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Wendy Stapleton, Ally Mac and Georga Byrne. Photos supplied by Wendy Stapleton.
A touch of Australian musical stardom is coming to Airlie Beach, as 80s rock favourite Wendy Stapleton and chart-topping husband Paul Norton turn back the clock for two afternoons revisiting the songs that filled Australian radios and dancefloors.
Taking over the Airlie Beach Hotel across the final weekend of August, Wendy Stapleton will bring two very different shows to the stage.
Saturday will see Wendy step into the world of Dusty Springfield, taking audiences through the life and music of one of the 60s, 70s and 80s most pronounced voices, with a show that has travelled stages across Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
“That show takes you on a journey through Dusty’s life,” Wendy said.
Then on Sunday, she’ll take the audience back to The Swinging Sixties, with classics from some of the decade’s favourite female artists, including Diana Ross and The Supremes, Petula Clark, Lulu, The Ronettes and, of course, Dusty Springfield.
“We have a lot of fun, and of course we costume it so that we’re in wacky ’60s,” Wendy said.
Both afternoons will then change gears for the final set, with Wendy and the band stepping switching to a collection of their favourite pop-rock songs.
These shows have been getting crowds moving for decades, with the Dusty Springfield show first beginning as a musical theatre production in Melbourne in the mid-1990s, before Wendy later created The Swinging Sixties around 15 years ago.
Long before stepping into the shoes of Dusty Springfield, Wendy had already made a name for herself in Australian music as the frontwoman of Wendy and the Rocketts.
Formed in the early 1980s when signed by Mushroom Records, Wendy and the Rocketts made their mark on Australia’s pub-rock scene, with singles Reputation, Your Place or Mine? and Wendy’s self-penned Play the Game all hitting the charts, while their debut studio album Dazed for Days broke into the Australian Top 30.
Their success eventually took Wendy well beyond Australian stages, with Wendy and the Rocketts heading overseas and touring through Europe alongside some names that would become giants of rock, including Bryan Adams and ZZ Top.
After years in rock and roll, Wendy eventually found her way back to musical theatre, something that wasn’t entirely new territory for a performer who had first appeared professionally on stage as a child.
As Wendy puts it, her career has simply been about continuing to move with the times.
“You’ve just got to keep rolling with the changes, keep reinventing yourself,” she said.
While the Dusty show originally grew from Wendy’s return to musical theatre in the mid-1990s, The Swinging Sixties was a creation of her own, born from a desire to bring together the female voices that helped define the decade.
Joining Wendy on stage will be Angie Stapleton, Ally Mac and John Arthur Grant, with live guitar and keyboard accompanying the vocals and dancing. Angie performed in the original Dusty production, while Wendy’s daughter Ally joins her cousin as one of the show’s singer-dancers.
Completing the line-up is another name Australian music fans might remember, Wendy’s husband and chart-topping musician Paul Norton.
Paul got his start playing bass as a teenager before helping form Melbourne band The Runners, who built a strong following on the pub circuit and signed with Mushroom Records in 1981. The band went on to release singles including Sure Fire Thing and Endlessly, along with their 1983 album Hitting the Wall, while touring heavily throughout the early ’80s.
After The Runners, Paul spent time playing with Wendy and the Rocketts and Steve Hoy and the Hoy Boys before launching his solo career in 1988, again signing with Mushroom Records.
His biggest break came with Stuck On You, which received strong radio play and climbed to #2 on the Australian charts. The success was followed by a trip to London to record I Got You and his debut album Under a Southern Sky, before he later worked with American musician and producer T-Bone Wolk on his second album, Let It Fly.
These days, much of Paul’s work happens away from the rock stage as Musical Director for the Australian Shakespeare Company, writing music for theatre productions in Australia and abroad.
“I’ve always been a songwriter, so I’ve always loved to do that,” he said.
Paul has joined Wendy for the shows over the past couple of years when time allows, and in Airlie he’ll return to his rock roots for the final set, performing a few of his own songs, including his hit Stuck On You.
“If I’m in the audience and I go and see an act that I really like, you kind of want them to do the hit songs that they’re known for,” Paul said.
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