26/11/2024
Many of you might have been at the Fortitude last night at The Cult, witnessing the incredible performance of Ian Ashbury - and remembering that legendary night in '87 at Easts when on the third encore, ending with Born to be Wild (unknown to the band this was a huge dancefloor filler at Mortica's) the band demolished everything on stage. Have a read of the whole backstory of John and Ian's negotiations with booking and financially guaranteeing the show, no pre-sale tickets, the cyclone, pouring rain, flooding and mud at the venue on the night. And to think, the record company had no intentions of touring the Cult in Queensland.
John on the backstory of booking The Cult and the legendary performance at Easts Leagues Club, Stones Corner, on the 16 October 1987.
'They (the national promoters) said ‘what are you going to do if people don’t arrive. You’ve conned us into giving you the show more or less, or you’ve forced us into giving you the show. You haven’t sold tickets and what are you going to do if people don’t arrive’. I said ‘I’ll just pay you, I’ll just pay you’.
I guaranteed the money. We were going to do this ... I’d done all the promotion, I’d done all the homework on the band. So why wouldn’t I carry through and put my money where my mouth is for this band? I’d just done a few years work on them and made them so popular. By the time The Cult came along, I was well into the whole thing so I’d had about eight years of working out what works and what doesn’t, putting my money into the right places.
Why wouldn’t I put my head on the chopping block … The Stems, The Lime Spiders and all the up-and-coming bands Australian indie bands. We had massive nights, but because you’re recycling money into the bands you’re already promoting – it’s going to be a success. But only we knew that.
For some reason I’ve got the figure of $18,000 (to buy the show) in my mind but I can’t remember. They said ‘you’re not going to sell, you’re not going to presell the tickets!’ I said ‘no, the people will come. Put the show on, the people will come’.
And you know what, there’s a cyclone on the night of The Cult. There’s a cyclone off the coast of Fraser Island and the area where the venue is, is going underwater. Flooding, Deshon Street was flooding. We went ahead and just left it in the lap of the Gods. And then … I mean it was huge. Just put two really good cashiers on the door, not one door, two doors and they arrived, in the cyclone with the area going under, flooding, and they arrived and it was massive ... it was the big history maker.
Then on stage they smashed their gear. They had Mooloolaba to do on the Saturday so we had to replace all the gear to take up the north coast.
And backstage Ian Ashbury said ‘where’s these guys that put on the show, where are they?’ and someone said ‘Ian Ashbury wants to see you’. So I grabbed Ian (Whittred) and fronted up to Ian Ashbury and he said ‘you guys are really cool, you’re really cool’ ... that’s all he said. Because he just had the night of his life, you know.'
Newspaper review of The Cult live performance October 16, 1987 at Easts Leagues Club by Richard Conrad, The Sunday Mail, Brisbane.