Always the Frontman
When I was growing up me and every other girl (worth her salt) in New Zealand was in love with Peter Sinclair (broadcaster and writer) because he was happening and so very hip, both of which I might add, he was in the most understated of ways.
Some might go so far as to describe those ways as enigmatic yet how could they be since they consistently typified how he was right throughout his professional career. He was a private person, he could choose to be and he did, just like any of us can and do!
If anything, I’d have thought his entry into radio was, how would you say, just a little unusual? He was living in a tree. It’s true, but you’re right I’m play’in with you! “In Christchurch in 1957, his broadcasting career in New Zealand began up a tree. Peter, a student, was living in one in Hagley Park at the time (until bodgies chopped it down on day three) as a publicity stunt for a student revue.” But as N.Z. music history would have it, he definitely wasn’t barking up the wrong one!
C’Mon
He was mandatory listening and viewing in the 1960s and early 1970s firstly on New Zealand radio and then as host of Let’s Go, Happen Inn and C’mon three of New Zealand’s primary rock music television shows at the time. They say that he ‘rose’ to fame at this time but actually I’d say ‘fame’ made friends with him in ways that were only ever truly appreciated between the both of them. At the end, you got the sense that Peter Sinclair (despite his fame) was still very much his own man.
Peter Sinclair (1938-2001) was a New Zealand television personality and radio host though he was born in Sydney, Australia. I had to smile about that because we finally got to ‘claim’ one of theirs as one of ‘ours’ and yet the New Zealand ‘musicscape’ (in my mind) would not be the same without the inclusion of his name in its long and illustrious line up of stars. Among them (in my opinion) he shone as brightly as any of them, perhaps more because he was the frontman.
Later this week I’ll be building a bridge back between the islands and getting the West Island (Australian) take on ‘lining up the ducks’ from Australian Rock Music Industry journalist Stuart Coupe. Stuart and me have in common a bit of ‘open space’ in the middle of Petersham (next door to his quiet ‘burb of Lewisham in Sydney’s Inner West) called Thepbc, Petersham Bowling Club.
Stuart Coupe, Laughing Outlaw Records & Management
Thepbc is the most unlikeliest place you’d ever think of going to where you can hear some of Sydney’s most musically and creatively proficient artists. I was a Director at the time of this small wholly resident-run bowling club. Famous for many things and glaringly more famous among us locals for its total lack of ‘real’ bowlers (the all-in-whites-kind) it’s where I first met Stuart and a few of his ‘family’. I think he’s got a bit of Maori in him because he has quite an extended family! I met Perry Keyes and the Band, Bek-Jean Stewart and L.J. Hill and David McCormack that night. I was like a pig in mud!
I think my parents must have been very forward-thinking back in the day, we had the first black & white television set on Farm Road and as a family we all watched Happen Inn and C’mon together. Our home was always full of music. It still is. Diana Wichtel of the NZ Herald wrote in her piece about him and following Peter’s death, “Soon a generation, and their appalled parents, were transfixed by the startling image of Pete in full, fast forward flight ..”
I’m glad those words never described my parents and as I watched old black and white footage earlier today, I had to wonder what was to be appalled at! I had a chuckle because the only thing that startled me was the set designs. They were busier than a beehive hairdo! The thought did occur to me that thank goodness they were only in black & white because had they have been in colour we might have all been reaching for the panadol!
Industry Awards
By all accounts Peter Sinclair never placed a lot of stock in Industry awards and that is I suppose more reflective of his own sense of self than it was a snub of an industry in which he gave back as much as they took from him. This was, perhaps, that private side of him coming out again. My take on an action like his is that someone else may attribute value to something but we always get to say whether its true or not for us.
He was it’s written ” genuinely touched however to receive one of the country’s new, indigenous honours, which he affectionately referred to as “the Order of the Tuatara”. He was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to broadcasting.
He’ll “be best remembered as the face and voice to a generation, to whom he presented pop shows when they were teens, quiz programmes through their university years and love songs on radio in their middle age” but he’d also be the closest thing New Zealand had to their own Peter Pan because his youthful good looks and that impish grin are immortally etched in my mind.
He passed away in August 2001, he had leukaemia. I suspect he’s somewhere under a pohutukawa tree reading a book. I’d have loved to have asked him to ‘line up the ducks.’
RELATED
