Home > The Skyhooks

The band shocked conservative middle Australia with their outrageous (for the time) costumes, lyrics, and on-stage activities, leading to nine of the eleven tracks on their first album being banned from commercial radio. Beyond this, although the Skyhooks were not the first Australian rock band to write songs in Australia, about Australian, for Australians (rather than ditties about love or songs about New York or other foreign lands), they were the first band to do so and be commercially successful. Indeed, the the 'Hooks were the success story of their era. Their first album, Living in the Seveties rocketed to the top of the charts and stayed there for so long that it became the best selling Australian album ever, and the follow-up, Ego s not a Dirty Word, became a close second.

Over the next few years, the Skyhooks gradually faded from the public eye, though it should be noted that the two or three subsequent albums were poor sellers only by comparison with the astonishing success of the first two.

Lead singer Graham "Shirley" Strahan and guitarist Red Symons both went on to successful careers in Australian commercial television. Songwriter and bass player Greg Macanish lives in semi-retirement in Melbourne.

The name "Skyhooks" comes from an imaginary device created in the book Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator used to hold the elevator up in mid-air. See skyhook.