G. WAYNE THOMAS

G Wayne Thomas was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia in 1968 and started writing music for commercials. He signed with Warners, released a single, ''Take It Easy'' in 1971 which was reasonably successful, getting good airplay. ''Take it Easy'' reached top five on the 2SM chart in Sydney and #58 nationally. Shortly after he produced the soundtrack to the surf movie 'Morning of the Earth', changing what was going to be a Tamam Shud album into a various artists record. It featured Tamam Shud, Terry Hannigan, Brian Cadd, John J. Francis, Peter Howe and three G. Wayne Thomas tracks.

The soundtrack was mostly recorded at TCS Studios in Melbourne, which at the time was one of only two studios in Australia that could provide 16 track recording. Recording was fairly chaotic due to player and band availability, and much is owed to the players who backed up the performers: Duncan McGuire, Billy Green, Mark Kennedy, Phil Manning and Broderick Smith, who sang the Tamam Shud song ''First Things First'' due to Tim Gaze not being well. The soundtrack was released in 1972 along with a single from the album, "Open Up Your Heart / Morning of the Earth". It reached #1 in Sydney and would have made the top ten nationally but for the leading DJ in Melbourne refusing to play the track due to a personal argument he had had with Thomas some months before.

In 1972 he put together a band called Duck to record and produce an album. The band originally comprised Jon English (ex-Sebastian Hardie), Bobbi Marchini, John Robinson (ex-Dave Miller Set, Blackfeather), Bobby Gebert, Larry Duryea (ex Tamam Shud, Heart 'n' Soul)), Teddy Toi (ex Billy Thorpe and The Aztecs) and Steve Webb (ex-Dave Miller Set). The album titled 'Laid' covered songs of other bands.

Thomas started his own label, Warm & Genuine, and released a self-titled album in 1973. He also released six singles. He followed that up with a soundtrack for 'Crystal Voyager'. For this he put together a studio band called the Crystal Voyager Band. It consisted of Thomas, Bobby Gebert, Mick Liber (ex-Python Lee Jackson), Rod Coe (ex-Freshwater) and John Proud. His last release on Warm & Genuine was in 1975 after which he signed with Polydor. In 1979-80 he worked in a duo with Peter Bailey and together they released an album, 'Missing Person' and four singles.

Thomas continued to write and produce music for commercials, including “Spirit of Australia” for Qantas Airlines, the words now written on all of Qantas’ aircraft. He also adapted Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue” from the “Grand Canyon Suite” for United Airlines in America, and all the music, theme and incidental for Malaysian Airlines.

In the late ‘80s, with David Perryman, he produced the original Ray Henwood authored play, “No Good Boyo”, which proved to be one of the hits of the Sydney Festival under Stephen Hall, an old associate from his Opera Company days. The idea of the play is an imagination of what may have happened in the last three missing hours of Dylan Thomas’s life, and it reunited all surviving members of Dylan Thomas’s family from around the world in Sydney for the premier. G. Wayne only occasionally performs in shows around Australia, one of those being as recent as 2014.

SINGLES

Take it Easy

22 NOV '71

#58

Open Up Your Heart

24 APR '72

#21

Everything in You

19 MAR '73

#47

Just to Love You

29 MAR '76

#58

References

http://top100singles.blogspot.com.au/