Festival Records

PETER WRIGHT

Mid-1967 saw Peter’s three year contract with EMI run its full term.

He immediately signed with Festival Records where his publishing mentor Joe Halford was now producing. Peter is asked to write a song for

Noleen Batley who is cutting a new Festival single. Peter writes the A-side How Far Is Somewhere while Barry Gibb pens the flip - The Wishing Song.

Peter’s first release on Festival is a self-penned track called House Of Bamboo / Clown Tears (Festival FK-1973, October 1967),

once again a success in Sydney, making both the 2UE chart and Ward ‘Pally’ Austin’s Top 30 on 2UW, where it reached # 3.

Top-flight band The Questions, hit-makers in their own right (and later to become Doug Parkinson In Focus), backed Peter on these recordings.

Peter remembers that he heard House Of Bamboo as a fuzz/overdrive riff...“but none of us had ever seen, let alone played a fuzz unit. We had to learn

it as the tape was rolling”.

Despite a run of well received records in Sydney, which was then the place where the major deals were done, Peter curiously dropped out and quit

that city in early 1968 and a flying under the radar hiatus ensued.

This saw him return to Queensland to establish and operate a recording studio, Toowoomba’s legendary Bakehouse Studio, which he continued

to operate until late 1969. Only one Peter Wright recording was delivered to Festival during this period, a hastily convened cover version of a Vanilla Fudge

B-side (the B-side to You Keep Me Hangin’ On), thought to be solely to honour contractual obligations.

This record - Take Me For A Lil’ While / When I Fall In Love (Festival FK-2565, October 1968) was recorded by Peter at the same sessions that saw

him produce the Chapter III classic - Just Can’t Live Without You / See See What I See (Festival FK-2566, October 1968). Chapter III, which was his

younger brother Kerry’s band, backed Peter on both of his Bakehouse tracks.

With no promotional performances or publicity, Take Me For A Lil’ While eased halfway up the regional charts in the Southern Queensland area

apparently on residual goodwill.

(left) House of Bamboo - Promotional, 1967.

Chapter III at The Bakehouse, 1968.

(l-r) Ron Smith, Ray Moore, Col Zeller, Kerry Wright

Wright’s return into the professional live performance arena came in late 1969. Some months later, in early 1970, Peter accepts a contract offer

from promoter Ivan Dayman (formerly of Sunshine Records fame) not to record...but to go on tour with his recently formed show-group

The Peter Wright Revival in Ivan’s shiny new touring concept, the unprecedented Swinger Circuit.

(above) Peter with Joe Halford at Festival, 1967.

House Of Bamboo (Festival FK-1973)