There's no shrine to the late, great Johnny O'Keefe in Marianne Renate's house. The first wife of Australia's first son of rock prefers photos of her grandchildren to hang in her Gold Coast home than shots of O'Keefe ripping it up onstage. Not that she's bitter about the man she divorced in 1966 after eight turbulent years; it's just that it was all a long, long time ago. In a cabinet underneath the TV, however, is a set of JOK's records. "Here it is," the 64-year-old sighs as she reaches into the LP stack and caresses the cover of I'm Still Alive, O'Keefe's comeback album after a near-fatal car crash in 1960. Renate stares at the photo of O'Keefe's mangled red Plymouth Belvedere and shakes her head. "A lot of his problems," she says, "go back to that smash."

   A car wreck is an apt metaphor for the life of O'Keefe, a fuel-inlected showman who revved a generation of Brylcreamed Australian babyboomers into the rock and roll era and whose stage moves and hedonistic lifestyle paved the way for future rockers. In her new autobiography,

Off the Record (Macmillan), Renate tells how medication prescribed after the smash-which tore O'Keefe's face apart- combined with alcohol, marijuana and schizophrenia to turn her focused, loving husband into an irrational wild man who beat her in a drunken rage. On the eve of the 20th anniversary of O'Keefe's death from a heart attack, Renate recalls, "He became a very sad man, very depressed. It was like he was broken."

       When the young German immigrant first met the "charismatic and lovable" O'Keefe in 1953, he was working in his father's furniture store in Pitt Street, Sydney, and doing odd gigs impersonating American crooner Johnny Ray by night.

        Hooked on early US rock records, O'Keefe wanted to be an Australian Bill Haley or Little Richard, and what he lacked in talent he made up for with a captivating stage presence. "He went at it so hard he was almost a blur onstage," says friend and fellow rocker Lonnie Lee. "Musically he was sound enough to get by," adds conductor and composer Tommy Tycho, who later worked with O'Keefe on the singer's weekly TV music show Sing, Sing, Sing. "Whether he was a good singer or a bad singer, he had the command of the audience."

        In 1957, O'Keefe's big break came when, after years of badgering, he persuaded promoter Lee Gordon to let him perform on one of Gordon's tours featuring US stars Gene Vincent and Little Richard. When the show opened at the Sydney Stadium on Oct. 4 and local boy O'Keefe appeared onstage, "The audience started to boo because they knew they could see him for two shillings and [wanted] to see the big overseas acts instead," recalls Alan Heffernan, Gordon's right-hand man and later O'Keefe's tour manager. "John's attitude was to shout back at them, 'You may hate me now but you're gonna love me before the show's over.' He was right."

         The tour helped launch a blistering career but also heralded O'Keefe's boozing and drug-taking. Fame also exacerbated his penchant for being prickly. "There was a side to him that would want to run through walls and when he bounced off them and fell over, he'd blame other people," says early rock rival Col Joye. "He had his problems." Digger ReveIl, a singer who appeared on O'Keefe's TV shows, remembers a man who "loved cognac and loved a good time. If he needed accommodation, he'd take over the whole floor. But he was also a very kind man-he loved to shout you a beer and did a lot of charity work no-one knew about."

         In March, 1958, O'Keefe released "Wild One." It became Australia's first homegrown hit record and gave O'Keefe his showbiz moniker. Six months later, he married Renate and a whirlwind of touring and partying ensued. "After those early shows he was just go, go, go," says Renate, who was the teetotal, dutiful housewife to O'Keefe's larrikin. "He always went out drinking afterwards." By 1959, he was hosting his own weekly ABC-TV music show, Six O'Clock Rock. With a son, John Jr (two more children, Victoria and Peter, followed), recording commitments, carousing and tours, O'Keefe's life was overheating. "What he really wanted was to make it in America," says Renate. In 1960 he tried and failed. "He was depressed because he bombed out," she says. "He was partying too hard for the Americans and he liked to sneak into the black quarters at night and smoke dope."

        Back in Australia, popularity was not a problem and O'Keefe was soon touring the country again with his band, the DJs. Onstage he was mesnierising, but travelling from show to show he terrified his entourage with his erratic driving. "He should never have been given a licence," says Heffernan. "I loved John, but he was a maniac behind the wheel of a car."

        After a Gold Coast tour in 1960, O'Keefe was driving home to Sydney with saxophonist Johnny Greenan and his wife, Jan. South of Kempsey, the car crossed onto the wrong side of the road and collided head-on with a truck. "I thought it was a plane crash," says Lonnie Lee, following in another car. "It was O'Keefe's car and it was mangled. They all survived but JOK ended up in a terrible way." Lee, familiar with his friend's antics on tour, retrieved O'Keefe's bag of marijuana from inside a hub cap. "If the police found his pot, it would have been strife."

        While he recovered from plastic surgery to his face, doctors prescribed O'Keefe painkillers. "The drugs had an effect on him," recalls Lee. At home in Sydney, Renate, too, began to notice her husband had changed. "He used to have a little box and it was full of pills," she says. "He'd fill his hand with pills and say, 'Look at this,' and throw the whole lot down his throat and wash it down with whisky." Within months, however, O'Keefe was touring again.

          Now he was Australia's biggest rock star, but that was not enough for O'Keefe, who remained determined to succeed in America. In January 1961, he had another crack at the US. Again, America didn't want to know. "The next thing I knew he called me from London," says Renate, "and then

I didn't hear from him for three months. He just vanished. It was terrifying." O'Keefe had overdosed on pills, dope and alcohol in the Dorchester Hotel bar. Carrying no ID, and after telling doctors he was Jesus Christ, he was admitted to a mental institution.

       "When he finally came home, he was off the air-not the man I knew," says Renate. "He was a mental patient and would gibber on about nonsense. We were having dinner and I put my fork on the table and he said, 'What are you doing? Are you tapping a message to the Martians?' It was frightening." O'Keefe later had a nervous breakdown and was consigned to a Sydney psychiatric hospital. When he came out, "he was docile," says Renate. "He was never the same."

        Although O'Keefe eventually improved and landed a new show, Sing, Sing, Sing, on Channel Seven, "He was still drinking and popping pills," says Renate. One night in 1966 he lost control. "He was drunk," Renate recalls. "I'd left Johnny jr's bike on the driveway and he ran over it and crashed into the wall. He was in a rage ... he beat me very badly. I was black and blue from head to toe." When O'Keefe passed out, Renate took the children and fled. The divorce followed.

        Despite the beating, Renate managed to remain friends with O'Keefe, who remarried and performed and promoted younger artists until his death at age 43 on Oct. 6, 1978. Six weeks before, as he watched a TV special on Elvis Presley's demise, he said to his wife, Maureen, "It's going to be like that when I go. I suppose there'll be all that publicity, the crowds and everything." lndeed, thousands lined the streets as his funeral procession made its way to Sydney's Northern Suburbs Crematorium.

        The 20 years since have eased Marianne Renate's pain. "Even though there were the problems, I don't remember him as the troubled star," she says. "I remember him as the children's father, as a husband-as the cheeky little guy who wanted to be a star." .

This article was taken from

the October 12th 1998 Issue of Who Magazine

Used Without Permission