Tony Mitchell (born 5 September 1951 in Sydney, Australia) is a songwriter and bass guitarist who rose to fame in the 1970s with the Australian rock band Sherbet. Tony co-wrote (with

Garth Porter Garth Ivan Richard Porter (born 24 September 1948) is a New Zealand-born Australian multi-instrumental musician, songwriter and record producer. He was a member, on keyboards and backing vocals, of the pop group, Sherbet (1970–84), and co-wr ...

) some of Sherbet's biggest hits, including " Howzat" and " Magazine Madonna".

Howzat

In 1976, someone suggested to Tony Mitchell and keyboardist

that ''Howzat'' might make a good title for a song because some of the members of Sherbet loved

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

. Despite Mitchell not being a good cricketer, he sat down with Garth Porter at Porter's

Watsons Bay Watsons Bay is a harbourside, eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Watsons Bay is located 11 km north-east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Woollahra. ...

home to work on the idea. Mitchell soon came up with the "doo-doo, doo-doo" bass

riff A riff is a repeated chord progression or refrain in music (also known as an ostinato figure in classical music); it is a pattern, or melody, often played by the rhythm section instruments or solo instrument, that forms the basis or acc ...

, after which the first thing that came into Porter's mind was the phrase "I caught you out." The song became Sherbet's biggest hit, rising to #1 on the Australian

charts A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tab ...

, and #4 in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

References

1951 births Living people Australian bass guitarists Sherbet (band) members {{songwriter-stub