Review by Lawrie Zion - The Sunday Age 24/10/99
Jim Keays Book Cover

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 "In the second half of the 1960's they were one of Australia's leading rock groups with a string of hits that included 'Elevator Driver' and 'Living In A Child's Dream'. By the early 1970's,they were perched on the edge of what they were entitled to hope was the beginning of a successful international career. But in the end, the Masters apprentices never quite cracked the big time beyond these shores, and in 1972 they returned to Australia and broke up.

End of story? Well not quite, thanks to two very different trips down memeory lane from lead singer Jim Keays and one-time bass player Glenn Wheatley. the latter, of course, is also known for his peripatetic career as a manager, entrepreneur and political aspirant. Not surprisingly, then, 'Paper Paradise' (Glenn Wheatley) is ultimately more interesting as a history of corporate manoeuvrings than as a reflection of the experience of playing in a band - fewer than 60 pages into his 400-page tome, the Masters are well and truly behind us....

....Though it covers considerably less territory, Jim Keays' 'His Master's Voice' is also a more erudite and vivid account of what it was like to be part of rock's halcyon days. And those living in hope of revealing accounts of the sex and drugs in what we now rather coyly refer to as the pre-AIDS era certainly won't be disappointed.

"The back of the bathroom door became the score sheet. The girls came and went, so to speak, and the bathroom door gained more and more notches...Now and then the cry of 'Next' could be heard from the bedroom and one would leave and another enter. almost like a doctor's surgery." (Wheatley's own account backs this up.)

Of his numerous "conquests", Keays confesses: "I took full advantage of the situation, adopting a simple philosophy that if I had the reputation already, why not enhance it further?".....

....Keays also offers an evocative account of other aspects of life on the road, providing entertaining anecdotes about Sydney's underworld, playing for underground "camp" dances, the infamous Battle of the Sounds competition, the joys of having a No.1 record, and the ultimately insurmountable challenge of making it in the UK....

....There is a refreshing directness about the music itself. "It was spontaneous and simple, not cluttered with a million ideas; it was its own idea." And as well as articulating the idealism of a now bygone era without resorting to corny nostalgia, he manages to convey - albeit with perfunctory brevity - the real difficulties faced when coming down from the perch of stardom...."