Timeline of Trends in Australian Music - 1970s

1970s

There was a 'boom' of Australian music acts in the early 1970s. Masters Apprentices, Spectrum, ACDC, and Daddy Cool were some of the most successful Australian bands of this time.

The popularity of surf culture continued into the 70s. From 1972 to 1975 the Sunbury Music Festival (considered to be Australia's answer to America's Woodstock) was held in Victoria, dominated by the likes of Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs, Daddy Cool and the Skyhooks. At this point, however, Australians were being exposed to a new distinctly American style of music - soft rock. Although they could listen to this sort of music through television and radio, it wasn't popular here until it came to Australia via the Eagles. The Little River Band is one of the noted Australian bands of this era to play in this style of music.

In 1972, "It's Time" was recorded by Alison McCallum, and was (in)famously (and successfully) used by the ALP in Gough Whitlam's bid for government. He introduced many reforms, including legislating for the establishment of community-based FM radio and increased funding for the arts. Due to his government's reforms, 2JJ (now the influential Triple J) was established.

1972 also saw Michael Gudinski form Mushroom Records. In 1975, Skyhooks, who were signed to Mushroom, released Living In The 70's. Six tracks from the album were banned, and the controversy combined with the singles "Living in the 70s" and "Horror Movie" ensured the album sold well. Their actual style of music was originally surf rock, but became glam rock, which originated in Britain during the early 1970s; they are thus Anglicized in this way. Nethertheless, they were hugely successful because they gave the young Australian public what they wanted - songs about Australia - places, experiences, values and so on, rather than songs about love, which Australians up until that time had been famous for. The debut song played by 2JJ was one of the banned Skyhooks tunes, "You Just Like Me 'Cos I'm Good In Bed".

Glam rock would go on to become one of the most popular styles of music in Australia in the 1970s with Sherbet and Split Enz both being successful bands.

At the end of 1974, the ABC began broadcasting Countdown with Ian Meldrum as host, a show which became hugely popular and influential. The show started as a conventional music show, it was still common for every single song to be played live. By 1976 onwards, overseas artists began to send the ABC and other television networks promotional videos to air on their music shows when they could not perform live. Thus Australian bands like Dragon, the Little River band and Skyhooks made promotional videos to accompany many of their songs, even though they rarely aired on Countdown at this time. Songs played on the show often experienced a wild upswing in sales.

Disco emerged in America in the mid to late 70s and came to Australia via artists like KC & the Sunshine Band. The Bee Gees, who had stopped recording big-band style music in the early 70s, used this style of music to make their comeback to the Australian charts. In 1977, the Bee Gees's soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever was a huge success worldwide, and in Australia broke all previous sales records. (Creswell & Fabinyi, 1999) Disco also had other Australian followers: Leo Sayer had a Top 10 hit in 1977 with "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing", and John Paul Young achieved success with "Yesterday's Hero" in 1976 and "Love is in the Air" in 1978.

The aforementioned styles of music existed alongside hard rock acts such as AC/DC.

Australian music was starting to gather momentum overseas, with the Skyhooks touring the United States, and AC/DC and Sherbet attracting attention in Britain. In the late 70s, as the punk rock phenomenon began overseas, Radio Birdman and the Saints began to be seen as scene leaders such as Shelby Ryan :S. Little River Band gained success in the United States in 1977, with their album Diamantina Cocktail being the first Australian-made American gold record (500,000 sales). (Creswell & Fabinyi, 1999)

Melbourne became a haunting ground for many influential although not huge-selling rock acts during this time, including Nick Cave's the Birthday Party, the Go-Betweens and the Triffids.