| Mike's
Pith & Wind - Charisma
The Concise Oxford Dictionary that Ross &
Pat Wilson gave me in 1970 doesn’t even have the word, which
tells you something about how times have changed, so I’ll
be terribly modern and refer to the Wikipedia definition. ‘The
word charisma … refers to a rare trait found in certain human
personalities usually including extreme charm and a 'magnetic' quality
of personality and/or appearance along with innate and powerfully
sophisticated personal communicability and persuasiveness.’
Robbo came over today, (which was when I realised it’s been
a long time since I had social intercourse with a rational human
being), and somewhere in the conversation the subject of charisma
came up. Since Billy Thorpe died, I reckon there’s been a
gap at the top of the Oz rock ‘n’ roll Charisma tree.
Whenever Billy walked in the room, there was no doubt, in his mind
anyway, who was the top bantam strutting the fowl yard, and nobody
else was left in any doubt either. If there were unbelievers, I
never saw them challenge him, (apart from Max Merritt after a few
whiskies on the bus back from Wollongong on the LWTTT tour, but
that ended amicably enough), and anyway, Billy always had the ultimate
weapon to fall back on when dint of personality proved inadequate
– sheer, naked, unimaginable VOLUME. Billy started at eleven,
both with voice and guitar.
I guess it’s possible to go through life without coming into
contact with charisma, although, like genius, the quality has been
somewhat diminished by being too liberally bestowed. The sales rep
that comes round to the office every month with the winning read
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