James Keays Jr. (9 September 194613 June 2014) was a Scottish-born Australian musician who fronted the rock band The Masters Apprentices as singer-songwriter, guitarist and harmonica-player from 1965 to 1972 and subsequently had a solo career. He also wrote for a music newspaper, Go-Set, as its Adelaide correspondent in 1970 and its London correspondent in 1973.
The Masters Apprentices had Top 20 hits on the Go-Set National Singles Charts with "Undecided", "Living in a Child's Dream", "5:10 Man", "Think about Tomorrow Today", "Turn Up Your Radio" and "Because I Love You". The band reformed periodically, including in 1987 to 1988 and again subsequently. Keays, as a member of the Masters Apprentices, was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1998. As a solo artist he issued the albums The Boy from the Stars (December 1974), Red on the Meter (October 1983), Pressure Makes Diamonds (1993), Resonator (2006) and Dirty, Dirty (2012).
He published his memoirs, His Master's Voice: The Masters Apprentices: The Bad Boys of Sixties Rock 'n' Roll, in 1999. From 2000, he performed in Cotton Keays & Morris alongside other former 1960s artists Darryl Cotton and Russell Morris. In July 2007, Keays was diagnosed with myeloma, which caused his kidneys to fail. By 2009 the cancer was in remission after chemotherapy and stem-cell transplants. However, he died in 2014 from pneumonia due to complications resulting from his cancer at age 67.
Early years Keays was born on 9 September 1946 in Glasgow, Scotland, where his unwed mother put him up for adoption at six months old. He was adopted by James Keays Sr. (born 7 November 1916) and Jessie Cameron (née Caldwell) Keays (born 16 February 1915), a childless couple from Clydebank. They migrated to Australia on RMS Asturias, leaving Southampton on 5 September 1951, four days before he turned five. They settled in Beaumont, a suburb of Adelaide.
He attended Burnside Primary School and then Norwood High School. Keays played Australian rules football up to under-17s and golf—a passion shared with his father. His interest in rock music began when he heard "Rip It Up" by Little Richard and "Great Balls of Fire" by Jerry Lee Lewis on a school friend's turntable when he was 11.
Career 1964: The Mustangs The Mustangs were a surf music instrumental dance band formed in Adelaide in 1964 by guitarist Mick Bower, lead guitarist Rick Morrison, drummer Brian Vaughton and bassist Gavin Webb. Managed by Graham Longley, the group initially performed instrumental music inspired by the Shadows and the Ventures. Following the Beatles' tour of Australia, the band decided to recruit a lead singer and advertised for a vocalist. Jim Keays was the successful applicant. His arrival completed the line-up that would soon become the Masters Apprentices. During this period the band performed an instrumental set followed by a second set featuring original beat music written primarily by Bower, with Keays as vocalist.
1965–1972: The Masters Apprentices
In late 1965, the Mustangs renamed themselves the Masters Apprentices (deliberately omitting the apostrophe). The name was conceived by Bower, who explained that the group regarded themselves as "apprentices to the masters of the blues—Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, Elmore James and Robert Johnson". Under Bower's musical direction, the band developed a repertoire of original material at a time when many Australian beat groups relied largely on overseas covers. Bower wrote or co-wrote the band's early recordings, including the national hit singles "Undecided" and "Living in a Child's Dream", helping establish the Masters Apprentices as one of Australia's leading original rock groups. Go-Set writer Ian "Molly" Meldrum declared that the band had "made the grade".
Whilst a member of the Masters Apprentices, Keays was one of hundreds of potential national service conscripts whose 20th birthday, 9 September, was picked in a 1966 ballot. He was able to legally avoid the draft by signing with the Citizens Military Force (CMF, later renamed the Army Reserve) and eluded a "short back and sides" haircut with the aid of a girlfriend, who pinned his long hair up under his slouch hat whenever he attended CMF sessions. By February 1967 the band had relocated to Melbourne. Late that year he began taking the illegal psychedelic drug, LSD. After Bower left the group in September 1967, because of a severe nervous breakdown, Keays became the de facto leader, while various line-up changes followed. Keays chose their "velvet, satin and floral-print psychedelic gear", which they wore on stage and for photo shoots.
In January 1968, Colin Burgess (ex-the Haze) joined on drums, followed by Doug Ford (ex-the Missing Links, Running Jumping Standing Still) on lead guitar. Keays and Ford began working as a song writing team, beginning with "Brigette", released as a single in June, which peaked into the Top 40. Glenn Wheatley (from Brisbane's blues group Bay City Union) had joined on rhythm guitar by May and later took over bass guitar.
The Masters Apprentices became the "bad-boys of rock", Keays was interviewed for Go-Set by staff reporter, Lily Brett, and the 'expose' was printed on 17 July 1968, headlined "Sex is Thrust upon Us", the article and its follow-up, "Whose Breasts Are Best?", revealed aspects of the bacchanalian scene where female groupies were called band molls:
The "bad-boy" publicity also frustrated their manager, Darryl Sambell, who had planned to market them as a wholesome teen combo. Keays stated that there was a backlash from the interview: the roadway outside his flat in East St Kilda was daubed with the slogan "Band Moll's Paradise" in one-metre high letters, threats of physical beatings were made by male audience members and press claims that they were "sex maniacs" were regularly printed. During 1969 the band switched to wearing leather stage outfits—it was routine for the band to have their clothes and hair literally torn off by frantic fans, and the cost of buying expensive stage clothes which were being shredded nightly was sending them broke. But the leather gear—which resisted even the most ardent fans—provided them with their longest-wearing outfits in years, and Keays maintained that it saved them thousands of dollars.
In April 1970, EMI released the group's most popular single, "Turn Up Your Radio", co-written by Keays and Ford, produced by Howard Gable, and engineered by Ern Rose. It was recorded at a late-night session and Keays later recounted that he was so drunk when he recorded his vocals that he had to be held up to the microphone. The song was deliberately designed to be loud and offensive, and was intended as the final nail in the coffin to their ill-conceived teenybopper image. It was released just before the start of the 1970 radio ban—a major dispute between commercial radio stations and record companies—which resulted in the banning of many major-label releases. Despite little commercial radio airplay, the song raced up the charts and peaked at No. 7 nationally. During that year Keays was the Adelaide-based correspondent for Go-Set.
Keays and Ford co-wrote four of the band's Top 20 hits with "5:10 Man" (No. 16 on the Go-Set National Top 40 Charts, 1969), "Think About Tomorrow Today" (No. 12, 1969), "Turn Up Your Radio" (No. 7, 1970) and "Because I Love You" (No. 12, 1971). Keays and Ford also co-wrote "Quicksand" which was issued as a single by Adelaide-based blues group, The Expression, in June 1970. Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, declared that the track "ranks as one of the most astonishing hard guitar/psychedelic singles of the period". Keays and Ford co-wrote "St John's Wood" (mid-1970) for Brisbane-formed group, the Sect, which had relocated to Melbourne in late 1969 and signed with the same booking agency. From July 1970 the Masters Apprentices had relocated to the United Kingdom where they tried to break into the local market but they disbanded in 1972 without achieving any UK charting.
1972-2014: Solo and with Southern Cross After leaving the Masters Apprentices in early 1972, Keays returned to Australia and completed promotional duties for their just released single, "Love Is", which did not chart. He established a talent brokerage, Rock on Agency. Keays compèred the Meadows Technicolor Fair in Adelaide in January that year. He wrote an article about the festival for Go-Set, which was printed to coincide with its first day. He followed by compèring the Mulwala Festival in April. According to Daily Planets Dean Moriarty the latter festival's promoters had shown "little respect for artists and audience", Keays and his wife "spent a night ... on the ground in the rain".
From late March 1973 he played the role of "The Lover" in the Australian version of the Who's rock opera, Tommy. The Melbourne performance was broadcast in early April on TV station HSV-7. Also during that year Keays wrote for Go-Set as their London correspondent, providing "News and gossip from within the music industry". In January 1974, Keays compèred the fourth annual Sunbury Pop Festival. He then oversaw the Masters Apprentices' compilation album Now That It's Over (October 1974), drawing on their later career. He designed its cover, with liner notes written by Howard Lindley, a freelance journalist and film maker. Lindley had been working on a film about the group before he committed suicide in 1972. EMI released a track from the compilation as single by The Masters Apprentices, "Rio de Camero", in August 1974, which garnered radio airplay but it did not chart.
In December 1974, Keays released his debut solo album, Boy from the Stars, also on EMI. It was an ambitious concept LP with the science fiction theme of an alien arriving on Earth to warn of the misuse of power sources. For the album, which was produced by Ian Miller, Keays wrote all the lyrics and most of the music. Session musicians included: David Allardice on piano, James Black on guitar, Geoff Bridgeford on drums, Joe Creighton on bass guitar, Mick Elliot on guitar, Dennis Garcia on keyboard, Billy Green on guitar, Marcia Hines on backing vocals and Lobby Loyde on guitar. The Canberra Times Tony Catterall felt the "main concept ... has been done to death" while musically it showed a "lack of expertise ... while striving for effect succeeds only in producing a sea of mud that obscures Keays's lyrics and drowns the individual instruments in a swirl of uninteresting sound". Whereas McFarlane declared it was "put together with a great deal of skill and attention to detail".
His first single, "Kid's Blues", was also released in December. Some tracks from Boy from the Stars were performed at the final Sunbury Pop Festival in January 1975, by his all-star backing group, Jim Keays Band. They were joined on-stage by Wheatley, recently returned from the UK, in their last performance together for over ten years. As a member of The Masters Apprentices, Keays had endured rip-offs, where promoters had made considerable profits while they had received little payment. At Sunbury 1975 Keays and his band were one of few Australian groups to be paid for appearing—Keays had wisely arranged an outside sponsor—low attendance and the huge $60,000 fee paid to head-lining group, Deep Purple, meant that few of the other Australian acts were paid, and the festival organisers went into liquidation soon after. His second single, "The Boy from the Stars", was released in February.