By Luke Voogt
British 60s rock legends The Hollies will play in Geelong for the first time at Deakin’s Costa Hall Sunday.
“We’re looking forward to that,” said original drummer Bobby Elliott ahead of the band’s show in Perth Wednesday.
“We’ve been to Melbourne many times, but never Geelong.”
The band is famous for classics like The Air That I Breathe and He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.
Elliot, 76, said the band had toured every year since it began in 1963 and was still going strong.
“Although the shows get longer and longer,” he added.
Elliots love of music began when his aunty sang to him as a baby.
He fashioned drums from chocolate tins as a toddler in his mother’s store in the northern England town of Burnley.
“I would play along to whatever the drummer was playing on the records,” he said.
“(My parents) could see I was pretty well determined.”
At 16, he bought some “two-pound” drums. Later, he borrowed 60 pounds from his dad for a proper set to indulge his love for jazz.
Touring with Elliot this month is original lead guitarist and singer Tony Hicks.
The two met after leaving school and finding work as apprentice tradesmen.
“Tony was an apprentice electrician, which I think was so he could mend his amplifiers.”
Elliot met Hicks’ sister (and late wife) Maureen in the local pub and “bought her a glass of cider”.
He walked her home and came in for a coffee, spotting Hick’s guitar. After meeting Hicks, he joined his band The Dolphins, which eventually morphed into The Hollies.
“We were making more money than we were with our normal jobs,” Elliot said.
The band shot to stardom in the 60s, joining the Beatles in the ‘British Invasion’.
“The Americans weren’t sure what had hit them,” Elliot said.
“We’d absorbed the likes of Elvis, Little Richard and Everly Brothers. We were selling American music back to the Americans with a Pommie twang.”
Elliot remembered his Australian tour in 1970, which involved scores of stops on the way in cities like Frankfurt and Istanbul.
The band played in front of 7000 on a steaming hot 9 January, he said.
The American Rock and Roll Hall of Famers played in the first BBC TV Top Of The Pops 1964, and have performed alongside Little Richard and Jimmy Hendrix in New York City.
In the band’s early days, Elton John, then a shy, polite, Reg Dwight, played piano for tracks including He Ain’t Heavy for a basic recording session fee of about $15.
The Hollies will play at Deakin’s Costa Hall Sunday as part of their Highway of Hits Australian tour.
“We like the traditional theatre type gigs,” Elliot said.
For information or to book tickets phone 5225 1210.
