John Paul Young On Why Vanda & Young Wrote A Fair Few Songs About Friday

"Before Flash And The Pan, there was the Marcus Hook Roll Band, and that was another one of their creations," John Paul Young reveals of Harry Vanda and George Young's various post-The Easybeats projects. "And they recorded some things under that banner in the early '70s, and I was a recipient of a couple of songs that they wrote for the Marcus Hook Roll Band on my first album."

John Paul Young really does know everything about Vanda & Young. "I'm a real tragic," he chuckles. "I'm as big a tragic with that as Johnny Howard is with cricket!" 

Friday On My Mind (The Easybeats)

In terms of "the early Easybeats stuff", Young admits he's not entirely sure which songs were written by Vanda & Young and which were "written by George and Stevie [Wright]". "My brain is not exactly in tune as to which ones they wrote and which ones they didn't," he confesses, "but one I know for sure that [Vanda & Young] wrote was Friday On My Mind, of course, and that has been voted the greatest Australian composition ever. "They wrote quite a few songs about Fridays, too," he observes. "They wrote one for me called Where The Action Is, which is all about Friday and, of course, Friday On My Mind. And that really is a testament to their working class roots, you know, because they knew how important Fridays were to the average person. [Friday On My Mind]'s just got a lovely, exciting, whoop-dee-doo; it's somebody jumping up in the air because it's Friday and work is over."

When asked whether he remembers where he was when he first heard this song, Young shares, "I can tell you I was 16 years old and I was probably getting into the last year of my high school. [Fridays] are [important] to everybody. It's only people like myself who are in a bit of show business where it's not necessarily the most important day of the week. I mean, for us probably Saturday night or Sunday's more important because you get to get a few days off."

St Louis (The Easybeats)

"The other [Easybeats] one that really grabbed me was St Louis. I really loved that track and that kinda came outta the blue, in a way, 'cause the band had actually split up by the time that was released so, yeah! That was a big favourite. They just had a vibe about 'em, you know," he says of the two aforementioned Easybeats songs.

"The Easybeats split up when they were here in Australia," he continues, "and I think they got around eight or nine hundred dollars each, and that was it - that was the end of it for them. George apparently bought a one-way ticket to London, and he bought a bottle of whiskey and a teddy bear for his daughter. And he was in the middle seat on the - I suppose it would've been a 707 in those days, and they had plenty of stops all the way to London. [He was] nursing the teddy bear and bottle of whiskey. And he got to his flat in London, knocked on the door and dropped the bottle of whiskey!" He laughs. 

"[Vanda & Young] were living [in London] and they came back to Australia for a tour, but it was during that tour that it was announced to them that it was over; the band was over, it was finished. And him and Harry went back to London where they had set up a flat — you know, where they were living — and they hunkered down and just started working... and they would've stayed there forever had it not been for Ted Albert, you know, basically saying, 'I'm gonna build you your own playpen if you come back and I'll stump up enough money for deposits for houses for you both'. And, of course, they just saw that as the most terrific opportunity for themselves and came straight back."

Yesterday's Hero

"I was a recipient, if you like, of some songs that they'd already finished - or near-finished - before they even came back to Australia, because they were basically ensconced in a little flat in London and writing hard, you know? [There were] lots of half-finished songs, so when they came back here I was the one that was lucky enough to receive quite a few of them and I think we finished up with about eight hits, maybe nine.

"Yesterday's Hero wasn't written for me, but it was written about George Young and Harry Vanda and their experiences after leaving The Easybeats. And it's only sort of dawned on me in the last five or six years that that is exactly what people say, they actually say: 'Haven't I seen your face before,' because they really don't know where they've seen you, but they know they know you. And there's this half-confusion in their heads as to where they know you from, because over the years you've gotten older, their brains've gotten older and [laughs] they just have this unbelievable recognition factor but they can't quite put their finger on it. And they say, 'Oh, no, you're somebody — what is your name? You're, ah, ah...' and they can't think of it. I had one guy come up to me and very confidently tell me my name's John Paul English, haha. So there's those diehard fans who would never make that mistake but these are the people on the fringe, you know, who might have glanced at you once or twice back in the day."

I Hate The Music

I Hate The Music is one of the Vanda & Young songs that was "specifically written for" John Paul Young, he tells. "I mean, I Hate The Music - I had to sing that to a very basic track with a lot of banjo on it and they kept on telling me to sing it harder, harder, harder, you know? And [laughs] I couldn't work out why, because the backing was so sparse. And they played with it after I'd sung it, and sent it down to me, and I nearly fainted when I played it; you know, with all this brass and this fanfare that they had put around the track so it was, yeah! It was an eye-opener. It was an exciting thing to actually put a vocal down and then there'd be this two- or three-week wait to see what on earth they were gonna do with it."             

Standing In The Rain  

Another recurring theme that John Paul Young has noticed in Vanda & Young's songs is rain, with his own Standing In The Rain and also Walking In The Rain by Grace Jones being just two examples that spring to mind. "See, you know, George and Harry - and my drummer pointed it out the other day - were pluviophiles," Young acknowledges. "A pluviophile: somebody who loves the rain. So they wrote lots of rain songs."  

Love Is In The Air

"Love Is In The Air is a good example of them coming up with a song that was probably only a title in a book at the time," Young considers, "and they needed something to follow up Standing In The Rain with and, luckily enough, Love Is In The Air was it, you know? And it proved to be — it is actually the most famous song that they've ever written and it's the biggest money earner — single song — that they've ever written; bigger than all the AC/DC stuff. So, you know, it's a testament to the flukey nature of the business; you really don't know where these things are gonna come from... [The song's success off the back of Strictly Ballroom's soundtrack] was the second time around, so that was just marvellous, you know? I mean, to this day, that song still ticks over a few bucks for me, so it's wonderful."

Vanda & Young are two of Australia's most prolific songwriters and John Paul Young puts this down to "the set of circumstances that they found themselves in". "They must've come to a branch in the road and thought, 'Well, you know, we can either forget all about this and just try and live a normal life or do something totally different, or we can forget about everything else and just put all of our energies into writing songs'," he muses. "And that's the road they took. And I think George called it the four-year binge, where they just hunkered down and started writing, and they wrote jingles, they played on jingles, they did anything and everything in London to make money and to stay afloat; they even sang backing vocals on the Jesus Christ Superstar album that was produced in London just before the musical took off!"

We discuss the fact that there are still some people out there who don't realise the familial connection between AC/DC and Vanda & Young and John Paul Young (no relation) marvels, "That's George's two younger brothers, Malcolm and Angus! And George's older brother Alex [George Alexander, born Alexander Young], he was in a band called Grapefruit that John Lennon put together in the '60s." And just when we thought we'd received all of Young's Vanda & Young-related wisdom, he deals another zinger: "And here's another one for ya! Harry Vanda's second cousin is the blonde lady [Agnetha Faltskog] in ABBA!"