WIL GREENSTREET / BILLY GREEN

Wil Greenstreet (Billy Green) was born in Leidschendam, Netherlands and was named Wilhelmus Arnoldus Maria Groenewegen. In 1943 The Netherlands was under German occupation and the family was hiding from the Nazis in their attic. His father died shortly after the war in 1949 and in 1952 when he was 9-years-old, the family moved to Australia. Initially, they lived in Orange, NSW until 1955 when his mother remarried which resulted in a move to Harbord (renamed Freshwater in 2008) Sydney. Wil started playing guitar when he was around 13. By the time he turned 14, he had his own acoustic guitar. It was called a Nightingale Jackaroo; painted on it was a Cowboy sitting by a campfire boiling his billy on an open fire. It cost him £18.

In the late 50s, Wil joined his first band called Bix Bryant and the Raiders. They played at a weekly Friday night dance at the Brookvale Theatre in Sydney. He was 15-16 years of age and at that point was already calling himself  Billy Green. The band released some singles which were recorded at Festival Records in Pyrmont. ''Nature Boy'' by Eden Ahbez was also recorded for Festival Records. That track and a few others got a fair amount of airplay on Sydney radio. The Raiders also backed other artists on the Rex label: ''So Sad'' by The Dew-etts (1960) and''Five Brothers'' by Candy Williams (1960). Bix Bryant left the band and they became known just as The Raiders. The band ended up playing at the Bondi Royal Hotel six nights a week and Saturday afternoons. By that time they had gone through several singers.

One Sunday afternoon at home in Bondi, Sydney, Billy heard a band playing on the beach. It was Roland Storm and the Statesmen and that’s where he met Duncan McGuire. Duncan was playing bass with them and they were looking for a replacement guitar player. Billy and Duncan hit it off really well and eventually started their own band called The Epics. From 1964 - 65 The Epics played many Sydney venues mainly Surf City in Kings Cross. The band was signed to the EMI label and released two singles, ''Caravan/Around And About'' and '' Too Late/Please Tell'' (''Around And About'' and ''Too Late'' both written by Green).

In the mid 60s, Rory Thomas joined the band, playing Hammond B3, trumpet, and sax as did drummer Bill Flemming. Renaming themselves The Questions they landed a regular gig at the Canopus Room, a Miller’s Hotel on Manly Beach. They played The Canopus six nights and Saturday afternoons for about two and a half years. They had already released an album, 'What Is a Question?' (November 1966) when a young singer named Doug Parkinson came and sang in one of their Wednesday night talent quests. After hearing him sing they hired Doug to join the band. The Questions recorded their first single with Parkinson out front, ''Sally Go Round The Roses'' which went top 40 nationally.

Right before the 1969 Battle of the Sounds, Rory Thomas quit the band to further his music studies at Berkelee School of Music in Boston, USA, rendering the band a four-piece group. Also by that time Johnny Dick had joined on drums. During that year the band moved to Melbourne and renamed itself Doug Parkinson In Focus. The recording output was quite prolific and the band produced some very fine 45s. Green wrote many of those songs including ''Then I Run'', ''Baby Blue Eyes'', ''Pour Out All You Got'', ''Without You'', ''Caroline'', ''This Must Be The End'' and Purple Curtains''. The band had two top ten hit singles in 1969, ''Dear Prudence'', (a Beatles cover) and the double sided hit ''Without You/Then I Run''. They disbanded in 1970 when Johnny Dick and Doug Parkinson took off to the UK with Vince Maloney (guitar) and Teddy Toi (bass). They started a band there called Fanny Adams and came back to Australia to go on tour and record an LP.

McGuire and Green formed the short lived group Rush with Mal McGee (Python Lee Jackson) on vocals, Kevin Murphy on drums, and Steve Yates on keyboards. After two failed gigs Rush disbanded. Michael Browning and Peter Andrews managed Rush. Peter Andrews was really into Green's compositions. Peter decided that Green should go solo and record a single. He went to EMI studios in Sydney and recorded his version of ''This Must Be the End'' playing all the instruments and singing. Moving to Melbourne, he recorded ''My Name Is Earl'', a pseudo-country tune at Armstrong Studios. It got a fair amount of promo from EMI but never took off! Sometime later Gerry and the Joyband recorded ''My Name Is Earl'', and it did reasonably well. Green produced that session for Gerry.

In 1974 Green wrote the soundtrack for the Ozploitation Biker-Psych Cult Classic, 'Stone'. Previously he had worked on the scores for several small movie sound-tracks including a segment for a movie called Libido (directed by Tim Burstall) and a few tracks on the surfing movie Getting Back To Nothing, a film dealing with the 1970 World Surfing Championships held in May at Bell's Beach, Victoria.

In 1974 after the Stone music soundtrack was all recorded and the movie was released, the musicians that Green had hired for the project announced that they wanted to form a band. They wanted him to keep writing material like that and add a few other players. So, in addition to Graham Morgan on drums, Barry Sullivan (Big Goose) on bass, and Peter Jones on keyboards, they got Mal Logan on keyboards and Keith Sterling on trumpet. This was a true “super group” – no doubt about it and he named it Sanctuary. The band rehearsed for about a month. They gigged at Bertie’s, and the crowd loved it. The band's management suggested that they add a singer for more commercial appeal. Renee Geyer was recruited on vocals. The band didn't last very long because half of the members wanted to go on tour, and the other half wanted to stay put!

In 1975 Billy Green booked his trip to the USA and he has lived there ever since. Green changed his name to Wil Greenstreet and since his arrival in the USA he has formed many versions of his Greenstreet band. The first incarnation was in Houston, Texas, in 1977 playing all his original tunes. He also had a jazz trio in New York under the same name. In 1981 Greenstreet moved to Los Angeles and did a quick trip back to Australia to see family and do a recording with Doug Parkinson, ''You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling''. On his flight back to the USA, he decided that he would take up the sax. Being a huge fan of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter etc he decided that's he wanted to do. Practising for hours every day he was playing professional gigs within two years. Over the last 20 years Green has released a number of albums.

Greenstreet states: I have played in so many situations and with so many great players along the way. I’ve had many versions of the Greenstreet band – duos, trios, quartets, and larger. Lots of times, though, I played solo gigs, and that is actually my favourite way of playing. I love the freedom of it. We lived in Austin, Texas, for ten years (1991 - 2001), and for a long time while there I played solo sax in the street as a busker. From that playing in the street, I was hired to play in a very classy outdoor restaurant, called Mozart, right on the edge of Town Lake. It was during my stint there that I really refined my solo style. At the same time I played a sax and drums duo called Acquaviva, and we played very free jazz. In addition, I had a great funk band called Talk Is Cheap, playing all original sax-lead tunes; we played all the jazz clubs in Austin. It was a great band to dance to.

SINGLES

''This Must Be The End / My Name Is Earl'' 1970 Columbia

ALBUMS

'Stone' [Music Soundtrack From The Movie Stone] 1974 Warner Bros

'Between Iraq & a Jazz Place' 2003

'Blue My Mind' 2014 

'Movimento' 2019

'Pressure (Mad Pleasure) 2019

'Paradigm' 2019

'Upheaval' 2020

'Imagine That!' 2021

'Riding The Harlem Line' 2022

'Dreamstreet' 2022

'Melting Pot' 2022

'Free Radical' 2022

'Whirled Gnus' 2022

References

Wil Greenstreet