Sunday, November 26, 2017
plays the role of Ted Albert, the band’s producer, in Friday On My Mind.
The two-part series follows the band members from their early days when they met in Villawood to their first meeting with Albert and their global success.
“I think the story is really The Easybeats’ story and I think Ted’s role in it, and the way he would have seen it, is really one of stewardship,” Zukerman said.
In the telling of The Easybeats’ story though, Albert’s role was integral. Zukerman began delving into the history of Albert himself and Albert Productions – the successful Australian label he founded within his greatgrandfather’s publishing and production company, Albert Music.
He discovered that this man who steered The Easy beats’ career and the offshoot songwriting partnership of Vanda and Young was sort of strange and enigmatic.
“I think there is something interesting about the Alberts in that a family, at that time – who were as big as the Packers and had as big, if not more of, an effect on Australian culture – that from Ted Albert onwards they actually made a real specific choice to not be in the public eye, which I think is pretty remarkable,” Zukerman said.
“The Alberts helped support so much of the Australian industry and what Australian culture is today and what we identify as Australian, but they never put themselves front and centre and I think that’s beautiful and I think there’s something hidden in that which is also the key to Ted – he was an entrepreneur driven simply by passion and not ego.”
Zukerman has the weighty task of telling this visionary’s story alongside that of The Easybeats, who were one of the first bands to distinguish themselves as Australian within the world of pop music.
“They actually beat the numbers in Australia that The Beatles had,” Zukerman said.
“This is one of the things that Ted did bring. I think he identified that there was a line to be drawn in the sand between us being an inferior culture, a subset of England, and something that was our own. And I think he wanted to draw that line in the sand because up until that point the charts were full of either remakes of US and British hits or it was the actual US and British hits themselves, so he sought out that Australian voice and he found it in The Easybeats.”