JUDITH DURHAM - One Plus One (2016)
Judith Durham - One Plus One (2016)
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00:00Hello I'm Jane Hutch and welcome to the program where my guest is the legendary
00:05Judith Durham from the Seekers. Judith Durham stumbled into her role as the
00:12female singer in the 60s group that quickly took the world by storm.
00:18Despite her celebrity status she'd always wanted to be a solo artist
00:23disappointing millions of Seekers fans when she called it quits and left the
00:28group. She celebrated more than 50 years in the music industry and a musical
00:33about the Seekers story Georgie Girl premiered in Melbourne and moves to
00:38Sydney in April.
00:50Judith Durham welcome to One Plus One it's lovely to see you. I'm thrilled to
00:55be here it's just great to meet you too. A lot of us including me have
00:59soundtracks go on in our heads quite often I'll find myself whistling Georgie
01:04Girl. I wonder in your soundtrack what music plays is it the early songs of the
01:11Seekers is it your solo songs or is it something completely different? Oh well
01:16well quite often because I'm a composer quite often it can be an affirmation
01:22that I've ended up composing a song about that that can happen but you know
01:28just songs get in your head it doesn't matter what it is so I do have so many
01:33different songs that I love so it's usually just what's come to my
01:38attention and then they just fix themselves. What do you think it is that
01:41connects us to a song what makes us love a song? Oh well of course sentiment no
01:47doubt and songs like the Seekers classics they can be lifelong things
01:53that people have from childhood and then they have more and more significance as
01:58you grow older different emotional experiences will make them more
02:03indelible from a romantic point of view I mean a song like I'll never find
02:07another you but then again a lot of people will have a spiritual element to
02:11that.
02:18The carnival is over many men in particular can get extremely emotional
02:23about the carnival is over of course the women do too.
02:37It's really really amazing what these songs do mean to each person and I think
02:43it's a kind of music therapy and I wish that people would take it more seriously
02:49who are in a position to share the music more. I've been looking through newspaper
02:55cuttings, YouTube videos, books and it seems that you have never been out of
03:02the limelight for 60 or so years. Is it a burden being a cultural icon?
03:11Oh goodness there was a period in my life where I suppose I saw it slightly
03:21as a burden because I was still trying to find my role in life what my purpose
03:28in life was and at one stage I really thought that I probably wasn't going to
03:33keep singing or you know I just wasn't sure what I was meant to be doing and
03:38I'm glad that I've lived a long time and that's helped me therefore lose the
03:45sense of burden and see it as an honour and a privilege that people have kept me
03:51in their lives and have given me my sense of purpose to be something
03:55meaningful in their lives.
03:58So can I ask you when it was that you felt that burden? How old were you?
04:03During the late 70s maybe because I hadn't re-embraced, I wasn't too sure what
04:10role the Seekers music was meant to play in my life. It was as if it
04:16happened by, well it did happen, it seemed to happen by chance I now see it as
04:20destiny. We were coming overseas just as an adventure for 10 weeks we had
04:27absolutely no idea we were going to stay in England and become pop stars so the
04:33whole of life was sort of still to unfold for me and I still thought I was
04:38going to go back to Australia. So the burden started to come when I got a bit
04:43what I perceive as a sense of burden when I couldn't get the role of, I wasn't
04:52pretty and I felt self-conscious, had weight problems, there were lots of that
04:57kind of thing which was a burden to me and therefore if I was recognised in the
05:02street I couldn't just be in the moment and hug the person and say how lovely to
05:09meet you knowing what I meant in their life. So there was always a
05:13self-consciousness which made a barrier for me.
05:17You say that all of this was destiny. I want to take you back, you were born in
05:22the 40s, I understand that you didn't even meet your father until you were
05:27about three years old because he'd been away at war and your sister Bev, Beverly
05:32always spoke of you having this great persistence, this great kind of
05:39self-knowledge that you could succeed. I mean everybody says when they're a kid
05:44I'm going to sing on stages and sing all over the world but not everyone achieves
05:49that, you did. I don't know where it came from, I just had such a joy and deep
05:57feeling, emotional feeling of music. It just was all a natural part of life in
06:03those days and there was no such thing as television. You see this is what's
06:07hard for people to comprehend, nothing, we had no television, we didn't even have a
06:12record player, we had the piano in the home and we listened to the radio so
06:17aren't I lucky that that's how I was brought up, that we were just
06:22entertaining ourselves and it allowed us to develop an appreciation of music
06:27which was uplifting and the songs our parents chose, we loved those songs and
06:33our parents of course loved those songs so it bonded us all together, yes very
06:38lucky. So even by the time you were 18, by night you were performing jazz and you
06:44were singing and by day you got a job, I always think of the TV show Mad Men
06:49when I read about this section of your life about the advertising world because
06:53you got a job as a secretary at J Walter Thompson. Tell us about the other member
06:59of the Seekers who was working there and how you got the offer to join this group.
07:06Well you know talking about destiny, it was destiny. I'd been working at the
07:12Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital for two years, it was my first job as a
07:16secretary, I was the secretary to Dr Greer who was the
07:22pathologist, so there I was in my own office for two years, paid not very much
07:29money, I enjoyed the work. Mum said I think you should be earning a bit more
07:33money, why don't you go and get a different job that'll pay more. So I went
07:37along and did an interview not knowing what the firm was, I was sent for the
07:41interview and I got out of the lift door on the sixth floor and it said J
07:48Walter Thompson Advertising. I thought I don't know anything about advertising,
07:52that sounds too sophisticated for me, I probably won't get this job but I'm here
07:57anyway. After I'd been for the interview the person rang me who interviewed me
08:03and said we'd like to offer you the job. So that very first day I went to J
08:09Walter Thompson when I met the girls in the office they said oh there's another
08:13person who sings in this office, his name's Athol Guy and so I went into his
08:18office, I mean this is on the first day that I work in this new job and he said
08:22oh I sing with two other guys, Bruce Woodley and Keith Podker, why don't you
08:27come along and sing with us tonight, we work a little gig in the treble
08:31clef. And that was the birth of the Seekers as we now know, he became world
08:39famous you know for the next 50 years. Incredible and Athol, I always remember
08:44him because he was the guy with the glasses. Yes exactly, that's exactly right
08:48and that's the most easiest way. You see you can see that there was no
08:52selection process, none of us knew what any of us would sound like as a foursome,
08:57that's what's so remarkable because the world, the sound of the Seekers, that
09:02four-part harmony sound, three boys and a girl, is so unlikely. You would not choose
09:09those four voices to blend together and say this is going to be you know you
09:15couldn't like a Monkees or you know in a manufactured pop band, you'd think you'd
09:19spend hours and hours and hours sort of auditioning people to get the right
09:22blend of voices. That's what the Seekers sounds like just as the four of us did
09:2650 years ago, we sound exactly the same, playing the same instruments, looking the
09:31same in our personalities, although a little bit you know different, but still
09:35the same four people and we're all very natural, you know none of us have gone
09:39off the rails in all that time, nobody's gone to excess, we're just normal people
09:44and that's how we were all brought up. So it's just a miracle.
09:50It was very interesting how Athol Guy saw that in order to be really
10:00successful and I suppose world-famous you had to get out of Australia and the
10:05four of you took... But we didn't think of it that way. You didn't think of it that
10:09way? No way. We went off because he worked in advertising, don't forget, he's a bit
10:14of a wheeler-dealer and he realised that he could wangle a free trip with the
10:19shipping company whose account he was handling at J Walter Thompson. So it was
10:24all about the boat trip? It was a free boat trip. He just told the guy, oh yeah
10:29don't worry we'll play for dancing. We never played for dancing. So I had to
10:34take all my sheet music so I could play the piano when we played for the dancing
10:38and down the other end of the ship in the afternoons we used to sing our folk
10:41songs. That's how we got to England, thinking we were going for 10 weeks. What
10:48did you intend to do once you arrived in Southampton and then went to London?
10:53Well I was going to see my sister first and foremost because she'd already got
10:57over there. I mean we didn't know what we were... We were assuming we might get some
11:02work and Athol and you know the boys they were all sort of geared up to talk
11:06to agents when they got there. So one way or another we went we were given
11:11opportunities to perform in clubs but the first night it was just simply one
11:17night and we went on television because the Tonight Show said oh they're an
11:23Aussie group who've just arrived in Australia. It was newsworthy. So the very
11:26first night in London we actually went on television. It doesn't make sense does
11:32it? We still weren't going to be pop stars. Nobody... We hadn't even made a pop
11:36record. So that was like not what we were expecting to have happen at all. It was a
11:41very very rapid rise and in fact by 1965 so you were only 20, 21, 22? Yeah 20 when I
11:50actually left Australia. I turned 21 and I had to ring and tell mum on my 21st
11:57birthday in fact I rang her to tell her which was horrifically difficult to say
12:02look I'm not going to come back as planned because we the great
12:06organisation had offered us what you would call a summer season. So the idea
12:10was that we were making a commitment to stay in England for 12 months and that
12:15was like last thing we expected to happen so I had to kind of shock mum and
12:19dad to say look I'm not actually going to come back. So this whole trip in a
12:24sense was it was almost like four Aussie backpackers going to London. Yes. But
12:31making very good all of a sudden. Yes. A lot of people think we went overseas to
12:35become pop stars or that we were already successful in Australia or something
12:40like that you know but it wasn't like that. No it was just in the spirit of the
12:43fact that most Australians tried to find a way to get to London. Everybody wanted
12:48to go away and be overseas. That was what you did when you were young and of course
12:53in the state of in the case of women most women thought that you'd be sort of
13:00seen to be on the that you'd be an old maid or you'd be on the shelf by the
13:03time you were 25 if you weren't married. So I was saying okay well I'll get
13:09overseas and of course I wanted to be I thought I might be going to be going to
13:12become an opera singer or musical comedy or something so I thought well there's
13:16only a couple of years to do that in and then presumably I'll be getting married.
13:19So that was how women thought in those days you see. Between 1965 and 1967 which
13:27was when the Seekers dominated the music charts around the world that was when
13:32the Beatles were were huge. How did you view a group like the Beatles and do you
13:39ever know how they viewed you? Well I always thought of other people as being
13:45famous so even though I felt just like a normal person and oh there's nothing
13:49special about me it's sort of other people have drawn to my attention and
13:54what exactly we'd achieve and of course now we've been given these incredible
13:58honours you know in the in the Australian Honours list and you know and
14:02realised well wow you know we really did become Australians of the Year and
14:05all this sort of thing. It's helped me appreciate all those things. But in that
14:10time say for example between 1965 and 1967 were you able to wander around
14:17London as a normal person doing normal things? Well it was different for because
14:25we were very normal people in our attitude we weren't mobbed we didn't
14:32have a screaming crowd you know people weren't we weren't deafened by the
14:37people screaming like the Beatles were. When we did Wembley Stadium for instance
14:41you could hear us perform when the Beatles came on stage on exactly the
14:46same bill everybody screamed because everybody did scream at the Beatles you
14:50see and you couldn't even hear the music. So it's a different there's a
14:55different level of appreciation with the Seekers music and the different
14:59attitude of the fans who are Seekers fans. It's a really interesting one I
15:06mean we didn't go to America which is a pity in a way that we didn't go when the
15:12Seekers had Georgie Girl as number one in America for instance. We were in
15:17England and that in a way was not good management. I see that now in hindsight
15:22not that I had anything to do with management but there were quite a few
15:27things that meant that it was very hard for people to put us in the perspective
15:31of the fact that probably we really had the same number of fans as the Beatles
15:36did at that time.
15:43After so many years of success you pulled the pin you were the one that
15:48told the three men that you were leaving the group. At the time you said
15:54that you'd seen yourself as someone who wasn't particularly attractive, was
15:59overweight, who was lonely, unhappy and unfulfilled. Yeah that's funny I mean I
16:06certainly didn't just suddenly leave the group you know we'd all said that we
16:09would give each other six months notice if we wanted to leave and I didn't know
16:13what to do because the longer I was with the group the more popular we were
16:17becoming. We could have kept going for another 50 years and nothing would have
16:21changed but for me because I was aware that probably being I was just 25 well
16:28at that time I was 24 I thought well I mean if ever I'm going to get married I
16:34won't have many more I'll only have another half a year or something and
16:38then I might be married with children and I won't have a chance to sing on my
16:41own. So that was one thing and plus the fact I still hoped I might have had a
16:44chance to sing opera there were a lot of unfinished question playing the
16:48piano I was going to go back to that so I had a lot of ideas so I thought well
16:53I'll just go back to Australia and find out what musically I might enjoy doing
16:58before I get married and settle down. Let's talk a little bit more about your
17:04life apart from the Seekers. You met Ron Edgeworth when you're about 25 you got
17:13married to him. You've had many aspects of your life that some of us would
17:18regard as extremely challenging. While you were married to Ron for 25 years he
17:24sadly died in the early 90s of motor neuron disease. You've been involved in a
17:30terrible car accident and even a few years ago you had a brain hemorrhage.
17:36When you look at all these challenges that you've had in your life do you know
17:42why you've been challenged? Have you worked that out? I'm very grateful that I
17:47have been. I think it's shown me what life should be. I mean you imagine if I'd
17:52stayed in the Seekers for that 50 years I would have never known a lot about
17:58reality in life and I've learned a lot you know it's given me a lot of positive
18:04values rather than regrets or superficial values and of course meeting
18:11Ron in himself. What a marvellous person. He taught me with challenges
18:19you're speaking of as you say like the car accident for instance. Now you know
18:27all of a sudden the girl died in the other car and Ron and I had been
18:33doing concerts for the previous many years. One of the songs I'd written which
18:39was called All Through Life and those lyrics I'd already been talking about
18:44challenges. So as soon as that car accident happened I had the lyric of
18:50this song that I composed which helped me understand well all through life you
18:55had to take the good with the bad. It's hard but it's not just me. Everybody has
19:00adversity in their lives and we all have to find ways of overcoming them. We
19:05can't just kill ourselves which is what a lot of other people are doing. You
19:09can't do that. You've got to soldier on, make the best of it, look for the
19:15positive in everything you know and you've got to get through to the other
19:18end and hopefully meet your maker or whatever your beliefs you know take
19:22where they take you. But have you ever found yourself at such depths that you
19:27haven't been able to see the sunny side? Never. I've had that in my life ever. Even
19:34before I had the spiritual understanding that I do because I had
19:37the music and this is what I really hope make this what this may program may
19:42convey to people. Music from my early age when I was singing and playing music and
19:47my parents when we were hearing and sharing songs music and lyrics that were
19:53uplifting. They're marvellous marvellous songs that people could be using all the
19:59time. Instead of waking up and saying oh I'm so depressed I've got to take a pill
20:03to uplift me. You just sing the song and you forget your troubles which is what
20:08people in the war did. You spoke earlier about your spiritual understanding. You
20:14sound as if that came to you suddenly. Did it? Well certainly reading spiritual
20:22books and understanding the whole concept of reincarnation and destiny and
20:30all those you know spiritual thoughts with it's definitely unquestioning
20:36faith. First and foremost that there's you know I've never entertained the
20:41thought that there's nothing beyond this life but it's of course developing a
20:45whole perspective on that you know and that's a mark that's the my biggest
20:49challenge in life more than anything else that's what I value more than
20:53anything else. When you say it's your biggest challenge? To truly embrace that
20:59that's what I value more than anything and everything else is sort of yes all
21:04right you come and go but it's beyond this life that we should be putting our
21:10focus on. Yeah that's how I see it. A musical has been written about the life
21:16of the seekers about the life of the group in a sense it's it's like a
21:22summary of at least part of your life. I wonder do you think about what you
21:29would have liked to have gone into that musical that perhaps didn't go there
21:33were a lot of secrets I suppose left out? Yes look of course but this is a very
21:41very entertaining show. Certain things needed to be in there to make it
21:47enjoyable to certainly tell a story of the seekers to bring the story of the
21:54seekers to life which is what everybody loved and there has to be a limit to
21:59what you can encapsulate in two hours of absolute entertainment of highs and
22:04lows that all have huge depths and meaning and that will bring something to
22:08life for people where they'll appreciate because it's part of their story too.
22:13The Georgie Girl musical is a is a very fitting tribute. I wonder do you ever
22:19think about the legacy that you are leaving? I'm starting to think about it
22:24more and more. I really am. I yeah and I mean this is because other people have
22:30made me value it. Other people's appreciation their expression of their
22:35appreciation. I can see it's a legacy and of course the fact that I can go to a
22:39museum and I can see one of my dresses there I start to think you know I mean
22:44even if they did have it displayed back to back to front and I had to tell them
22:48by the way that dress I wore the other way around so it's good that while I'm
22:52still alive you see I'll be able to fix things. If you had the chance to write
22:59your legacy you know to tell people what it is that you hoped you had left them
23:06do you know how you would describe that? I think it's too soon. I hope I live a
23:15bit longer so I could answer you that question because it's unfolding all the
23:19time. See the songs that I've written I'm still not quite sure I mean what role
23:25they have and what yeah apart from the Seekers of course the Seekers is the
23:30main thing. You had been one of the most discussed people always talked about
23:37always photographed your interest in raw food and your whole diet and there was
23:44this lovely quote I have to read you this one quote. Your husband Ron once
23:49said that you didn't need to worry about women's liberation because you were
23:53already liberated from the kitchen because you ate a raw food diet and
23:59he's right I see that more that's great that you quoted that I mean look yes
24:06absolutely I mean he went on a raw food diet it's amazing isn't it how many men
24:11would enjoy that you know but I didn't understand it that is so fantastic. But
24:17but even that question about sidestepping women's liberation I mean
24:22that was all going on as you were as you were growing up as you were performing is
24:28there a part of your life that you you remember particularly fondly as the
24:33element that really made you who you are? Well I mean I can't get around the fact
24:39that Ron is it. See Ron's the one who liberated me in every single way he
24:46opened my eyes to everything I can't ever change that he was the greatest
24:52gift how on earth could I find that person yeah I mean we shared so much
24:56musically speaking so he enriched my life with music both music and lyrics
25:01because he wrote both himself and we shared but I also you know for me it was
25:05it was both. Oh goodness me I mean environmentally I mean I said
25:10spiritually earlier definitely environmentally but there's the
25:14philosophies of life you know and of course my worry about my weight now you
25:22see I'm much I mean I they were serious problems I had you know I was so
25:26self-conscious for a very very long time but my worry about having a bad cough
25:31and how to make my health better that I could have a long singing life or you
25:36know how I could live longer than my mother who died at 61 for instance with
25:41you know she didn't have bronchiectasis but she certainly had serious
25:45emphysema so I knew that I had to really look after my health he helped me put
25:50that first we shared when you said the raw food that was all in the quest of
25:54finding the most healthy way of living so you know I became a complete
25:58vegetarian I stopped eating eggs stopped having any alcohol so all those things
26:04meant that I had a positive outlook there's only I mean I could go on and
26:08this could be a mile long. So it wasn't just health it was about seeking a moral
26:13good and spiritual life as well. Absolutely absolutely so many and the
26:20philosophical side but I can't tell you I used to be a really negative person I
26:24mean negative I used to worry all the time every day of my life not only
26:29worrying about weight but just worry negative so Ron he just bounced through
26:36it all in his marvellous positive outlook he really was a real adventurer
26:41and idealist so everything really I can't go back beyond me of course my
26:46parents my parents without a doubt and of course their parents before them you
26:50can't say there's no chain in what led well how did I find Ron and Ron was a
26:55person from England I was from Australia so how on earth could we have met you
27:02know it's all and that was all part of the seekers because it's because of the
27:05seekers that I met Ron so you know what I mean it's just all such an amazing
27:10complicated jigsaw and I see it all I'm so glad to now see it all and have the
27:16understanding and appreciation of it all what a brilliant answer thank you so
27:21much for joining us on one plus one it's been a great pleasure well it's been a
27:25thrill for me and I do appreciate the opportunity thank you very very much
27:28Jane one plus one is available on iview you can browse the archive or contact us
27:35through the website stay in touch and leave comments via Facebook you can also
27:39follow me on Twitter I look forward to your company next time from me goodbye