Idris & Evan Jones
Broken Hill brothers Idris and Evan Jones became internationally famous when, in 1971, their original composition The Pushbike Song became a number one hit in Australia and was in the U.K. top 10. In the year it was released, the Pushbike Song was only nudged off being top of the charts by George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord. The single sold over one million copies worldwide.
In Australia, the Jones brothers have become music history, both as performing musicians and by writing songs that were recorded by music greats such as The Angels, the Twilights, Rose Tattoo and Redgum.
Growing up in a large family in 1940s and 50s Broken Hill provided not only an environment to be inventive, it was a time for being resourceful and for making the best of what you had. These qualities, present in so many Broken Hill people, shot the Jones brothers to international stardom.
Looking for adventure, Evan and Idris left Broken Hill in 1969 and headed for Sydney, where they played in bars and tried their luck in the city’s music scene. After jobbing as musicians and performing as The Gingerbread Men in Sydney clubs, the Jones brothers wrote The Pushbike Song. The song was first recorded in Adelaide by the The Mixtures, with Idris as vocalist, then covered by many top bands of the 1970s. The brothers toured Australia with The Gingerbread Men, with Tony McNicoll and Dean Birbeck, doing live shows and recording throughout the 1970s.
The Pushbike Song touched a nerve in the culture of the time: it was upbeat and popular, the tone carefree. The black & white 1970 music video of the song shows the band and some extras riding bicycles through busy central Melbourne in pursuit of a girl on a bicycle. By the end of the song the lead singer and the girl are riding tandem: ‘a bicycle built for two.
Evan Jones’ singer/songwriter music career was interrupted by doing military service in Vietnam where he was an Intelligence Dutyman and Photographer. He was a television host for a time, then returned to Broken Hill in 1993, and then took a Visual Arts degree. He now works as a painter and photographer and has exhibited at the Horizon Gallery in Silverton and the Adelaide Central Gallery.
The lyrics of the Pushbike Song have stayed with many who grew up with it, and also those who didn’t. The song is about enjoying the simplicity of life and has since been interpreted as having environmental overtones; about being kinder to the earth and creating change. Growing up in Broken Hill, Idris and Evan Jones knew a thing or two about freedom; of being out in the sun and living close to the natural world.
Audio transcript available.