Billy Thorpe: Poison Ivy League.

Long Way To The Top plays the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on September 10 and 11.

When you tell someone you’ve just done speaking with Thorpie, they’re likely to assume you’ve been doing laps at the pool. There was a time Thorpie didn’t automatically refer to that 14-foot tall swimming sensation. Rather you’d have a mental image one of Australian rock ‘n’ roll’s founding fathers, Billy Thorpe. And with Long Way To The Top, the early days of Australian popular song are one again gracing the arenas of our nation.

It’s his work with The Aztecs that Thorpe has on show. Two different incarnations of the act, the original line up from his days as a sixties pop star, and the more psychedelic volume wielding line up that took to the stage of the Sunbury Festival in the early seventies. Each a very different musical beast. But Thorpe’s involvement in the event goes deeper than that. He’s one of the shows producers, working his way through the logistics of staging one of the biggest shows Australia has seen in years.

“I think an idea’s only as valuable as your ability to act on it,” he explains. “It was just about being in the right place at the right time. We’d been talking about doing this for years, but we wanted to do it so it wasn’t a pub or leagues club degrading kind of experience, and here we are with a six and a half million dollar budget, 30 acts, over 100 musicians, an amazing set, lights. It’s one of those things where you sit around and think ‘wouldn’t it be great if…’ and it is. It’s happened. It’s a real tribute to those times.”

The wave of interest generated by Long Way To The Top shows has been quite overwhelming, with extra performances being added, and quickly selling out in most venues. However, the current warm glow surrounding our musical history has not always been evident, even quite recently.

“The people that are on this show spun a pretty large piece of the threat from which the tapestry of Australian popular culture was woven. They’re the roots, but there’s never been any real sense of lineage. People don’t realise the depth and significance of what went on. It wasn’t documented. When I researched my first book (Sex & Thugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll) I was just stunned at how little there was that had been written about the times. People just didn’t give a fuck, because it was Australia. What Long Way To The Top has done, is put a magnifying glass on that era, and it’s struck a chord with the public. There’s a huge baby boomer generation out there, from people running corporations to taxi drivers that were at all these shows, getting stoned and dropping acid and having a crazy time, and they’ve never really straightened out. What it represents is a better time in people’s lives, because it was a better time in everybody lives. It was an unbelievably exciting time.”

The original line up of the Aztecs officially called it a day back in 1966, and these shows are the first real gigs the band have played since then. Thorpe took a couple of years off after the band split before the Aztecs more familiar incarnation took shape, Thorpe shedding his pop persona for one of all out volume.

“I’ve always been lucky,” he relates. “I’ve always been in bands around great characters. The original Aztecs played together recently for the first time in 37 years. We all got a Vox amplifier each, and it was mighty. I never knew that we were that good. It was an instant 1964 sound. Bands are trying to get that sound now. If you want to know how to do it, come along to this show… The band had eleven top ten records in eighteen months. That means the record company was putting out a new record every six weeks, which is unheard of now. That band was as big as you could get.”

“The second band, the Sunbury Aztecs were the result of several years I spent in Melbourne. I stopped playing things like Poison Ivy and got into the blues, mainly because our guitar player didn’t turn up, and I had to play. It was the rockingest fucking rock band that country has ever seen, man. We may be in our fifties, but I’ll go toe to toe with any band in this country. We’ll wipe the fucking floor with them. It’s not ego, it’s just no stop gigging. You couldn’t work in Melbourne then unless you could hold down five nights a week with six hours a night. That’s why a lot of these bands have endured.”

“It’s fun,” he enthuses, obviously still addicted to the thrill of live performance. “I’m only using six Marshall stacks… “We started to play loud because people used to talk, so we just added more gear to flatten them. Talk over this… It’s a force. It’s an energy. You can’t get it from small gear.”