Fact #123947
When:
Short story:
Young pop hopefuls The Full article:
Barry Gibb (The Bee Gees] : The drug problems which hampered us in later years, started in Sydney, Australia, where every year artists would do a thing called the Royal Easter Show, which is really an agricultural show, where people from all over Australia would bring their cattle and their wares and they would all be on display and you'd have side-shows.
And we would play in these side-shows like the literal historical side-shows you would see at Barnum And Bailey where you'd have the bearded lady and The Bee Gees. You'd have the guy standing out in front with a stick - you know, 'Roll up, roll up, see the two-headed lady, the snake dancer and The Bee Gees.' Eventually, we got top billing.
What happened was that we were doing five songs per show and you might do twenty shows a day. Get the people out, get the next crowd in. It was in a tent. We'd do free shows in tents, and there'd be a whole thoroughfare of these shows that would go for half a mile. It would be a bit like a shanty Vegas, where there'd be just these little shows all the way down. All the ground being straw, and the rides, and the dodgems and the big wheel. Just this chaotic thing. You might do it for three-weeks a year. It would happen and all the artists who were lucky enough to get the gig of doing the side-shows at the Easter Show made a lot of money in that three-week period, but you had to do twenty shows a day. So we discovered methedryn because it would enable us to go on a bit longer.
I think it was sold under the name liquid methedryn but they didn't know what it was, and it was just something we discovered in the chemists. You know, 'is there anything you've got to keep us going?'. It was perfectly legal in those days and most amphetamines were buyable pretty much anywhere in the world.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, February 9, 2001)
Tweet this Fact
And we would play in these side-shows like the literal historical side-shows you would see at Barnum And Bailey where you'd have the bearded lady and The Bee Gees. You'd have the guy standing out in front with a stick - you know, 'Roll up, roll up, see the two-headed lady, the snake dancer and The Bee Gees.' Eventually, we got top billing.
What happened was that we were doing five songs per show and you might do twenty shows a day. Get the people out, get the next crowd in. It was in a tent. We'd do free shows in tents, and there'd be a whole thoroughfare of these shows that would go for half a mile. It would be a bit like a shanty Vegas, where there'd be just these little shows all the way down. All the ground being straw, and the rides, and the dodgems and the big wheel. Just this chaotic thing. You might do it for three-weeks a year. It would happen and all the artists who were lucky enough to get the gig of doing the side-shows at the Easter Show made a lot of money in that three-week period, but you had to do twenty shows a day. So we discovered methedryn because it would enable us to go on a bit longer.
I think it was sold under the name liquid methedryn but they didn't know what it was, and it was just something we discovered in the chemists. You know, 'is there anything you've got to keep us going?'. It was perfectly legal in those days and most amphetamines were buyable pretty much anywhere in the world.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black, February 9, 2001)