The Good Old Days of Rock 'n' Roll - Her Majesty's Theatre

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Sat 14 Dec 2024

Little Pattie Interview

Australia has had a long and storied history in the realms of Rock and Roll. Through the decades the lucky country has produced a cavalcade of international sensations and rock legends. While a culture of great rock and roll is still strong today it’s always good to look back at our roots and see the pioneers who paved the way. Bob McKinnon presents The Good Old Days of Rock ‘n’ Roll. McKinnon has put together the cream of the crop of Australia’s early rock history to showcase a slew of music legends. Weekend Notes sat down with Little Pattie, an Australian pop sensation who hit the charts at 14 years old with He’s my Blond-headed, Stompie Wompie, Real Gone Surfer Boy. She translated her early success into a fruitful career culminating in receiving the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2003.



Little Pattie: Our audience is full of people with beautiful silver hair. The show is really designed for, not deliberately, but because of who we are and our ages in our careers, it is for people who are, and I hate the term, but Baby Boomers.

Weekend Notes: This is a pretty big show you’re putting together. A lot of great Australian artists. So obviously there is yourself but you also have Jade Hurley, Dinah Lee, Lucky Starr and Digger Revell. Have you worked with these artists in the past?

LP: Yes, I have. Well, we all have. None of us have worked with the five of us together. I’ve done many shows with each of them but not together. So, it’s a first for all of us but this is the second year we’ve been doing this show. It’s been a huge success. I must say particularly for a female performer if I had to describe it, what the life is like, I could give you all the adjectives. I can say it’s wonderful, you never stop learning and challenging yourself. Overriding much of that, for a female performer, unless you’re an absolute party girl and I’m not, it’s a very lonely life. You are alone a lot. So the fact that we are definitely like-minded, we like music, and we have known each other all our lives almost. To get together, it’s sounds corny but the dressing rooms are full of laughter, full of life, full of stories from a bygone era. It’s a great feeling just to arrive at the venue and to be together for several hours. We need to arrive at the venue generally at 10am and we don’t go on until 2pm so there’s a lot of giggling going on there.

WN: With all that experience in that dressing room you share so many stories.

LP: Well the stories are common to us all. We kind of know each other's stories because in a way we’ve all been in each other's stories. The fact that I’m the youngest on the show makes my stories a little different. I started when I was 14 and they were considerably older. I thank them for protecting me so well when I was 14. They were all great to me and for me.



WN: How did the idea for this show first come about?

LP: We’re terribly enterprising, performers. Business acumen is not our strength. It’s such a simple lovely idea that we would of all agreed with for many years but none of us did anything about it except talk about it. I think Jade Hurley did the phone around. He called me a said, “I’ve got this idea, what do you think.” I said, “I think it’s a great idea, count me in. I would love to be a part of it.”. An ex-musician, I shouldn’t say ex cause I don’t think he would ever give it up. A musician called Bob McKinnon who is also an entrepreneur of sorts and a premotor. He promotes the show. He’s no spring chicken either but Bob has worked and worked hard at promoting the show and we’ve all worked hard as performers. It really is a good team. We love every minute of it, we’re like kids again and our audiences can feel that too.

WN: You said this is the second year of running the show. How did that first year go, coming together and performing?

LP: It sort of fitted like a pair of gloves in as much as we knew what we were doing. We had chosen each chosen our own repertoire for the show, with very few changes. We knew what we wanted to do and what each of us did best. We added a few group songs where all of us are on stage together and some duets. The show seems to go very quickly but it’s quite a complex show. The first time we did the show we thought, ‘What have we been doing? We should have done this years ago.”. Instead of remaining in our solo shows. Which we love to do of course and we will still do solo shows but not nearly as enjoyable as the group show.



WN: Looking at your discography it would like this year would be the Diamond anniversary of your first album, The Many Moods of Little Pattie. Are you doing anything special for the occasion?

LP: No, no, no. I won’t be celebrating. I don’t really like the attention on my side. I know that’s silly as a performer, I mean that’s my job. I just don’t want that sort of attention.

WN: That’s more than fair. You’ve done everything you want in your career. Anything from here is icing on the cake.

LP: And you know it is. It is the icing on the cake. I just think performers of our vintage, or heritage performers, we are blessed to still be working and to enjoy pretty good careers and to do what we love.

WN: That’s especially true when you can do what you love and bring in big crowds sixty years on. Most careers don’t last half that long.

WN: Thanks for your time Little Pattie. So, just to wrap this up if these is one thing you could say to give readers an idea of kind of experience they’ll have at this show.

LP: Our show makes us and the audience feel really young again and it will bring back memories for everyone. You will feel great and I make this promise; I promise that you will love this show.

The Good Old Days of Rock ‘n’ Roll will be showing at Her Majesty's Theatre on Saturday 14th of December at 2pm. See more information here .

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