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Max Merritt

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Max Merritt is truly one of the most venerable rock pioneers in Australasia. As a ceaseless crowd pleaser for more than fifty years, he was a superstar in New Zealand long before his fame spread.

He grew up in Christchurch and at 17 formed his first teenage band to play at the youth club his parents had opened for him. By 1958 (the same year that Johnny O’Keefe and Col Joye were having their debut hits in Australia) he had hit the charts with the amusing Get A Haircut. After his home town success, Max headed to Auckland. By the time The Beatles changed the musical landscape there had been ten singles, two EPs and two LPs spread over four labels for the ever-changing Max Merritt & The Meteors. Then there was the distinctive backing on Dinah Lee’s string of ska-styled hits (Reet Petite, Don’t You Know Yockomo and Do The Bluebeat).

Max had a fine, gravelly voice that led credibility to everything he sang. When The Meteors crossed the Tasman at the end of 1964 and began dishing out r&b, rock 'n roll, Merseybeat surfpop and an unrelenting dance beat, the floors filled. By 1965 they were touring nationally with The Rolling Stones and Searchers and cutting a run of fiery singes for EMI including Shake, I Can’t Help Myself and Fannie Mae.

From 1965 to 1967 Max Merritt & The Meteors were absolutely the live band on the eastern seaboard; the ultimate discotheque kings. Entranced fans would follow them from gig to gig, hooked on Max’s peerless funk. Early in 1967 member Peter Williams left to form The Groove and Max put together a hot new band with the aim of tackling the British market. In came commanding bassist John ‘Yuk’ Harrison, veteran jazz drummer Stewie Speer and highly regarded brass player Bob Bertles. This formation, from the outset, was a sensation. It jelled perfectly and plans were made for departure. Max had refined his passion for soul music after being turned on to Otis Redding’s Dictionary of Soul album, particularly the track Try A Little Tenderness. It was the sound and style he’d been looking for - his niche. But on 24 June the international aspirations were dashed when Max and his Meteors, on the road to Morwell in a Commer van for a Saturday show, were crushed and crumpled in a head-on collision that left all hospitalised and him with just one eye. The benefit concerts and moral support that flowed enabled the band to endure the tragedy and slowly rebuild.

The Meteors didn’t return to performance until 1968. They appeared regularly on Uptight and the ABC recorded them in a four-part ‘In Concert’ TV series. They entered the Hoadley's Battle Of The Sounds, took out the Victorian section and were placed third in the National final. Though pitching themselves there to screaming hordes, Max and his men offered themselves as nothing more than the soul merchants they were - with Max close-cropped in a world of hirsute rockers, surrounded by a portly, white-bearded elderly drummer, a bassist described as having the appearance of a rough long-haired version of Rolf Harris and a sax honker looking more like a beatnik than someone who should have been portraying the flower image of the 'love' generation. You could only love them for their sound - and at venues like the Whisky Au Go Go in Sydney, frequented by Vietnam soldiers on R&R, that's all that mattered. They were red hot and young players sat at their feet to learn how it was done.

After two trying years, the outfit recorded what is rightfully hailed as the first truly great Australian rock album. The bristling excellence of the Max Merritt & The Meteors album on RCA and the national hit Hey, Western Union Man, delivered on the promise. A second album, Stray Cats, followed. They finally made it to England in January 1971, though it was a case of starting all over again, bashing away in pubs. There were supports to Slade and The Moody Blues and an increasingly popular residency at the White Hart in Willesden, which attracted a steady stream of homesick antipodeans. They were Sunbury headliners in 1972 and 1973, flying home to do so from their new base in London. But it was not enough to survive on (particularly with families in tow) and the core band dissolved, with Merritt going back to his original trade of bricklaying for a time.

At the end of 1974, a determined Max and Stewie regrouped, found a new manager, and recruited three new members. During 1975 they successfully rebuilt their pub rock reputation, though with a little less soul and jazz in the mix. Word-of-mouth was so strong that the new, polished, more international Max Merritt & The Meteors became the first signing to British arm of Arista Records. Clive Davis, the man who’d signed Janis Joplin, Santana, Bruce Springsteen and Aerosmith to Columbia Records, personally recruited them. Over Christmas 1975 Max’s Slippin’ Away was at number two on Australia’s national charts (the A Little Easier LP having been top ten) and by the time he and his band had swept across the country on a triumphant tour in mid-’76 he’d also had down under hits with Let It Slide, Coming Back and Whisper In My Ear and a top twenty album with Out Of The Blue. A wildly-received performance at Melbourne’s Dallas Brooks Hall was released as the Back Home Live album.

By the end of the 70’s Max was a solo recording entity. Signed to Polydor, he cut two fine albums in America, Keeping In Touch and Black Plastic Max. The former, recorded in Nashville, featured a gutsy remake of Slippin' Away and a gritty version of Steely Dan's Dirty Work (which charted moderately in Australia). The latter boasted a soulful reworking of Clyde McPhatter's A Lover’s Question that enjoyed some airplay. Further singles appeared throughout the eighties, including Prove It and Mean Green Fighting Machine.

Over the decades, though he split his time with other pursuits, Max’s name remained synonymous in this part of the world with passionately performed roots music. He did so with a rare integrity that was fundamental to all he did. Based out of Los Angeles he recorded and toured at his own pace, on occasions sharing bills with the likes of Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles and James Brown. In 2001 he was recorded and filmed with an 18-piece ensemble before a capacity audience at Melbourne’s Crown Casino Showroom, introduced by his good friend and comrade Billy Thorpe, for the Live In Concert DVD. In 2002 he dramatically closed the first half of each Long Way To The Top concert across the nation with a fiery, intense soul-gospel revue performance based around Try A Little Tenderness that had the panting hordes truly screaming for more. Those who witnessed his set at Byron Bay’s East Coast Blues & Roots Festival in 2004 are still talking about it.

The extraordinary level of respect, affection and indeed concern that exists for Max Merritt over generations of Australian music performers was vividly evident in October 2007 when over 25 recording artists, 50 musicians and 70 crew gathered at the St. Kilda Palais (where Max had opened for the Rolling Stones all those years before) for The Concert for Max benefit. That night his songs were rendered and his soulfulness celebrated and evoked by the likes of Renee Geyer, Ross Wilson, Joe Camilleri & the Black Sorrows, Jon English, Vanessa Amorosi, Russell Morris, John Paul Young, Daryl Braithwaite, Dinah Lee, Kevin Borich, Normie Rowe, Wendy Stapleton, James Reyne, Wilbur Wilde, Peter Cupples, Swanee, Doug Parkinson and The Delltones.

“It backed up what a huge influence Max had on us all” said English afterwards. We’ve all got Max stories. Tales that will be told for as long as antipodean musicians and performers cross paths, marvelling over the man who showed so many how it is done, or certainly how it should be done.