the Easybeats

Who’s your Daddy? Daddy Cool

If you are of a certain age, as I am, you might owe your entire existence to Daddy Cool’s Eagle Rock. Your parents probably had sex to it. No one wants to think about that, do they? It makes it literally Dad rock. Or Mum-and-Dad rock, if you prefer.

Eagle Rock is 50 years old this year. It is a cultural touchstone, voted the second greatest Australian song of all time, behind only the Easybeats’ Friday On My Mind, in a 2001 Australasian Performing Right Association poll.

Yet there is a younger generation that semi-ironically loses its mind over Daryl Braithwaite’s Horses – a naff cover of a Rickie Lee Jones song – but spurns Eagle Rock. Why?

It could be Mondo Rock, the new wave band that Daddy Cool leader Ross Wilson fronted from 1976 to 1991. More specifically, it could be their creepy 1983 hit Come Said The Boy. But you can’t totally blame Wilson for that one. It was written by guitarist Eric McCusker.

More likely, it’s the ubiquity. Overexposure can do terrible things to a tune, and Eagle Rock is inescapable. In Australia, it has charted twice in my lifetime: 17 weeks at No.… Read more..

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George Young: the original architect of Oz Rock

Between his work as a guitarist and songwriter with the Easybeats and as a producer (along with fellow Easybeat Harry Vanda) for AC/DC, there is a very strong case to be made that George Young was the original sonic architect of Australian rock & roll. Other than Vanda – and with no disrespect to anyone who came before them, or followed after – the legacy of Young, who died yesterday aged 70, arguably outstrips anyone’s.

Those are big claims to make, so let’s start at the beginning. Young was born in Glasgow in 1946, migrated with his parents and younger brothers Malcolm and Angus to Sydney in 1963, and met Vanda at Villawood migrant hostel (now shamefully a detention centre) the following year – an event Australian Musician magazine selected as the most significant event in this country’s rock music history, in 2007.

That’s another big call, but the Easybeats, Australia’s first and finest response to the British Invasion (and the Beatles in particular) all but justify it by themselves. Their second single She’s So Fine, released in May 1965, launched them to local stardom. Their fifth, Sorry – led by a propulsive, serrated Young riff that prefigured younger brother Malcolm’s rhythm work with AC/DC – took them to the top of the Australian charts.… Read more..

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Stevie Wright: the prototype Australian rock frontman

The news that Stevie Wright – solo artist, singer for the Easybeats and, thanks to that band’s immortal single Friday On My Mind, arguably Australia’s first international pop star – has died at the age of 68 will not be a surprise to anyone familiar with his sad story. That does not make his loss any less devastating.

The tiny Wright, who was billed as Little Stevie in his early years, was Australia’s prototype rock & roll frontman. Some of his moves, not to mention his leering grin, were lovingly copped by AC/DC’s Bon Scott. They also found an echo in Chrissy Amphlett, whose band the Divinyls covered the Easybeats’ I’ll Make You Happy.

Wright, along with his bandmates, was part of the first wave of migrants to jump-start Australian rock and pop. Born in Leeds in 1947, his family emigrated to Australia when he was nine, settling in Villawood. There he met Dutch-born Harry Vanda and Scot George Young (older brother of AC/DC’s Malcolm and Angus), both of whom were staying at the local migrant hostel.

Wright wrote lyrics for many of the Easybeats’ early hits, including She’s So Fine, Wedding Ring and fan favourite Sorry – a number one hit in Australia in 1966, and as tough a record as anything released to that point by the early Kinks, Rolling Stones or the Small Faces.… Read more..

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You Am I: Porridge & Hotsauce

Every artist needs a few demons to get by, right? You Am I’s Tim Rogers knows he’s got ’em; he just doesn’t call them out by name: “They’re just some pushy friends, they’re on my couch, they’re on my knee.” He’s learned to live with them over the years. “If I don’t let ’em in, some other fool will / If I don’t let ’em in, maybe they won’t come back again.”

Daemons (as Rogers calls them) sits squarely in the middle of You Am I’s 10th album, Porridge & Hotsauce, and it wants you to know he’s OK. If this ballad – just acoustic guitar and strings – could almost seem too self-aware for its own good, it’s nonetheless reassuring. Rogers, who has been open about his struggles with anxiety and depression in recent times, is at ease with himself.

It’s also reassuring that the remainder of Porridge & Hotsauce is hot rock & roll, many of its 13 songs coming in well under the three-minute mark. Tearing out of the blocks with Good Advices, which dismisses the well-intentioned opinions of others with a flourish, it’s an enjoyable ride, with Rogers in fine voice and his band’s capabilities shown off to full effect.… Read more..

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Without Malcolm Young, AC have lost their DC

Years ago, a journalist asked the late Bon Scott whether he was the AC (alternate current) or DC (direct current) in his band. Scott’s response was as quick-witted and accurate as any of his best double entendres. “Neither,” he grinned. “I’m the lightning flash in the middle.”

Many thought Scott, who died in 1980 just as the band was reaching its peak, was irreplaceable. But AC/DC were unstoppable. Substituting their lightning flash for a forward slash named Brian Johnson, they ploughed on and made Back In Black. It was the biggest album of their career, vindicating the band’s resolve.

So it would be a foolish writer indeed who ever wrote off AC/DC. They remain unimpeachable as a live act, even if their recordings post-Back In Black have never matched the brilliance of their early years (for proof, their give-the-punters-what-they-want shows lean heavily on the roll-call of classics from their first six albums).

Be that as it may, I can’t bring myself to see them on their Rock Or Bust tour, which kicks off in Sydney this week. For without Malcolm Young, AC have, in effect, lost their DC – the man that made them a true rock & roll, as distinct from a mere rock band.… Read more..

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Flowers in the wheelie bin

In 1977, John Lydon – née Rotten – launched a vitriolic attack on the monarchy that brutally summed up the status of England’s youth in the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee: “When there’s no future, how can there be sin? / We are the flowers in the dustbin / We’re the poison in your human machine / We’re the future, your future!”

God Save The Queen, as performed by the Sex Pistols, is one of the greatest protest songs of all time, but I’ve long pondered over these lyrics. Was Lydon inferring that Britain’s future had been literally thrown out with the garbage, as the nation celebrated? Or making a statement about how great art can be constructed from throwaway refuse – one of punk’s defining tenets?

Or was he saying that art itself is nurtured by the oppression of the state? “We’re the poison in your human machine” is a wonderfully subversive argument to this effect, and it’s a line with ongoing resonance to Queensland. It’s a common assumption, for example, that the 1970s punk explosion in Brisbane, spearheaded by the Saints (who, let’s not forget, pre-dated the Pistols by as much as two years) was a reaction to the excesses of life in Queensland under Joh Bjelke-Petersen.… Read more..

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