene, Bertles was a powerful and commanding tenor sax player who also had also gained extensive experience playing rock'n'roll as a member of Johnny O'Keefe
's backing band The Dee Jays from 1961–65, and he was also a regular session player on pop recordings by emerging performers such as Jeff St John.
The temporary five-piece version of the Meteors embarked on the Pacific cruise, but along the way they lost Bruno Lawrence, who jumped ship in Auckland, forcing Merritt to play drums on the last leg of the cruise. Another other significant event took place during The Meteors' visit to Auckland, where Merritt's old friend Jimmy Sloggett introduced him to Otis Redding
's new LP Dictionary of Soul. In particular, Otis' famed version of 'Try A Little Tenderness" had a huge impact, and it transformed Merritt's thinking about The Meteors' direction.
The importance of acts like Max Merrit & The Meteors in the development of the Australian pop-rock scene cannot be understated. In the 1960s and beyond, the Australian pop scene was dominated by commercial pop radio stations, and in general their programming policies were strongly biased against music by African-American performers. Many seminal black recording artists were not played on Australian pop radio—in his recent book on Australian radio, media historian Wayne Macardle records that (as in America) the classic single "River Deep, Mountain High" was effectively banned by commercial stations because it was considered "too black and too loud". Major black American soul acts like James Brown
and Sly & The Family Stone
were rarely if ever played on commercial radio in Australia, and as a result, local acts like Max Merritt, Jeff St John, The Groove
, The Groop, Ray Hoff and others. These performers energetically championed soul and R&B music and played a major role in popularizing these genres in Australia; many young Australians of the time first heard famous soul songs of the period through the performances and recordings by these local groups.
After returning to Sydney, Merritt put together a new lineup, hoping to better emulate this new wave of soul epitomised by the artists on the artists of the Atlantic Records
and Stax
labels. He was greatly impressed by Bertles' talent and decided to keep him on for the new group. After recruiting flamboyant NZ-born bass player John "Yuk" Harrison (ex Invaders, Heart'n'Soul) Merritt invited Stewie Speer to join as their new drummer in May 1967. Although he played outside the band on various occasions over the years, Speer effectively worked with Merritt for the rest of his life.
, 90 miles south east of Melbourne.
Harrison, who had been sitting in the back with the equipment, escaped unhurt, but Bertles, Merritt and Speer were trapped in the front of the crumpled van and it took firemen more than an hour to free them. Merritt sustained severe head injuries, Bertles' leg was smashed and Speer suffered multiple injuries—his legs were crushed, both arms were broken and he lost the tips of several fingers, resulting a four-month hospital stay and a long and painful rehabilitation. It took the better part of a year for the group to recover from the accident. As a result of their injuries, Merritt lost his right eye and his face was badly scarred, Bertles was left with a permanent limp, and Speer never regained full mobility.
Well-supported benefit concert
s in Sydney and Melbourne raised money to support them through their convalescence, but their only gig that year was a one-off comeback show at Berties disco in Melbourne on 2 December. The Meteors gradually returned to performing through the early months of 1968 and by mid-year they were back on the road full time, and winning acclaim as one of the hottest live bands on the scene. In July, they came in third behind runners-up The Master's Apprentices
in the national final of the Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds
. Ironically, the winner was The Groove
, a new 'supergroup' fronted by Merritt's former guitarist Peter Williams.
By 1969 Merritt was Australia's undisputed "King Of Soul" and the group gained added stature when the ABC
presented them in a four-part series, "Max Merritt and the Meteors in Concert", the first TV series ever made in Australia to feature a rock band live in concert. They signed to the Australian division of RCA Records
and recorded their debut album Max Merritt & The Meteors. It included their first Australian hit single, their classic cover of Jerry Butler
's "Western Union Man", which featured a punchy Stax-style brass arrangement by Bertles. It reached #13 on the Australian national pop chart in December 1969, and the album itself fared even better, reaching #8 in June 1970.
Later career
In October 1970 Max Merritt & The Meteors finally left for their long-postponed visit to the UK, but as with so many Australian bands of the period, it was mostly hard going for little reward. For Australian fans the highlights of that period were the group's brief returns for triumphant appearances at the Sunbury Pop Festivals in January 1972 and 1973. The Meteors slogged away with regular live work on the London pub circuit, building up a solid following, and they also began to pick up prestigious support slots on national tours by leading groups like Slade
and The Moody Blues
. However they suffered a major setback in 1974 when manager Peter Raphael suddenly decamped, leaving them stranded with no money and many outstanding debts. Bertles left to play with UK jazz-rock band Nucleus
, Speer toured Europe with Alexis Korner
, and Merritt was forced to fall back on his old trade and work as a bricklayer.
Max and Stewie put together a new, five-piece Meteors in late 1974, with British musicians John Gourd, Howard Martin Deniz and Barry Duggan. They went back to work on the London pub circuit and became the first act signed to the new UK division of the Arista
label. Happily, the resulting album, A Little Easier, became their biggest success to date. An Australian best-seller, it reached #4 in November 1975, with the classic ballad "Slipping Away" reaching #2 in Australia and #5 in New Zealand that same month. Still based in the UK, The Meteors returned to Australia for successful tours in May–June 1976 and February 1977, the latter producing the album Back Home Live, recorded at Melbourne's Dallas Brooks Hall.
In 1978 Merritt broke up The Meteors, retaining only Speer. He signed a new deal with the Polydor label and recorded an album in Nashville
, before relocating to Los Angeles
, where he was based for many years. In May 1979, Merritt toured Australia with a 12-piece band, and returned in late 1980 for another visit with a band comprising Stewie, Paul Grant (guitar), John Williams (keyboards) and Phil Lawson (bass). This was Max and Stewie's last major tour together.
Stewie Speer returned to live in Sydney in 1980, and he remained active on the local scene, although the health problems stemming from the 1967 car accident affected him increasingly during his last years. He died of a heart attack in Sydney on 16 September 1986, aged 58.
Like Charlie Watts
Charlie Watts
Charles Robert "Charlie" Watts is an English drummer, best known as a member of The Rolling Stones. He is also the leader of a jazz band, a record producer, commercial artist, and horse breeder.-Early life:...
, Speer was one of many Australian musicians who began their career in jazz but later branched out into the pop/rock scene and, like other contemporary Australian jazz musicians who worked in popular music (e.g. Bob Bertles
Bob Bertles
-Career:A self taught musician, Bertles began his performing career in 1956. In the late 1950s and early 60s Bertles was a member of the developing modern jazz scene that grew out of venues like the Mocambo in Newtown and the El Rocco Jazz Cellar in Sydney's Kings Cross.Active in clubs, on TV, as a...
, Bernie McGann
Bernie McGann
Bernie McGann is an Australian jazz alto saxophone player. He began his career in the late 1950s and is still active as a performer, composer and recording artist.- Biography :...
, Warren Daly, Bobby Gebert, Don Burrows
Don Burrows
Donald Vernon Burrows, AO, MBE is an Australian jazz and swing musician, playing the clarinet, saxophone, and flute....
) Speer was known for his ability to work across many musical genres.
Early jazz career
Born in MelbourneMelbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
, Speer was one of the generation of distinguished Melbourne jazz drummers who came onto the music scene in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Alongside contemporaries like Len Barnard, John Sangster
John Sangster
John Sangster was an Australian jazz composer, arranger, drummer, cornettist and Vibraphonist born in Melbourne, most well known as a composer though also a gifted multi-instrumentalist...
, Laurie Thompson and Alan Turnbull
Alan Lawrence Turnbull
Alan Lawrence Turnbull, is a jazz drummer and freelance professional musicianAlan Turnbull was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1943...
, Speer was strongly influenced by Melbourne's three leading "trad
Trad jazz
Trad jazz - short for "traditional jazz" - refers to the Dixieland and Ragtime jazz styles of the early 20th century in contrast to any more modern style....
" drummers, Bob Featherstone, Charlie Blott and Billy Hyde, who founded the well-known Australian music company that bears his name.
Throughout the 1950s Speer played the prevailing trad jazz style with Roger Bell, Bob Barnard, Frank Traynor
Frank Traynor
Frank Traynor was an Australian jazz musician, trombonist and entrepreneur based in Melbourne. He led Australia’s longest continuously running jazz band, The Jazz Preachers from 1956 until his death in 1985. He founded the Victorian Jazz Club in 1956...
and others, but he was drawn irresistibly to bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
, which had begun to filter across to Australia from the USA in the late 1940s.
Although 'trad' ruled the roost in Australian jazz well into the 1950s, both Speer and Charlie Blott amassed considerable collections of imported bebop records and both were avid fans of the new genre. Jazz historian Andrew Bisset
Andrew Bisset
Andrew Bisset was an Australian author, music educator and singer, based in Canberra.- Author :Andrew Bisset was particularly noted for his excellent book Black Roots White Flowers - A History of Jazz in Australia, which traces jazz influences and performances from the early days of visiting...
records that on returning home in the early hours after gigs, Speer and his friends, including sax player Splinter Reeves, would "... sneak in through the back window so as not to wake his mother and stay up until breakfast trying to work the records out."
Brian Brown Quintet
In early 1956, saxophonist and bop fanatic Brian BrownBrian Brown (musician)
Brian Brown OAM, is an Australian Jazz musician and educator. He plays the soprano and tenor saxophones, flutes, synthesizers , panpipes and a leather bowhorn designed by the late Garry Greenwood, .-Biography:Brown has performed as a soloist and with his own ensembles since the mid 1950s throughout...
returned from Europe and formed a new band with like-minded players—Speer, trumpeter Keith Hounslow, schoolboy pianist Dave Martin and bassist Barry Buckley
Barry Buckley
Barry Buckley was an Australian jazz double bass player and dental technician from Melbourne, a notable presence on the modern jazz scene for over 40 years....
. Bisset remarks that in Speer, Brown found a drummer " ... who swung. Speers had beautiful time, especially on cymbal, hard and straight ahead, with the message on his kit 'Art Blakey For Pope'."
The Brian Brown Quintet were regulars at Horst Liepolt
Horst Liepolt
Horst Liepolt is a jazz producer and artist.In Australia, and later in the United States, he organized numerous successful jazz concerts and festivals and also produced a large number of jazz recordings....
's influential Jazz Centre 44 in St Kilda
St Kilda, Victoria
St Kilda is an inner city suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 km south from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Port Phillip...
, which operated from 1955 to 1960. As indicated by the 'Blakey for Pope' message on Speer's drum kit, the Quintet championed the more progressive (but less popular) east-coast style of modern jazz. At that time, the preferred genre was the "cool", west coast style epitomized by artists like Chet Baker
Chet Baker
Chesney Henry "Chet" Baker, Jr. was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.Though his music earned him a large following , Baker's popularity was due in part to his "matinee idol-beauty" and "well-publicized drug habit."He died in 1988 in Amsterdam, the...
and Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck
David Warren "Dave" Brubeck is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills...
, who were then all the rage with modern jazz fans in Australia. The Brian Brown Quintet were enthusiastic ambassadors for bop, introducing Melburnians to music which was still largely unheard in Australia including artists like Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker, Jr. , famously called Bird or Yardbird, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer....
, Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an American jazz pianist and composer considered "one of the giants of American music". Monk had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "Epistrophy", "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser"...
, Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...
and Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins
Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins is a Grammy-winning American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St...
. Speer continued to work in 'trad' bands to earn a living, but he was a regular member of the Quintet until it split in 1960.
Move to Sydney
Speer then moved to Sydney and became a regular at local jazz haunts like Quo Vadis in Martin Place, Chequers and Sammy Lee's legendary Latin Quarter, where Jimmy Sloggett's band (which included Bernie McGann, Bob Bertles and Graham Morgan) was introducing Sydney club-goers to the latest sounds of soul music
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
and the revolutionary Motown beat. It was during this period that Speer succeeded New Zealand actor–drummer Bruno Lawrence
Bruno Lawrence
Bruno Lawrence was a New Zealand musician and actor.Initially notable as founder of 1970s musical and theatrical "Blerta", he had well-regarded roles in several major films, and starred on the 1990s Australian satirical TV series Frontline.-Biography:Born David Charles Lawrence in Worthing, West...
as the drummer in the Latin Quarter's resident band, after Bruno (who was soon to join The Meteors) fell ill with hepatitis
Hepatitis
Hepatitis is a medical condition defined by the inflammation of the liver and characterized by the presence of inflammatory cells in the tissue of the organ. The name is from the Greek hepar , the root being hepat- , meaning liver, and suffix -itis, meaning "inflammation"...
.
In the mid-Sixties, Speer was an integral part of the fertile scene that centred on the famous El Rocco Jazz Lounge in Kings Cross, playing with groups that included by John Sangster
John Sangster
John Sangster was an Australian jazz composer, arranger, drummer, cornettist and Vibraphonist born in Melbourne, most well known as a composer though also a gifted multi-instrumentalist...
, Judy Bailey
Judy Bailey
Judy Ann Bailey ONZM is a former news presenter for ONE News, the highest rated evening television news programme in New Zealand. She has been called the "Mother of the Nation"....
, pianist Col Nolan, clarinettist Don Burrows
Don Burrows
Donald Vernon Burrows, AO, MBE is an Australian jazz and swing musician, playing the clarinet, saxophone, and flute....
, Warren Daly and others. Founded by Arthur James
Jimmy Griffin
James Arthur Griffin was a singer, guitarist, and songwriter with the 1970s rock band Bread.-Early life:An Academy Award winning songwriter, Griffin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, but grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. His musical training began when his parents signed him up for accordion lessons...
in 1957, and developed by musicians including Sydney drummer John Pochee
John Pochee
John Pochée, is a Jazz Drummer and Bandleader.John Pochée was born in Sydney, Australia in 1940.His career as a professional musician began in 1956. He formed The Last Straw in 1974 and also played with the Judy Bailey Quartet from 1974 to 1979...
from 1957–59, the converted plumber's shop at the top of William Street became the centre of modern jazz in Sydney in the 1960s.
Max Merritt & The Meteors
Stewie Speer might well have remained a respected but relatively little-known member of the Australian jazz scene had it not been for a series of coincidences that brought him together with Christchurch-born R&B singer Max Merritt
Max Merritt
Max Merritt is a New Zealand-born singer-songwriter and guitarist who is renowned as an interpreter of soul music and R&B...
. Merritt had risen to the top of the New Zealand pop scene with his band The Meteors before moving to Australia in 1963. After a tough start, the group had enjoyed moderate success in Australia, becoming a popular draw on the Sydney circuit, but by the mid-1960s, with the beat boom starting to fade, their manager Graham Dent wanted to steer them into a career in cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
. Another enduring problem in the band was its frequent turnover of personnel—many prominent players passed through the ranks in the band's ten-year life to 1966, but none of its lineups lasted more than a year. By the end of 1966 the lineup had (briefly) settled down to long-serving guitarist Peter Williams, bassist Billy Kristian and drummer Bruno Lawrence
Bruno Lawrence
Bruno Lawrence was a New Zealand musician and actor.Initially notable as founder of 1970s musical and theatrical "Blerta", he had well-regarded roles in several major films, and starred on the 1990s Australian satirical TV series Frontline.-Biography:Born David Charles Lawrence in Worthing, West...
, but their recording career had stalled and they needed a change of direction to survive.
Pacific cruise job
In early 1967 the band reluctantly took a job entertaining passengers on a Pacific cruise liner, but just before they left both Williams and Kristian announced their intention to leave the Meteors after the cruise. As a temporary addition, Merritt took Bruno Lawrence's suggestion and brought in one of Stewie and Bruno's Latin Quarter colleagues, saxophonist Bob BertlesBob Bertles
-Career:A self taught musician, Bertles began his performing career in 1956. In the late 1950s and early 60s Bertles was a member of the developing modern jazz scene that grew out of venues like the Mocambo in Newtown and the El Rocco Jazz Cellar in Sydney's Kings Cross.Active in clubs, on TV, as a...
. Another stalwart of the Sydney jazz scene, Bertles was a powerful and commanding tenor sax player who also had also gained extensive experience playing rock'n'roll as a member of Johnny O'Keefe
Johnny O'Keefe
John Michael O'Keefe, known as Johnny O'Keefe was an Australian rock and roll singer whose career began in the 1950s. Some of his hits include "Wild One" , "Shout!" and "She's My Baby"...
's backing band The Dee Jays from 1961–65, and he was also a regular session player on pop recordings by emerging performers such as Jeff St John.
The temporary five-piece version of the Meteors embarked on the Pacific cruise, but along the way they lost Bruno Lawrence, who jumped ship in Auckland, forcing Merritt to play drums on the last leg of the cruise. Another other significant event took place during The Meteors' visit to Auckland, where Merritt's old friend Jimmy Sloggett introduced him to Otis Redding
Otis Redding
Otis Ray Redding, Jr. was an American soul singer-songwriter, record producer, arranger and talent scout. He is considered one of the major figures in soul and R&B...
's new LP Dictionary of Soul. In particular, Otis' famed version of 'Try A Little Tenderness" had a huge impact, and it transformed Merritt's thinking about The Meteors' direction.
The importance of acts like Max Merrit & The Meteors in the development of the Australian pop-rock scene cannot be understated. In the 1960s and beyond, the Australian pop scene was dominated by commercial pop radio stations, and in general their programming policies were strongly biased against music by African-American performers. Many seminal black recording artists were not played on Australian pop radio—in his recent book on Australian radio, media historian Wayne Macardle records that (as in America) the classic single "River Deep, Mountain High" was effectively banned by commercial stations because it was considered "too black and too loud". Major black American soul acts like James Brown
James Brown
James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr...
and Sly & The Family Stone
Sly & the Family Stone
Sly and the Family Stone were an American rock, funk, and soul band from San Francisco, California. Active from 1966 to 1983, the band was pivotal in the development of soul, funk, and psychedelic music...
were rarely if ever played on commercial radio in Australia, and as a result, local acts like Max Merritt, Jeff St John, The Groove
The Groove (band)
Formed in mid 1967, The Groove are considered to be Australia's first "supergroup" in that all members had considerable experience behind them in a number of successful bands...
, The Groop, Ray Hoff and others. These performers energetically championed soul and R&B music and played a major role in popularizing these genres in Australia; many young Australians of the time first heard famous soul songs of the period through the performances and recordings by these local groups.
After returning to Sydney, Merritt put together a new lineup, hoping to better emulate this new wave of soul epitomised by the artists on the artists of the Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
and Stax
Stax
Stax can refer to:* StAX, Streaming API for XML. An API for reading and writing XML in Java.* Stax Earspeakers, a Japanese brand of electrostatic earspeakers* Stax Records, an American record company...
labels. He was greatly impressed by Bertles' talent and decided to keep him on for the new group. After recruiting flamboyant NZ-born bass player John "Yuk" Harrison (ex Invaders, Heart'n'Soul) Merritt invited Stewie Speer to join as their new drummer in May 1967. Although he played outside the band on various occasions over the years, Speer effectively worked with Merritt for the rest of his life.
Collision and convalescence
Speer's new career as a rock drummer almost ended in tragedy only one month after he joined The Meteors. The band was planning to travel to Britain, but while preparations proceeded they continued taking gigs wherever they could get them to raise funds for their proposed trip. On 24 June 1967, on their way to a gig in Morwell in country Victoria, their van collided head-on with a truck just outside the town of BunyipBunyip
The bunyip, or kianpraty, is a large mythical creature from Aboriginal mythology, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes....
, 90 miles south east of Melbourne.
Harrison, who had been sitting in the back with the equipment, escaped unhurt, but Bertles, Merritt and Speer were trapped in the front of the crumpled van and it took firemen more than an hour to free them. Merritt sustained severe head injuries, Bertles' leg was smashed and Speer suffered multiple injuries—his legs were crushed, both arms were broken and he lost the tips of several fingers, resulting a four-month hospital stay and a long and painful rehabilitation. It took the better part of a year for the group to recover from the accident. As a result of their injuries, Merritt lost his right eye and his face was badly scarred, Bertles was left with a permanent limp, and Speer never regained full mobility.
Well-supported benefit concert
Benefit concert
A benefit concert or charity concert is a concert, show or gala featuring musicians, comedians, or other performers that is held for a charitable purpose, often directed at a specific and immediate humanitarian crisis. Such events raise both funds and public awareness to address the cause at...
s in Sydney and Melbourne raised money to support them through their convalescence, but their only gig that year was a one-off comeback show at Berties disco in Melbourne on 2 December. The Meteors gradually returned to performing through the early months of 1968 and by mid-year they were back on the road full time, and winning acclaim as one of the hottest live bands on the scene. In July, they came in third behind runners-up The Master's Apprentices
The Masters Apprentices
The Masters Apprentices were an Australian rock band fronted by mainstay Jim Keays on lead vocals, which formed in 1965 in Adelaide, South Australia, relocated to Melbourne in February 1967 and attempted to break into the United Kingdom market from 1970, before disbanding in 1972...
in the national final of the Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds
Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds
Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds was an annual national rock/pop band competition held in Australia from 1966 to 1972.-History:Australia's Battle of the Sounds was originally established by Australian tabloid magazine Everybody’s in 1965 as a talent quest for new unsigned bands in Sydney, Melbourne...
. Ironically, the winner was The Groove
The Groove (band)
Formed in mid 1967, The Groove are considered to be Australia's first "supergroup" in that all members had considerable experience behind them in a number of successful bands...
, a new 'supergroup' fronted by Merritt's former guitarist Peter Williams.
New Meteors
The new Meteors were certainly an unlikely-looking group of rock stars—counter to the current trend, Merritt had close-cropped hair, and Speer was overweight, over 40 and greying, his bald pate covered by his ubiquitous cloth cap. But they were a firm favourite with other groups, a "musician's band" who were also renowned as one of the hardest-working groups in Australia.By 1969 Merritt was Australia's undisputed "King Of Soul" and the group gained added stature when the ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
presented them in a four-part series, "Max Merritt and the Meteors in Concert", the first TV series ever made in Australia to feature a rock band live in concert. They signed to the Australian division of RCA Records
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
and recorded their debut album Max Merritt & The Meteors. It included their first Australian hit single, their classic cover of Jerry Butler
Jerry Butler (singer)
Jerry Butler is an American soul singer and songwriter. He is also noted as being the original lead singer of the R&B vocal group, The Impressions, as well as a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee.Butler is also an American politician...
's "Western Union Man", which featured a punchy Stax-style brass arrangement by Bertles. It reached #13 on the Australian national pop chart in December 1969, and the album itself fared even better, reaching #8 in June 1970.
Later career
In October 1970 Max Merritt & The Meteors finally left for their long-postponed visit to the UK, but as with so many Australian bands of the period, it was mostly hard going for little reward. For Australian fans the highlights of that period were the group's brief returns for triumphant appearances at the Sunbury Pop Festivals in January 1972 and 1973. The Meteors slogged away with regular live work on the London pub circuit, building up a solid following, and they also began to pick up prestigious support slots on national tours by leading groups like Slade
Slade
Slade are an English rock band from Wolverhampton, who rose to prominence during the glam rock era of the early 1970s. With 17 consecutive Top 20 hits and six number ones, the British Hit Singles & Albums names them as the most successful British group of the 1970s based on sales of singles...
and The Moody Blues
The Moody Blues
The Moody Blues are an English rock band. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their 1967 album Days of Future Passed....
. However they suffered a major setback in 1974 when manager Peter Raphael suddenly decamped, leaving them stranded with no money and many outstanding debts. Bertles left to play with UK jazz-rock band Nucleus
Nucleus (band)
Nucleus were a pioneering jazz-rock band from Britain who continued in different forms from 1969 to 1989. In their first year they won first prize at the Montreux Jazz Festival, released the album Elastic Rock, and performed both at the Newport Jazz Festival and the Village Gate jazz club.They were...
, Speer toured Europe with Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner
Alexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...
, and Merritt was forced to fall back on his old trade and work as a bricklayer.
Max and Stewie put together a new, five-piece Meteors in late 1974, with British musicians John Gourd, Howard Martin Deniz and Barry Duggan. They went back to work on the London pub circuit and became the first act signed to the new UK division of the Arista
Arista Records
Arista was an American record label. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment and operated under the RCA Music Group. The label was founded in 1974 by Clive Davis, who formerly worked for CBS Records...
label. Happily, the resulting album, A Little Easier, became their biggest success to date. An Australian best-seller, it reached #4 in November 1975, with the classic ballad "Slipping Away" reaching #2 in Australia and #5 in New Zealand that same month. Still based in the UK, The Meteors returned to Australia for successful tours in May–June 1976 and February 1977, the latter producing the album Back Home Live, recorded at Melbourne's Dallas Brooks Hall.
In 1978 Merritt broke up The Meteors, retaining only Speer. He signed a new deal with the Polydor label and recorded an album in Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
, before relocating to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, where he was based for many years. In May 1979, Merritt toured Australia with a 12-piece band, and returned in late 1980 for another visit with a band comprising Stewie, Paul Grant (guitar), John Williams (keyboards) and Phil Lawson (bass). This was Max and Stewie's last major tour together.
Stewie Speer returned to live in Sydney in 1980, and he remained active on the local scene, although the health problems stemming from the 1967 car accident affected him increasingly during his last years. He died of a heart attack in Sydney on 16 September 1986, aged 58.