New York, NY (Top40 Charts) It was 45 Years Ago this week that 'The Pushbike Song' by The Mixtures entered the UK Top 10, where it would stay for the next 2 months! It was only kept off the No.1 slot by
George Harrison's 'My Sweet Lord'. With the song already No.1 in their homeland of Australia, it was also 45 years ago that the band arrived in the UK for the very first time......and Mick Flinn never went home!
The Mick Flinn band was formed around 5 years ago with Mick Flinn on lead vocals and rhythm guitar,
Peter Lennon on lead guitar, Rickey Simpson Gray on bass and Steve Rolfe on drums. M.F.B have been working flat out in recent years with live gigs and recording their first album entitled �Road To LA�. All tracks on the Album are original songs and written mostly by Mick in the style that he grew up in, Retro 60�s, 70�s, with a splash of now.
Australian born Mick Flinn was the lead singer of the Australian pop group The Mixtures who in 1970 covered the Mungo Jerry hit song �In The Summertime� and took it to No1 throughout Australia. They soon realized that they needed a follow up song and it just so happened that one of the members of the band had written a rock n roll song called �The Pushbike song� but had the wrong beat, so one day Mick said lets slow the song down a bit, play it on a banjo and give it the Mungo Jerry style and I�ll throw in the hook which was �Sh oo oo Sh Ah�. They recorded the song and it went straight to No1.
Their producer
David McKay brought the recording back to the UK just to play to his friends, Polydor heard it and said that�s a hit record and the rest is history.
Mick and the Mixtures were then asked to come to the UK for 8 weeks to promote the record, which then became their first UK hit. �The Pushbike Song� was kept at No2 in the UK chart for 7 weeks by
George Harrison�s �My Sweet Lord� but then dropped into No1 for just one week. Ironically at the same time on the other side of the world in Australia The Mixtures were at No1 and
George Harrison was at number 2. The Pushbike song was a worldwide hit, and sold over a million copies.
�I came to the UK for 8 weeks and stayed 45 years.�
- Mick Flinn
The Mixtures were the first Australian group to top the British charts with a song that was written, recorded, produced in Australia, by an all-Australian group. After releasing two further singles in the UK, the band decided to go back home to Australia but Mick wanted to stay in England to pursue his career, and along with Keith Potger of The Seekers and Australian TV producer
David Joseph he helped form a new group called �Springfield Revival� along with Donna Jones and Ray Martin.
The �Springfield Revival� had a turn table hit in 1972 with their first single �Mamma Was Right All Along�, and the group went on to have the same success as many hit bands of the time without actually having a chart record. In 1973 Mick and The Springfield�s toured
America and the world opening for �The Osmond�s� playing such prestigious venues as Madison
Square Gardens and The Academy awards in Hollywood to name but a few.
The group disbanded in 1975 and Mick went on to write and produce Donna Jones as a solo artist under the name of Pussyfoot, and in1977 they had a No1 single in Australia entitled �The Way You Do It�.
Mick was instrumental in bringing Joe Dolce�s No1 hit song �Shaddup Your Face� to the UK and
Europe and also co-wrote �Do The Conga� for
Black Lace, which more recently was used in the train line TV commercial.
Over the last 13years, as well as performing, producing and writing, Mick has been keeping busy coordinating and producing an annual concert in Hertfordshire in aid of the �Teenage Cancer Trust�, and together with his team has raised in excess of �300,000 for the charity.
