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Who started the band? Was it you or Rick?

It was me that started the band.

Uh, it was my idea.

I was driving Rick somewhere.

He'd just got his degree as an agricultural scientist.

I pulled the car over and I said to Rick,

"You know that band Sherbet, Rick?"

And he said, "Yep."

And I said, "I reckon if we start a rock band,

we can knock 'em off in 12 months.

What do you reckon?"

He just turned to me and said, "Yep, okay."

And I spent all night talking to Doc.

About nine o'clock in the morning,

I talked him into it.

Without Rick and Doc agreeing,

it could never have been more than just a dream.

She should have known just once,

just once in her life,

that she had to taste the long, thin edge of her own knife.

Similar to the way Nirvana

changed hair band music in America,

and all of a sudden it became alternate,

the Angels did exactly that in Australia.

- Angels! Angles! Angels!

♪ Went down to Santa Fe where Renoir paints the walls

♪ Described you clearly but the sky began to fall

♪ Am I ever gonna See your face again?

♪ Am I ever gonna See your face again?

♪ Trams cars and taxis, Like a wax-works on the move

♪ Carry young girls past me but none of them are you

♪ Am I ever gonna See your face again?

♪ Am I ever gonna See your face again?

No way, get fucked, fuck off!

I was always a bit protective of Rick.

When we were little kids,

the guy next door picked on Rick

and I beat him up.

And then into our teens

I think we probably got

a little more distant from each other.

Brothers get along in a certain way, I suppose.

Generally speaking, the older sibling tends to be

a little more authoritative over the younger sibling.

And John was obviously the older brother, you know.

John wasnthe older and sophisticated man

and had girlfriends,

but I'm pretty sure

he gave us a couple of dollars one day

to go away and buy an ice cream.

Dad was the lead cellist in the orchestra,

then he was the Director of Music

for the ABC.

I mean, he came through the Depression.

And it was all about job security.

I got into working

in a chartered accountant's office,

because I thought, "Oh, well,

that's what Dad thinks I should do.

Maybe he's right."

You know, we were young and we were breaking free.

Long hair, flower power, free love. Music was king.

The Beatles, The Stones, The Kinks.

Our friend Pete Thorpe said,

"You know when we go to these parties

and you take your guitar along and sing songs?

I'd like to play with you."

And I said, "Okay, yeah, what do you play?"

He said, "I don't really play anything."

"But I'd like to learn something."

And I said, "Well, I don't know.

Why don't we do a jug band?"

We went to my brother

and asked himif he'd like to be part of it.

I didn't feel like I had a lot of responsibility.

Rick won the Under-21 Classical Piano Eisteddfod

at the age of 16.

I don't have any doubt

that he could have been a concert pianist.

He was that good.

Rick's relationship with Arthur

and certainly... and I think John's, too,

was difficult.

He had a nasty streak.

Arthur was at home

with some of his drinking buddies

and at one stage, John was one of those.

And I walked in and he said,

"Oh, have you met my daughter, Richalina?"

And I just wanted to kill him.

We always used to give him

a hard time for being vague,

because he'd sort of seem to be off with the fairies

but he knew exactly what was going on.

And then in came Doc.

We arrived in Australia on Easter Thursday of 1960,

and I went, "Shit..."

you know, "...this is Adelaide?"

Probably expected a big cheering crowd

to be on the wharf.

There was nothing of the sort.

It was quite solitary and almost, to me, lonely.

We ended up in a town that was just being built,

north of Adelaide, called Elizabeth.

There was very little for teenagers to do.

Nothing to do.

Bob Bowes, long-time friend of Bernard.

You'll find I don't call him Doc.

My nickname for him was Bernardino.

We were always out singing.

We walked the streets a lot singing.

That was a big part of it.

Elizabeth was, in those days, a step too far,

so he often stayed with me at my home.

He was a mover and shaker.

He was also extremely athletic.

I saw him leapfrog red letterboxes.

In fact he even split his trousers...[CHUCKLIN

...one day doing that

which we never let him forget.

He was a character. Yeah, he was a character.

And he read a lot of books.

He was always writing things down.

But he was really, really cheeky.

Always,

you know, making a joke of... ...sensitive times,

or trying to.

I got a call from Doc.

"Hey," he said, "Do you wanna be a star?"

And I said to my wife,

"Look, like, it's one night a week."

Well, one night turned into six.

The Sussex Hotel was their big venue.

The dance floor was always packed.

Like people on the tables, jumping.

Peter Thorpe would play

the string bass with a glove on,

and he'd soak it in metho and set it on fire.

The crowd would go nuts.

There had been a recording contract with EMI

floating about the place,

and so everybody decided that it would be a great idea

if we went properly professional.

And so I resigned from teaching.

Thank you. That's it for now.

Moonshine will be back soon.

And then almost immediately,

they decided that they would really

like to play electric rock and roll.

Hello, baby!

♪ Yeah, this is the Big Doctor speaking

♪ What's that, honey?

Our first drummer, Charlie King,

was probably one of the only drummers around

that would actually consent to play with us.

I knew all the numbers, '60s and '70s rock.

I just loved music.

♪ Chantilly lace and a pretty face and...

Their first gig electric,

there was only 20 people there

and they got booed.

The audience hated us.

Meeting AC/DC in 1975 completely changed our life.

I think it might have been Malcolm that said,

"Next time you come to Sydney,

we'd like you to meet George and Harry."

"Yeah, of course.

Thanks for the invitation, guys."

We'll be there.

So we sang a few songs

and we were signed two weeks later.

Albert Studio in Sydney is a kind of iconic studio

and it's where The Easybeats recorded

and where AC/DC recorded all their initial albums.

And it's got a particular sound about it

that is kind of defining of Australian rock and roll.

Ted Albert was the head of the company.

He was a real visionary

and he had a lot of faith in people.

He knew George and Harry's worth

and he let them get on with what they did best.

Vanda and Young were

the hottest producers in Australia

and internationally recognised.

I don't think there was any year

that we didn't have three albums in the chart,

all created from our own studio.

It was like the pinnacle.

If you could make it in Sydney, you'd made it.

One of my friends said,

"You ran away from Adelaide with a rock and roll band."

I was only 23 when I got here.

It literally was an adventure.

Someone found Wallaringa Mansions.

Carpets that smelled of cat piss

and I couldn't have cared less.

It was all aboutthe next session in the studio

and writing the next song.

I worked particularly hard

because I was doing the roadie's job as well.

If I wasn't drumming, we were pulling down

or loading and driving to the next gig.

I remember one week, we did 12 shows.

One of the gigs in Melbourne

was the Ringwood ice skating rink.

Angus Young and Rick would get these gloves

and cut the fingers off

so they could get a bit of circulation

into their fingers to play the leads.

There'd be very few people

and Bitsy, Dzintra and I would sit up the back

and wait for four hours.

It's a long time.

I was a fairly newly-graduated physio.

We all provided stability

while they chased a dream.

We were all working on our instruments

and developing moderately well,

but Charlie didn't seem to be improving.

George and Harry had a quiet word to us.

Said, "Maybe it's time to look for another drummer."

I didn't want to do it and I'm sure Doc didn't.

We suggested,

"You're the guy, John. You do it."

I was sitting in the front of a car.

John suddenly turned around and said,

"Pete, you're out of the band."

So I just opened the door, stepped outside,

lit up a smoke and took a deep breath.

He just drove off.

That was it.

I really, really believe

that the main reason I got fired

was because of egos.

Drumming had nothing to do with it.

It was bullshit.

I reckon I was about nine or ten

when I decided I was going to be a musician.

My nana had a tape recorder and then my cousins had one

and then I had two tape recorders together.

And I'd go from one to the other

and I'd add bits and pieces.

I'd seen the Moonshine Jugand String Band which I loved,

and we would run into them at these gigs

and I remember saying to Doc one time,

"'Why did you guys stop doing the jug band?"

Because the jug band was really good.

"But if you don't mind me saying,

the Keystone Angels don't sound that good."

He said, "Oh, we're just learning

how to play electric music."

Robbie Robertson,

who runs the Thebarton Theatre, rang me up.

So I go into this meetingand there's John, Rick and Doc.

And immediately I went,

"Oh, no, the Keystone Angels. No, I don't know about that."

I thought, "Well, I'll join you for six months,

see if I like it and I'll come to Sydney."

If I don't like it, I just thought

I could leave or go back to London

which was what my plan was anyway.

Any time you started to talk about,

you know, things rhythmic, Doc couldn't do it.

He just physically couldn't do it.

And I'd kind of be dropping hints about, you know,

wouldn't it be nice if there was a bass player

that could sort of keep up with me?

You know.

One Saturday afternoon in Neutral Bay

in a crummy boarding house that we were stuck in,

it was an open meeting

so we could all say whatever we wanted.

And there were reasons

why John should be the frontman.

He could play harp and he was a good singer.

And then we sort of went round the circle of the four of us.

We got to Buzz and he said,

"Well, I think Doc should be the lead singer,

because he's got the worst voice in the band."

I gave him a look that could kill.

Like, really, I was pretty insulted.

Buzz very quickly corrected himself and said,

"No, what I mean is the most distinctive voice."

I said, "Look, why don't we just get a bass player

and make it a five-piece band?"

Buzz had contactwith Chris Bailey in Adelaide.

I, for one, went, "Oh, yeah, you gotta be kidding."

He was frontman for his own band.

Suddenly we had a rhythm section.

We had some of that magic.

It was amazing.

♪ Hold tight, big brother

♪ Calling in the name of liberty

♪ Lots stone take your place

♪ Looks like It's comin' down on me

♪ Down on me

I had this old EH Holden station wagon

and we would just go from town to town, seven nights a week.

Every time we stopped on the road

we'd play gentlemen's frisbee

and it was fantastic fun, but never Doc.

He would be off in a corner somewhere, reading a book.

Doc didn't play frisbee.

Doc used to get hit by the frisbee.

Doc, no matter where he was, would get hit.

John was assertive.

I saw John as the leader,

without really thinking of it in those terms ever,

at that time.

I did all the driving back in the old days,

mainly because I was probably not out of it.

I was probably the least out of it.

Thousands and thousands of miles

in the old station wagon.

I don't remember anyone driving apart from John.

He was very confident in the band

and he was the guy that went daily to the agent

and he would literally stand over his shoulder,

looking at the calendar, saying,

"There's a hole there. Fill it. Come on, come on."

"Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again" the single,

was what we call a turntable hit.

Got lots of radio play, but got no sales.

Sold a few copies to people like my mother.

They put out a song called "You're a Lady Now".

I have no idea why they put that out.

The album itself wasn't received that well.

Sank without a trace.

We thought "Comin' Down" was gonna be our big hit.

And that didn't really take off.

Another flop.

One flop after another.

Harry and George asked Rick and I

to step out into the corridor.

And my heart sank.

I thought, "They've lost interest."

Vanda and Young had asked me

if I wanted to be their apprentice.

Of course I said yes, you know,

and so I started working with their artists.

AC/DC, "Love Is In The Air", John Paul Young.

You know, after about six months,

George Young came up to me,

and said, "Look, we're thinking of dropping the Angels.

We can't see us

doing a lot of work with them any more,

because they weren't a commercial success.

But if you'd like to work with them,

you know, we'll keep trying."

♪ White line On the burning road

AC/DC have a sound.

The Rolling Stones have a sound.

Everyone has a unique audio footprint.

And yet in most Australian acts,

it was just all these different songs,

like throwing mud against a wall

to see if it would stick.

So I wanted to make a record

that the apprentice butcher or the young tradie

could get his cassette and slam it into his car

and drive off to the pubwith this blaring really loud.

♪ She promised herself this would be the last one

Punk music was ending.

So it struck me

that what I had to do with the Angels

was come up with some sophisticated punk sound.

Now, I had no idea what that sound was.

Absolutely zero.

I'm sure John Brewster would have regarded me

with a little bit of suspicion,

because all of a sudden I had a bit of power.

But that's fair enough, too.

Without John Brewster, there's no Angels.

Robyn.

John was doted on by his mother,

if that's the way of saying it.

I think he came after a child that died,

so she was quite protective

and I think that he picked up on that

and was quite neurotic about health

and safety and illness and... yeah.

We never even heard of Robert until years later.

All I saw was John getting a lot of attention.

And I never wanted that sort of attention.

John was a major worry wart.

John would worry about every little detail.

He was definitely the mother of the band.

We couldn't afford accountants, so I'd do it all

and you know, we bought a truck and all this stuff.

So there was this massive pressure

of repayments to a loan.

I couldn't sleep at night.

There was some talk

of putting the jug band back together again.

You know, it's three years too late,

but maybe I could go back to entomology.

And I said, "Hang on,

we've got seven weeks of gigs coming up.

Now we've got to do that seven weeks

and we'll see how we're going then."

Week one, our van blew a tyre.

- Boom!

We talked to Ted Albert, who said, "No."

"I'm not loaning you money."

John approached me for money.

I had no money.

I went from Sydney to Adelaide,

went down to Victor Harbour.

Asked Dad to help us out.

Of course, Dad knocked me back and then he sort of said,

"Well, you've forced me to make a commentary

about what you're doing."

He said, "I think you and Rickhave made a very big mistake."

I was thinking about

how I was gonna go back to Sydney

and have to tell the band,

"I'm sorry, guys, it's not gonna happen."

The song just came into my head.

It was at Chequersand it was a wet Tuesday night

which doesn't mean anything, but it adds to the moment.

And...

I think I was doing the door.

And then they sung a song called "I Ain't the One".

You could almost feel the band

sensing they'd found themselves.

The people who'd been sitting up the back

rushed to the front,

and it was a moment from which you couldn't go back

because it laid out for them

exactly who and what they could be.

We used to rehearse

in the basementof somebody's house in Balmain.

It was like airless, shirts off

and sweat pouring off of us.

Someone would be going,

"De-de-de-de-eh, de-de-de-de-de-de,"

and we'd do that for, like, 20 minutes

and you'd go, "I've had enough of this.

For God's sake play another chord! Play a D."

The main element of it was called an eighth note

which we called "nick nick".

We had all these other songs.

"Well, we can put it in that one,

we can put it in that song,

we can put it in this song."

And we can write new songs that incorporate it.

We were all smoking marijuana.

It's so much a music drug

and also the camaraderie that exists.

If you're all having a joint,

you're all on a pretty similar wavelength.

I was very fortunate with "Face to Face"

because when we did the vocals,

it'd just be me and Doc together.

I set the microphone up in the control room

with the big speakers,

because I wanted him to get the feel of it.

The idea was to have no one else around

and so that way,

he could disappear into his own world.

When it was a four-piece band,

when I first joined,

it was kind of... everyone was very tight.

And as soon as Chris came in and it was a five-piece band,

it changed the dynamic quite a bit.

It changed it a lot, actually.

When we officially formed

Brewster-Neeson-Brewster,

it would have been

when Buzz and Chris were both in the band.

We were sitting around in a room like this

with a couple of guitars, all throwing in ideas.

And Doc would have his notebook,

singing along.

It felt like a real team.

Chris didn't show any interest in writing.

But Buzz wanted to write.

There was this push-pull thing

between musical styles.

I mean, those guys hadn't heard the Ramones.

You know?

And I was, like... "You haven't heard..."

"You haven't heard the Ramones?"

Many times, nBuzz or Chris would say to me,

"Oh, gee, I wanna leave the band."

And I said, "Do not leave the band

Do not. This is going to be so big.

Do not leave. Do not leave.

You're so crucial."

It created this nice friction, this tension,

and that's the thing

that I was always looking for in the songs.

"Create tension, create tension."

Then Rick wrote Take A Long Line.

This is it, folks, over the top.

Once that hit the airwaves,

they broke records.

It was a dam breaking.

And it just boomed up the charts.

We played with David Bowie, AC/DC, Meatloaf.

The Angels!

♪ He was selling postcards from a paper stand

♪ The whiskey bottle in his withered hand

♪ Put his finger on a photo from an old magazine

That summer,

you could walk outside the back of your house

and you'd hear "Face to Face"

being played in the backyards all around.

In the car next to you at the traffic lights and

and driving past someone's barbecue,

you'd hear...

♪ Take a long line...

♪ Reel him in

Manly Vale Hotel. 1,800 people in there.

The agent called the manager and said,

"We suggest you take out all your tables and chairs."

And the publican said,

"Don't tell me how to run my hotel."

At the end our show, I'm standing on the stage,

and there's not one table, not one chair in one piece.

The whole place is wreckedwith glass all over the floor.

Every now and again you see a thong where there's blood.

And the manager's walking towards me

and as he got closer I said, "Sorry about the damage."

And he said, "Damage? What damage?

This is my bar take.

When can I get you guys back here?"

Fifa Riccobono came to me and she said,

"Oh, 'Face to Face' has gone gold."

I said, "Fifa,

this album's gonna go a lot further than gold.

This has changed Australian music."

♪ Take a long line

♪ Reel him in

♪ Take a long line

♪ Reel him in

George said, "Your best way on stage,

because you haven't been a frontman before,

is just to do anything that you want."

I went, "Anything?"

I decided to go down to Sydney Fish Markets

and I bought about a dozen foot-long fish.

I cleaned them, disinfected them

lowered them into a bucket

and took them to the Bondi Lifesaver

and kept them out of sight

from the band because I thought,

"'Let's give the audience something to talk about."

I didn't realise there was fish meat on the head

and it was breaking offand getting on people's clothes

and getting on their skin

and a few people

actually started throwing them back at the band.

And one hit Chris Bailey's bass

and kind of mushed itself right across all his strings.

So he had to play the rest of the night...

... with fish head all through his guitar.

And he came off the stage, you know, when we were all off

and I was kind of thinking,

"Mmm, wonder how the fish thing went."

And he came up to me and he said, very quietly,

"Doc, I never interfere

with what you're doing on stage,

but if you ever fucking throw fish out again,

I'm not playing with this band."

At a nightclub where I'd got a part-time job on weekends

as a roadie,

I was on stage

and I just happened to look across the room

and I saw this girl with these beautiful eyes

just about to sit down

and I thought,

"Hmm, if I were to sit beside her for the next hour,

I'd have the chance to... to chat her up."

So I put on a bit of a spurt,

kissed her on the cheek goodnight,

but got her phone number.

Daniel was born, and Bernard in his usual sort of way

had arranged for Daniel and I

to come home in a horse and carriage.

With Kieran, it was a limousine and champagne in the back

and it was such a delightful part of him

where he really wanted to,

you know, make an occasion of this

because it was important.

See, if you get it right,

when he goes up on the shoulder like this,

he gives a projectile vomit.

Six or seven years upon migrating from Ireland,

you know, he had a relationship with my mum,

got into music and got into drama school.

I think from that point on, it was, like,

"Well, what can I do with this place?"

You know, "What buttons can I push?

What is there to explore in life?"

Bernard liked German Expressionism in film,

in particular where there was high drama,

there was lots of contrasts and long shadows.

He was into poetry,

he was into Bertolt Brecht writings and Kafka.

I was looking to be

a film director and write scripts.

The flash of life

that is the second that begins the day.

♪ Holding council with the king and queen

♪ Trying hard to decide the fate of their regime

♪ There's only one thing needed to complete the harmonising

♪ That's a man with a voice like a scraping violin

♪ Waiting for Mr Damage...

He wanted to benan untouchable, magical thing.

♪ Trying hard just to keep a candle lit

♪ A leather flyer leaves the subway anxious to admit

♪ That the marvelled one so recently deposed

♪ Was seen three days laterin a brand new suit of clothes

♪ Brand new suit of clothes for a very special day...

He's one of these people who contains this energy...

like a bomb.

♪ A brand new suit of clothes for a very special day

His energy translates by him letting it go

screaming across the audience.

It's in, it's in, it's in and then he goes, "Bang!"

♪ Hey!

♪ Mr Damage holds a curse

♪ Mr Damage drives a hearse

♪ Don't you know who did it first?

♪ Mr Damage

♪ Mr Damage

♪ Walks through the door

♪ Of his sacrificial church

♪ Mr Damage

♪ Meet you in the lobby

♪ And he'll leave you In the lurch

♪ Mr Damage

♪ Stands at the altar

♪ Sermon of the search

♪ All the faithful follow

♪ Holding frozen hands

♪ As Mr Damage holds the curse

1979, I think we did 330 gigs.

So that only left, you know,

35 days when we didn't have a gig.

Which is not very many.

I saw less of him.

In fact, the year that I was pregnant with Sam,

I think I would have seen him

only for a few months of that year.

You could never sort of stop and think.

You know, we were just on the road all the time.

Ray Hawkins, he knew nothing about lights.

I was at law school,

but I'd just been busted for dealing drugs,

so I wasn't exactly your normal...

...your normal law student.

We used to go around to Ray's house

and physically build lights.

We had this little production line.

Crimp, rivet, grommet. Crimp, rivet, grommet.

And then we'd set the lights up

at four o'clock in the morning out in his back yard.

The singular feature

of the Angels' lighting was darkness.

As well as black being a colour we used,

Doc used silence

in the middle of his raves.

For a rock and roll band

to use a poignant, pregnant pause,

and leave the moment

for people to fill in as they wish,

it was theatre, it was perfect.

And it was complex and it was menacing.

I think they touched people deeply

on a level that no one even understood

because into darkness,

you can project your own fears and subconscious.

The Angels were just incandescent.

When the bandfirst kind of hit the heights,

it was mainly males.

I'm looking at all these guys with their shirts off,

sweating and drinking beer and stuff

and I look out and there,

standing on a table, dancing, is my mum.

She was... You know, we could do no wrong.

My dad never came to a show.

Rick tried to be a rock and roll performer.

Didn't work.

He was kind of a bit eccentric.

He used to take a sewing machine on the road

in case he had to run up a pair of flares.

He had for no apparent reason

bought 11 red phone boxes,

and then put store mannequins inside them.

He looked really ungainly

when he used to walk around on stage.

We'd sort of be on him and say,

"Hey, Rick, you know,

that silly little move you make.

Do you have to do that?" You know?

And finally he said one day,

"What do you want me to do? Stand still?"

♪ I ain't the one...

No one could stand still with that intensity.

Doc would go up to Rick and scream in his ear

and Rick would still just stand there like this.

When it came to "I Ain't The One"

and all the focus was on Doc.

Fade to black. Rick would go off the stage.

Put a cardboard cut-out of Rick up there, life size.

The light would come up from behind him

so they were only seeing a silhouette.

And then Doc, in his antics,

would be dancing across the stage and whack!

Fold in the middle, flat to the ground.

He would rip the head off

and frisbee it out into the crowd.

But it's the only time he'd frisbee.

What I used to hear the Angels doing

for at least half an hour

in whatever dressing room space that they had,

they carried practice amps and they set them up there

and all three of the guitars, Chris Bailey on bass,

the two Brewster brothers

would play together for at least half an hour,

probably more like 45 minutes.

And this was all about getting the guitars exactly in tune.

Of course they're doing it all by ear.

There were no tuners.

So, that was the way they locked themselves in.

And that became a real thing for me

because they were such a tight band.

I think that's the defining thing about them. It was...

Oh, I don't know,

kind of almost a religious experience for me.

Now? Yes!

Now!

Proudmans was built for ballet.

The speaker columns and the ceilings

bouncing up and down.

Suddenly the whole truss

comes down and it scatters the audience

No one was injured. It was hilarious.

They've been transformed into this menacing,

road-tough new band

with a whole lot of new material

played incredibly fast.

The Oils had to compete with this.

You see Guns N' Roses.

Their singer, he took everything from that.

♪ I ain't the one I ain't the one

♪ I ain't the one to judge

♪ I ain't the one I ain't the one...

You'll never ever tell me

that he didn't know exactly what he was doing

every second of the performance.

Everything's in lockstep.

They can feel it.

Everything, every note, it's milliseconds going down

and they're on the same wavelength.

♪ I ain't the one I ain't the one

♪ I ain't the one to judge

♪ I ain't the one I ain't the one

♪ I ain't the one to judge

♪ I ain't the one I ain't the one

♪ I ain't the one to judge

Well, we're into the 1980s,

but it hasn't started outas an entirely happy New Year.

Hooliganism marred the New Year's Eve revelries

at the Opera House last night,

bringing the Sydney Festival Concert

to an abrupt and violent end.

Sixty-five people were taken to hospital

and there were more than 40 arrests.

Everyone was shitfaced

and started to frisbee these pieces of masonite

up onto the stage.

Chris and I are just going,

"'Fuck..." you know,

"Is someone gonna stop this or what?"

Right then, this flagon

that had been broken off went...

Embedded itself in the wood.

Just missed me. And I just said to Chris,

"Next song, mate, I'm outta here.

I'm just gonna get up and walk off."

And Chris, you know, he's playing along and,

"Yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah, all right".

And he turned around and this bottle...

Bang! Knocked him unconscious.

And I just got up and I ran

to the fucking front mic and I said,

"You fucking idiots! Arseholes!"

You know, and I'm fucking like this and Rick's still...

Rick's still playing, and I'm going,

"For fuck's sake, get off!"

- And then...

For whatever reason...

Well, hang on, whatever reason?

It was alcohol.

They were drunk as skunks

by the time the Angels came on.

That's the funny thing with crowds.

It's like, you can have a religious experience,

but then, the darkness can come in

if people are not in a good space.

I rolled the dice.

It was a double one. A classic.

There was a lot of fear about doing the next album

because it was five times platinum,

because you've got to now live up

to what you've created before.

"Face to Face"

was a real three-part collaboration.

For me, it started to fall apart

on the next album, "No Exit".

I don't know.

I don't even know what Doc did with his time.

He could strum an instrument

but he wasn't, by any means, a musician.

I mean, he had musical inclinations,

but I don't think he was...

I mean, he wasn't as proficient

at guitar as the Brewsters

and, you know, Rick

who's just a consummate shredder.

There's always a threat of knowing where you fit

or understanding where you fit.

That can lead to insecurities.

Yeah, the new album, of course, for the Angels

is the important thing

on the scene at the moment for the boys.

The Face to Facealbum, um, at 75,000 copies, I believe?

- Apparently. - John, yeah.

Can you tell us a bit about the album itself

and how long it took

and where you did it?

Well, we, uh, did it at Alberts,

the same place we did Face to Face.

We did it a little bit differently to Face to Face.

We... uh, put amps in different rooms

and the production's a bit different.

Um... But we also wrote all this...

Well, nearly all of the songs on this in the studio,

which is a bit different from Face to Faceagain

because most of that stuff was written on the road.

So you had a bit of time

to sit down and think, did you, this time?

Yeah, we took about two and a half months on it.

You're the quiet one here, Rick.

You get involved sort of with John and Doc

on the song writing side of things or...

- Oh, yeah. - Fairly heavily?

- Yes. - Yeah, yeah.

- So the answer is yes. - He's talkative.

How's Doc, anyway?

I haven't seen him for a while.

I haven't seen him for a while either.

Oh, I see, so after a heavy night...

No, he's turned into a bit of recluse these days.

Right. So tonight at the Finsbury

and tomorrow night?

They would come into the studio

with a song, finished.

And it was said to me a couple of times,

"Shut up and play the drums."

Oh, that's me there, so you've got a camera.

When Rick and I were writing together,

it was the most creative time

and it was an incredible relationship.

Quite often, we would end up hating each other

and they were ridiculous arguments.

They went from musical arguments

to personality shredding.

And people would go,

"Oh, my God, you know, the band's about to break up."

And then half an hour later,

we wouldn't even know what we were talking about.

By the time we walked out of the studio,

the little café across the road was open

and people were going to work.

Coordination.

Can roll in...

John was driven.

He had a passion, he had a vision.

He had loads of self-confidence.

There was one agency called Premier Artist

and they handled all the bands.

And there were two managers.

John Woodruff managed the Angels

and Rod Willis managed Cold Chisel.

They worked out that between those two bands

who were massive at the time,

that they were doing half the business of the agency

but weren't gettingany better deal than, you know,

all the other hundred little tiny bands.

John Woodruff, Ray Hearn and Rod Willis

took the Angels, Cold Chisel and Flowers, or Icehouse,

I think by then, and formed Dirty Pool Artists.

If you wanted to book the Angels

or you wanted to book Cold Chisel,

you had to go to the managers and just do a deal.

It was just really, nreally innovative for the time.

Got a lot of the establishment noses out of joint.

John Woodruff came to the band and said,

"I can get you a deal with Epic Records

where you get more money."

Basically,

John Woodruff walked into Alberts and said,

"We're leaving the company."

I found out when I was doing

"Choir Girl" with Cold Chisel.

Went back to Alberts, said, "What? What's going on?"

He said, "No, they've decided to leave

and go to Epic Records,

which is part of CBS Sony."

And I just couldn't believe it.

Epic Records treated us like pop stars.

Like the first time we went to England,

we had Bentleys and we went to Lord's

and had cucumber sandwiches.

You know, the first time we went to America,

you know, we were into the main office

and we were taken out to dinner.

And you're outnon the road for months on end,

and pretty girls come and things happen.

Particularly in America.

I had a girlfriend, Kaye.

I went through the whole Angels experience

as Mr Monogamous.

I still had no idea

that people snorted white powder.

In Los Angeles we had an engineer.

I watched him get a gram of coke

and on the mixing console,

he put the whole gram out, chopped one long line,

and just went up it with a straw,

the whole gram.

Bang.

There was something going on.

It was just starting to break.

KGON, I think,

was the radio station in Portland.

They gave us the keys to the city

and they put us in their Hall of Fame.

We killed it.

The band were very, very popular

in some parts of America.

Sometimes when you tour with bands,

they greet you with open arms

and other times you're just like

something off the bottom of their shoe.

We started The Kinks tour in the areas

where we'd been before

and we were actually quite successful.

Chicago we'd been to before.

Seattle, Portland, Vancouver.

So when we turned up with The Kinks,

there would've been 7,000 people there

that knew who we were.

Poor old Ray Davies didn't like that.

When we did our bit

and when Doc ran out into the audience,

all the audience went nuts and went,

"Hey, this is cool. You know, these guys are great."

The Kinks' road crew began putting tape

on each side of me

and I wasn't supposed to go past that tape on the stage.

♪ Shadow boxer

♪ Don't go Walking out late...

Doc would immediately go past it,

immediately pissing them off.

When that didn't work,

they started giving us less lighting.

And when that didn't work,

they started actually giving us less of the PA.

We were still drawing encores.

♪ You might find that you have turned to stone

It was very exciting for us, of course.

♪ Shadow boxer

♪ Shadow boxer

♪ Yeah

Eventually, dear old Ray had a hissy fit

and chucked us off the tour.

I wouldn't put it past Ray Davies, I'll tell ya.

It was an honour to get tossed off that tour, probably.

Yeah.

It was an honour to be on and get tossed off.

- That's right. - Yeah.

Then "Marseilles" got on

178 radio stations around the country.

I mean, you get on radio in America,

and that's a big deal.

It's the largest record buying public in the world.

Should have stayed in the States longer.

Yeah, they should have stayed in the States.

I blame their management.

The Epic deal that we signed

involved them paying us an advance.

We used about $125,000 of that advance

to buy out of a year of contract with Alberts.

We had to pay all the legal bills

and then we had to pay the manager.

By the time all those things were done, we had no money left.

John Woodruff

didn't actually put the other side of it,

which was "You'll have to pay for your studio,

you have to pay for your engineer,

you'll have to pay for your producer",

that we didn't have to with Alberts.

Musicians tend to, on the whole,

go, when it works, it was them.

When it fails, it was the manager.

Woodruff probably felt, to break America,

you needed a multinational like CBS or Warner,

and he made, I believe, the right call

by virtue of the fact that CBS

had put a plan together that'd break America.

We were sort of hell bent

on what we were doing creatively,

that we went along with this.

You know, and all of a sudden,

we're out of Alberts, we're on our own.

And we'd lost the family, you know.

Buzz was certainly voicing some frustration.

I remember him saying to me, "You guys won't use my songs."

And I said, "What songs?"

John Woodruffgot in touch with me and said,

"Oh, we still want you to work on the albums

to create the sounds,

but we don't want you to be a producer any more."

I'm, like... I said, "What?"

you know, "How does that work?"

Warner Bros. approached me and said,

"Oh, can you come and do the album with Cold Chisel?"

An album that was called "East".

And I said, "Yeah".

And so I just said,

"Sorry, guys, I'm not doing this any more.

You've only got me down as an engineer,

so see you later."

And walked off the job, basically.

I just told them I was leaving.

Doc and Buzz came to us

with a song called "No Secrets"

which was a really slow ballad.

We had this...

Well, basically, Rick and I had a massive input

into changing that song into what it is today.

John first came up with the riff

which is the opening.

Rick came up with the chorus.

So instead of being...

♪ She keeps no secrets...

It became...

♪ She keeps no She keeps no

♪ She keeps no secrets from you

See, I can sing.

♪ Amanda the actress waits at the station

♪ She's drifting With nothing to do

♪ With dilettante steps She's quick to accept...

Because Buzz was always carrying on

about he never got credited as a songwriter,

that we decided,

"Don't worry about it, nwe're not gonna claim anything.

You guys have it."

So it's down forever as Bidstrup-Neeson.

♪ She keeps no She keeps no

♪ She keeps no secrets...

And so, boy, that backfired.

♪ She keeps no She keeps no

♪ She keeps no Secrets from you...

I was hoping that co-writing and co-producing

their first top ten hit might have actually led to,

"Hey, you got any more songs?" But it didn't.

It was treated as an aberration

or as a lucky fluke or something,

I don't know.

America made a hybrid

out of "Face to Face" and "No Exit".

So they took away a lot of the depth of those albums.

And then Dark Room sounded radically different

to the American Face to Face.

And the record company are going,

"Well, it doesn't sound like... they're not the same."

It just changed dramatically

when the record didn't take off.

In London, you know, we had to get the tube.

There was no room for anyone to get any external stimulus.

It was all kind of focused in on this five people.

You know, there was no... You didn't have a life.

And that's what started to get to me.

I just... I couldn't do anything else

and the thought of playing with anybody else

or recording with anybody else was like a no-no.

Like, you couldn't do it.

John Woodruff, he was our manager

and I did have this discussion with him

with a snoot full of cocaine

in America where I just said,

"Man, why don't you grow a pair

and just go to them and tell them

that if they don't consider

at least some kind of remuneration

like other people do..." Like it's not...

I'm not asking for anything out of the ordinary.

I'm just asking for what other people get.

And it was just basically like, "Oh, well, you know.

They're never gonna share their song writing royalties

so don't worry about it.

You know, don't even think about it."

And that was probably, you know,

a week, two weeks before I left.

♪ Iceman, come in From the cold

When Buzz left the band, I think we threw a party.

♪ Sleep Walker, fast talker

♪ Feels nothing Dog eat dog

♪ In the wasteland That's where you belong

Buzz was just a fantastic drummer.

If I look back on it with retrospect I'd say

we should have tried to make him happy.

I think we thought, "Oh, you know,

we'll just get another drummer in."

Thirty-two different guys turned up

and none of them were right.

Now look at the man behind the scenes.

Mr Brent Eccles.

- Oh, hello. - The real deal.

- Well, hello and welcome again. - Let's see if we can

get you into focus, Brent.

Welcome again to Opportunity Knocks.

And the slogan for this week is

"Opportunity only knocks twice."

And our first contestant...

Brent, if I could just interrupt

- you for a moment there? - Yes.

A band is probably the worst

business relationship you could possibly have.

And being the drummer

is probably right down the very bottom,

because you're not writing the songs.

You know, you weren't an original member.

You've come in as a... as a hired hand.

John Woodruff had a contract and he said,

"Because Buzz has gone, you have to sign that

you've taken his place."

And I said, "No problem, I'll sign the piece of paper,

but I want to read the contract."

They said, "Oh, nah. you can't, really."

I said, "Well, I'm signing a piece of paper

that's agreeing to the terms and conditions

I can't even read. I just want to read it."

And John said, "Yeah, okay."

So, I spent the next two weeks going through that contract,

understanding every clause.

It was a very complicated document

and I ended up understanding it totally.

I've never forgotten the stuff in it.

It's set me up in my head for how music works

and how contracts work for my entire life.

When Buzz left, Chris stayed in the band.

You know, it was obvious Chris wasn't happy.

So we asked Jim to join the band.

I remember we used to travel on the tour bus

and I would go to bed with my notebook

and a guitar in this tiny little bunk bed.

And I'd be there for hours, writing songs.

But I don't remember, you know,

times like that, the three of us sitting around.

More and more songs became

either written by me or written by me and John.

I got sick of it.

I just said, "Nope.

I want out.

I want to put the credit where it belongs."

Rick and John Brewster being brothers

had a wonderful love/hate relationship.

John was a bit of a hypochondriac.

He would always be having heart attacks.

The second day we worked together,

John was lying on the studio floor

clutching his chest saying,

"Rick, Rick, I think I'm having a heart attack."

And Rick calmly, quite calmy,

just stepped over the top of him,

looked at me and said,

"We'd better do my guitars now."

It was a great moment. I went,

"Okay, I can work with you guys."

They were cheerful,

they were enthusiastic, they were hopeful.

But there was an underlying tension there.

None of these guys were as young as they used to be.

Recording vocals in particular,

John and Rick would both

act as producers along with me.

So there was a lot of opinions in the room

about what's right, what's wrong.

Brent at this stage was quite new to the band.

He was very much the drummer.

John would, to an extent, try and handle Doc.

He was just a bulldog. He would not let things go.

I recognise...

So, to an extent

Doc would just sort of go, "Okay, fine.

All right, all right, fine, we'll do it that way."

I'll get the last bag.

Doc loved to have fun.

And that probably never left him but...

He drew away from the rest of us in the band, I think.

That side of him, if you ask other people

who were friends,

they'd probably say it never went.

I think for both Bernard and I,

it was a bit ofna superficial industry, really.

Um, it was certainly an aspect that I really didn't like

and I think for Bernard, similarly,

he had to be part of that.

He would often stay behind at gigs and sign autographs

or he would have to get up at two,

three in the morning, whatever,

to do a radio interview.

Even after a gig,

even though he'd put 110 % into his performance,

he was still performing.

He couldn't switch off.

He just found some way to, sort of, come down, relax.

For him it was alcohol.

It was a slow... a slow change,

but the more popular the band became,

the more the pressure came as well.

He just didn't want to be

corralled into a specific thing

and I think he wanted a lot more

artistic control of his life.

And I think that's what part of the problem was.

Bernard was considered for the lead role ofMad Max

which eventually went to Mel Gibson.

It's not that anybody knew

what it was going to involve

and how big it was going to get potentially,

but it was a feature role.

But again it was

time that he couldn't give to those projects

because it was taking time away from band life.

He was making ridiculous demands.

He needed to have the sun on his left.

And we used to say, "What do you mean?"

"When I wake up, I want the sun on my left."

No one ever worked it out.

And he started talking in the third person.

"Doc needs to evolve."

"Doc, you're talking about yourself."

"I know, but Doc needs to evolve."

We stopped for breakfast.

He didn't sit with us, but we saw him.

Furious red face, steam coming out of his ears.

And at the top of his voice,

"I asked for my eggs to be near the toast.

They're touching!"

He was dead serious.

He knew what he was doing.

You know, he'd sometimes...

Sometimes when he'd be at his worst,

he'd just give me a wink and go...

Yeah, he'd know. He knew exactly what he was doing.

He was playing games, you know?

People say he wasn't one of the boys.

I just don't know that he had a very good education

in how to perform in a group

because he was told to police his family

and be responsible for them.

He was the eldest. There were five siblings,

four boys, one girl.

Money was a problem.

Being the eldest even from a very young age, under ten,

was put in charge of his siblings.

He was responsible for seeing

that certain household duties were done.

With six children, I can imagine

there would have been many a mutiny.

I'd say he had trouble saying no

in regards to hurting people's feelings.

Saying no to the band, who he'd spend,

you know, the majority of his time with,

was probably the most difficult thing.

♪ Nobody came...

The possibility of that whole band dissolving

was very threatening to other members

because that was the family.

I think he was torn.

♪ Dream of yesterday

♪ Fame

♪ Fashion

♪ Fashion and fame

If you'd played your arse off

for a couple of hours

in a sweaty pub, you'd go back to the hotel,

you're not going to sleep for two or three hours.

You know, we'd smoke a bit of weed,

you know, hang out with the road crew.

You know, there were some moments with ecstasy

which was a lot of fun, but all of us,

you know, wives and girlfriends as well, which was a lot of fun.

Yeah, we did it all, but it wasn't to any excess,

you know, so it's not really a story.

In Los Angeles, I went through a red light.

As I pulled over, I was terrified.

They asked me to step out of the car,

which is what they do in America.

And I was questioned by one cop.

And the other one shone a flashlight in the car.

He came out with a little brown bottle

and he said, "Oh, it looks like we've got some nose candy."

Bang. Face down on the pavement. Handcuffs.

No questioning.

No interview. Nothing.

Woodruff picked me up in the morning

and took me straight to a lawyer

who was well known.

He said, "I don't want to know the story,

don't want to know anything about it.

What do you want?"

"Well, I want to get off."

And he said,

"Well, that's going to cost you this much

for 100% chance of getting off.

No conviction.

If you want 80%, this will cost this much.

If you want 50%, it'll cost this much."

I said, "I want 100%, please."

When his marriage broke up,

the rock and roll side of Rick really came out.

Maybe secretly, he always wanted to be a rock star,

I don't know.

But the fact that all of a sudden

he was a multi-platinum selling artist,

allowed him to do things

that he wouldn't allow himself to do before.

John felt very threatened by drugs.

He didn't like it at all.

It worried him. It scared him.

If you're talking big brother, little brother,

when he got into cocaine, it was a big alarm bell for me.

Um, you know, I grew up with an alcoholic father.

I left home quite young.

But when I'd go and visit home,

it was apparent that he was getting really bad.

Finding bottles in the kitchen cupboards.

You know, he was hiding it.

Rick and I decided that something had to be done

because he was getting really worse and worse.

And, uh... We just thought...

"We've got take Mum out of the situation.

Uh, maybe it'll shock him

that he actually could lose her."

He'd come home and he'd say, "Where's your mother?"

And we'd just say, "We're not telling you."

I don't know whether it was a good thing to do or not, but...

We just said,

"We're not telling you until you stop drinking."

Three days later he came home and I said to Rick,

"He's sober."

And he was.

He never had another drink...

for the rest of his life.

It had to be largely driven by John.

It certainly wasn't me.

That's the thing that I, um...

Did with the band too, you know.

I'd come up with the ideas and we'd take it wherever it...

Uh, what am I trying to say?

Yes, I took control of that situation.

One night, nBernard was drinking on stage.

At the end of the gig, Rick came up to me in tears

because he just felt so distraught

at seeing this person who normally was so in control.

I'm not the biggest fan of the Angels.

There's a certain part of Australian violent suburbia

that I don't really care for.

I had this early recollection of him

as just a dad and then,

there was a time when he tried to maintain that persona,

but it was completely undermined.

One thing I just have not been experiencing before

is recognition.

And we've just done our first date in Canberra

and I was in at the, uh...

The Institute of Technology and Science

or whatever they call it,

and they've got fantastic things and it's all, you know,

put your hands on and see all these gadgets,

gyroscopes and lights flashing.

It's a great place to visit. And I thought,

"Great, I'm visiting during non-school, you know,

like, all the kids are at school.

I'll be able to just cruise through

and play with all the toys here."

I noticed his mood started to change

and he became very agitated.

And then suddenly, without warning,

we were being chased.

There must have been 40 school-aged children

running after us, screaming.

And he picked my younger brother up

and, sort of, flung him over his shoulder

and I was being dragged along by the hand.

He kicked open a fire escape door and...

...there were a big group of kids

having a cigarette or something.

They were, like, "Oh, my God, it's Doc!"

And I just saw his face melt and he made, you know,

literally a sprint for the car with us in tow.

Threw us in and the car immediately became swarmed.

There's a quote from you that said,

"I had the theory that people go to the circus

- to watch the trapeze artist die." - Yes.

"They're really going for blood."

- Yes. - Yeah.

That's why you get standing ovations,

because people are kind of recognising

that you've been to the edge of, what I saw was,

kind of, the dark potential in the song.

♪ Obey the rules

♪ Do as you are instructed

♪ And don't ask questions

♪ Psychopath, young man

♪ Dedicated to efficiency

♪ 17, 28, 59

♪ Looks like it's comin' down on me

♪ Down on me, down on me Down on me

♪ Looks like it's comin' down on me

♪ Down on me, down on me Down on me

♪ Never so many are watched by so few

♪ F or so long, by so much

♪ For big brother

♪ For so long, by so much

♪ For big brother

♪ For so long, by so much

♪ For big brother

♪ For so long, by so much

♪ For big brother

♪ For so long, by so much

♪ For big brother

♪ Looks like it's comin' down on me

♪ Down on me, down on me

♪ Looks like it's comin' down on me

♪ Looks like it's comin' down on me

♪ Down on me, down on me Down on me

♪ Down on me

♪ Down, Down, Down, Down, Down

♪ Down on me

It was a starry night

and I asked the fans to light their lighters.

From my perspective

it looked like I was, sort of, watching

or seeing in front of the stage right out to infinity.

Narara was the first time Doc announced that he was leaving.

I'd, sort of, felt that we'd reached our peak

and this could be a great souvenir

of that event and maybe

mark the end of my career with The Angels.

Doc, who said in the press

that he'd never left The Angels,

actually left six times.

But we got him back every time.

Bernard and I eventually separated

when the boys were young, two and four years old.

You know, people just grow apart

when there's lots of separation.

You miss, absolutely miss the family unit

because that's what it was going to be

forever and a day and...

as hard as it was at the time, you get on with stuff.

I mean, when you've got two children that age,

you have to get on with stuff.

I started to realise that we weren't making the records

that we used to make.

'83 we lost the deal with Epic, uh, worldwide.

Still, we were a very close unit,

still ever hopeful that we would break

around the world, um...

John, how the hell are you?

We were so excitedthat we finally got a new deal

and we were going to recordsomewhere outside of Australia.

We said to John Woodruff,

"Look, we'll record anywhere except LA."

We ended up recording in LA.

An album we could have made for $60,000 Australian

ended up costing us $450,000.

And it started us on a path of massive debt.

And the only way to work that debt off

was to play every gig

from here to Timbuktu in Australia.

So we toured and toured and toured.

We're coming back to the, uh,

Shellharbour RSL for a few drinks

and a couple of, uh, rounds on the poker machines.

We should have stayed in the States. We should have stayed there, you know?

"We're not going back to Australia.

We're staying here. We're going to make this happen."

We let that opportunity go, I think.

I was pretty keen on approaching Alberts again

and going back to Harry Vanda and George Young, and...

It's not to say that my ideas were right, by the way,

but it was like no one wanted to listen.

John's a self-confessed control freak

which, you know, it's a good thing in some ways

to have someone, you know,

at the helm, so to speak. Uh...

But... really annoying.

Especially as a brother who's grown up with that.

And it eventually affected everyone in the band.

I think because Rick had started

a new relationship with quite a flamboyant girl,

who was bringing a different side to Rick out,

he wanted to break away from that control.

I made a really stupid mistake

in going to Rick's ex-wife.

Um, and, she called me and I went round there.

And I think I overstepped the mark

and said some things that I...

That she then told Rick.

And I think that was probably the final straw for Rick.

If John was honest with himself,

he was probably trying to fold it up.

I wouldn't turn up for sound checks

and I'd go out on the golf course instead of doing 'em.

I mean, they did a film clip

and they had to put me in it from another film clip.

John Brewster was a very needy man.

He needed to know that you appreciated

all the hard work that he had put into it,

that he had co-written so many great songs and driven us...

He drove the band from Adelaide to Sydney.

He wanted you to appreciate that.

And I'm sure we all did but there's a time where you go

"Well, okay, we do, but now we're on to another thing here.

We need to put a whole lot of energy into this."

I think he misread it. Well, I don't know what it was.

I feel there were other things in play in his life.

I got accused by him of coming back to Australia,

because I cared about my family more than I did about the... The band.

Fuck, what?

I cared about my family more than the band? Well, excuse me.

Yeah, I did, but he reckoned that I pulled the band out of America

so that I'd be there for the birth of my second son.

- Was it true? - Fuck, no.

No.

No, it was because the band... We were going...

We were going to have babies in houses we didn't own any more.

It was that bad.

I just remember a time when we were on a plane

and Rick was sitting beside meand I was talking to him about

what I thought we should do.

And I realised that he was sitting there

and I don't think he was evenregistering that I was talking.

I realised that the connection was gone

and when I think what we used to go through

in our song writing and those wonderful times

that we used to stay up all night in the studio,

smoke a couple of joints, walk across the road,

pick up finger buns, Kit Kats and milkshakes...

When I realisedI was talking to a blank wall,

I knew we were in big trouble.

We all knew exactly why we were there, except John.

Doc said he would do it.

And he just started a long...

talk about...

what was going on in the band and, you know, nothing specific.

Until eventually, I said,

"For Christ's sake. We want you to leave the band."

Just give me a minute.

Because I could see, John was confused.

He had no inkling.

And then it was like a rock.

And he just got up and left.

Looks like it's really serious.

Incredibly fucking serious.

When John left the band, the feeling of relief was phenomenal.

We were happy, we were having fun.

We were doing things we didn't normally do and Bob Spencer came in.

I leapt on the freedom of the band without John

and working with someone new, writing songs with Bob Spencer.

But there was always that nagging feeling that, you know,

we've lost that guy who would go and spend hours

at the agency looking at the calendar and going,

"We've got a hole here. Fill it."

You know, that leader side of John had gone.

It hurt.

When I was in The Party Boys, we released a cover.

It was John Kongos' song, n"He's Gonna Step On You Again"

and a moment of... ...sheer joy for me, it's a nasty joy,

was that the Angels released a cover at the same time.

The Angels song rose to number four in the charts

and we leaped over them to number one and I went, "Yes!"

I think our dad dying had some role in it too, somehow.

We wanted to win with the band to impress him

and suddenly he wasn't there any more.

I think maybe he was kind of a bit,

in a funny way, the glue that kept us together.

And when he died, that glue kind of disappeared.

When he eventually gave up drinking,

he did change.

He was just a really friendly guy.

Not long before he died, he called me and he said,

"Son, I've been listening to your music,"

and I nearly fell over

because I didn't think he would ever do that.

And he said, "You know, it's very good."

That was a massive compliment from him.

That's John Brewster.

Just arrived? Yeah.

- Hello, John. - Frank.

So you would say it has made a new man of you?

It was about five years in and I just woke up one day and I went,

"This is wrong, this is wrong. He's my brother."

So I called him.

And uh...

And...

I think my words were pretty much exactly like this, I said,

"Rick, you know, when we see each other," I said,

"We're friendly." I said, "But there's a wall between us

and I want to kick that wall down."

We didn't talk about working together again.

We just talked about being friends.

And I realised how many things had gone back to childhood for him.

And I think a lot of the problems that we... that ended up...

being a big problem was that I was his big brother.

And I don't think he wanted a big brother at that time in his life.

After years and years of travel, we've got our bags down

to about three or four each.

Throughout my whole time playing in the Angels,

I was always wanting to meet people in the business.

And the fact that I wasin the band meant that I could.

I think what happened with the Angels and John Woodruff was

the band wore him down.

There aren't many managers who've signed a band

to three major international record companies.

At some point, you've got to go,

"Well, the managerwas pretty good. Maybe the band didn't bac him up."

He bailed out.

Rick and Doc said to me, "Brent, do you want to do it?"

I said, "Yes, I'll do it."

I think the biggest change in the music was it got faster.

And there were times when I felt,

"Shit, I wish John was here."

Between the two of us, we would've put a stop to that but, um,

me on my own, no.

Bob Spencer was someone else who really always wanted to have

his own thing going and he sat me and Rick down one day at my house

and said, "I'm gonna leave and start my own band."

Rick said, "I think we should get John back."

John always felt, you know,

I don't think he particularly liked that I was managing it.

Actually Brent wasnpretty damn good at it but, uh,

in terms of how the business structure happened,

I was never let back in.

And that was, I think, pretty shameful, really.

But we all have our opinions, you know.

The band got back that thing it had when

the two Brewsters played together. We got that back.

They played at a place in Adelaide called The Bridgeway

and it was packed and the lights were sort of red and the smoke

and there was, like, sweat dripping from the roof.

There was this element of fear,

like with the Brewster brothers just holding...

Just holding the poses.

And then with Doc at the front being this huge, intimidating...

It's like I'd walked into some weird cult.

If our lives depended on it, watch out.

We would just wipe the floor. But...

...there were issues.

The one person that got fucked up with drugs,

they were legal and they were prescribed

by psychologists to Doc Neeson.

And we'd have Doc World, which was a tent on stage

and it was an array of tablets and mouthwash and alcohol in there.

He'd arrive at the show, go straight to the tent.

He wouldn't talk to us. He'd just appear and come on for the first song.

We once went to an Al-Anon meeting.

You know, we thought we were going to find some magic solution,

you know, for Doc because we cared about him, you know.

He was driving us mad, but we cared about him.

We all have to deal with a lot of darkness.

And I guess I was trying to express that emotion.

I did come to a point where I thought,

"This is taking me over."

♪ Hurry, Alexander

♪ They're waiting for you

♪ Alexander, just look at yourself

♪ How many times have I spoken to you?

♪ Every time is the same, Alex

♪ That you don't have enough time and you hurry

♪ You hurry to get up You hurry to get to work

♪ Do your job properly so you can earn some money

♪ Alexander, you give everything away

♪ What have you got they're gonna ask you one day for?

♪ PIN numbers

♪ They want your

♪ I guess they want your weight

♪ They want your registration number

♪ Alexander, when they ask you you're gonna have nothing

The depression, that was...

It was him with his demons.

I've read a few of his diaries from when he was younger

and he was incredibly self-loathing.

When people have imposter syndrome,

they have characters that they draw on

because dealing with themselves is the worst feeling ever.

When he had his accident,

his doctor told him that if he went on stage,

his spine could snap

and he could be a paraplegic, you know.

Whether he used that as an excuse

to not play with the band, it might have been.

Don't know.

He rang me up and he said to me,

"Bob, you'd better get your suit pressed."

And I said, "What?"

He said, "Yes, you're going to a funeral. I'm going to die."

Well, I was a bit floored by that,

and he told me about this terrible brain cancer that he had.

The last time I ever saw him, I walked out of the...

We spent many hours, a group of us, in his room.

And I walked away and Dzintra had arrived.

And as I walked away, I turned back and looked through the door.

And they were framed.

Him sitting up in bed, her talking to him.

That was my last image.

After he'd passed away,

I found a letter that he'd written.

It was a letter to himself

and I think it was either

when myself or my brother was born.

And it said something along the lines of, you know,

"I've got this beautiful boy with his blue eyes

and all I want to do is be at home with him."

And, you know, he really wanted to,

but obviously, the job, the fame, the band,

um, it was really, really difficult to do.

I rang him when he was in hospital close to the end.

And I just rang him because I wanted to spend five minutes reminiscing.

And he said, "No, I've got to go."

And I tried to call back, but never got through.

Five take one. And mark.

Thank you.

Once he'd said he wanted to leave, that kind of stuck, that feeling.

- The last time? - No.

- From the beginning. From Narara. - Oh, any times? Yeah. Yeah.

Uh, and I think it wasn't too long after that

before he felt that he wanted to leave again.

I don't think he was happy in the band from before Narara.

- Yeah, maybe.

And I think that's sad that he never was able to really see himself,

- the strengths that he had. - Hm.

Because he might have just continued

- to wear the whitest outfit and...

...stand at the mic and do the great things that he did.

Yeah, well, I mean,

- lots of things contribute to...

...the band not realising what we could've realised overseas but, um...

But at the end of the day,

I'm speaking for myself and, you know, I love Doc.

I love the memory of Doc.

But, fuck, he was difficult.

We've had marriages break down

and then relationships within the band break down,

- including our own relationship... - Really?

...that broke down. But you know what? Doc actually said it in an interview,

you know, there's a really good, good comment he made

talking about the band, he said,

"It's not easy being in a rock and roll band."

I'd talk about

how the planets were aligning for a moment

to successfully get up to the top of Mount Everest.

Base camp was breaking in Australia the way that they did.

The second part was signing to CBS and touring America and Europe.

That was their window.

They almost got to the top, but didn't quite reach the summit.

That's the cruel thing about our industry

because rarely do you get a second chance.

So they mightn't have helped themselves

but they certainly broke down the doors

for artists like INXS and Men At Work and bands like that

that came after them and learned from the experiences they had

and had more knowledge than we had,

because we were too busy just kicking the fucking door down.

♪ Deal me the card that takes my blues away

♪ Take me away to Marseilles

♪ Take me

♪ Take me away to Marseilles

♪ Take me

♪ Take me away to Marseilles

♪ Take me

♪ I want to go to Marseilles

♪ Take my blues away

♪ Yeah, take me away to Marseilles

All right!

Angels! Angels! Angels! Angels!

It's an interesting thing in your life

to be a part of something which is so incandescent.

You know, life is so... it can be so bland.

And then you've got this moment of pure incandescence

and it permeated every aspect of our lives and it was just wonderful.

This is it, folks. Over the top.

♪ He was selling postcards from a paper stand

♪ The whiskey bottle in his withered hand

♪ Put his finger on a photo from an old magazine

♪ Saw himself in the shadow of his dream

♪ They found him with his head inside a tin-pot crown

♪ Told him his feet stank and took him downtown

♪ Called him agitator, spy and thief

♪ Shut him up in solitary third degree

♪ Take a long line

♪ Reel him in

♪ He tried to appeal to the king of might

♪ Said "I'm just exercising my sacred right"

♪ The king, he said "You ain't got no rights

♪ You're a madman, a traitor Get outta my sight"

♪ Take a long line

♪ Reel him in

♪ They found him with his head inside a tin-pot crown

♪ Told him his feet stank and took him downtown

♪ Called him agitator, spy and thief

♪ Shut him up in solitary third degree

♪ Then they put him aboard a well-wound whirlwind

♪ Pulled out his teeth and they told him to grin

♪ He gave them a smile Pulled out a bottle of wine

♪ And said, "I never existedYou've been wasting your time"

♪ Take a long line

♪ Reel him in

♪ Take a long line

♪ Reel him in

♪ Take a long line

♪ Reel him in

Everybody that has ever been in The Angels has been fired.

At some stage or another, every single person, except one.

Rick.

Rick Brewster-Jones. He has never been fired.