Daddy Cool, the Australian Invasion, and Why Elle MacPherson Is the Greatest Import of the 1980s

The Vogue is a little oasis of hope.  You enter through the back with the red BAR sign expecting remarkable things.  And sometimes it happens.  And sometimes it does not.  Lou had high hopes for Daddy Cool’s Teenage Heaven.  Titled Sex, Dope, Rock ‘n’ Roll:  Teenage Heaven in its original release.  Ooh, that sounds tasty.  Look at these song titles:  “Hi Honey Ho”, “Daddy Rocks Off”, “Teen Love”, “Love in an F.J.”, and “Baby Let Me Bang Your Box”.  Could this be a John Valby rock album?  Sadly, it is not.  A Little Richard side from the 1950s is more daring and dirtier.

Daddy Cool was an Australian rock band out of Melbourne that formed in 1970.  Originally, their sound was 1950s doo-wop style covers and originals.  Their first single, “Eagle Rock” reached number one for ten weeks in Australia in 1971.  The debut album, Daddy Who?  Daddy Cool, also reached number one and was the first Australian album to sell 100,000 copies.  To give you some idea of just how huge that was, it took only10,000 copies to become gold.  That number went up after the success of Daddy Cool.  Teenage Heaven from 1972 also cracked the top ten.  The band did absolutely nothing in the United States, but in Australia they can be considered one of the first truly huge rock bands.  

In writing about music of the 1980s, there is often talk of a Second British Invasion.  This was driven by MTV, where British bands were ahead of the game when it came to video and the idea that style over substance would sell records.  British glam and punk provided the blueprint for bands like Duran Duran and The Cure.  Britian cornered the market on synth pop and post-punk; the sounds you think of when you think of early 1980s MTV.  

But Lou remembers there was also an Australian Invasion throughout the entire decade.  Of course, there was AC/DC and INXS, but Australian culture crossed overseas in all facets from music to movies to booze to models.  Sure, there was the Mad Max franchise, but for Lou the Crocodile Dundee franchise was bigger.  Like Mel Gibson, Paul Hogan was everywhere.  The scene in the outback when Linda Kozlowski gets attacked by a crocodile is one of the great ass shots in all of 1980s film.  Life-changing for a young Lou, but even more important was thescene in a dive bar in New York City that Lou would later learn was filmed at the 7B in the Lower East Side.  Handsome Dick Manitoba of The Dictator’s bar was across the street.  The 7B would become one of Lou’s favorite bars in the entire city, along with Welcome to the Johnson’s and Milano’s.  Every trip Lou makes to the city involves a stop at the 7B as well as stops at The Strand, Nat Sherman’s, and Barney Greengrass.  (Lou should insert here that his absolute favorite thing to do in New York City when he was in his twenties was to watch The Robin Byrd Show on basic access cable after midnight.  Byrd was a porn actress who appeared in Debbie Does Dallas in 1978 and other films of the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Byrd ties into Daddy Cool, Lou promises.  Byrd’s theme song was “Baby, Let Me Bang Your Box,” no shit, which she performed perfectly in her exquisite black crochet bikini. A cover of a cover of a cover and so on into infinity. Her show, which featured straight and gay porn stars, strippers and other members of the sex industry, was must-watch TV and only available to Lou in New York City.)  At the 7B, Lou would never drink Foster’s but in the 1980s drinking underage, getting a hold of a Foster’s oil can was a special treat.  Not as good as a forty-ounce in a brown paper bag but still a good bang for the buck.  Studying abroad in London, Lou discovered Castlemaine XXXX, which Lou much preferred to Foster’s.  In London, Lou was really a bitter guy to be honest, quite happy drinking pints of Theakston’s Best Bitter at the Phoenix & Firkin.  “Phoenix my pint, I’ll Firkin kill’em!”  Good times.

AC/DC and INXS were huge but so were Midnight Oil and Crowded House as an alternative.  Rick Springfield and Men at Work were ubiquitous on MTV and radio.  “Jesse’s Girl” is a stone-cold classic. You also could not get away from “Down Under” and “Who Can It Be Now” but the best Men at Work jam is “Overkill” from their disappointing (in terms of sales) second album Cargo.  For the more depressed (read cooler) kids, there was Nick Cave, Hoodoo Gurus, and The Church.  “Under the Milky Way” being some of the best mood music of the entire decade.  Following in the footsteps of the dreamy Olivia Newton-John was Kylie Minogue.  Did you know that her debut album, Kylie, was the best-selling album by a female artist in the UK for the entire 1980s.  Take that, Madonna and Whitney Houston.  Lou was always happy when “Locomotion” came on MTV.  Easy listening, easy on the eyes.

Take your Mel Gibson and Paul Hogan and Lou will raise you a Yahoo Serious.  The Australian Invasion was so powerful (and profitable) that even Young Einstein got made.  Mind-blowing.  Lou was a big horror fan in the 1980s, and he watched every horror flick the local video store had, so it is no surprise that he watched Razorback.  That movie was not a bore.  But seriously folks, in terms of Australian actors of the 1980s the biggest import was probably Nicole Kidman before Tom Cruise destroyed her and made her a Stepford Wife.  Dead Calm, an indie thriller starring Kidman, Sam Neill and Billy Zane, is a movie that may have slipped under your radar.  It is a good one.  Check it out.  Lou knew all about Kidman before that breakout, because he saw BMX Bandits on cable, which starred a very young Nicole Kidman.  An equally young Lou appreciated a young Nicole on her bike.  By the way, one of the greatest Christmas gifts Lou ever received as a kid was a red Kabuki BMX bike.  Lou and the gang (minus Nicole) would take that thing down to the Spin-Out and skid around all over the place, while looking for porno mags hidden in the woods or stealing boxes and boxes of nails from construction sites.  Cause that is what you did, and it was good.  The best Christmas gift would have to be 2-XL, the Talking Robot.  You would throw an 8-track in his belly, and he would talk you through trivia games on all kinds of topics from sports to literature to history.  Lou was a nerd.

As much as Lou loved Nicole Kidman, he loved Rachel Ward more.  She was born in Oxfordshire, England from an extensive line of blueblood bullshit, but she is often labelled an English-Australian actress.  In 1983, she married Byran Brown, an Australian actor, who played Tom Cruise’s mentor in Cocktail, which makes you never want to go to a bar again.  Unlike Barflywhich draws Lou to a good dive bar like a moth to the flame.  Check Brown out in FX.  Underrated with an interesting premise.  

Ward broke through in The Thorn Birds, a massive mini-series from 1983.  If Roots didn’t exist, The Thorn Birds would probably be the most important and viewed mini-series of all time.  Lou’s Mom watched The Thorn Birds, along with half of America.  Lou watched Rachel Ward.  But Lou really got in, um, touch with Ward in Against All Odds.  A white-button down shirt and loose-fitting blouse have never looked so good.  To this day, Lou will fire up the old YouTube and listen to Phil Collins belt out “Against All Odds” in a video set to the film’s clips.  Ward, Jeff Bridges, and James Woods chew up the scenery, but the real star of the movie is Alex Karras.  Karras was a better actor than Jim Brown for sure.  In 1983, Ward was voted by U.S.audiences as one of the world’s ten most beautiful women.

In the beautiful woman department, Nicole Kidman and Rachel Ward are nice, but the best Australian import of the entire 1980s was Elle MacPherson.  The Body, dude.  This was when being a supermodel meant something.  Elle dominated the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue throughout the 1980s.  That said, Lou was a Christie Brinkley guy.  Always will be.  But Elle may be second.  Don’t sleep on Kathy Ireland.  It cannot be overestimated how important the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue was to a young man trying to find his way in the 1980s.  Victoria’s Secret catalogs and the Internet did not exist.  A young man had to find what he could out there to survive.  Survive!!!  You understand what Lou is talking about?

Christie Brinkley and Elle MacPherson!!  Wow!!  Which makes it all that much more painful to Lou that Billy Joel sullied them both.  Surely, Joe Jackson’s song “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” was written about Billy Joel?  If it wasn’t, it should have been.  It is if you ask Lou.  Sometimes something is true even if it is false.  Lou can see Christie Brinkley being with Billy Joel.  She does not seem to be all that cool.  Have you seen her dance in the video for “Uptown Girl”?  She is probably not the greatest between the sheets.  You must be able to dance.  Coordination matters.  Ask Ginger Rogers.  For the record, Lou can’t dance.  Make of that what you will.

Now, Elle, she seems cool.  The sole evidence that Lou has for this assumption is the urban legend that she dated Norm MacDonald, one of Lou’s favorite celebrities of all time.  Elle appeared on Saturday Night Live in 1996, during Norm’s tenure on the show and the rumor got around the SNL set and leaked out that Norm and Elle were an item.  Norm always denied it in a way that only Norm could, but Lou has always wanted the rumor to be true.  This is known as the Joe Jackson effect.  What is not a rumor and what is the naked truth, is Elle’s supporting role in Sirens, a clunker movie from 1994.  Not the 1980s, but a major celebrity skin moment, nonetheless.  And a sad one to be honest.  Elle’s nude scenes in Siren created an insatiable demand for nude shots of her, including disgusting opportunists contacting her ex-boyfriends.  To shut down all the bullshit, Elle appeared in an Herb Ritts photoshoot in the May 1994 issue of Playboy. Lou hopes Elle found peace.  She seems to have done all right for herself.  She is an icon.

Let’s end here on hope.  Lou hopes you enjoyed this trip down under.  Daddy Cool wasn’t all that Lou hoped for, but Teenage Heaven did lead to some great memories of teenage heaven. Lou won’t go as far as to go to the beer distributor and get a Foster’s,but he will crack a PBR and watch the “Against All Odds” videoagain.  Man, that Alex Karras kills it.  If only he wore a white-button down shirt.

Suggested Sites and Sounds:

Linda Kozlowski:  Underrated but not Underappreciated:  Crocodile Dundee: Attacked by a large crocodile

The 7B Where Lou Wants to Be:  Come for the Stereotypes, Stay for the Rheingold:  Crocodile Dundee bar scene

Kylie!!:  Kylie Minogue - The Loco-motion - Official Video

Nicole, You Want to Come to the Spin-Out:  BMX Bandits (1983) ORIGINAL TRAILER - YouTube

Christie Brinkley Can’t Dance:  Billy Joel - Uptown Girl (Official Video) - YouTube

And Elle MacPherson Drinks Beer:  1987 Miller Lite Beer Commercial with Elle Macpherson

Urban Legend Norm MacDonald:  Norm Macdonald talks to Bob and Brian Part 2 (Elle MacPherson, Burt Reynolds, ESPYS)

A White-Button Down Shirt and Alex Karras:  Against All Odds- Phil Collins/ movieclips Against All Odds (1984)

-- Lou Waxman