I Think Of You

On Wendy Saddington, Chaos, History, Magic & Loss

Wendy’s New Face

It seemed that Wendy Saddington was the main reason the audience came. When she finally appeared her presence filled the barn like theatre. The initial impact caused by her makeup and leotards soon was replaced by the strong, sincere and unique quality of her voice. Her self painted clown like mask and harlequin costume were so weirdly out of place that the effect was intriguing. In her own way, Wendy triumphed. She was the only performer who actually made the audience feel what she was doing. …during her next two songs it was obvious that Wendy was very uncomfortable with both her backing and the way she was being presented. “I’m sorry” she said, “I just don’t feel like singing anymore”.

After she walked off the audience came alive with cries of “More More” and the foot stomping began. Wendy stepped back into the glaring spotlit area and began reciting the lyrics of ‘I Want To Go Home’ a song she wrote while in New York. “I want to go home” she slowly said “If only I knew where home was…”.

Several lines later her voice suddenly was singing. It was with this song that she really scored the impact, perhaps because the discordant group accompaniment was absent. Kopek joined her towards the end of the song with a quite tasteful backing, but in previous songs the other musicians had been completely out of touch with what the singer was doing.

Wendy is back. She has a folio of her own songs and will probably be ready to perform them in the near future. What she is attempting is so fascinatingly different that it would be a crime if she didn’t find the proper conditions to perform under.

Stephen Maclean - Go Set 1972

When asked about Australia’s lack of reverence for it’s own cultural history, internationally revered singer-songwriter/music writer Robert Forster told Everett True in a 2015 Guardian article “I find it irritating that kudos have not been accorded... You can be a fairly obscure group in the UK, but your story will be told. It’s in the newsagents month after month. Here, it doesn’t exist. Where are the eight pages on Sharpies? Where’s the eight pages on Daddy Cool? Where’s the big feature on Wendy Saddington? Ask the musicians, they know.”

Wendy knew.

She’d ended up in New York, in search of something beyond what Australia could offer and ended up sleeping in a bed fashioned out of a stage coffin for her by welcoming fellow Australian Geoff Crozier, psychedelic shaman/ shock-rock magician/trickster/weaver of fantasies who had also fled the barren shores of his hometown in search of something more. At times he found it too, making a name for himself and performing at the legendary Carnegie Hall, Max’s Kansas City (where his stage pyrotechnics set the roof on fire during his act and he was banned from performing there again), CBGB’s (where he was banned for singing owner Hilly’s beard with a flashpot) and even headlining a season at the Olympia Theatre in Paris before returning to Australia in 1976, ‘broke and disenchanted’ ‘desperate and destitute’.

Creating magic is expensive, and very demanding, and Geoff demanded the very best of himself, pouring every single cent he earned into costumes, animals, props, potions and chemicals, completely dedicated to the art of making better, wilder, more terrifyingly exciting shows. Accompanied by a pounding tribal beat and squalling noise musicians, Crozier utilised electric chairs, coffins, doves, cauldrons, flames, explosions and demonic chanting to freak the fuck out of his transfixed audiences, who hadn’t even heard of Alice Cooper yet. Crozier created perfect conditions to unleash true chaos and then played with it like a kitten, building towards an explosive annihilation.

The musicians onstage with Crozier had no idea what was going to happen on any given night, all he required from them was an unrelenting wall of sound played fearlessly at ear splitting volume while the maestro stunned, terrorized and delighted his shellshocked audiences.

Wendy was inspired and turned on by Geoff’s complete dedication to his craft and tried to find her own true path, resulting in the formation of Teardrop on her return to Australia, her first self created band, with Harry Brus on bass and Peter Figures on drums, both deeply soulful players from Copperwine, and performance artist Morris Spinetti miming and moving beside her while she sang, both of them in theatrical black and white harlequin style costumes and Pierrot inspired makeup. Morris sewed their costumes himself.

You can see them in mesmerising action here at the TF Ballroom, apparently a fabulous semi-acronym for ‘the Too Fucking Much Ballroom’:

And here is Crozier with his Indian Medicine Magik Show (with Black Allan on didge and Lady Air as his ‘assistant’) on Australian television show ‘Hit Scene’ in 1970. He worked as a set painter at Channel 9 and convinced management to let him fill in when a booked artist cancelled, resulting in what Dangerous Minds called ‘the single most demented thing anyone did on TV (let alone in private) anywhere in the world that year’. And he was just getting started.

At his last show, 1980, in the suburban family friendly confines of the Sandown Hotel (‘enjoy a refreshing beverage, watch live sport, play a game of pool or poker, as well as some of the finest names in entertainment gracing the stage’), just off the Princes Highway, Crozier called out ‘Turn out the lights and see what you can find!’ during the finale, at which point the house lights were meant to be turned off, but management refused to do it, despite his repeated commands, as the room was full of celebrating, thirsty football fans.

Incensed, Crozier stomped across tables, sending drinks and debris flying, and thrust his flaming Sword of Justice into a giant mirror ball, which shattered and also burst into flame. The fire brigade and police arrived as the band played their frenzied finale and Geoff was paid his fee in full by the shaken and apologetic management without any further incident.

A year later he was found dead at thirty three years old, following a tragic hanging accident while he worked on a spectacular new trick at home.

Now that’s rock’n’roll! Why is Geoff Crozier* not known as a legendary Australian pioneer of the entertainment scene? Jesus, whats wrong with us???

Or is it just that history disappears when its not written down, and if something or someone incredible doesn’t get in front of the right people that are wielding the pens that write history, then they are destined to be remembered only by those that were lucky enough to be there.

For those of you in Sydney, Australia next Sunday 6 March, I’m absolutely thrilled to be curating a celebration of the incredible Wendy Saddington as part of Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, with archival media and an ‘in conversation’ with musicians Harry Brus and my dad Peter Head (who played with Wendy off and on from early 80s til her death in 2013) as well as with incredible rock photographer Philip Morris, who captured Wendy’s transformations over two decades. Tickets are selling fast but there’s still some left, please come and join us, it will be beautiful.

Tickets and info here: A Wendy Saddington Appreciation Society Happening

I wrote about Wendy Saddington in my book (chapter entitled ‘Black Tambourine’) and a Spectrum cover article about my ‘happening’ and a wonderful current exhibition entitled Yesterday’s Heroes that also celebrates her, amongst other queer pioneers, for the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend, you can read that here.

I did a lovely interview with Sunny Grace for The Sentinel that talks about Wendy and other inspirations and writing my book etc that you can read here.

Notes And Further Reading:

*Crozier’s name was spelled with many variations; Crozier, Krozier, Jeff, Geoff

Great informative story here by Rob Greaves, who played with him for many years