Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
Join Cheryl Lee That Radio Chick on Still Rockin' It for news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
What are they up to at the moment? Let's find out .......
Still Rockin' It - Cheryl Lee
What's Rose Tattoo's Angry Anderson up to lately OR What to do when your band has four guitarists?
Join Cheryl Lee - That Radio Chick on STILL ROCKIN' IT for news, reviews, music and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians.
Today we share a zoom room chat with the legend that is Angry Anderson. Rock singer-songwriter, television presenter-reporter, actor on both stage and film, and lead vocalist with hard rock band Rose Tattoo since 1976.
We hear about his early family years and his musical influences.
We learn how he found himself in a Mad Max movie and about his subsequent enduring friendship with Mel Gibson.
And most importantly, which AC/DC member introduced him to Stones Ginger Wine?
Includes Songs:
Rose Tattoo - Rock N Roll Outlaw
Rose Tattoo - One More Drink with the Boys
Rose Tattoo - Call Me One of the Boys
Rose Tattoo - Nothing To Lose (live)
Kate Ceberano & John Farnham - Everythings Alright/I Don't Know How to Love Him
Tina Turner - We Don't Need Another Hero
Rose Tattoo - We Can't Be Beaten
Suddenly - Angry Anderson
What's Angry Anderson and Rose Tattoo up to at the moment?
Let's find out .....
Get out when you can, support local music and I'll see you down the front!!
Visit: ThatRadioChick.com.au
That radio chick, cheryl Lee, here with you. Welcome to the Still Rocking at Podcast, where we'll have news, reviews and interviews with some of our favourite Australian musicians and artists. Today I share a chat I had in the Zoom room recently with the legend that is Angry Anderson Rock singer-songwriter, television presenter-reporter, actor on both stage and film, and lead vocalist and hard rock band Rose Tattoo since 1976. We'll hear about his early life, his musical influences, the current Australian and upcoming European tours and, of course, some songs you'd know and love, but also some that might be new to you. What's Rose Tattoo's Angry Anderson been up to lately? Let's find out. You're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me today. I have got Aussie legend in the Zoom room with me. Please welcome Gary Steven Anderson, aka Angry. How are you today, angry?
Speaker 2:Actually I'd put it the other way around chick, let's get back to the chick thing. That's a very PC inappropriate. I love it myself, thank you.
Speaker 1:When you call someone love or babe or honey.
Speaker 2:I'm just trying to figure out where I was the other day and a youngster late teens, early 20s and I said thanks, honey. She just looked at me, like how do you call me honey? And I just thought, no, fuck it, I'm an old man, I have to be your grandfather. I'll call you honey, it'll be honey. I love the fact that you identify yourself as the chick.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you. Well, I love it. You love it because I have actually had that comment about all chick.
Speaker 2:Really yes. So there you go. What worries me? I mean it's one of the 74 things that worry me about the young. Today, at my age, I can say that with some sort of reflective authority, if you like, or qualified authority. But just recently I was talking, I went to a very small country town and spent a couple of days there doing a series of talks and talk to a couple of schools and also some. It was a young offenders program and council work, you know people who did the roads etc. And it was all about mental health and those sort of issues. And I started out with the high school kids, not so much the primary school kids but and I said you know, I understand, as a parent, I'm a parent of grown children now. So, like from 30 onwards, I'm a parent of grown children. And I said you know, that's something I did, I did offer to them.
Speaker 2:I said your parents will always think until you actually get married and have children and possibly even then you will always be thought of as your mum and dad's children and I said take some advice from an older bloke. I said that should never be something that you feel uncomfortable with. You will understand as you get older the significance of always thinking of your children as your children.
Speaker 2:That's right that doesn't necessarily mean that you don't think of them as maturing or matured, that you don't think that they don't have a valuable opinion. I said, well, we refer to our children as our children. You are our offspring, you are the children of our, our union. But I said, you know, I realize as a biological parent. But then one of the wonderful things that happens when we become a biological parent is that we, we become a parent. In the expanded families, like in going back to tribal living, they understood that all parents for parents of all children, and it's part of the great wisdom of the divine, the process, the recreational process that we all feel, which is why older people are so concerned about younger people.
Speaker 2:I just heard on the radio this morning there's still this debate going on about whether they should ban phones from classrooms, but they're going to allow iPads. Now, I understand that iPads can and are in most cases a true aura, an aid to educating the parents, but phones no, and I don't understand why phones were ever allowed in a classroom. When you're in a classroom, you're in a social group that's there for a purpose To learn. A phone is a recreational device. It's an iPad okay, we're going to wrestle with that one. But yeah, I did say to them. I said I understand as a parent that you're growing up in a pretty scary world and it does concern us as your biological parents and hopefully they have the kind of biological parents Every kid has, the kind of biological parents that do worry about their state of mind, how they're perceived physically and intellectually, which is the, is the unspoken. Even to this day, parents and teachers have a real problem talking to kids about spirituality, for what I can tell, particularly talking to young girls, because they've got a real different slant than young likes on sex education. I still think to this day, and I think that's a reflection on that, that's one of the negative reflections on our education system. The sexual education seems to be woefully inadequate.
Speaker 2:You know, I was brought up by a single mother, fiercely Roman Catholic. So she had a very religious stroke, spiritual in her case, religiously. She realized how spiritual her belief was later in life, but it took her a long time because she was a indoctrinated Roman Catholic, not so much an educated Roman Catholic, and so the more that we talk about spirituality, that the more that she came to take my view that she realized her own spirituality as well, and that's. It's one of the things that's really, really lacking. And I do say, when I get the opportunity to talk to the secondary school kids not that I would not talk to primary, but I think it's a concept that you need a certain amount of living experience and all level of understanding, yeah, to grasp what is spirituality, what is the spiritual experience. Primary school kids have more time.
Speaker 1:The whole world is a wonder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right. Which is the total? You know, that's the real spiritual experience that I realized that haven't learned yet to intellectualize the process.
Speaker 1:Still rocking. A podcast with that radio chick, Cheryl Lee, will play a couple of songs, some that you may know and some from some lesser known albums that might be new to you. We're going to start with rock and roll. Outlaw that. I remember seeing Rose Tattoo perform on Countdown way back in 1978. Back to chat more with angry after this. So much to cover His movie with Mel Gibson, his appearances on the Midday Show and current affair. We'll hear what angry likes to listen to, where his interest in music came from and the current tour. The last time I saw you was in March at Abernyton Park under the Southern Stars.
Speaker 2:Oh, well, yeah, well this March, Of course, the previous two marches we haven't been doing much have we?
Speaker 1:I mean like no. So how was it to be back out in front of an audience?
Speaker 2:Well, it was twofold. I made an acquaintance, as did Bob in the early days, with the boys from Cheek Trick. So I hadn't seen those fellas since I lived in Los Angeles. I think it was 1989 when I was over there doing a solo album, blood from Stone, which the song Bound for Glory came off. I read into them a couple of times, and well, read into the Watts at the studio, and we arranged to do lunch, which just back in those days that was the thing in Los Angeles was to do lunch. And so we did, you know, and we hung out a bit together, which was lovely because they're extremely pleasant company, they're really really good people.
Speaker 2:But I didn't know too much about the other bands. I mean, I was familiar with Stone Temple Pilots music, but certainly not Bush and certainly not the strangely named Black Something motorcycle. I kind of thought, you know like it might be a bit like Zack Wilde or you know any of those sort of like wild, you know Ted Nussin type people, and they're this sort of like introverted sort of very gothic-y sort of like. Why would you call yourself a Black Something? What was it? Black Rebel motorcycle gang or something? And I thought maybe they were having a take on the piss. Yeah, maybe. I mean we've done a few gigs leading up to well. In the 12 months previous I think we've done about three or four gigs, very obscure gigs. I remember we went to Darwin to do at the ski club. There was a full band deal, yeah, so we'd only done a spattering, so it was great to get out and act.
Speaker 2:You know a whole vibe about the setup and you know the taste, the flavors, so to speak. You know the smells, the senses, it's all that kind of stuff. We've been doing a bunch of gigs now and at the beginning of July we're in Europe right through to the middle of August and end of the first weekend August actually.
Speaker 1:So you're back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it'll be. You know, living on the liner again and getting used to putting up with someone else's snoring and smelling all of their dirty socks.
Speaker 1:Still rocking a podcast with that radio chick, Cheryl Lee. We'll be back with more angry after this to find out who introduced him to Stoned Ginger Wine. So a very appropriate song, I think. One more drink with the boys, and this is from a German release Rose Tattoo album.
Speaker 2:Paine Paine was an album that we did in Germany, only ever going to be released by a German record company for Europe predominantly for Germany, but for Europe for when we toured there for the next couple of years and it's got some fucking mighty tracks on it. Really, really, really good tracks.
Speaker 1:You guys. You certainly looked like you were having a great time up there. I have to ask you the bottle did it have tea in it or something stronger?
Speaker 2:The bottle On stage, on stage On my stones. Yeah, no, no, it's Stoned Ginger Wine.
Speaker 1:Oh, was it. You know what? I just assumed you were having a little bit of whiskey or something.
Speaker 2:No, no, actually it's funny you should say that.
Speaker 1:Ronald.
Speaker 2:Bond. He put me onto Stones. Well, he actually reintroduced me. I remember when I was a kid, I was in my teens, late turns, early 20s. Well, there wasn't really unemployment the way that we understand it today. So you would go to the within the CES office and they would allocate your work. There were very, very few people in those days that were on benefits. It certainly hadn't become the industry that has become now, but I took the easy option and I've always liked to work physically. So I went down and loaded trains. I grew up in Melbourne, so it was at Spence Street, which is where the rail yards were, and we loaded trains or unloaded trains in the yards and that's what we did for a job. I remember the first my introduction to Stones was that during winter, the guys that were like the leading hands which worked under the foreman's, they would have a little office and they'd give you a small glass of here. This will get your blood going.
Speaker 1:Get this into you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the one, because it's a vibrant drink, but yeah, so once I left the rail yard so I didn't drink it anymore. And I remember years later I think it was one of the times where Angus and Bond came to jam with the band and Bond had some in a flask and I said what do you drink? He said I've stone screened ginger. I drink it for my throat. And I said, yeah, I used to drink it when I was a kid, you know what. So he reintroduced me to Stones. That's what it actually is in the bottle.
Speaker 2:They actually do make one called Stones Jack, which has usually got a Union Jack flag on the label. That is a blend of stone screened ginger wine and whiskey yes, right.
Speaker 1:Now, you only drink that at your peril.
Speaker 2:It's just kind of something that is going to kick your ass. I just drink straight the Stones green ginger.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's the fountain of youth. You are 74 years young. When I started to march, there was just no stopping. You is up there rocking your socks off. What is your secret of you? Discovered the fountain of youth.
Speaker 2:No, I love that face fast has got you know a positive aspect to it and a negative aspect, like everything in life, and one of the things that there's a picture of a guy usually a biker type with a beer man. He's got a shirt on right and said you know, like one of the slogans is, if you haven't grown up by the time you turn 60, you don't have to. Yeah, exactly, you know. I love the other one which I bought my daughter. One was like my father's across the old bar. So he's a biker, he's got a bad attitude, he swears a lot and if you ever mess with me, they'll never find your body. I love that one.
Speaker 1:I like that one too, still rocking a podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee. One more oldie bit of goodie now before I play another song from a lesser known album. One of the boys from Rose Tattoo's debut self titled album on the Albert Productions label, produced by the famous Vander and Young team in 1978. You mentioned your mum and upbringing. Did you know from a very, very early age that music was going to be your future? Was it in your genes? When did you discover that music was going to be your?
Speaker 2:Very early. Fortunately, my mother arrived here. My mother's Mauritian and my father met her in Mauritius. My biological father was a jockey and he was riding in Africa. Long story short, he ended up in Mauritius, met my mother and brought her here. He was full-time riding in those days, so he sort of basically dumped my mum pregnant with me, with his parents, my grandparents, and we lived for the first six years of our life Now the youngest, with my grandparents while he was away riding. But the youngest of the Anacin boys, my uncle, ivan, was a drummer and a swing band, a very accomplished magician. Actually had a wonderful voice, as did Colin, my biological father. He was a great singer, wonderful singer.
Speaker 1:So it's sort of using your genes a bit.
Speaker 2:Pretty much, I think you know talking about the DNA of the gene pool. But, yeah, so from a very early age from you know, year zero or day zero I was exposed to Ivan's record collection and the fact that he had a radio grandma, a record player and he had a record collection and he gave me at a very, very young age mum said it was around about three or four he upgraded, I suppose you would say, his radio.
Speaker 2:I become obsessed by the radio at that stage because I spent a lot of my early years not really having a social life. I remember I had a bit of a social life with the girl that lived next door. That was like over the fence, but anyway, that's another story. But for the first few years of my life I didn't have a social circle outside of the home because my own age.
Speaker 1:So my whole focus was on sounds, music here, I did a little bit of research and goodness me angry. Oh. Oh well, there's just so much that we don't know about you. You've done everything, man.
Speaker 2:I'm not too sure about, maybe, the things you don't know about me, you're not meant to know about me, go on.
Speaker 1:Apart from obviously being the vocalist for Rose Tattoo since 75. Yeah, I've got 76, but you're 75.
Speaker 2:So that no well, officially we were playing New Year's League and we had been playing for the second part of 75. We were rehearsing and we would do gigs and we were playing a lot as bands around Sydney get and start. There was two main gigs. One was at Donnie Sutherland's gig down at Koochie, but the main one was Checkers in the middle of the city yes, a very notorious nightclub, and you would do three or four, sometimes five sets over like six hours. We were so popular with all the colourful canisters, the colourful characters. Well, they were canisters. Yeah, let's just split his. They were very colourful clientele and they wanted us to play New Year's Eve. So the New Year's Eve of 75 into 76.
Speaker 1:It's the official date.
Speaker 2:Yes, we say that we were born on the stroke of midnight, midnight when we became.
Speaker 1:I just wanted to congratulate you on that. Longevity of a band is just amazing. There's only a handful of bands who have managed to do that, so well done. But also, you were made a member of the Order of Australia in 93. Congratulations for your role, as we've discussed, with your youth work and charity work, and I really thank you because I had a little read about the amazing work that you have done. It's great to see artists giving back so much like that. So thank you. Ian McFarlane, the music rock historian, said over the course of a lengthy career, the gravel throated vocalist has gone from attention grabbing rock and roll bad boy to all round Australian media star. And, as I say, as I read your bio I thought that's so true. You've done so many things. You played with the party boys, but you appeared as a human interest reporter on the midday show with Ray Martin and a current affair.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. My mother said to me after the first year that I was with Ray, which was we started with him in in 85. I was home visiting mum and dad. My stepfather, who's my real father Well, colin was my biological father, but my father in the real essence, truth, understanding of my father, bert, was, and I was there for Christmas, as you know. That was traditional. Mum said finally got a real job. Oh, god bless her. God bless her socks. Yeah, she's sad that we've lost it a dimension now, but anyway, yeah, I got the, I got the job and it's around about a bit of a story, but it's in the book and I'm going to.
Speaker 2:I am now, you know, compiling stories and notes for a larger volume if you like, a larger version of the book that already exists. But yeah, I was working with when I say working, I was asked by a guy while he was in jail that I used to visit when he got out. He was going to start a halfway house for young offenders, which he did in Wollumaloom and at the back of the cross, and I used to go down there and, just you know, like, hang out with young male offenders that once they got out of jail he would, you know, gave them somewhere to come and stay and he would try to find the work. He was turned around, he was a very colorful character.
Speaker 2:He was converted to Christianity in jail by the then Reverend Ted Moss, who ran the Wayside Chapel. So you know, and it was that down there while I was working for him, just as, just as someone who just I, just you know my background, I identify I mean, rose, that too, when you look at the lyric content etc. And our approach, our whole, look, it's those people, it's our people, it's where we belong, and that's true to this day, and I think it's a great wisdom where people never fall into the trap of believing their own publicity.
Speaker 2:So you know, yeah, so we never we never got to that point, rightfully. So, yeah, that's how I got my start. I was, I was there and it was. Crew from 60 Minutes came down to do yet another sensationalization on Street Kids and they heard that I was there. Basically, they were wanting to know what was you know, as you say, the attention grabbing bad boy of rock and roll? What the hell was I doing at the class? And they actually, when I say use me, I mean it's both purposes. But they said to the bloke that I was working for can you take us to meet the kids that would normally avoid the press in the back streets, so to speak, the hidden places?
Speaker 2:you know the real, the real people the real victims of the crime and the drug distribution, the prostitution, whatever. So Mike Walsh, who had the Midday Show in 84, which is where I didn't that's filled that story for television he saw the footage and he asked me come on and speak on behalf of those kids. And I did, and the year later, ready to go, he watched the footage and he said would you come on as a regular?
Speaker 1:Still rocking a podcast with that radio chick, Cheryl Lee. A live bonus track now from the album Blood Brothers. Nothing to lose Back more with angry after this, and we'll find out what he likes to listen to.
Speaker 2:Blood Brothers was. We knew that Mick was dying and I wanted to do something to honour his contribution, because Mick and I apart from Scar we wrote most of the songs on the first album, most of the songs on a song, barry's second album, and we wrote most of the songs on Blood Brothers. And it was kind of like we knew that he was going to die very soon and, yeah, I just wanted to do it. It's kind of like it could have been very much our last statement. It didn't turn out that way, but at that time when we recorded it, we'd lost Pete, ian, of course Pete and Ian went six months away, of course, digger, all those years before and there was the only hour of that lineup and there was only Mick and I and I thought, you know, really, we'll do another album and then we'll do a tour, and I thought at the time I was going to walk away, but it didn't happen.
Speaker 1:And legacy and everything that they started lives on. Their music lives on and you know you carry them with you every time you play oh yeah, oh, absolutely, yeah, they do. There's a couple of things that I'd like to touch on. We could talk all day, I think, because I thought this was quite ironic.
Speaker 1:You had your biggest hit in 87 with Suddenly from the single drum and of course, it was used as the wedding theme for Neighbours where Scott and Charlene got married, and this is the ironic bit. So Kylie Minogue put out her cover version of Locomotion and that went to number one and kept Suddenly out of the top spot.
Speaker 2:Well, actually it wasn't Locomotion. I remember I was in a dressing room with Cliff Richards and he said I'm hoping I go number one because it'll be my 25th number one record or whatever. I was over in England doing Top of the Pops and I'd met Cliff when he came out to do a midday show on several occasions and he said I hope it's not that got off in song like Kylie and Jason had. It really was, even though they did a few singles together that were passively good pop songs. This song was, I think it was written by some soft water man, akeman, and when it was just was like rubbish. But yeah, it was that song that kept Suddenly out of number one. Gratefully, cliff Richards soon popped them out of number one and went number one and remained there for weeks.
Speaker 2:He said to me and I thought it was a lovely compliment he said if I don't get number one, it'll be suddenly, because it's such a beautiful song.
Speaker 1:And he said I couldn't be happier. Supported Guns N' Roses, excellent. But here's something that a lot of people might not know, and I know I didn't. This just goes to show you've done everything. Jesus Christ, superstar, you played Herod.
Speaker 2:I did. I'd done a musical before that called Resputin, yes, and John English played Resputin. I played Vladimir Lenin because it was a bit of poetic license they had to have the component of because it was around about the time of the Russian Revolution Resputin was in a distance sense, was involved in, but only because of the royal family. But, yeah, it was a wonderfully written play and John was amazing in the role. I played Lenin. Yeah, it was a very interesting experience. But later on we did the superstar, with John Farnham and John Stevens who played Judas, and the amazing Kate Sibarno played Mary, yeah, and the amazing Russell Morris. So you play guitar.
Speaker 1:I don't. Are you referring to the guitar in the background?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, do you know Gary Burroughs? He worked for Acura for a long time. He plays with the boys, the rustlers. You probably know him if you saw him. He's been around almost as long as you have. That's actually a CD player. That guitar is a CD player. And it belongs to Gary Burroughs, who I do one of my shows where he and I co-host a show and that's his, but I thought it made a nice prop, yeah no, I love it because it's got that whole 70s. Yeah, 60s vibe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, love, peace and mung beans. I think it's a beautiful touch. It's a funny movie because that saying was around back in the day peace, love and mung beans. Must have been 15 or 20 years before I actually asked someone what the hell is a mung bean. There's a mung bean. It's one of those vegany type.
Speaker 1:It's like lentils. I discovered lentils.
Speaker 2:It's too good for you. I remember, as we did in those days, bands often shared houses well, particularly with women, but because they'd look after you and they'd cook for you and they'd wash you, whatever, more than likely be involved with one of them. And I just remember this one woman and she was a wonderful cook, she was a vegetarian in those days she made this most amazing lasagna out of nuts. She used to grind with a stone and just still get it. Yeah, she would go to the market and buy bags and bags of nuts and lots of yeah, three or four different nuts and she would grind them up and that was a substitute for me.
Speaker 1:That was a bit unusual back then. Oh, it was thoroughly unusual. Yeah, not common like now.
Speaker 2:No, I remember she brought home this disgusting thing one time and I saw her eating it and I said it's smell. And I said what's that? She says yoghurt. I said what is that? And she said, oh, it's a fermented product from cow's In those days. Try it. No, it doesn't smell that good and I tried it. So we're talking about the early 70s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now yoghurt is everywhere and everybody eats it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly when I think about it. I mean you know mum beans, I mean she used to cook and boil all kinds. She used to buy these huge bags of those big Italian beans which were quite exotic. But see, you're living in Melbourne and we live quite near. At that time we lived in Karp, which is not too far away from the big market.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Karp and Karm.
Speaker 1:Karm.
Speaker 2:And you know so she would buy bulk like we'd all put in. She'd buy bulk things and make big pots of stuff for everybody. Those are about eight people in the house.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe that's your secret to the fountain of youth All that healthy eating as a youngster, yeah, yeah possibly To count a balance, all the chemical interest being ensured, that's right.
Speaker 1:See, it's all about balance, ying yang. You know that's it. That's it Still off in a podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee? Back to find out some of angry's early influences after this. But I thought I would play you a song from John Farnham and the amazing Kate Sibrano from the 1992 Jesus Christ Superstar, where angry played Herod. Everything's all right. I don't know how to love him. One thing I wanted to ask you is what do you like to listen to, angry? Just for your own listening pleasure? What's your thing?
Speaker 2:It's horses, for course it's driving. I like, you know, I like rock and roll.
Speaker 1:You know, because you do, you're having a favourites ride.
Speaker 2:So my favourite rock band of all time, favourite rock and roll band of all time, apart from the very early influences. But the band that I love the most is the Faces. You know, on the road I'll listen to the Faces. I'll listen to the very early Rolling Stones. I'll listen to a lot of Leslie West and Mount. I like the things that you know. I mean I can sing the songs that you know I relate to the music. I mean obviously that's what you do with music, anything that's sort of just you know it's got energy, etc. I well, roach Tats and I had a manager years ago called Stephen White and he was most famous for Country Managers Country actually Lee Koenigin. For the last 10 or 12 years I think he's had this wonderful act called the Wolf Brothers. I played their albums.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I play their albums a lot in the car, you know it's because it's going music, you know. But at home, either car too, I was just thinking about it I play, you know, santana always, and it's freely from the 70s and taken lots of acid and really, you know, I just space it out on, whereas, like with Floyd, I won't play that in a car, play that at home, yes, same era, if you know what I mean, but like some people might be very surprised.
Speaker 2:Actually I listened to all my favorite singers from my early influences. You know the classic ladies Mahalia and Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee and Anita Sabone Odetta the great blues soul singers.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you because I thought that there was some blues in the background there, because I read that originally you wanted to be a blues guitarist, you know, like Dylan and then Lenin, and but you found yourself in a band with three guitarists, so you ended up singing and the rest is history. Is that right? Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2:I'm prescribing to some of the fundamentals that I believe in and I believe so. I believe in really there's no coincidence in life. There's no real, just haphazard collision of circumstances. I mean there's a collision of circumstances but it's not random, it's not haphazard. There is a purpose. It's not preordained, it's not predestined, but there is a fundamental reason that most things happen. And yes, found myself actually was four guitar players, but one of them played bass. Eventually.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, well lucky you could sing Well you know that's argument.
Speaker 2:People will debate that even to this day. Yeah, we all tried out singing and none of the others had any, had any taste for being a vocalist, right, and I was so bad as a guitar player I still am, but it's one of the things that I like. You know, we're drawing very close to the end of Rose Tattoo, but I've got my own band ready to go, which is more based on R&B sort of band like the Faces Right and yeah, so very much in that vein, a band from Melbourne called Palace of the King, and they're a band within their own right, of course, very talented, wonderful writers, beautiful musicians. Their influences are very much the 70s, which is the era that I want to use as my basis for the band.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I just said it one by one. We got up and sang. I chose to sing.
Speaker 1:Twist and Shout. Twist and Shout, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it just. They just all looked at one. I think they had it planned to this day. The other thing, too, is that I was such a lousy, and I still am such a lousy, clumsy guitar player.
Speaker 1:They thought what are we going to do with this guy? Let's put him out in front.
Speaker 2:Well, pretty much I now look back on it. Well, when I did look back, I thought that I was never going to get the job as a guitar player. Yeah, there was so much better than I.
Speaker 1:It's worked out perfectly. Now we're talking about Well for me it has Still off in a podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee. We're going to speak more to angry about how he got to play the character Iron Bar Bassie in this film beyond Thunderdome back in 1985. His Tina Turner. We don't need another hero. We've got to get on to the tour soon before we go. But talking about you, having been there and done everything, you were also in a film. You played Ionbar Bassey in Mad Max, beyond Thunderdome.
Speaker 2:I extraordinary experience making a film. The other films that I've been in have been very low budget. One movie I did was like a quarter of a million dollars budget and it was shot over about three months. You know that's not a whole lot of money for that many people.
Speaker 2:you know production but they're small parts and I've done one movie before Thunderdome called Bola Makanca, which is a crazy movie. George is an avid supporter but he's avidly or passionately interested in Australian film. George Miller, co-writer director Kennedy Miller, and we as a management approached George Miller on after I saw the first Mad Max. It was long after that that I asked management. I said, look, I reckon they're going to make another movie.
Speaker 2:And then, not so long after that, I read that George intended to make a trilogy being three. I mean because he's very, very he's stegued in esoterics, there's a lot of symbolism in these movies, et cetera. I mean, obviously he would add the whole thing, the anti-heroes, you know. So I was convinced that he was going to make another movie and I said to my management at the time approach them and let them know that I'm available, because when you looked at the first movie I thought I'll fit in here like a hand in the glove.
Speaker 1:They won't even need to dress you up.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, we were touring at the time that they cast and started to shoot the second movie. But this is how spooky life is. What are? My dearest friends at school, whose band I was in when I became a singer, was a guy called Vernon Wells, and he played Wes in the second movie. He was the Lunatic with the pink bow and hawk, yeah, and I went through school with him. He was two years ahead of me and in fact, when we were, I suppose for what a better word practically everyone where I grew up was involved in some sort of street gang or whatever, and he was the leader of our gang and we were later on went on to do music together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so all those years later. So Vernon got the part and I missed out because I was touring. So I was completely bummed by that, like, just you know, inconsolable.
Speaker 1:And then he said oh mate, you got no idea. You got no idea. I'm on something Fuck, I don't want to hear about it. You know, I want to be in the movie, but anyway, so anyway, you had.
Speaker 2:So, no Well so anyway, Some time later I'd done Brutal McCanker. They were having a meeting about the third movie. George Miller said look, there's this character, he's a rock singer, angry.
Speaker 1:Anderson. He would be amazing in the movie, but apparently he's uncontrollable.
Speaker 2:Like he's, like he's a loose. You know he's very loose Can it? The makeup lady said look, I did a movie with him a year ago called Brutal McCanker, and she said he's. She said if you can keep him away from the alcohol, he's fine. So so I got the part that they had a part. You know this lunatic.
Speaker 2:It was only three days shooting and I was only in that opening sequence where Max arrives in in Bartetown and Frank, who was you know, he was the governor, so to speak. He worked for and under Tina Arty her name was in the movie. Yeah, so, george, we shot those scenes. I met one of my best mates on that film. He's six foot eight. He was the giant master blaster. I had the little the dwarf sitting on his on his back. He was the guy that fought in Bunderdome fought Max.
Speaker 1:Yes, anyway, him and I became best mates.
Speaker 2:So we still are to this day, and he's a plumber, I work for him. I do his labor in for him when I'm not working at a band. But that's just how wonderful the connections that we make in life are.
Speaker 2:But after that movie you know the George said to me. He said like we talked about the connection between Vernon and I, he loved Vernon, he thought Vernon was great, he advised Vernon to go to Los Angeles and take up acting and like go to acting school. Vernon actually ended up doing about half a dozen movies, like he did three or four with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Morris played the bad guy. I think he'd do at least one with Claude Van Damme, but they were those sort of you know boofy boy, you know good bad boys. And George sort of said you know like, yeah, you should go and try your hands. And I said look, I don't want to be playing on him after the rest of my life. You know what I mean. And Mel, I know, you know, I know enough about Mel to defend him in when people say you know what a turd, what a hard boy.
Speaker 1:I said no, no, you don't know him.
Speaker 2:He's a great boy. One of the things that he and I had in common, you know we had demons from our past. Yes, anyway, he said to me. He said like, if you want to, he said I'd use you to a couple of acting schools because he's so honest about it. He said, let's face it, what you've done so far, that's not actually acting.
Speaker 2:He said, I think you can learn to act or you know you can learn the skill. That was a very complimentary thing to say because we spent a lot of time together during the movie, Mel and I, because he was living in a koojee and I was living a koojee at the time. We kept our quietness socially after we finished the movie as well. I enjoy his acting. I always have. I think he always plays Mel to a point, if you know what I mean. Yes, he's a wonderful director. He's written, co-written and directed some amazing films, Amazing films.
Speaker 1:Yes, very, very passionate.
Speaker 2:The passion. I mean Apocalypse, which is like an absolute favourite movie of mine, but you know there's a list of movies that Mel has done that are quite you know, I mean really, really extraordinary good movies.
Speaker 1:We must get on to your tour. Yeah, you're going to be a busy boy in May. You're coming to our town on the 6th at the Gulf. I'll see you down the road, let me have a look at.
Speaker 2:I've got May 6th at the Gulf, the second town city, because we had a very, very strong following from Elizabeth and around that sort of whole area. Buster Brown used to play in the early days with Lobby or Billy. So Lobby Norris and Billy Thorpe yeah yeah, when they both had their respective, had their bands, a deadlady had a very strong, sharp skinhead population which we used to play and I think it was called the pub, called the Piracca, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the bridgeway at Piracca. It was the Piracca Hotel, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we used to play there a lot. We had more success. We had our first chart success, firstly in Newcaste, then in Adelaide, and they seem to be the only two cities that whenever we released any single, they were the two cities, the two pockets, if you like that. Just I mean really in a real sense we've probably got. I've always attributed those two pockets as the most contributory factors to our early and enduring success.
Speaker 1:if you want to talk about that, yeah, Still off in a podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee. Back to have a final bit of a chat with Angry After this song. I don't think we can have a chat about Rose Tattu without playing. We Can't Be Beaten. We Can't Be Beaten, we Can't Be Beaten, we Can't Be Beaten. But we're here in our voice, we Can't Be Beaten. Well, good luck for the rest of the tour. You've got a few in Victoria, and then New South Wales and then Tassie and then, as you said, good luck for the overseas tour.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Keep our fingers crossed. It's a strange thing because I've not put myself in the grave yet just because of my age, but one of the things you do realise, going back to the, if you haven't grown up on a time, you're 60 thing.
Speaker 1:Growing up so overrated Gary.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing about it is and of course I don't want to go into it either, but the passing of life becomes more noticeable the older you get. Because I mean, like a reference to my, to the original Rosie Tattu they've all gone, my father's gone, my brother's gone, who's tell you? But so what it does is it gives you a very sobering, realistic look at life.
Speaker 2:You realise, it's not infinite. As George Harrison said, all things must pass, and that's very, very true, and I think that's one of the things that's very obvious. Rose Tattu is in its very last days. Well, I was going to say that at the last two years, lost, of course. Lost can't be relived, can't be got back, you know. So, all of us, the whole planet in a sense, but particularly in Rose Tattu, we've lost two of our last years, if we like.
Speaker 1:So make every moment count and, you know, absolutely enjoy every second.
Speaker 2:Manically, obsessively. We're going to ring, it's. You know every ounce out of it. We possibly can.
Speaker 1:You have been so, so generous with your time in the Zoom room.
Speaker 2:I've enjoyed your company.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much and we look forward to seeing you at one of our favourite places in Adelaide the Gove. I'll see you down the front, I'll give you away.
Speaker 2:Right, I've cut back drastically on, you know, recreational drinking, but I do have the odd beer or two after a gig, so it'd be nice to have a beer with you.
Speaker 1:Alrighty. Thank you so much again. Still off in a podcast with that radio chick, cheryl Lee. How about we hear that track we spoke about earlier? It was the soundtrack to Charlene and Scott's Marriage on Neighbours All those years ago. A beautiful ballad suddenly Again. All the best with all the touring and I look forward to seeing you very soon. See you at the Gove, see you down the front. Yeah right, I'm out.
Speaker 2:See you, mate.
Speaker 1:You're with Cheryl Lee, that radio chick. Thank you so much for joining me on the Still Rocking Out podcast. Hope to catch you again next time. Get out when you can support Aussie music and I'll see you down the front.