Australian icon’s tribute to 60s sounds

LEGENDARY British-Australian actor and stage performer John Waters is bringing a 20-year-long dream to life with a tour of classic Brit Pop hits in a show titled Radio Luxembourg. 

Waters was a musician and travelled around Australia with his guitar prior to his big break acting in the Sydney cast of Hair in 1969.  

He has since been part of many stage productions, films, and television series, and also featured as a vocalist. 

Waters said that he grew up in Britain listening to the first pop and rock music through the European medium wave radio station Radio Luxembourg. 

He said the BBC had a monopoly on radio licenses at the time and did not allow any commercial radio in the UK. 

The bands of the 60s he heard on Radio Luxembourg were largely what inspired him to start his career in performance. 

“It’s quite extraordinary that a country the size of the UK had no commercial radio, but it didn’t,” said Waters. 

“You’d get dribs and drabs of it on the BBC, but basically they thought that it wasn’t their brief to be commercial in terms of promoting record sales etcetera. 

“We used tune into 208 on the medium wave on our transistor radios, under the big clothes of night as to not wake our parents.  

“We’d listen to the lot, from the very early pre-made Beatles to all the American songs.  

“The Beatles of course were huge amongst that, and the Rolling Stones, but other that, those two that immediately spring to people’s minds, there were so many great bands and musicians. 

“I just wanted to put a band together and play these songs, and so I used Radio Luxembourg as kind of a title.  

“What people can expect is a concert of these songs; a lot of them very well known and played on the radio a lot, but you don’t hear them played live.” 

At one point in his early 20s, Waters said he had to choose between focussing on music or acting, and with Hair it became the latter. 

As time went on though, he wanted to shift his attention back to music. 

“Being able to indulge my first career, in my late teens of being in bands, and then coming to Australia and really moving from music into being an actor,” Waters said. 

“I was very lucky to be chosen for the roles that I was given as an actor in the 70s, because I wasn’t trained at all, but it was something I had an aptitude for.  

Waters said in the past 20 years or so he has probably done more music than he did prior to acting and is now seeking a sweet spot between the two. 

“I’m able to do both and I just want to do both of those things forever, for as long as I can,” he said. 

“This is me able to be free and drop those shackles and do what I’ve been nagging Stuart for us to do for probably 20 years now. 

“I’m free of any kind of scripting or anything like that, so I can just be me chatting to the audience. 

“I don’t play the guitar; I’ve found that it’s great to sort of prowl the stage with the microphone in my had like an old 1960s front man. 

“Just get to know my audience and swap a few gags and launch into some great songs.” 

The Bendigo show will be the last stop of the Radio Luxembourg tour and will be coming to the Ulumbarra on Saturday 9 November. 

Tickets can be found at radioluxembourglive.com.au.