Once 'hated, ignored and rejected', Judge Simon Stretton's punk rock band Black Chrome has found a cult following
Before Simon Stretton became a Judge, he was the singer and guitarist in a little-known punk rock band. (ABC News: Lincoln Rothall)
Simon Stretton had been driven by a desire to change the world from an early age. It's why he spent 14 years working as a District Court judge in Adelaide, overseeing everything from civil to commercial and criminal cases.
But before his legal career, he hoped to spark change through his music, as a member of the punk rock band Black Chrome.
The genre burst onto the international music scene in the mid-1970s. Seen as an aggressive and hostile form of music, it mirrored the social upheaval that was occurring at the time, particularly in the UK: songs like The Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK served as a call to arms and addressed the state of the nation.
The Sex Pistols formed in London in 1975. The band split just three years later. (The Sex Pistols)
"My inspiration for the music was more my appreciation of cultural and social and other bleakness and apathy," said Judge Stretton, who was both guitarist and vocalist for Black Chrome.
"That was what I perceived to be the youth culture that I faced in Adelaide in 1977. And that was the real impetus for Black Chrome and the message we were trying to get across."
'Hated, ignored, rejected'
From the very beginning, Black Chrome experienced insurmountable hurdles.
"We didn't realise at the time how hated and ignored and rejected we would be, because we were certainly the first punk band in South Australia," Judge Stretton said.
Adelaide radio hosts definitely weren't interested in playing punk rock at the time.
"I don't think Australia is ready for the punk rock image. People with rings in their noses and rings in their ears, with a chain combining together, that to me doesn't gel," Adelaide radio host Bob Francis told This Day Tonight in 1977.
A decade earlier, in 1964, Francis had successfully campaigned for The Beatles to come to Adelaide. The clean-cut boys from Liverpool were more Francis's idea of good music than that of the loud, in-your-face style of punk.
The Beatles with Bob Francis at Adelaide Town Hall greeting thousands of fans in 1964. (State Library of South Australia)
"I've gone around to all the announcers here and said, you know, what do you think of it [punk rock]? And they hate it. They don't like it," Francis told This Day Tonight.
"It's not part of our image. If other stations want to play it and it becomes the number one record, well, that's fine.
"But I think everyone has a particular standard to follow in certain music. And I think that we have the right to be able to say, I don't like that particular standard of music and therefore, I don't go play it."
Judge Stretton said radio stations were playing meaningless pop music and Bob Francis had a vendetta against the band.
"He was the antichrist of punk rock. He completely failed to understand the genre," Judge Stretton told 7.30.
"I'd like to bring one point up: the names of groups in punk rock," Francis told This Day Tonight.
Judge Stretton says Bob Francis, pictured above, failed to understand the punk rock genre. (ABC TV)
"There are the Sex Pistols, Stranglers, Boomtown Rats, Backstabbers, Electric Chair, Extermination. And the one group that really burned a fire inside me was a group in Sydney called The Beaumont Children. That really disgusts me."
Three siblings, Jan, Arnna and Grant Beaumont disappeared from Glenelg beach near Adelaide in 1966. Their disappearance still remains unsolved.
"Firstly, there was never a band called The Beaumont Children," Judge Stretton fired back.
"That's a complete fabrication."
Finding acceptance in unlikely places
Trying to get their music played on radio was one thing – the defiant and rebellious image that symbolised punk rock also didn't sit well with Adelaide's music venues.
"No venue would book us. We had to lie and told them we had a musical event," Judge Stretton explained.
"We would just turn up, put our posters on buildings around town and people would just rock up. Then of course someone in the audience would wreck one of the toilets so we would have to leave in a hurry and hope no one found us and sued us."
But there was one place where they could get regular gigs.
"There were these stoned hippies who had these Bihu festivals in the Adelaide Hills. There'd be people called Star Shine and they'd be blowing bubbles, or knitting alpaca jumpers," Judge Stretton said.
Hippies may not have been Black Chrome's target audience, but the band was grateful to be given opportunities to perform. (ABC TV)
"They were just the antithesis of our music, but to their eternal credit, they accepted whoever wanted to play. So we would play last and be very loud and clear the room, but at least they let us play. I think they were too stoned to know what we were playing."
Ironically, the death knell for Black Chrome came when they were interviewed for ABC TV's This Day Tonight. The program had travelled to Adelaide to interview the only punk rock band they could find at the time.
"Once we were on TV that meant we definitely weren't going to any gigs because everyone was aware of us," Judge Stretton said.
Black Chrome featured on an episode of This Day Tonight. (ABC )
The girlfriends of the band members also only realised that their boyfriends were in a punk rock band after the program aired.
"So they broke the band up, is my perception," Judge Stretton recalled.
Despondent, Judge Stretton was going to give it one last shot. He got into his Valiant with 200 copies of the band's one single, Australia's God, and drove to radio stations across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in the vain hope that someone would play their song.
"I can still remember going to the ABC in Sydney. I handed the record to this guy and explained that we were a punk band," he said.
"He looked at me like he had just trodden in shit. He just walked back off through the door and I never heard from him again.
"It's a protest song about Australia's bereft culture. So of course no one was going to play that, because it wasn't a nice song about love."
Black Chrome's appearance on This Day Tonight was the only time the band were on television. (ABC)
He returned to Adelaide feeling rejected and defeated. He decided he was going to have nothing more to do with the music industry. He pursued his legal career and eventually became a judge.
Fast forward to the year 2000 and the onset of the internet and Black Chrome suddenly became cult heroes.
"It was bizarre. People started calling me and saying, 'Can we book your punk rock band?'" Judge Stretton said.
"I resisted for a long time because I thought people would think, 'Who's that old idiot trying to be in a band?' And then I realised that all the other bands are still playing like The Buzzcocks. And people weren't going to treat us like a joke."
Judge Stretton continued with his legal career, retiring in May this year.
"I really did want to make the world a better place and it has been a worthwhile and rewarding job," he said.
"But I feel that I've done my bit now, and it's the right time to retire."
"The big difference now is people will actually listen to us. And the technology means we can publish ourselves, and no one can stop us anymore."
The band's latest project is taking "appalling songs in history and fixing them by playing them in punk." The first song which was recently released is based on the 1977 song Living Next Door to Alice.
"Happily, the dead hand of Bob Francis did not destroy punk."
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