Easybeats

The Easybeats came together in Sydney in late 1964, five migrants from Europe who met at the Villawood Migrant Hostel, and within a year they had Australia screaming. The frenzy got its own name, Easyfever, and the band fed it with songs they wrote themselves, which set them apart from most of their local rivals. Their first album, Easy, from 1965, was all original material. Stevie Wright sang, Harry Vanda and George Young played guitar and wrote, Dick Diamonde played bass, and Snowy Fleet drummed until Tony Cahill took over in 1967.

In 1966 they moved to Britain and cut "Friday On My Mind", a wound-up stomp with a guitar riff that twitches like a clock watcher, and it became the first Australian rock record to break big abroad. They never managed to follow it. Money and contract trouble, drugs and Vanda and Young drifting off on their own pulled them apart, and they went home and broke up in 1969.

The afterlife was busy: Wright scored a solo number one at home with "Evie" in 1974, and Vanda and Young became a writing and production team, producing several albums for AC/DC. The ARIA Hall of Fame took the band in 2005.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.