Work begins to transform the Concert Hall for a new era
“When it was designed and built nobody thought that rock bands or circuses or talks would be held in the Concert Hall,” Fiona Winning says. “It just wasn’t done at that time. Rock’n’roll was just not something that would be held in an opera house.”
Yet within a year of its opening in 1973, the Concert Hall stage was hosting two iconic Australian rock bands: Sydney sons Sherbet had already had a number of Top 10 hits while Melbourne’s Skyhooks, appearing in their first Sydney gig, had just released their first album Livin’ in the 70s, which would go on to sell more than 300,000 copies. The latter took to the stage in outlandish costumes and make-up and opened with You Just Like Me Cause I’m Good in Bed – one of six songs on their album that had been banned from radio. This boundary-pushing performance foreshadowed some of the groundbreaking acts that would grace the Concert Hall stage decades later.
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