Caught at The Catcher.

 

When I was 16 in 1966 I was quite aware I was queer in a society that criminalised my sexuality, thus I was an outlaw, fringe-dweller, renegade, maverick, freak, outsider, stranger, I was alienated from the world of the time. I searched for somewhere to belong, my community, a sanctuary, and being pop music-mad I found such a place in a rock club. In the ‘60s music venues were called discotheques because they spun records of the latest hits in between the bands. My first rock club was called The Biting Eye, in Little Bourke Street Melbourne. I’d hung out the front with a gang of Sharpies, (Skinheads), threatening to bash the Mods inside. When the Mod boys came out to confront us I fell instantly in love with their long hair, paisley shirts and striped bell-bottomed trousers and quickly transformed into a Mod boy, growing my hair till it hung in my face, buying Carnaby Street gear and taking shelter inside that psychedelic rock’n’roll cavern.

The Biting Eye was managed by an Italian family who also ran a pizza parlour called “Papa’s Pizzas” and for the first time in our lives we partook of this delicious culinary delight, pizzas with olives and anchovies. Top bands of the time played there such as The Loved Ones, Jeff St. John and The Purple Hearts, it was funky way before funk became the style to reach for. But those were sexually conservative times, teenagers were restless, under the thrall of their parents, starting to break away from puritanical, suburban dreariness, and ever so ready to fuck. Two patrons of the club, teenage lovers, had been caught having sex by their parents, the police were called, they were sent to trial and convicted of carnal knowledge. I was already doing the homo beats and lived in terror of being caught in the “act of perversion.”

Early 1967, I turned 17 and word was out of a new club that had opened in Flinders Lane up towards Spencer Street Station. The Catcher, a converted blue-stone warehouse, with two floors, painted a gothic black. Two would-be rockers reported that when they approached the joint, rock music blaring so loud it could be heard a block away, they freaked out, considering it the dirtiest, creepiest shithole, telling each other, “I’m not going in there” and they turned back and went home, the wimps. The first night I attended the warehouse I marched straight in, I didn’t see the grunginess at all, if I did I approved of it, nor did I find it dangerous, on entry into the dark interior, immersed in ear-shattering electric guitars, I was in my element, home at last.

It was created and managed by a Primary School teacher, Graham Geddes, who was very hip, cool and ahead of his times, a visionary, creating the space to be a playground for teenagers, to get them off the streets and surfing pop culture. When the police accused him of sheltering three teenage escapees from penal institutions he replied, “I’d rather them inside having fun than outside getting into mischief.” The interior decor consisted of black walls with wrought iron beds and plastic mannequins hanging from them, a cafe with counter and chairs to the side, an office at the front, an upstairs room that was full of manky couches and mattresses strewn upon the floor. This dark room was known as the Gobble Room with much illicit teenage frolicking, not that I experienced any of it, shyness and shame of my sexuality was the only fear I experienced in the joint.

A photographer, Ron Eden, hung 12 inch photos of club members from the ceiling and the bands played from a waist-high stage at the back of the ground floor, with a raised platform behind the band upon which beautiful girls moved rhythmically to the beat of the music, the Tamla Dancers. The hottest, wildest, hardcore rock bands of the time played there. Gerry Humphries and The Loved Ones, Lobby Loyd and The Wild Cherries/The Purple Hearts, Malcolm McGee and Python Lee Jackson, Running Jumping Standing Still, Jeff St.John and the Yama, Doug Parkinson’s Focus, The Adderly Smith Blues Band and the house band who played nearly every night the club was open, Ray Petrie and The Chelsea Set. When Max Merrit and The Meteors played all the other bands in town would hurry to finish their sets and rush over to catch the rock/blues maestro as his band was considered the “band’s band.”

Because The Chelsea Set was the House Band they played every night the club was open and Sundays as well, with movie screenings as added attraction. We teens not only became friendly with them, we adored them, particularly their lead singer, Ray Petrie; he was iconic in our mindset, the epitome of style, grace and good looks. I for one fell in love with him from a distance, he was not only the ants’ pants, I wanted terribly to get into those pants. I was too shy and in awe to approach him, he had a mob of groupies always hanging off him, particularly some extremely handsome boys, who I didn’t feel I could compete with. The Catcher sometimes arranged outings for us, one was a Sunday trip to Mt. Kosciosko and the snow fields. Hoping to stand out in the crowd and earn Ray’s attention I flung myself into a bog of mud, then walked about looking like the Swamp Thing, and indeed Ray was highly amused, declaring I was a cheeky character and giving me a hug. I was chuffed, hoping possibly I was now a member of the “IN crowd.”

At times the police infiltrated the club to spy on the teenage shenanigans: on questioning the girls they concluded they were there for immoral purposes, at 3am they found them lounging about on the floors, making love in dark corners and asleep on the tables. Some were refugees from the Children’s Court, and their boyfriends were known teenage criminals. The cops reported some girls were as young as twelve and the average age of the crowd was seventeen, my age, a time when I was discovering freedom and independence. I had run away from my home in West Heidelberg with a sixteen year old, long-haired rock drummer and we rented a cheap flat in Richmond, finding jobs as clerks at the Victoria Barracks on St. Kilda Road. Not everyone enjoying the space was criminally minded or attracted to drugs, most had come for the music and the camaraderie, an outlaw edge merely providing an extra frisson.

“Fiendish drugs” such as methedrine and benzedrine pills were readily available, either pilfered from many a mother’s dieting medication or from forged prescriptions foisted upon naive chemists. I never got into speed in any big way, taking one or two pills for the night’s dancing while some of my friends took twenty at a time and got holes eaten into their brains. On a raid, Senior Constable Bruce Huxtable was shocked by all this debauchery, he was determined to stamp out teenage violence, there were fights inside the club and brawls outside. A number of arrests were made in the area for offensive behavior and indecent language. I myself got in a fight late one night when a gang of redneck thugs attacked us after they stumbled out of some illicit pub, drunk as punks. To scare them I picked up a traffic stanchion and waved it in their faces like a light-sabre causing them to run for their lives, much to my surprise.

The cops discovered that the mob of burly bouncers had criminal records for assault and offensive behavior, we couldn't care less, they were needed to keep the unruly, acting-out teenagers under control. This was an era when we truly felt a new world was dawning, we were proto-adults and could decide our own destinies, even if it was a destructive one. I was determined to get a life, to live out my dream of adventure and accomplishment and I wasn’t going to let drugs, the cops, the crims or the sex get in my way. Bisexuality was somewhat fashionable, a few boys dabbled, I was one of the few who came fully “out of the closet” yet I couldn’t crack onto any of the hot boys, even in The Gobble Room, as the very act of homosexuality was till taboo amongst that Mod set, for all their flamboyant mannerisms. Or maybe I was just too shy and paranoid.

The lead singer of The Chelsea Set, Ray Petrie, was gay, even though he had a girlfriend and had got her pregnant. Late in 1967 I had broken up with my sixteen year old boyfriend, who was straight, and I ended up living with an old queen, Ruby, in South Yarra. One night, while we were relaxing in the lounge-room, the door was flung open and in walked Ray with this old Greek man who had picked him up at a traffic light. I got quite a shock and so did Ray on seeing me. There was a horrible room in the house that all of Ruby’s friends used as a fuck room, with towel and lube ready to go. Ray and I got on like a nightclub on fire, talking about the Catcher and the gang, while the old Greek prick looked on and became angrier by the minute. He signaled to Ray to get going and my rock’n’roll hero regretfully went to the fuck room with him and for half an hour got fucked stupid.

When he came out he was red with embarrassment and I was red with annoyance, we arranged to meet at a pub the next day and I knew I could win my dream boy as a lover if I wanted. I sweated on it for a day, pissed off that Ray had the bad taste to go with that uptight mug, a fat arsehole who had sexually harassed me for months and who I had rebuffed every time. Contempt for the whole affair set in and by the time Ray rang me for the appointment I was seething with resentment and I got Ruby to answer the phone and tell him I’d gone out. I missed out on experiencing pleasure with a guy I admired and I regretted it for the rest of my life, (for Ray fled back to England in 1969 and worked for the fashion magazine, The Face, styling the male models. He instigated The Buffalo look, based on the "rude boys" of Jamaica which became the rage in London, Boy George being one its most famous proponents. Ray died of HIV in 1989 at the age of forty.) I do have self-respect and I wanted him to know I was no easy lay like the rest of the groupies who swarmed around him; still, I guess I was just an uptight fool.

Back to the Catcher, it was open all night and the bands were considered the “hardcore end” of the rock’n’roll spectrum though again I didn’t see it, it was simply the style of music I loved, fast, loud, growling voices, wailing guitars and thumping drums. The club became more notorious as the months wore on, as if it were a vampire’s lair situated in the dark, deserted, desolate end of Flinders Lane. A music reporter commented, “The surly, sociopathic element of the rock music crowd slouched around a bare room listening to the harder and wilder of the music scene; very Malcolm Maclarenesque Punk ten years early with a not so different soundtrack.” The Truth scandal rag had shock horror headlines for months claiming The Catcher attracted an anti-social clientele.

I met my best friend for life there on the dance floor, 16 year old Gel O’Reilly, she didn’t take drugs, smoke, was chaste, and didn’t even drink coffee, she was the favourite of everybody. She was the type that would walk up to a stranger, befriend them and natter on till she learnt their life story. She was friends with many of the bands, the boys all wanted to get their hands on this bright British virgin but she didn’t give herself to any of them, even the hottest rockers, she preferred to dance the night away with queer boy me, dancer extraordinaire. And it was Gel who filled me in on the intimate side of Graham Geddes, hanging out in his office with him and the IN Crowd, me being too shy to venture within that inner sanctum.

Mr. Geddes was married to a woman named Sandy and they had two kids, he was only in his late twenties or early thirties so not that much older than us mob. He lived in the Dandenongs, at Olinda, a long drive home. As a Primary School teacher it was quite risky for him to run this rock club, for those were the days when teachers had to swear an oath not to take on a second job, they were to be dedicated to teaching alone. In the morning, while many of us raucous teens had “mildew parties” in some punks’ flat to come down from our speed trips, Graham would offer to drive a few teenagers home if they lived along his route to the Dandenongs. Sometimes he would take a gang of them in his pick-up truck for breakfast, Gel included, to MacClures coffee lounge on St. Kilda Road.

Gel told me that not once, in any way, did she get the barest hint that Graham Geddes was sexually interested in the girls, he was not a predator, it was not his secret agenda; she was very canny about these things, talked to all the girls and none of them ever reported hanky panky from Graham. He was the real thing, a renegade, hip teacher, only concerned for the welfare of his teenage wards, to steer them from a life of crime or desperation towards a future of contributing to society, in a fun, creative way, whether through music, dance or fashion. He opened a fashion shop up near The Biting Eye which he named The Gobble Shop, a tiny premises which managed to contain a coffee lounge, hairdresser, poster designers’ workshop and small disco dance floor. It was a hang-out for budding fashion designers and, along with others, I would buy my materials from nearby warehouses and bring them to The Gobble to be made into shirts, suits and dresses by resident tailors while we raged to the latest hits from The Beatles, The Yardbirds, The Stones and Jimi Hendrix. It was total immersion in pop-culture, we even sang the latest hit song to each other, “To Sir With Love.”

Because of the scandalous headlines from rags like The Truth Gel’s mother decided to take a look at The Catcher one Sunday afternoon, bringing her nine-year old daughter Imelda with her. She was greeted at the door by a bouncer, Kerry, and when she told him the purpose of her visit Mr. Geddes came out and took her for a tour around the club, showing her everything. She was quite satisfied it was a safe and well maintained place for her daughter Gel to while away the night hours within and she left in high spirits. It was reported in The Truth that week that a mother was seen dragging her 12 year old daughter out of The Catcher in high dudgeon, to which Kitty O’Reilly wrote a letter of harsh criticism of the untruths the paper was spreading, her daughter was nine and she’d gone on an inspection tour and was satisfied it was a safe place of musical enjoyment for her 16 year old daughter to patronise. The Sunday of her visit had the usual film screening event, Hitchcock’s “Psycho” or “The Birds” with the house band, The Chelsea Set, also playing, and Kitty thought it was all lovely.

As the club tottered towards 1969 and into the early Seventies, the notoriety became too wearisome for smooth and easy management. The Masters Apprentices last concert with their original lead guitarist, Rick Morrisson, happened there, he passed out on stage because of his one lung disability, having lost the other in childhood, and was carried out on a stretcher, causing him to retire from rock music. Some of us moved on, to other clubs, other climes. I started training as a registered nurse and thus unable to get the times and days needed for discos. I became a hippie, hung around Carlton, helped build the first vegetarian restaurant, Shakahari, and forgot The Cathcer, having escaped with my health and sanity still intact. Others of my peers got into heroin and I lost sight of them but Gel and I have remained best buddies into our old age. The Catcher closed sometime in 1970, just as I was hitching off to Ourimbah rock festival in NSW. It seems Mr. Geddes was uptight with the troubles thrown his way just because he ran a haven for teenagers, he might’ve even lost his teaching job, and his marriage to Sandy fell apart, he became somewhat cantankerous in old age, yet managed to run a successful antique business in Malvern for the rest of his life.

As I noticed on the FaceBook site, “Sebastions, Berties, The Catcher and The Thumpin Tum”, many of us Catcher mob have managed to stay alive into old age, and fondly remember the club and era as one of the greatest of times, when Mods flourished and Soul ruled. We loved the friendship, the phenomenal bands, the dancing and yahooing, it was basically the beginning of the youth revolution, teenage independence and an Australian rock/pop music renaissance. It was such a joy to live through, it gave me the strength and confidence to go out into the world, handle anything that was thrown at me and achieve my life-goals. I slept on the streets and beaches of India for four years and then the squats of inner-city Sydney for 12 years, and you can’t get a wilder school of hard kicks in the teeth than that, and much of my education was caught at The Catcher.