New World – Sister Jane

5th April 2021 · 1970s, 1972, Music, Uncategorised

New World are the forgotten band of the early Seventies. Deservedly so, some might say, and they would be right, in musical terms anyway. In legal terms, not so much.

The Australian band, brought to Europe by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, are most famous not for their four hit singles in the early Seventies but for the way they came to fame.

Which was thanks to their record label boss, Mickie Most, fixing it for them to win Opportunity Knocks.

Mike Hurst, their producer, later recalled how he found out when Most assured him they were going to win the TV talent show. “That was my first intimation that things weren’t quite as they should be,” he said.

“A guy from ATV who produced the show said: “And when they win the final…” and I looked at him and said: “How can you be so sure?” and he said: “Don’t worry. We are very sure. They are going to win. That’s when it all came home and i realised it was fixed…. it was nothing to do with me, I was just going to make a record.”

They were even arrested – eventually – but not before they had four hit singles. The first, featured initially on that TV talent show, was a cover of Rose Garden, simultaneously an even bigger hit for Lynn Anderson in February 1971.

Their next, the Chinnichap-penned Tom-Tom Turnaround – also recorded by The Sweet – did even better. Then came the truly execrable Kara Kara. And finally this.

Sister Jane was their fourth and last and least awful, so long as you don’t judge it by this bizarre video, with the three of them wandering through what looks like a private airfield with their acoustic guitars like a mariachi band that’s lost its trumpets and ponchos.

“At that point I gave up on it,” recalls Hurst, who says he did not pick the songs (that was Most’s job) and did not like them. “I really couldn’t take any more and I’d had enough. It was great to have the hits but they just weren’t my cup of tea.”

New World also recorded the original version of another Chinnichap composition, Living Next Door To Alice, before it was a hit for Smokey, a band who seem edgy by comparison to the bland Brisbane trio.