As promised:
Nelson was able to point the group in one direction: that of film and video. He invited The Go-Betweens to create a TV commercial for Nelson’s record shop, the Toowong Music Centre. Nelson, an ardent Dylan fan – he even wrote to RAM in 1978, defending Dylan from a hostile critic – came up with the idea of recreating the “Subterranean Homesick Blues” sequence from D.A. Pennebaker’s 1965 Dylan documentary, Don’t Look Back. The image of Dylan, in an alley, holding up signs displaying key words from the song has been influential ever since the film was released. Brisbane cineaste and director Robin Gold, who was present at the shooting of the commercial, believes that no one involved has actually seen Don’t Look Back, and that they had only heard of he scene. Damien Nelson’s father funded the commercial, which was made in black and white (in the face of heavy opposition from technicians and television stations in what were the early days of Australian color television).
The group recorded the backing music in a studio in Indooroopilly. When they arrived for the session, Forster and McLennan assured Nelson they had the song ready. Then he remembers, “they disappeared for about five minutes. And I know now what they were doing – they were writing it. And they recorded it!”
Forster sang the song, which opened with some alarming nonsense of “Some glass camels don’t even run / Some poor witch and her revolving gun / Shifts down, runs down, in her fur gown.” But he only appeared briefly in the commercial, which featured McLennan holding up handwritten signs featuring the words WHO?/GETS/ONE/DOLLAR/OFF/ALL RECORDS AT/TOOWONG MUSIC/NOW/EVERYBODY/EVERY/BODY. The visuals and music were not synchronized, so – unlike the original ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues” clip – the music was merely a surreal backdrop to the visual quote.
NELSON: We got a film guy, Jan Murray, and he did it in an alleyway one morning. It looked fantastic. It’s a real lost classic.*
You see Robert Forster at the beginning. First shot, Robert pokes his head round the alleyway. The final shot is of Grant walking – high shot from above – over “Toowong Music,” the letters put on the ground.
McLennan’s memory of the commercial is not dissimilar, though it contains more vomiting:
McLENNAN: I was sick as a dog that day. I’d been up all night. We shot it in this alleyway next to the Black Cat, which was a little cafe then. I think McDonald’s is there now. But there was this great laneway, very much like the start of Don’t Look Back, and I had this houndstooth double-breasted kind of Dylan suit that a friend of mine used to wear in the 1960s – she got it out of mothballs. I thought I was Bob Dylan. I felt as sick as Bob Dylan on that ’66 tour. We shot it early in the morning before people went to work, and Damien’s sister, Theresa was there. Damien was there, Robert was there, I was there, Robin [Gold] was there. All I remember was getting sick and getting in the car and vomiting all the way to Bardon.
The advertisement was shown at least once, possibly twice, on late-night television in Brisbane. “My parents never saw it, thank God,” says Nelson. “I’m sure if Dad had seen it he’d have hit the roof!”
*It’s not that lost. The ad has been located by Fiona Dempster for her documentary.
The Go-Betweens, David Nichols, Verse Chorus Press, Portland USA, 2003, pp 67-69.
