The Wiggles
The Wiggles are particularly popular in their native Australia. They are currently the nation's highest grossing entertainers. According to an April 2006 survey published in the Australian media, The Wiggles grossed more in 2005 than AC/DC and Nicole Kidman combined.
There were originally five Wiggles, but for almost all of the group's career the lineup has consisted of the remaining four founder members. Early on, they adopted differently coloured shirts for each member, which assisted their recognition by very young children, and they invariably wear the Wiggles 'uniform' when appearing as The Wiggles in the media or in public. The colour coding is — Greg, yellow; Murray, red; Anthony, blue; Jeff, purple. This simple device also allows the Wiggles to go about in public (at least in Australia) with relative ease, since children rarely recognise them without their trademark colours.
The basic act was later augmented with supporting characters — the "friendly pirate" Captain Feathersword (Paul Paddick) and the animal characters Dorothy the Dinosaur, Henry the Octopus and Wags the Dog. The inclusion of the Dorothy character enabled them to tap into the young children's interest in dinosaurs. The animal characters also enabled them to create a successful range of merchandising items that did not have to rely exclusively on the Wiggles' own personae.
Anthony Field (vocals, guitar) and Jeff Fatt (vocals, keyboards, assorted instruments) had been members of The Cockroaches, a popular eighties pub rock band which toured widely and had a number of Top 40 hits in Australia ("Do the Monkey" is a reworded Cockroaches song, whilst "Dorothy the Dinosaur" is based on the song "It's Another Saturday Night").
Field enrolled in early childhood studies at Macquarie University in Sydney in the late 1980s, and it was here that he met two other students who were also musicians — singer Murray Cook and vocalist Greg Page. Page, the youngest of the group, had come into the course straight from high school, but Cook and Field were mature-age students. Like Field, Cook had experience playing on the booming Sydney live rock scene of that period; he had played bass in a minor Sydney 1980s pop band, Finger Guns, while working as a clerk at the Australian Taxation Office.
According to an Australian magazine article, Greg was a roadie for the Cockroaches during the Australian summer (much to the chagrin of his parents) and was convinced by Anthony to go to Macquarie University with him and major in Early Childhood Development.
When Anthony, Murray, and Greg went into the studio to record their first album, "The Wiggles," Anthony needing a keyboardist, asked his old bandmate, Jeff Fatt, to help out. Jeff's reply was "Sure, but how long will it take..."
The Wiggles initially teamed up to produce a music performance project for their studies. Their shows were a hit with young audiences, and they found themselves in regular demand. They soon discovered that they could earn considerably more working as children's entertainers than as preschool teachers. At the time of the Wiggles' early career, entertainment for preschool-age children was a minor industry in Australia, operating in fairly traditional styles. Children's entertainment was up to this time dominated by presence of the long-running ABC-TV children's program Play School, who marketed much of the most successful children's material, and whose various presenters often performed at children's concerts and similar events.
