John Waters relaunches the '60s British Invasion with Radio Luxembourg

Through his basic transistor radio and headphones he'd be transported from his dreary suburban life in south-west London into the rapidly exploding world of British rock and pop.

Here Waters would discover the era's megastars like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, as well as personal favourites like the Small Faces' Ichycoo Park, Gimme Some Lovin' by The Spencer Davis Group and We've Gotta Get Out Of This Place by The Animals.

Due to the BBC's government-legislated monopoly of Britain's airwaves, Radio Luxembourg was created in 1933 as a means of circumventing the laws prohibiting commercial stations in the UK.

Broadcasting in longwave from the tiny landlocked European country of Luxembourg, the station was able to broadcast its English-speaking programmes across Britain.

In the late '50s and '60s Radio Luxembourg boasted a huge audience, as young fans clamoured to hear the music from the exploding British Invasion scene, who the BBC often ignored.

Then from the mid-60s, to improve its signal, Radio Luxembourg and rival commercial station Radio Caroline would broadcast from ships anchored off the Essex coast or in the Thames estuary. Thus it became known as "pirate radio".

"In a sense it made it a little bit more exotic," Waters says of listening to Radio Luxembourg.

"I've got my transistor, which cost next to nothing, and late of night if your parents didn't like your music, that's OK, because you've got some little headphones you can use and you'd twiddle the dial and tune into all these top-20 broadcasts."

Waters has turned his love of '60s British music into his latest show, Radio Luxembourg. Joined by his long-time Looking Through a Glass Onion collaborator, Stewart D'Arrietta, and backing band, the Chartbusters, the show covers the '60s British pop scene, which is one of the most fertile in the history of popular music.

As a teenager and young man in his early 20s, Waters played bass guitar in a band and would often attend shows at Eel Pie Island situated in the middle of the River Thames.

There he saw an early formation of the Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann, The Who, The Kinks and Chris Farlowe.

"So it's very personal to me, but it's also strikes a chord with everyone I speak to from my generation," he says.

"Particularly the English people who live in Australia. They'll say, 'oh Radio Luxembourg, what would have we done without Radio Luxembourg'."

The British Invasion created a sense of pride in the baby boomer generation in the UK, following the bleakness of their parents' experience during the Second World II and its lingering austerity measures.

The rock'n'roll pioneers of the '50s had mostly been American like Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, but suddenly there were bands like the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Kinks projecting British youth culture to the world.

"We really idolised the American rock music and suddenly we realised our bands were taking the American music form - they certainly didn't invent it - and transformed it," Waters says.

"They made it come to life and the hard-rocking English bands, they added an edge. The invention of the Marshall amphifier and distortion and lots of effects was something the English taught the Americans to do.

"The guitar-playing of the English guitar players in the '60s went off the scale when you had some of the great lead guitarists, starting with Keith Richards and George Harrison and later in the decade you had Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton who elevated the electric guitar playing to a new level as well."

In 1968 Waters immigrated to Australia where he developed a successful career in theatre, television and film - most notably starring in Rush (1974-76), All The Rivers Run (1983) and All Saints (2006-09) - as well as becoming a beloved host on ABC children's institution Play School for 19 years.

But Waters says music remains his greatest love.

"Music takes you to another place," he says. "I was living in a slightly dreary suburban environment with the drizzly rain of south-west London and you listen to this exotic, sexy music, it takes you out of your ordinary life and into another place.

"I think music does that for me more than anything else. When I'm playing on stage I can be exotic and I'm not particularly an exotic type of person. But I can be that when I'm inhabiting that music."

John Waters bring his Radio Luxembourg show to Lizotte's on November 30.