Taken from the SA Rock Encyclopedia, the following 40 acts are, according to Brian Currin, a list of supposed Top 40 South African Rock Legends. These artists are undeniably South African and some of them might have been popular, and good, but I think calling all of them “LEGENDS” is hyperbolic. When these acts arrived on the scene and were prominent for a while, the local rock scene was a fraction of what followed after 1994 and these acts could not only be touted as the best gigs in town, but pretty much as the only gig in town. The competition wasn’t very stiff and often mediocrity won simply because the musicians had the ambition and the drive to record their tunes and release them, regardless of quality. Obviously, this list is based on Currin’s opinion and reflects his taste for AOR (classic) rock and though I concur with some selections, I don’t agree with all of it and believe that another view is important; if it’s a revisionist view, so be it. Not everything released in this country is good; there’s lots of mediocrity and downright awfulness too.
It’s all very well to support your local artists but boosterism that’s blind to the reality that not all musicians are geniuses or can write good songs, and that one shouldn’t confuse technical ability with creative talent, serves no-one. Firstly, it doesn’t provide the reader with an objective as possible appreciation of any record or performance, and, secondly, unreservedly praising musicians regardless of whether they’re doing well or giving us workmanlike crap, doesn’t give them the opportunity of an unbiased outside view that could be of more use than only praise. Good musicians know when they’re playing badly or make mistakes and don’t much like it when fans don’t have the confidence to tell the truth.
Currin is of the “don’t criticise local acts” school of music appreciation and bis support for South African rock is admirable. In my mind, the best of what our musicians have produced over the years, need not stand back for anything so-called “international” acts have done and the mere fact that a band is from the UK or USA doesn’t automatically make then good.
I own, and have listened to, many of the records Currin deals with and my critical view is derived from this independent assessment and I believe (I would though, wouldn’t I?) that my view is more practically valuable than Currin’s.
Having said that, the SA Rock Encyclopedia is a good source for those researching SA rock music history.
- The A-Cads – “Hungry For Love,” “Roadrunner”
A mid-Sixties band I’ve never heard.
- Asylum Kids – “Fight It With Your Mind,” “Schoolboy,” “No, No, No, No”
Agit-pop alternative rockers (influenced by punk and New Wave). Robbi Robb, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist, subsequently formed Tribe After Tribe and later decamped to Los Angeles to make a go of it. He might still be gigging but has hardly set the world alight.
”Schoolboy” made it to the shortlist of the Springbok Radio Sarie Awards (the SAMA of its day) as part of the best pop, or rock, or alternative, list and if the entry was forced on the band by the record company, it’s still an oddity in the band’s CV as well as being a stupid, trite song.
“Fight It With Your Mind” is the best track, a feisty, fiery slice of angry confrontation with the powers that be and a song Asylum Kids should be remembered for rather than the simplistic “Schoolboy.”
- Robin Auld – “Baby, You've Been Good To Me,” “Perfect Day”
Auld is still living, recording and gigging around Cape Town and is now a senior statesman remnant of the mid-Eighties school of local rockers. Originally cast as the blond, blue-eyed surfing guitar player, he led a rocking band (Z-Astaire) and wrote some affecting, emotive tunes, of which “Baby, You’ve Been Good To Me” (1985) is probably the best and to this day still a nice little earner from radio play royalties. The other big hit is “All of Woman.”
“Perfect Day” (not the Lou Reed song), is cast in similar reflective vein, though hardly as classic as “Baby, You’ve Been Good To Me.” Auld is a journeyman rather than an example of brightly burning creativity. Seemingly, he surfs, he smokes a bit of weed, and he writes philosophical songs that are entertaining enough in concert. Auld’s greatest achievement is longevity and continued appeal, probably mostly to the audience who were young when he was, and partied along on a summer weekend afternoon in front of the Da Gama Hotel in the Strand.
- Ballyhoo – “Man On The Moon”
A bunch of South Africans fronted by a Brit, Stewart Irving, who wrote and sang this crappy, cheesy pop ballad, and whose keyboard player, Attie van Wyk, became a big player in the local music scene by founding Big Concerts. “Man on the Moon:” (1980) was a monster, irritating pop hit and receives a surprising amount of air play to this day. Typical one hit wonder stuff. This song, though it hit a chord with the lowest common denominator of pop fan, is just bad, one of those tunes that only grates on the nerves when one hears it.
- Baxtop – “Jo Bangles”
In 1979 Baxtop won a Pop Shop Battle of the Bands competition with this song. Not only did the band, in the punk and New Wave era, look like a tragic throwback to the by then archaic, obsolescent hippy era, but this bluesy soft rock tune also sounded out of time even if it was catchy. It’s by far not the best song on the band’s one and only LP, Work It Out(1979.) “Dr Watson”, “Golden Highway” and “Night Time Train” are probably the best guitar driven rockers but the lyrics generally are at best workmanlike, at worst just lazy.
Larry Amos, lead singer, songwriter and lead guitarist, is still working in Gauteng, and Tim Parr, the second guitarist, formed the more successful EllaMental in the mid-Eighties and is now a solo artist, but Baxtop didn’t last, leaving us just one album of derivative, retro guitar rock, expertly played as it was, but not very engaging. Again, a one hit wonder, and I would rather call Baxtop an example of wasted opportunity.
As an aside: Piet Botha also competed in this Battle of the Bands, as leader of a leaden, plodding heavy band called Raven.
- Big Sky – “Waiting For The Dawn,” “Slow Dancing”
Steve Louw was the founding member, lead vocalist, songwriter and rhythm guitarist for my top favourite local band of the Eighties, at least as a live incarnation, because their two albums mostly sucked, All Night Radio, which didn’t amount to much commercially. When that band failed, he formed Big Sky, a kind of project band, with session musicians to help him indulge himself in his passion for, well, big sky pseudo-Americana. Sadly, the concept sounded better than the execution. Even so, Big Sky has a much larger recorded legacy than All Night Radio ever did and benefitted from much better production. The tunes sound good, the lyrics have improved and the musicians put some back into it but, as with All Night Radio, Louw’s weak, colourless voice ruins the effect and the playing is too slick for proper roots style music.
Louw is the perfect example of ambition and drive triumphing over actual talent. He became a rock musician, and star of sorts, not because he is amazingly creative but because he simply went ahead and did it. He wrote songs, recruited musicians, recorded the songs and released them. That’s how a career in the arts can be achieved. A mediocre talent who works hard at achieving his goals will do better than a genius who can’t be arsed. Louw cannot sing, writes middling songs and prefers recording where all the gritty parts are smoothed out and buffed to a sheen, avoiding anything quirky or, indeed, rocking. If you want to be a roots rocker, you gotta have some grit, some roots and some genuine feel for a groove. Steve Louw ain’t got none of that.
He’s not legendary. He built a musical career on hard work, not on talent, and not on creative achievement
- Piet Botha – “Goeienag, Generaal,” “Sien Jou Weer”
Piet Botha has a dual career” (a) as leader, songwriter and vocalist for Jack Hammer, his version of AOR Southern Rock, I guess; and (b) as solo Afrikaans troubadour.
‘n Suitcase Vol Winter(1997), from which the above songs were taken, was his Afrikaans debut and is probably the best of the releases that followed, with the best known songs, except for Die Mamba(2003), which is a true classic of creative song writing, inspired playing and high production values. Botha’s schtick is a way of talk-singing that is supposed to lend weight to the ruminating, philosophical, trite, songs but often just weighs them down into boring plods. Botha never counts down a fast rocker.
Lyrically, he investigates the past, from the futilities of the Border War in Namibia (”Goeienag, Generaal”) to the ravages suffered by die Afrikaner population during and after the Second Anglo Boer War. It’s at the same time indicative of an alternative, critical Afrikaner view of Nationalist politics and a kind of celebration of it. Namibian War is bad: Boer War is good.
As pioneer of adult Afrikaans rock, I guess one could call Piet Botha a legend, and also for the longevity as working musician in South Africa but whether he could ever be considered one of the greats, and not just a survivor, is open to argument.
- Bright Blue – “Weeping,” “Window On The World”
With “Window On The World” Bright Blue announced itself as a lively, literate, somewhat subversive, mbaqanga influenced pop band from Cape Town but seemed lightweight and frothy, of little consequence, yet with “Weeping” the band cemented itself in the popular music pantheon with a stone cold classic of a protest song, born in the heart of the darkness of the South African State of Emergency of the mid- to late- Eighties. “Weeping” is, as the cliché has it, a sweeping indictment of the National Party government and its repressive policies yet it became a hit, and received much airplay on Radio 5, before the people who decided these things realised what the song was about and promptly banned it from the airwaves.
In this case I would say that “Weeping” is the legend, not so much the band, which didn’t last any longer than most South African bands of the era.
- Circus – “Conquistador”
Hmm, Circus, a legend? I doubt it. The band was a late Seventies would-be glam prog rock group, with a vocalist in a harlequin costume and make up, and was one of the bands of the time that fell victim to managerial sharp practises and record company ruthlessness, but that’s about all. “Conquistador” wasn’t a bad little number though it’s a cover of a Procol Harum song, and the other ‘hit’ that Circus managed was Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s “Delilah.” From this one would imagine that Circus earned their living as a human jukebox in hotels and bars in Johannesburg but had little of their own creativity to contribute.
- Johnny Clegg – “Kilimanjaro” (with Juluka), “Scatterlings of Africa” (with Savuka)
Mr Clegg has moved, like Koos Kombuis, from operating guerrilla-like on the rebellious fringe of the South African rock scene to being an elder statesman in the middle of the mainstream, heaped with honours and adulation for his steadfast championing of Zulu culture and consistent battle against the erstwhile political establishment. The National Party is gone and Johnny Clegg lives on.
I’ve never been a fan. I generally like the music of Black South Africa, especially the old school mbaqanga and jive variants, but I’ve always had my doubts about Clegg’s cultural appropriation of traditional Zulu music, adapting it for a White, and, (notoriously) in the Eighties, for an international audience, to create a pop hybrid that has little appeal to me but. Has been commercially successful for Clegg.
In the early to mid-Eighties, when Juluka was a revolutionary innovation in local music, it seemed that every liberal, left wing student household had one or two Juluka albums, possibly as a badge of how cool the owner was. Some Juluka tunes received airplay, despite the subversive nature of the band, such as “Scatterlings of Africa” and ”Summer African Rain,” and I always questioned how much of a dangerous maverick Clegg could be if the SABC, notoriously prone to censorship, was prepared to play his music.
When Sip[ho Mchune, the second founder member of Juluka, left the band, Clegg regrouped as `Savuka and it was about this time that his “White Zulu” status became legendary in France and his record company started promoting him as a breakout South African artist, with “international” (dance) remixes of his most popular tunes. These “international tracks” might have been of their time but they grate even more than the original versions. However, along with Mango Groove, Clegg became a big concert attraction in South African too, fully leaving behind the modest, guerrilla beginnings of his career. Hard graft and persistence paid the usual showbiz dividends.
Johnny Clegg, is probably legendary for what he’s achieved, and rightly so, but a lyrically trite song like “Kilimanjaro” is hardly the epitome of a legendary tune or even one of Clegg’s best. ”Impi” is my favourite.
- Dog Detachment – “Waiting For A Miracle”
If I have it right, Dog Detachment started as a punk or New Wave type group, and then developed into a mid-Eighties type of “alternative” band, looking to the melodic, anthemic style of the likes of Duran Duran, and proto-Goth bands, and began writing some big tunes, like “Waiting For A Miracle,” from their best album Fathoms of Fire(1985), which gave them a popular hit on Radio 5 but, alas, didn’t propel them into a long, successful career. They released three albums, lasted perhaps 9 years and didn’t survive the Eighties.
The songs were pleasant and hummable, but this is not a legendary band by any stretch of the imagination. They just didn’t have the legs.
- Lesley Rae Dowling – “”Grips Of Emotion”, “The Spaniard”
Ms Dowling is what one would now call a grand dame of the AOR side of the South African music scene, emerging as a piano playing singer songwriter in Cape Town in the late Seventies, with an extraordinarily warm, deep voice, writing literate, adult songs. As far as I recollect, she was a contemporary of David Kramer, who achieved a great deal of commercial success, while she got married and seemed to prefer being a farmer’s wife to being a working musician.
Dowling did maintain a musical career but not high profile and these two songs are early tunes, both from her debut album Lesley Rae Dowling(1981.) it‘s telling that none of the later compositions ring a popular chord; although there was radio exposure once, I wouldn’t think she fits the programming demographic of any local station at the moment. Perhaps Lesley Rae Dowling can be listed under legendary because she was a ground breaker at the time, not being a frothy pop performer, but a serious musician, though she hardly bestrode the South African music scene like an unchallenged colossus.
- EllaMental – “See Yourself (Clowns)”
Tim Parr followed the backward looking Baxtop with the very much forward looking, contemporary, sleek Eighties pop rock of EllaMental, featuring the striking looks and vocals of Heather Mac. For a while, from the mid- to late-Eighties, EllaMental represented the intellectual, activist side of the local scene, had some hits and were featured on rock radio, touted to be a big thing indeed. It didn’t last and the attempt to build an “international” career, in the days of the cultural boycott, didn’t work out.
“See Yourself (Clowns)” (1985) is a good example of the bright overproduced Eighties style but it’s hardly a classic nor can EllaMental ever truly be considered a legendary ensemble. The band didn’t achieve enough or last long enough.
- éVoid – “Shadows,” “Taximan”
Lucien and Erich Windrich were obviously influenced by the British New Romantic movement of the early Eighties and then discovered, perhaps with a nod to what Adam Ant was up to, that a bit of cultural appropriation would provide a striking image, threw in some electronic beats and came up with a couple of striking tunes, in 1983 and 1984 respectively, to brighten up the local scene, like Via Afrika, with African inflected pop, lightweight as it was.
Eventually, like EllaMental, the Windrichs tried to further their music career in the UK and seems to have made more of a success of it, though by now, I guess, it’s as a nostalgic act, repeating their few hits ad infinitum, rather than as innovators.
Again, though the tunes would fit in nicely amongst the others in a neat compilation of SA pop, this is not legendary stuff.
- Falling Mirror – “Johnny Calls The Chemist,” “Making Out With Granny”
For roughly a decade from 1979 Nielen Marais/Mirror and Alan Faull ran the Falling Mirror project, from the prog rock post punk oddity of Zen Boulders, with the earnestly, and often risible, poetic lyrics of Mirror and the highly accomplished but slightly out of fashion music of Faull, and after three albums they came up with Johnny Calls The Chemist(1986), arguably the duo’s best and most definitive record and possibly one of the top five South African rock albums of the Eighties, not so much because it’s that good (and it isn’t as wonderful as some would like you to believe) but because of the popular nerve it hit, the zeitgeist it illuminated and because, plain and simple, this is the record that made Falling Mirror.
“Making Out with Granny” is from Zen Boulders.
Mirror’s lyrics are pretentious, he tries to be oblique and mysterious yet is simply obscure, silly and unpoetic. The music is still reminiscent of prog rock and still sounds surprisingly good and the songs would have been so much better if Mirror was a decent lyricist.
- Freedoms Children – “1999”
Freedoms Children may well be legendary, from the days when “underground” meant heavy prog rock and when having long hair was a radical anti-establishment stance in South Africa. Astra(1970), from which this tune is taken, is the best of the three albums the band released. Despite the promising title of Battle Hymn of the Broken Hearted Horde(1968), it’s just late Sixties heavy, prog pop and Galactic Vibes (1971) re-treads Astrawith diminishing returns.
Although Julian Laxton was a driving force in the band, the music on Astraseems to be dominated by keyboards, in true prog fashion, rather than being a full blown heavy guitar record, and “1999” is an interesting choice, probably just a favourite, as the featured tune to characterise Freedoms Children. This is one of those records where listening to the whole thing is definitely more rewarding that the isolated parts.
- Crocodile Harris – “Give Me The Good News,” “Miss Eva, Goodnight”
Mr Harris is really Mr Graham from Somerset West, who had a mixed bag of a pop career from the fiery glam rocker “Miss Eva, Goodnight” in 1974, through a hiatus to the bigger hit of “Give Me The Good News” in 1982, a few minutes of feelgood MOR schlock that to this day, if the man is still performing, would be the elongated showstopping finale to gigs. I prefer the earlier tune, because it’s a rock and roll thing and because it was released when I was 15 and very susceptible to this kind of froth, where the slower tune was released when I was doing National Service, not in need of this type of alleged good news, and still very much a louder, faster kind of guy.
Okay, so Crocodile Harris is a two hit wonder, but he’s no legend. He’s just a pop performer who’s possibly managed to parlay a career out of these songs but hasn’t given us anything else of value.
- Hawk – “Here Comes The Sun”
I tend to think of Hawk and Freedoms Children as two sides of the same early Seventies South African “underground” rock coin, but there are few similarities other than sharing a geographic neighbourhood. Hawk started later and were, perhaps because of the times, more focused on the African cultural influences around them than Freedoms Children, though both bands were strongly progressive. “Here Comes The Sun” is an anodyne version of an inconsequential George Harrison tune, well performed but pointless, unless it was a cynical attempt at commercialism from a band that hardly have thought of itself, or be considered by its audience, as a pop group.
Hawk may be legendary for much the same reasons as Freedoms Children, and must be given credit for trying to make it in the UK, as Jo’burg Hawk, but this tune is an idiosyncratic, and inexplicable, choice to illustrate what Hawk was about.
- Hotline – “You're So Good To Me,” “So Cold”
Hotline had two stabs at stardom. The first was as a bog standard, plodding heavy band, featuring the powerful vocals of PJ Powers, and the second one was as pioneers of the fusion of rock and mbaqanga, and this second wind was where the success lay, with hits such as “Feel So Strong” (with Steve Kekana) (1982) and “Jabulani” (1984.)
These two tracks are the A and B sides of the single from the debut album Burnout(1981.) My guess is that they get zero radio play nowadays. “Jabulani” is the lovely little earner to this day, and probably still in P J Powers’ set list as closing number.
The lesson to learn from Hotline is that they adapted, however cynically or commercially driven, when they realised that their Afro rock fusion (“Feel So Strong”) was more popular and appealed to a larger audience than the heavy sludge. A bunch of White rockers listened to mbaqanga, and presumably other African stuff, learnt some licks, sanitised for the broadest possible market, and rode the commercial wave for as long as it lasted.
Hotline and PJ Powers must be lauded for bringing the township to South African rock radio and for going to the townships to show solidarity.
- John Ireland – “You're Living Inside My Head”
“I Like…” (1982) was probably a bigger, more memorable hit in a recording career lasted from 1978 to 1986, but the earlier hit from 1978 is pretty good too. this does not make him a legend, though. Just a musician who had the opportunity to record his music for a good innings though only managed the two hits.
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