“Opened up like Pandora’s Box.. the last episode of black & white pop television in Australia”

Rare footage of vintage pop show Happening ’72 was recently unearthed after former host Jeff Phillips donated a long lost 2 inch reel to the National Film and Sound Archive.

The last-ever episode of the show concluded with a young Johnny Farnham singing For Once in My Life, followed by a group farewell with ’70s pop icons Allison Durbin, Debbie Byrne, Issi Dye and a young Ian Meldrum.

“50 years later, it was opened up like Pandora’s Box. The NFSA sent it off to Canberra to get cleaned up, found the last episode of the Happening and said, ‘This is the last episode of black and white pop television in Australia.’ Bandstand closed earlier in the year, Hit Scene with Dick Williams on a Saturday afternoon had finished. We were the last of the Mohicans,” Phillips tells TV Tonight.

Happening ’70 was originally hosted on ATV-0 by singer Ross D. Wyllie as a successor to Uptight. Broadcasting pop music for 4 hours every Saturday, it subsequently changed its name to Happening ’71 and thereafter Happening ’72 with host Jeff Phillips, who had won a 1970 Logie as Best New Talent for pop show Sounds Like Us on ABC.

As Phillips recalls, the show had the cream of Melbourne performers and bands, with Meldrum, then a Go-Set journalist, giving his trademark pop reviews. As the final credits rolled, Meldrum was even heaved into a coffin by the crew (vision here).

“Ian did the same thing that he’d do on Hey Hey it’s Saturday, Countdown, Uptight. He would come on the show with about half a dozen new albums and talk about them. He’d talk about tours and then he’d promote Chiko rolls, from memory.

“The only problem with Ian was that you never knew whether he’d be half an hour early or half an hour late.

“Everyone had long hair”

“Everyone had long hair. It was just a matter of how long. The same thing was said about the bell-bottomed pants. But the good thing about the show, I’ve got to say, is that in the entire time I was hosting, there was never an argument with any band, any singer, because we all sang basically at the same venues. Same clubs, same hotels, same tours of Queensland, WA and Adelaide, wherever you went. We all talked to one another. It was like an extended family.

“You see a lot of people talking in Sydney about Bandstand, but there were hardly any Melbourne artists on it. It was all Col Joye, the Allen Brothers, Judy Stone. It became very much middle of the road, more like a Tonight show, not really a pop show or a rock show. When The Go! Show came along that was straight out pop & rock. We followed after The Go! Show with Uptight and then the Happening.”

In late 1972 Phillips went to Athens, winning song contest Fifth Olympiad of Song, with his own composition “Gloria”, which led to interest from London.

“The musicians union brought in a ban on any one miming on TV”

“Record and publishing executives were all coming up to me and giving me their business cards. I came back to Australia to hand in my notice at the Happening but there was hardly any need. They told me the Happening would be closing because the musicians union brought in a ban on anyone miming on TV,” he recalls.

“You can’t do a four hour pop show without people miming to their records! We filmed it on a Monday evening from 7 o’clock. At 11 o’clock at night they turned off the lights, and we were out of there. So there was zero room for ‘Let’s do that again!’…. On the Happening nothing got to ‘Take 2!'”

As he travelled back to London, Phillips carted a two inch reel of his work -VHS tapes were yet to be invented. As he spent the next 7 years in the UK, followed by LA and returning to Australia, he lugged the video reel with him.

Phillips would go on to appear in the original production of Cats in Australia, hosting Child’s Play (a game show with kids saying the darndest things) for Seven, and his own quiz format My Generation on Nine.

In 1991 he hosted a revival of Star Search on 10 before network bankruptcy led to management changes and new host, Mike Hammond.

“It was the first talent show where the Australian public could telephone in and be the judges,” he continues.

“But because of Channel 10 and their bankruptcy they brought in Bob Shanks from America.

“They put him in as program manager!”

“He knew nothing about Cricket, Australian Rules football, hardly anything to do with Rugby League, but they put him in as program manager!

“There’d be three managers in the studio sending messages that ‘Jeff would look better in a blue tie rather than red’ … Standing behind them were the bankruptcy people and they would lean over -I kid you not- saying ‘We prefer the red tie.'”

According to Phillips, he was also earmarked to host a new version of Young Talent Time.

“But Bob Shanks knew nothing about Young Talent Time and the history that it had, so he knocked it on the head.”

In recent years Phillips has pragmatically returned to another love: property.

“I’ve always either bought houses, renovated, sold them. At one stage I was developing townhouses but I found that to be too long an exercise, because by the time you start and finish, it’s a good two years, sometimes even longer. I’ve been with a company called RT Edgar Real Estate, which is generally a high end real estate company in Toorak, South Yarra, Camberwell,” he explains.

“They want to talk about the pop days.”

Still flashing that grin at the age of 74, Phillips laughs that he can’t get away from his pop star past.

“I’m talking to people about real estate but they want to talk about the pop days. …. it happens almost every week!”

Having donated the rare vision to the National Film & Sound Archive, Phillps is grateful Happening‘s place in TV pop-dom is recognised and archived, years before shows like Countdown or Sounds with Donnie Sutherland went on to long success.

“When Donnie came along with Sounds, I think it was called Sounds Unlimited it was then well-established that there were videos like MTV.

“Whereas we were 60 / 40 or thereabouts, of people in the studio performing with their bands and solo. We were just getting the start of videos, but it wasn’t like an explosion or an avalanche.

“We were lucky if we could get something from the Bee Gees or The Kinks!”

Photos / Video: National Film & Sound Archive.