WE’VE all seen those t-shirts: “Old Rockers Never Die, They Just … shake, rattle and roll/turn up the volume, keep playing until their bodies fail (you get the drift).

In the case of Crackenback's Jeremy Paul, the words to add are: “Form another band and keep on playing music”.

Jeremy, who founded local band the Hip Replacements is probably best known for his involvement with 70s/80s bands Divinyls and Air Supply.

He is one of a number of high-profile rockers who have settled in or returned to the Snowy Mountains, living modest, unassuming lives…until they are sniffed out by an intrepid reporter who can remember interviewing them back in their heyday.

Air Supply got together in 1975 and Jeremy played bass guitar from 1975-1977. Divinyls formed in Sydney in 1980 and comprised Jeremy, Chrissy Amphlett on vocals and guitarist Mark McEntee. The first album Monkey Grip produced hit singles Boys In Town and Science Fiction.

In years since, Jeremy has been a songwriter, a musical theatre performer, an ocean yacht racer, a marketer, a TV station marketing manager, and a company owner.

Born and bred in Gosford to a doctor dad and a “golfer” mum, Jeremy was “an arty not academic” kid who happened to be good at competitive swimming.

“I realised that I could get a guitar if I kept going to training sessions, so I kept swimming, got the guitar and have been playing ever since.”

At boarding school between the ages of 11 and 18, he experienced “just about every musical genre” but particularly liked the Rolling Stones, Kinks and Beatles.

He went to art school to study fine art and design and to make money, he formed a band with some school friends, Soffrok.

“We played three or four nights a week, usually finishing at 1or 2am and being in no shape to study,” he says, “so I dropped out.”

In the early 1970s the band was signed to a Alberts Music. By then he had had some voice training and ended up signing on to the same label solo.

In 1971 he recorded What Becomes of You My Love . Then came musical theatre.

“In London I saw a show on High St Kensington which was the first performance of The Rocky Horror Show and I was so impressed. Here was a combination of theatre and music and the arts, all the things I loved.

“In Australia I was cast in Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat i and then the Harry M Miller production of Jesus Christ Superstar with Chrissie Hammond, Jon English and Trevor White.

“After that, I put together Air Supply with Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell whom I had met working on Superstar.

Within three months, Air Supply was featuring on television’s iconic music show Countdown with Molly Meldrum, touring and on New Year’s Eve 1976 opened at the Opera House before 100,000 people. It signed with CBS Records and released its first single, Love and Other Bruises.

He was in the United States on tour with Rod Stewart and setting out to re-record Air Supply’s Australian album with just the three main performers “and not the rest of the band” when he decided to controversially leave.

“I realised it had been a big mistake for the rest of the band not to be there and I realised that I was no longer in control of what was going on, so I left in October 1977 and came home and married my sweetheart, Rosemary, an actress on Restless Years, and a model for No Knickers (can't do without my mum) and Coca Cola."

He performed in Reg Livermore’s musical Ned Kelly which opened in Adelaide then got involved in real estate, bought his first home and was invited to join the cast of Superstar, the concert version at St George Leagues Club, where he met Amphlett in 1978 and Tony Rommerill.

At the end of the show, the trio formed a band with two others, Baton Rouge and earned a living playing in clubs and restaurants until Tony and Shane left.

“I wanted to create a band and that ended up being Divinyls in 1979 with Mark McEntee, who I had also recruited into Air Supply, and our first song was Boys In Town.

Success came thick and fast. A movie, based on a book, Monkey Grip, where the band was part of the story, performances in inner city hotels.

It also decided to make a movie clip to put on Countdown which previously had only had live bands – ground breaking stuff.

But, as Jeremy had noticed before, “success has a lot of owners and they all started arriving” and once again he lost control and left.

“Ten years later I realised being in a successful band was not what I wanted to do, what I wanted was to start bands, help them find the right look and energy and market them. I discovered I was a marketer not so much a musician.

He headed up marketing for Network 10 then set up his own company, C3Media.com.au which still exists today. He moved to the Snowy Mountains in 2010, after getting to know the region as a skier for many years.

It wasn’t long, however, until he had a look around to see if there were any musicians in the Snowy Mountains. The Hip Replacements was born and is playing regularly around Cooma and Jindabyne after a few lineup changes and the rest, as they say, is history.