Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
What have The Radiators been up to lately? OR Who won the big cricket match with The Police?
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
Ever wondered what it takes to stay relevant in the dynamic music industry for over 40 years? In this riveting conversation, we sit down with Geoff Turner, the charismatic bass player of Australia's favorite pub rock band, the Radiators. Join us as Geoff gives us an inside scoop into the band's journey, right from their humble beginnings, to their breakout single, the evolution of their unique sound, and much more. Brace yourselves as he uncovers the story of their infamous song, "Give Me Head," and how it's been both a boon and a bane for the band.
Geoff lets us in on the fascinating tale of how they found their new guitarist amidst the Covid pandemic, and how this fresh addition has reignited the band's passion. The Radiators haven't missed a beat, and Geoff gets candid about how they've managed to keep their authenticity alive on stage and continue to charm audiences with an average of 80 gigs a year.
Includes Songs:
The Radiators - Gimme Head
The Police - Every Breath You Take
The Radiators - Coming Home
Mental as Anything - Live It Up
Free - All Right Now
What have The Radiators been up to lately … let’s find out!
To catch up on podcasts from other favourite artists, or for more radio chick stuff simply go to “ThatRadioChick.com.au”.
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
You're with Cheryl Lee That Radio Chick, and this morning we are chatting to Geoff Turner, the bass man for Australia's most loved pub rock band, formed in '78 in New South Wales, The Radiators. Hi, Geoff. Hey, Cheryl Lee, doing well. Thank you. Now. Let's start at the start, shall we? Good place? I know Brian Nichol and Stephen 'Fess' Parker had a little band in school. How did you join up with these likely lads and did you have any idea that 40 plus years later you'd still be Radiating?
Geoff Turner:Well, no, no idea really. We just have to try and make it to the next Saturday night, when we did our first gigs together. But I was with another band that was cruising around Sydney at the time, band called Twister. We were like a long-haired, denim clad, Status Quo type boogie rock band, you know, and Brian and Fess were in another band called Big Swifty and they were more sort of Pink Floydy, David Bowie type sort of thing you know with ten minute songs and 14 verses and I was doing like a half-minute boogie song. But we did a couple of gigs together, got to know each other and when Twister broke up, unfortunately, well, they approached me to see if I'd want to join up with them guys and Brian at the time was playing bass guitar and he wanted to sort of offload that and just become like frontman type of thing. So I said, sure, you know, but this stuff look too tricky for me. I won't be able to play this stuff, you know, but I got around it.
Geoff Turner:My first gig involved lots of full-scale pages full of notes and stuff like that and you know, constant checking on that for the hour. I got through it and we continued on as Big Swifty for eight or nine months and then I was starting to introduce a few of my songs into it and it was a bit of a clash, but you know. They accepted my tunes and at the time the new wave and the punk thing was running red hot was just starting to hit and we were caught up in the energy and the excitement of all that. It was like trying to cut the hair. He shortened the songs and wrote more snappy little numbers and you know what I mean. We just sort of wanted to be part of the new wave, I guess, and it was a conscious decision.
Geoff Turner:Yeah, right we'll accept that. But yeah, you gotta have a sense of humour and we try and keep it sort of light and bright and we never get too heavy into politics or anything like that or what's going on. You know, if there's big stories of the day, you know we're trying to lighten them up a little bit or you know things like that. We talk to the crowd a bit during the show but we don't preach. We keep it all sort of light and bright and breezy, you know, and let the songs and the music do it work for us, you know yeah, yeah.
Cheryl Lee:Well, clearly the band's got a sense of humor with them. You're probably most famous or infamous song that you wrote Gim me Head. That's a very, very humorous song. Do you think in hindsight it's been good or bad? Is it all good, all bad?
Geoff Turner:bit of both exactly yeah.
Geoff Turner:I say you know, it's been a double-edged sword, as always say great on one side because it's at least people nice for one song. But then the bad side is people know you for one song. They judge a whole act on that and don't take it seriously and just think we're sort of, you know, we're under like a dirty little smutty ditty, and you know that's a bad they don't realize that we've done seven or eight albums, recorded over hundreds of songs of you know all sorts of styles and variations and that and to be judged on that one song it's held us back and probably done more harm than good. But when we play it live, it just goes over so great and people just rush to the floor and the cameras come out and it's like, oh, here we go, yeah, if the gig hadn't been working up to that point.
Cheryl Lee:Then it kicks off at that point, you know well, that's exactly what I thought you were gonna say, because it is one of those songs that is absolutely now inbuilt to the Australians music psyche. It's part of our history.
Geoff Turner:We all grew up racing to the dance floor when it came on, but I can imagine that sometimes just being known for that one song might have been a little bit frustrating as well, yeah, I think it actually held us back a lot and amongst the coolest at the media, that the too cool for school media, and it also probably didn't do us a lot of good in Melbourne who poke their nose up. But we had some very successful shows in Melbourne during the 80s. We set the pack out more like the beer gardens, like Matthew Flinders and Village Green and things like that in the suburbs and inner city. They apart from Bombay Rock, they didn't want to know about us too much.
Cheryl Lee:Well, it's absolutely gonna go down in Australian music history, that's for sure.
Geoff Turner:So be proud of that well, yes, at least make a mark somewhere. E xactly right.
Cheryl Lee:So let's get that song out of the way. Right up front from the 1980 Feel the Heat Gimme Head.
Cheryl Lee:You guys supported UK guys The Police on their Aussie leg of their tour. What was that like?
Geoff Turner:Oh, that was fabulous. We released our first album Feel the Heat on the day we did our first gig with The Police in Sydney at the Horton Pavilion there. It was just monumental. It was such a boost and a kick off for us. We were able to go and play in capital cities and with the hottest band in the world at that time. They were fantastic guys and really, really encouraging to us. We got a few encores, which is unbelievable for a support band, you know. In fact, we were back in the dressing room at the Horton Pavilion after we'd done our first show in Sydney and the crowd were going yeah, more more.
Geoff Turner:And then Sting, burst your doors, say, hey, get out there, you know, come on, they want you. You know, get out, do it. They only encouraged us, sort of, pushed out the door. So we went in and done a couple more and I thought, yeah, because that's, you know, the biggest band in the world. You know, they weren't worried about it. A lot of bands would be, you know, wouldn't want to know about that. That'd be shit themselves.
Cheryl Lee:They'd get their nose out of joint, but he sounded like he was very generous.
Geoff Turner:Oh well, definitely, as if they had to worry. They come on. You know they just took over the place. Of course, you know it was a fantastic band. But it taught us a lot very early on and we've always been encouraging to our support acts as well and give them a good run of the PA and the lights and I means that adds to the night. You know, you know you've earned it, you know, and it taught us early on to be generous as well.
Cheryl Lee:Very good. Just as an aside, early next year I'm off to the UK and I'm popping in to see Sting and Trudy, Oh wow. So I'll say hi from you, shall I?
Geoff Turner:You can and tell them about The Radiators that we played cricket at the airport once, you know we had to pull out the bat and ball. We played cricket on the tarmac at Sydney Airport, you know, and we had an old DC, DC eight or DC three. There was a fuel strike at the time and the flights were cancelled. We hired this old, like second World War old Dakota and flew down in that down to Canberra and it was like a private little mini airport, you know. So we were allowed to get out of the tarmac when we played cricket.
Cheryl Lee:No, I'm just writing that down, yeah, at the Sydney Airport and the Dakota right.
Geoff Turner:Yeah, Dakota, I think it's. Dc three is a DC three propeller job. You know propeller.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah.
Geoff Turner:It was just us, The Police and one air hostess in there. We flew out and Sting, wasn't well, had a bit of a flu or something and he was coughing and you know it's close. I was like how's he going to do it, you know, and before he went on in Canberra he's had above the steaming water, like where you make the cup of tea or something, h is towel over his head, breathing in all the steam and then he just went out and killed it.
Geoff Turner:No, it was one of the best I've ever seen Canberra like open air, just brilliant. You know three guys, it sounded like 30 guys. It was just incredible.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, that's professionalism. But hey, who won the UK versus Australia Cricket match?
Geoff Turner:Sting, h He wasn't a bad bowler actually, but it was just like a lightweight chuck around, you know, fill in time until we flew off. But yeah, you don't forget that. And it was also the first time we'd ever seen a Sony Walkman. They had just completed a tour of Japan and they had all these little boxes next to them and they were shoving in cassettes and they had their headphones on. They were like what's going on here? How good is this? So those were the first Walkmans I'd ever seen.
Cheryl Lee:et's have a Sting song, Every Breath You Take from The Police, from The Very Best of Sting and The Police. Back to speak some more with Geoff Turner, bass man of The Radiators, straight after this.
Cheryl Lee:At some stage, you were averaging at least 200 gigs a year and you have been quoted, Jff, as saying did you ever have a plan B?
Geoff Turner:Ever since I was in high school I thought that's the way to go. Very cool, good way to pick up chicks, grow your hair and seek fame and fortune and all that sort of thing beats, work and type of thing. It just influenced by the Beatles and all that whole scene. It was just caught up in all of that, even the onkeys and all that. So it's got to be in a band. This is the way to go. Me and a few mates, we formed a band. Then we just realised that we didn't know how to play anything. We couldn't play any instruments. We had to rush out and get some lessons. I started taking a couple of guitar lessons. We had no instruments, we couldn't play, but we were in a band. That was something.
Cheryl Lee:I love that, like a cart before horse or horse before cart doesn't matter, it worked out in the end.
Geoff Turner:Yeah, that's right. And on the Gold Coast in Queensland, where I started out and then maybe way down to the Big Smoke band of Sydney and formed Twister the band, which was eventually signed by RCA, we put out a couple of singles that didn't do much but then sort of broke up. T hen ran into the boys from Big Swifty, we were having the Radiators, and we're still going now.
Geoff Turner:It's something to do on the weekends, but we did do a lot of shows. I think something like 300 shows in the first year, I think 550 something in the first two years of the band we did, and then we're probably averaging at least 120, 150 every year after that for many, many, many years. I tried to calculate it up recently because I kept notes religiously up to gig number 3000, then I got bored with the book so I stopped writing it. I think we're done at least over 5,000, 250 years up my last shows and counting.
Cheryl Lee:So you know and still going strong.
Geoff Turner:Yeah, yeah, we probably do, maybe about 80 a year, now seven or eight months, maybe you know.
Cheryl Lee:That's still pretty good going.
Geoff Turner:Yeah, yeah, it's just not the venues these days. That used to be. Once upon a time you could play every night of the week Monday's, Tuesday's, you know, playing in a suburb gig 1,300 people on a Tuesday night you know, just outrageous. You know, Monday night, you know, 1,250 people like, and all the bands are doing like Angels and Midnight Oil. We're all trying to break each other's records, like you know. So it was a constant. You know, we got 1,320 at Bankstown, and Angels only got 1,275. Things like that, yeah, management was always trying to outdo each other back then and it was just incredible times. But now, like, if you get two gigs in a row, now you're calling it a bloody tour. Yeah.
Tommy Kaye:You are listening to Still Rocki' it. The podcast with Cheryl Lee.
Cheryl Lee:The Radiator's signed with WEA Records in 1979, and issued their debut single Coming Home in the September. Let's have a listen now and we'll be back to speak some more with Geoff their bass man after this.
Cheryl Lee:The tour. You've got seven dates in November and I think eight dates already in December. You're going everywhere, man, but you're not coming to Adelaide. Where's our Adelaide date?
Geoff Turner:We were hoping to be back, when did we do Adelaide. At the very start of the year we had come down for one gig only at Pooraka, The Bridgeway. We went really, really well. We thought, well, we'll be booked back here for sure. But I don't know if we step on someone's toes. They didn't re book us, but it went over really, really well. But what we need to do is put a couple there, you know, like, come for a weekend, at least two or three. We're always looking to go wherever we're invited. We have to be invited. We can't just sort of lob in the town and go and give us a gig, you know. But we're very, very keen to get back to Adelaide. It was surprising good night. We were absolutely wrapped with the response. We got the reception and it just went over so well.
Cheryl Lee:Oh, I had many friends there. Can't remember why I couldn't make it out there, because that was my old stomping ground. As a teenager I used to go there before I was allowed to go there. You know, it's a great Adelaide venue. So your bands being described as boogie rock and someone said somebody said it was by the 90s, it was outmoded. But James Cockington said, part of your appeal is that you refuse to change your style. So, a 78 gig, and a gig 20 years later, in 1998, strangely very similar. What about now, 20 years on again? Are we going to see the same Radiators that we know and love? Although, has it changed a little bit with your new band member?
Geoff Turner:Well, the music hasn't changed, other than we had to re-adapt it in the early 90s because we lost our keyboard player. In the 80s we had a lot of keyboards, so we had to sort of re-style us a bit but kick the basics of the song, of course, and just play a little bit more, a little fillier on the drum, a little bit more run on the bass. But we keep them true to the records and we haven't had any complaints. People love it and get the odd version of oh, I missed the keyboards, but not many. So we're very gratified with that.
Geoff Turner:We put out a whole range of stuff during the 90s as well, just the four-piece band and very heavy, you know, heavier sort of music, and it sort of went okay. But it's not really what people wanted to hear. They wanted to hear it a bit lighter. You know just the phase we were going through. But we're somewhere in between. We're doing heavier versions of our older stuff.
Geoff Turner:Our new guitarist has got a nice light touch. He's got a very gutsy sort of crunchy sound, but he's got these lovely stereo Vox amps, you know, and they just sound fantastic and it gives us a lighter, without being dirty, sort of sound. You know it's still very punchy and crunchy. And you know a crazy drummer, Mark Lucas on the drums. He's all over. Brian is just as manic as ever. I don't know how he does it he's like a praying mantis or something. He stalks the stage. He's the hardest working guy I've ever known. He's so impressive as a frontman. He puts kids half his age or a third of his age to shame really. He's just the ultimate professional and I think people will be impressed and we hope so. Now we really try hard to deliver. Every night live by the adage, you're only good as your last show and it's corny, but that's our mantra.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, nostalgia is a big thing and we do love that. We can go and we can hear the songs that we grew up with, the songs that we love, and still see them being played live as a punter. We just love that.
Geoff Turner:Yeah, well, we get a lot of feedback through our Facebook page and that and glowing reports all the time and people love us Not just really really gratifying and we get so much encouragement from our loyal supporters. You know, it's just incredible. That's what keeps us going, I guess, yeah, if we kept reading all these guys of shit you know they're going off, you know what I mean You'd have to take it on board and go, ok, but we see it be kicking goals all the time and when we come back to the stage we haven't played for a long time, they go oh just as good, or they're better than ever, better than ever.
Geoff Turner:Yeah, we go. Oh, that's, that's the guts. You know what I mean. So we'll just keep going until they start putting us off stage, I guess.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, keep on keeping on. So if people wanted to find out where you are, next Facebook page and your website, which is www. TheRadiators. com. Yeah, pretty easy.
Geoff Turner:That's right. And Facebook The Radiators, I guess. And we've got another page fans of Facebook and our fans sending lots of their own photos and lots of their stories and memorabilia shots of the old gigs and you know old t-shirts and they talk to each other and egg each other on the cover of different shows. And it's great networking. We just love it.
Cheryl Lee:We've got your little Facebook community. That's awesome.
Geoff Turner:Correct.
Cheryl Lee:Couldn't find a legal version of the Radiators Live It Up. So here are the Mentals with their hit Live It Up. And we look forward to seeing Martin Silia next time you see the Radiators live. Back to see what Geoff Turner bass guitarist for the Radiators likes to listen to on his day off.
Cheryl Lee:I'm going to ask you what do you like to listen to? You're going in your car and you can listen to whatever you want. What do you like to listen to?
Geoff Turner:Probably old stuff, of course. My favourite album possibly in the world is an old one by Free with an album called Highway. I think it was Free's fourth album. Whenever I just can't think of anything to listen to, I put that on it. Paul Rogers. I listen to The Beatles of course, Revolver. I love that. I like a lot of stuff, even a bit of Doof Doof. My kids got me into that. I got caught up in all that. I couldn't understand it. I couldn't understand it. First I thought, yeah, okay, now I can't get it done. It's just another form of art. Music is art. Not everyone likes the same pictures and photos and paintings. Doof Doof. Electronic music, edm, edm what do you call it? Electronic dance music it's another form of art and I've learnt to appreciate it. It's clever in its own way and it serves its purpose and the whole generation of kids who wouldn't know one Rad song at all, into this and you can't knock off for that. They've got their own thing. We had our own thing when we grew up.
Geoff Turner:I try to listen to everything and see Just what all the fuss is about, and a lot of the time I guess I'm just too old to appreciate it. I don't like that much. There's some odd gems that keep coming, because that's the way music is. I'm always looking out for something that's going to strike my interest in that and try and keep abreast of what's happening. But I can't say I dive deeply into the new stuff. I find it a little bit passe in, a bit too lightweight. So I tend to go back to what you know, which is what you do.
Cheryl Lee:Yeah, I think that's human nature. Congratulations on your 2013 best rock band and performance of the year In 2015,. The Radiators rock act of the year Well done.
Geoff Turner:Thank you, thank you.
Cheryl Lee:I'm looking forward to seeing Martin next time we get to see you live. Martin from Mental is Anything and you do a bit of a Rad version of Give it Up.
Geoff Turner:That's right. Yeah, because Greedy Smith passed that left Martin without a gig. We ended up without a guitarist after the Covid thing. You know a bit of a blow up there. He was looking for a band and we were looking for a guitarist and our world's collided. It's been a match made in heaven. He's added a lot to us. He's a professional touch. He's a brilliant player. He's slotted right in and he's given us a boost when we needed it, a bit of a jolt. We're just enjoying it more than ever. So it's been very gratifying and he's a great player, a great player.
Cheryl Lee:I think that's the key. You're enjoying it as much as ever and I think that's what comes through to the punters. You guys clearly love what you're doing and are passionate. That comes across to the audience.
Geoff Turner:Well, yeah, I thought you can't pretend. You know what I mean. People see through you. They see through you. When you just go through the motions, you soon get found out. You know, you've got to be real. You've got to be real.
Cheryl Lee:Thank you so much for being so generous and spending some time with us this morning and, as I say, I'll see you down the front next time you're in Adelaide.
Geoff Turner:Please make yourself known, come back and rip into our rider. You're welcome to have a few free drinks with us. Oh, thanks, Geoff. No worries, Cheryl Lee, and it's been lovely talking to you. Thanks for your interest and thanks for your time.
Cheryl Lee:All the best, thanks, bye, bye. Bye, bye, Geoff. We're going to go out with one of the favorites that Geoff Turner turns to, an oldie but a goodie by Free, All Right Now.