James Keays (9 September 1946 – 13 June 2014) was a Scottish-born Australian musician who fronted the rock band The Masters Apprentices as singer-songwriter, guitarist and harmonica-player from 1965 to 1972 and subsequently had a solo career.
The Masters Apprentices had Top 20 hits on the Go-Set National Singles Charts with "Undecided", "Living in a Child's Dream", "5:10 Man", "Think about Tomorrow Today", "Turn Up Your Radio" and "Because I Love You".
[2] His interest in rock music began when he heard "Rip It Up" by Little Richard and "Great Balls of Fire" by Jerry Lee Lewis on a school friend's turntable when he was 11.
Bower supplied the name because "we are apprentices to the masters of the blues—Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, Elmore James and Robert Johnson".
[6] Early original songs were largely written (or co-written) by Bower,[7][8] including Top 20 hit singles, "Undecided" and "Living in a Child's Dream".
[11] Whilst a member of the Masters Apprentices, Keays was one of hundreds of potential national service conscripts whose 20th birthday, 9 September, was picked in a 1966 ballot.
[4][13] After Bower left the group in September 1967, because of a severe nervous breakdown, Keays became the de facto leader, while various line-up changes followed.
[3][4][5] Keays and Ford began working as a song writing team, beginning with "Brigette",[7] released as a single in June, which peaked into the Top 40.
The Masters Apprentices became the "bad-boys of rock",[12] Keays was interviewed for Go-Set by staff reporter, Lily Brett, and the 'expose' was printed on 17 July 1968, headlined "Sex is Thrust upon Us",[12][14] the article and its follow-up, "Whose Breasts Are Best?
Keays stated that there was a backlash from the interview: the roadway outside his flat in East St Kilda was daubed with the slogan "Band Moll's Paradise" in one-metre high letters,[12][15] threats of physical beatings were made by male audience members and press claims that they were "sex maniacs" were regularly printed.
But the leather gear—which resisted even the most ardent fans—provided them with their longest-wearing outfits in years, and Keays maintained that it saved them thousands of dollars.
[14] In April 1970, EMI released the group's most popular single,[10] "Turn Up Your Radio", co-written by Keays and Ford,[7] produced by Howard Gable,[5] and engineered by Ern Rose.
[16] The song was deliberately designed to be loud and offensive, and was intended as the final nail in the coffin to their ill-conceived teenybopper image.
[7][10] Keays and Ford also co-wrote "Quicksand" which was issued as a single by Adelaide-based blues group, The Expression, in June 1970.
[18] Keays and Ford co-wrote "St John's Wood" (mid-1970) for Brisbane-formed group, the Sect, which had relocated to Melbourne in late 1969 and signed with the same booking agency.
[19] From July 1970 the Masters Apprentices had relocated to the United Kingdom where they tried to break into the local market but they disbanded in 1972 without achieving any UK charting.
[3][4] After leaving the Masters Apprentices in early 1972, Keays returned to Australia and completed promotional duties for their just released single, "Love Is", which did not chart.
[20][21] According to Daily Planet's Dean Moriarty the latter festival's promoters had shown "little respect for artists and audience", Keays and his wife "spent a night ... on the ground in the rain".
[4] EMI released a track from the compilation as single by The Masters Apprentices, "Rio de Camero", in August 1974, which garnered radio airplay but it did not chart.
[5][25] It was an ambitious concept LP with the science fiction theme of an alien arriving on Earth to warn of the misuse of power sources.
[5][20] The Canberra Times' Tony Catterall felt the "main concept ... has been done to death" while musically it showed a "lack of expertise ... while striving for effect succeeds only in producing a sea of mud that obscures Keays's lyrics and drowns the individual instruments in a swirl of uninteresting sound".
[20] Some tracks from Boy from the Stars were performed at the final Sunbury Pop Festival in January 1975, by his all-star backing group, Jim Keays Band.
[4][20] As a member of The Masters Apprentices, Keays had endured rip-offs, where promoters had made considerable profits while they had received little payment.
Keays provided lead vocals for Cybotron's Steve Maxwell Von Braund's debut solo album, Monster Planet (1975).
[5][20] He followed with a single-only release, "Give It Up", an anti-drug song, and subsequently toured with the line-up of Allardice, Bridgeford, Creighton, Elliot and Garcia in his backing band.
[5][20] Keays co-produced an album, Riding High (February 1976), by Melbourne-based hard rock group Freeway,[5][26] which Catterall opined had "a serious identity problem ... not knowing if it's the Allman Brothers Band, Grinderswitch or Lynard Skynard [sic], it also has tendencies toward sounding like Bad Company and the Doobie Brothers"; while Keays work is criticised as he "does tend to overuse" synthesisers.
Keays worked as a radio DJ from 1983 to 1987, and was also a producer of Melbourne music program, Performance which was renamed as Night Life, during 1984 to 1985.
He released his next solo album, Pressure Makes Diamonds, co-produced with producer, composer and guitarist, Frank Sablotny (a.k.a.
[38] The TV series inspired the Long Way to the Top national concert tour during August–September 2002, which included a range of Australian acts of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.