Normie Rowe has long ranked among the most enduring presences in Australian music, his path stretching from early covers of rock ’n’ roll standards such as “Shakin’ All Over” to the role of Valjean in the Australian production of Les Miserables. In that breadth he resembles the English figures Tommy Steele and Joe Brown, though his own work moved across multiple rock styles and touched psychedelia by the close of the 1960s.
He began as a part-time vocalist with no plan to perform professionally, yet lost his daytime employment over the length of his hair and turned to music full time. Performing in a white soul manner reminiscent of Fred Heath—better known as Johnny Kidd of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates—he gained notice fronting the Thunderbirds and held his own against the English groups that ruled Australian charts in the middle of the decade. Television exposure followed, and in 1965 the Playboys scored his first chart entry with a reading of “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”
Later the same year Normie Rowe and the Playboys delivered the biggest Australian rock ’n’ roll success of 1965: a treatment of “Que Sera Sera” cast in the mold of “Louie, Louie” and the approach of “Hang On Sloopy.” Cut rapidly in a single session that left an audible whistle on the finished master, the record outsold every other locally produced rock ’n’ roll release of that year.
Its momentum took him to England. There the Playboys—billed as the Australian Playboys and including Kevin Peacock—issued the 1967 Immediate single “Black Sheep RIP” backed with “Sad,” a striking psychedelic pop outing marked by striking guitar work behind Rowe’s vocals. Like most Immediate releases it failed commercially, yet it has since become a prized collectable. Rowe subsequently toured Canada and the United States, then returned to Australia where he was conscripted and served in Vietnam.
His career never recovered the visibility it held in the mid-1960s. Like many contemporaries he shifted to the cabaret circuit and slowly rebuilt an audience. He continued as a versatile performer and singer, most visibly assuming the part of Jean Valjean in the Australian cast of Les Miserables. In later years he has also campaigned against drug use, prompted by his daughter’s near-fatal struggles with heroin. Rowe endures as a warmly regarded emblem of early Australian rock ’n’ roll and a widely admired musical personality.
