#20: Friday On My Mind by the Easybeats
City: Edmonton, AB
Radio Station: CJCA
Peak Month: June 1967
Peak Position in Edmonton: #3
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #9
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #16
YouTube: “Friday On My Mind”
Lyrics: “Friday On My Mind”
Stephen “Stevie” Carlton Wright was born in Leeds, England, in 1947. When he was nine-years-old his family moved to Melbourne, Australia. He moved to Sydney and joined a local band called The Outlaws. By 1964 Stevie had formed Chris Langdon & the Langdells. While he was with this band he met Johannes Hendrikus Jacob van den Berg. Johannes was born in the Netherlands in 1946. When he turned 13 he taught himself to play guitar in his family’s tenement home. He played guitar in a band called The Starfighters, based in The Hague. When he was seventeen his family moved to Australia in 1963. The following year, going by the anglicized name of Harry Vanda, he became the lead guitar player for a Sydney band called The Easybeats. A co-founder of the band was George Young. Also an immigrant to Australia, in his case from Glasgow, Scotland, George Redburn Young was born in 1947. He was a rhythm guitarist. After one of the coldest winters in Scotland on record in 1962, the Young family saw a Television ad from the Australian government promising travel assistance for families seeking a new start with a life in Australia.