Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I'm your host,
and I am just so thrilled you decided to spend
some time with us today. And I'm your resident
music expert, really excited to dive into this
one. Because we are heading into some, you know,
truly uncharted territory today. Have you ever
found yourself falling down one of those late
night internet rabbit holes? Oh, absolutely.
All the time. Right. You click one link, then
another, and suddenly it's like two in the morning,
and you are staring at a completely forgotten
corner of history that just absolutely captivates
you. Yep. The classic Wikipedia spiral. Exactly.
And that is the exact energy of today's deep
dive. Our entire focus is based on a single Wikipedia
article about a completely obscure... basically
lost musical duo from the 1970s. And honestly,
it really is a remarkable little document. When
you strip it down, it's just a few paragraphs
of text. But hidden inside those paragraphs is
this entire universe of artistic struggle. It
is a story about fierce ambition, the often harsh
realities of the music business, and the lengths
people will go to in order to protect their art.
It's one of those rare glances into a world that
almost completely slipped through the cracks
of history. I mean, before we even start, I want
to validate your time here as a listener, because
while this duo only existed for a very brief
window, about three years, from 1972 to 1975,
their short run is a brilliant case study in
musical ambition and defying local trends. Which
brings us to the core mission of today's deep
dive. We are exploring a fascinating, really
universal question. What happens when your creative
vision is completely, entirely out of sync with
the world around you? Right. It's the ultimate
dilemma. When everything you want to make goes
against the grain of what society actually wants
to consume, what do you do? Do you bend your
art to fit the mold, or do you just double down
and play your harpsichord louder? It really is
the ultimate dilemma for any creator. You are
always balancing commercial viability against
uncompromising artistic integrity. Though, as
we will see, rarely does anyone face that dilemma
as dramatically as our subjects today. Or as
stubbornly. So, let me introduce you to the subjects
of this whole crazy story. We are talking about
an Australian folk music duo called Madden and
Harris. They formed in Sydney, New South Wales
back in 1972. Okay, let's unpack this. Let's
do it. Before we get into the wild music they
actually made, who were David Madden and Peter
Harris, and how did they even end up in a room
together? Well, the foundation of their partnership
is uniquely intimate. There was no grand audition
process, no record label executive artificially
pairing them together to, you know, manufacture
a hit group. David Madden was simply a guy taking
guitar lessons, and his music teacher was a man
named Peter Harris. A student and his guitar
teacher. That just changes the entire dynamic
of a band right from the start. You have that
built -in mentorship, that inherent power structure
of the teacher imparting knowledge to the student.
Exactly. And then they just decide to throw that
out the window and step onto a level playing
field as creative partners. But when you actually
look at the division of labor in this so -called
duo, that level playing field starts to look
pretty tilted. Oh, very tilted. What did each
of these guys actually do in the band? This is
where their story immediately veers off the path
of a traditional folk act. Let's start with David
Madden, the student. His contributions were exactly
what you would expect from one half of a 1970s
folk duo. Okay. He handled vocals, he played
the guitar, and he played the bass. Which is
a completely respectable workload. You have the
rhythm, you have the melody, you have the voice.
Yep. If you are sitting in a coffee shop watching
a folk duo, that is what you expect one of the
guys to be doing. Precisely. It is perfectly
standard for the genre. But then we look at the
teacher, Peter Harris. Oh boy. Yes. His list
of contributions is staggering. In addition to
providing vocals, guitars, and bass himself,
Harris brought in a bassoon. A bassoon? A bassoon.
He brought a cello, he brought a harpsichord,
a mandolin, a mellotron, a piano, an organ, a
saxophone, and a zither. I just have to stop
you there. A bassoon. A zither. I mean... What's
fascinating here is the sheer undeniable contrast
between the concept of a simple two -man folk
duo and the massive, almost unhinged orchestral
ambition of Peter Harris. It is a phenomenal
list of instruments, and we really have to consider
what these instruments actually are. A zizzer,
for anyone unfamiliar, is this obscure flat wooden
sound box with numerous strings stretched across
it that usually play flat on a table. Not exactly
a campfire instrument. Not at all. And a bassoon
is a massive, incredibly complex woodwind instrument
that belongs in a classical symphony. Not a local
pub gig. Just imagine you were a local venue
owner in Sydney in 1972. You book a folk duo
for a Tuesday night. You expect two guys in denim
jackets to show up with a couple of acoustic
guitars. Yeah, standard gig. And then Peter Harris
pulls up to the back alley and starts unloading
a cello, a bassoon, a delicate classical harpsichord,
and a literal Mellotron out of the back of a
moving van. It's like a weekend hobbyist showing
up to a casual gig with a full symphony orchestra.
in their van. The logistics alone are hilarious.
How do you even move a Mellotron around in the
70s? That logistical nightmare is exactly what
highlights their incredible dedication. A Mellotron
is not a modern, lightweight synthesizer. It
is a notoriously heavy, temperamental beast of
a keyboard that uses actual physical loops of
magnetic tape to simulate the sound of an orchestra.
If you bump it too hard, the tapes can tangle.
So incorporating a Mellotron alongside a fragile
harpsichord into a local gigging folk act is
not an accident. It is a very deliberate, uncompromising
artistic choice. It tells you that Peter Harris
had a sound in his head, and he was not going
to compromise that sound for the sake of convenience.
Definitely not. But that uncompromising vision
walks them right into a massive culture clash.
Let's look at the environment they were trying
to survive in. Right, the local scene. The Australian
local music scene in the early 70s was not exactly
a gentle, welcoming place for a guy playing a
zither. We have a perspective from an Australian
musicologist named Ian McFarlane, who points
out that the local scene at that time was completely
dominated by pop and what he calls blues and
boogie. You really have to visualize the atmosphere
of that scene to understand what Madden and Harris
were up against. Blues and boogie implies loud,
driving, pub -oriented rock and roll. Sweaty
rooms. Exactly. Think about the venues. Sweaty,
crowded rooms filled with people drinking heavily.
Music that succeeds in that environment is aggressive.
It's highly rhythmic and it relies heavily on
overdriven electric guitars and pounding drum
kits just to cut through the ambient noise of
the crowd. And right into the middle of that
sweaty, loud, beer -soaked boogie scene walks
Peter Harris carrying a bassoon and asking the
crowd to quiet down so they can hear the delicate
strumming of a mandolin. Quite the picture. McFarlane
specifically notes that Madden and Harris' sound
was fundamentally at odds with prevailing trends.
They categorize... themselves as progressive
folk. And the critic Richie Unterberger from
AllMusic observed that their specific brand of
mild folk rock was heavily influenced by British
folk rock and British progressive rock. If we
connect this to the bigger picture, this is a
crucial takeaway for you listening right now.
It takes an incredible amount of courage or perhaps
just sheer blind stubbornness to play delicate
British -inspired classical prog in a local scene
that just wants to hear loud blues. Yeah, they
were swimming against a massive cultural tide.
Absolutely. British progressive rock is characterized
by complex time signatures, pastoral, nature
-based themes, and classical instrumentation.
It is music that demands your full attention.
It demands quiet, focused listening. And trying
to deliver that to an audience primed for loud,
aggressive boogie rock is a monumental challenge.
It's the ultimate test of artistic belief. It
really is the ultimate test. It's like trying
to serve a delicate, multi -course whispering
tea service right in the middle of a monster
truck rally. That is exactly what it's like.
The crowd just isn't there for it. But here's
the wild twist to the story. Despite being these
total undeniable outliers, they actually started
to gain some real traction. Which is the most
surprising part of their trajectory. The historical
record shows that in 1974, they managed to issue
their debut single, a track called Remember Me.
And they didn't just press it themselves in a
garage. No, it was released on the Albert Music
label. Getting signed to a label like Albert
Music in that era is a huge deal. It means somebody
with a budget. looked at this bizarre heavily
orchestrated folk duo and said yes there is a
market for this yep but it gets even weirder
they didn't just release a single they actually
scored three separate appearances on a very popular
music series on abc tv called gtk gtk which stood
for get to know was a major cultural touchstone
for australian music at the time Exactly. And
they were on this national show once in September
of 1974, and then they were invited back twice
in November of that same year. Now, I have to
ask you, is it really that impressive to be on
a TV show three times in three months? Or was
it just a slow news month for Australian television
in 1974? It is incredibly impressive, especially
for an act so far outside the mainstream. Television
appearances, particularly recurring ones on a
show like GTK, offer a massive platform. Yeah,
that makes sense. It suggests that while they
were completely out of step with the sweaty pub
scene, there was an undercurrent of genuine interest
in their highly refined approach. The television
producers clearly saw something visually and
musically compelling about them. Seeing a band
utilizing cellos and Mellotrons on a national
broadcast would have been striking. It definitely
provided them with the crucial momentum they
needed for their next and ultimately final major
step. Here's where it gets really interesting.
They took all that momentum from the television
appearances and parlayed it into recording their
debut album. Their one and only album together.
Right. It was recorded in 1974 and officially
released in May of 1975 on the Jasmine Records
label. The album was called Fool's Paradise.
And honestly, given how completely out of place
they were in the Sydney music scene, naming their
album Fool's Paradise feels like a moment of
incredible, almost painful self -awareness. It
is a perfectly evocative title for their situation.
And when they finally got into the studio to
record Fool's Paradise, they didn't just rely
on Peter Harris's one -man orchestra skills to
carry the entire project. They actively sought
out collaborators to round out their complex
sound. They brought in session musicians, which
makes sense. They had Paul Baker join them on
bass guitar. But then, and this is the detail
that absolutely stops me in my tracks, they brought
in drummers. Three of them. Three drummers. Nick
Churkin, Doug Gallagher, and Ross Rignell. Three
different session drummers for an album of delicate,
progressive, British -style folk. How does that
even work? Are they all playing at once in some
massive drum circle? How do you fit three drummers
into a fragile folk song? It is a deeply strange
detail that speaks volumes about their recording
process. They almost certainly weren't playing
simultaneously. Okay. Using multiple session
drummers on a single album usually implies a
highly fragmented, drawn -out recording schedule.
Or, more likely for a progressive band, it implies
a desperate attempt to capture very different,
highly specific rhythmic feels for different
tracks. So they were choosing a very specific
sound. Exactly. It shows that Madden and Harris
but likely Harris in particular, were striving
for a meticulously constructed, almost perfectionist
sound on Fool's Paradise. They were hunting for
the exact right groove for every single classical
folk hybrid they wrote. That level of perfectionism
is exhausting just to think about. So the ultimate
question is, after all that effort, all those
instruments and all those drummers, did they
actually achieve a masterpiece? Well, that depends
on who you ask. Right. We are incredibly lucky
to have some fantastic retrospective dueling
reviews from the critics we mentioned earlier,
which really helps gain a picture of what this
lost album actually sounds like. Let's start
with the glowing praise from Ian McFarlane. He
absolutely loved it, didn't he? McFarlane's assessment
is about as high a praise as a progressive folk
band could ever hope to receive. He described
Fool's Paradise as a carefully crafted song cycle
full of fragile, refined songs. But the really
important part of his review is the heavy -hitting
comparisons he makes. He does not hold back.
He compares their sound to UK folk, acts like
Nick Drake and Mellow Candle. Huge names. For
anyone who might not know, Nick Drake is legendary
for these incredibly intimate, melancholic acoustic
masterpieces that feel like they are being whispered
directly into your ear. And Mellow Candle was
this brilliantly obscure Irish folk rock band
famous for their haunting, complex vocal harmonies.
Those are massive cultural touchstones for folk
music, but McFarlane pushes it even further.
He compares Fool's Paradise to the softer side
of the Moody Blues and the quieter pastoral moments
of early King Crimson. King Crimson, the Moody
Blues. We are talking about the absolute titans,
the founding fathers of progressive rock. To
have your obscure 1975 Australian folk album
compared to the quiet genius of early King Crimson,
that suggests Madden Harris actually pulled off
a miracle. It paints a vivid picture of this
album as a lush, lost masterpiece of pastoral
beauty. It certainly does. But as with all art,
subjective experience varies wildly and history
isn't always unanimous. We have to contrast McFarlane's
deeply romantic assessment with Richie Unterberger's
review for all music. Unterberger offers a much
more grounded perspective. He does. Unterberger
is definitely more measured. He gives the album
three and a half stars, which is certainly respectable,
but his description is far less glowing. He straight
up calls it a decent, if somewhat derivative,
British folk rock style album. Derivative is
a strong word there. Yeah. He notes that it went
in a slightly less pop oriented direction and
was heavily colored by classical music and progressive
rock. It is a fascinating critical divide, and
it hits on a tension that still exists in music
today. Where McFarlane hears a carefully crafted
song cycle that is fragile and refined, Unterberger
hears something that is decent, it's somewhat
derivative. Right. Unterberger is pointing out
a harsh reality. By heavily borrowing the sounds
of British, Prague, and folk, Madden and Harris
were essentially imitating a style that had already
been established thousands of miles away in the
UK, rather than innovating something genuinely
new in Australia. It is the classic debate of
originality versus execution. you, the listener,
into this for a second. Think about your own
favorite playlists right now. When you discover
a new band, what stands out to you? That's a
great question to consider. Does it bother you
if a band sounds exactly like your favorite artist
from the 1970s? Are they creating a beautiful,
loving homage that captures the magic of their
influences? Or are they just a derivative copy?
Is it the allure of discovering fragile, refined
music? Or do you worry about the danger of listening
to something that is just a lesser version of
King Crimson? That tension is exactly what makes
exploring lost media so rewarding. You have to
listen for yourself and decide whether the artist
achieved true transcendence or just skilled replication.
But the tragic part of the Madden and Harris
story is that they didn't stick around long enough
to debate their own critical legacy. No, they
absolutely did not, because the end of the road
for this duo came incredibly fast. It is an abrupt,
almost jarring end to the narrative. The duo
officially disbanded in 1975. And what is so
crazy about that timeline is that 1975 is the
exact same year their album Fool's Paradise was
finally released in May. It is a surprisingly
common yet always heartbreaking phenomenon in
music history. The sheer physical and psychological
effort of writing, recording with an arsenal
of instruments and multiple drummers, and finally
fighting to release an album that goes against
the grain of the entire local music scene. It
can completely exhaust a band's creative and
interpersonal resources. Yeah, the burnout is
real. Often, by the time the record is actually
pressed and on the shelves, the energy that brought
the musicians together in the first place is
completely gone. Burnout is a very real thing.
It makes total sense. You spend all this time
building your elaborate fool's paradise, hauling
your bassoon into hostile pubs, you finally get
the record pressed on Jasmine Records, and then
the tank is just empty. It's over. But importantly...
This was not the end of music for Peter Harris.
No, not at all. He pivoted almost immediately.
In that exact same year, 1975, Peter Harris...
Released a solo album. Yes, he released a solo
record called Ruby. And this wasn't some tiny
independent release that he sold out of his trunk.
He put Ruby out via Ritz Gramophone, which was
distributed by Festival Records. Which is a big
deal. A major established player in the Australian
music industry. Clearly, even after the duo collapsed,
Harris still had the relentless drive and the
industry connections to keep pushing his vision
forward. And what did that vision sound like
now that he was operating without his student?
david madden we have a really insightful review
from a radio program called back to vinyl hosted
by music presenters jordy and david kilby they
reviewed ruby and highlighted a fascinating evolution
in harris's sound The Kilbys noted a major shift.
Hare started mixing his established progressive
folk sounds with synthesizers. Wow. He is taking
the classical foundation, the harpsichords and
woodwinds of Fool's Paradise, and he is injecting
early electronic instruments into the mix. And
the Kilbys emphasized just how radically unique
this approach was, stating plainly that Ruby
was unlike anything else being made in Australia
at the time. Unlike anything else being made
in Australia at the time. That quote just perfectly
encapsulates Peter Harris. Even after his band
broke up, he was still out there stubbornly refusing
to conform to the blues and boogie scene. Totally.
He remained completely committed to being a musical
outlier. He was still swimming against the tide.
He just swapped out some of his acoustic instruments
for synthesizers. It is a testament to an absolutely
unyielding artistic compass. He knew what he
wanted to hear, and he chased it regardless of
the prevailing winds. But what about the legacy
of the duo itself? Did Fool's Paradise just vanish
into the ether, completely forgotten by time?
This is perhaps the best part of the whole story.
There is a final, beautiful piece of vindication
for Madden and Harris. It took almost two decades,
but in 1994, Fool's Paradise was resurrected
from the ashes of obscure music history. A long
wait, but worth it. It was officially reissued,
complete with bonus tracks, by a record label
that has quite possibly the greatest name I have
ever encountered in my life. Vicious Sloth Collectibles.
Vicious Sloth Collectibles. It is a phenomenal
name, and it is perfectly evocative of that very
specific, deep, crate -digging, obscure record
-collecting subculture. Yeah. That is a culture
that exists. solely to champion exactly this
kind of lost idiosyncratic music. They are the
archivists of the weird and the wonderful. They
really are. So what does this all mean? We've
gone from simple guitar lessons in a room in
Sydney to hauling delicate zithers into sweaty
rock pubs, to utilizing three different drummers,
to dueling critical reviews, to an immediate
breakup, and finally to a reissue by a vicious
sloth. What is the big takeaway from all of this?
To me, Madden and Harris serve as a powerful,
enduring testament to the importance of following
your own peculiar muse. They were completely
unapologetically out of step with their time
and their place. They certainly never conquered
the blues and boogie shards of 1970s Sydney,
and their partnership barely lasted three years.
But their unwavering commitment to their unique,
multi -instrumental, progressive folk vision
ensured one very important thing. What's that?
They weren't just another generic bar band. that
faded away into total anonymity. That stubbornness
earned them that 1994 reissue, and it secured
them a permanent, genuinely fascinating footnote
in music history. They created something distinct
enough to still be debated, analyzed, and loved
decades later. That is a victory for artistic
integrity. I love that perspective. They built
their highly specific weird little fool's paradise,
and eventually enough time passed that the rest
of the world found the map to get there. Precisely.
And this raises an important question for you
listening to us right now. If a highly trained
music teacher and his guitar student could manage
to create a lost masterpiece of fragile, classical
-infused folk right in the middle of a loud,
boogie -obsessed 1970s Australian rock scene,
What hidden, entirely out -of -place gems are
being created in your own city right now, just
waiting for the rest of the world to catch up?
Oh, that is such a phenomenal thought to leave
on. Keep your ears open for the quiet weirdos
in your own neighborhood, folks. Thank you so
much for joining us on this deep dive. We absolutely
loved unpacking the strange, beautiful, and stubborn
story of Madden Harris with you today. Until
next time, keep exploring, keep questioning what
you listen to, and we will catch you on the next
deep dive.