The Dugites
Paul Noonan sent us a late-night email…
I wrote the beginning of this piece this morning as a post to a WhatsApp lawyers’ thread I’m on. Later, I saw Kevin Densley’s contribution in The Footy Almanac honouring the anniversary of John Lennon’s murder and thought I’d join in.
On this day, December 8 1980, before the others on this thread were born (!), I was on a plane from Brisbane to Melbourne with other members of the band I was playing bass in at the time, The Dugites.
Out first album had been released earlier in the year and had achieved gold sales. On the Saturday night, we had opened for Elton John at Festival Hall Brisbane (third of three shows there) and were flying to Melbourne for three gigs later that week at Festival Hall Melbourne, followed by Adelaide and Perth. We had already done three Sydney gigs at the Hordern Pavilion where we met Elton. All seemed well.
Elton and his band and crew were on the plane to Melbourne with us. We disembarked to the news that John Lennon, a good friend of Elton and well known to his band and crew, had been assassinated.
This was devastating for Elton and his band and crew, as you can imagine. A number of the crew had been working with Lennon on gigs in the lead-up to the Elton tour, and Elton was godfather to Sean Lennon, so everyone was plunged into mourning.
They seriously contemplated cancelling the remainder of the tour and it put a massive dampener on everything, including any possibility of social interaction between the bands.
One of the songs in his set in Sydney and Brisbane was a fantastic version of ‘Imagine’, so the emotion when he sang it in Melbourne was incredible.
When we had met Elton at the Hordern in Sydney after our first set, he was charming and friendly and spoke about the normal EJ band v support band cricket match and parties etc. All of that went out the window. Still amazing to watch that band and crew from close up for eight concerts.
I was older than Kevin Densley when it happened (see his Almanac piece from earlier today), but in common with him I was a massive fan of the Beatles and of Lennon in particular (name an Oz muso in 1980 who wasn’t). It’s only in recent years that my estimation of Lennon has dimmed somewhat, especially in comparison to the genius of McCartney (there’s a reason why my incorporated legal practice is named McCartney Danko Pastorius!).
But that sort of reassessment has only been possible because of the terrible event of December 8 1980.
Kevin’s tribute reminded me that the skies wept with us all in Melbourne that night.
Read Kevin Densley’s piece HERE.
Read more from Paul Noonan HERE.
Read more stories from Almanac Music HERE.
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Thanks for these memories, Paul.
Wow!
Goodness, Paul.
Incredible story.
The Dugites! Love that name. When I walked 500 km of the Bibbulmun Track throughout November 2003, I reckon we saw at least one venomous dugite every day. Tiger snakes too. But as we used to say – it’s the ones you DON’T see that are the worry.