The Angels play Caloundra RSL Club Thursday 24 July, Southport RSL Friday 25 July, Norths Leagues and Service Club Saturday 26 July 2008.
April 2007. The Basement, Sydney. The large framed guy to the left of the stage was in raptures. Not twenty feet away one of his idols, Bo Diddley was performing and the big bloke who went totally unrecognised was giving the great man all the encouragement he could muster.
Fast forward twelve months and the rabid fan, better know as Doc Neeson, was back at The Basement but this time on stage performing with his old comrades John and Rick Brewster from The Angels. There was a magic in the room and the legal wrangling of the past suddenly became weightless.
The trio had their beginnings together in the Moonshine Jug and String Band before moving on as The Keystone Angels. But it was as The Angels with their defining second album, Face To Face which was released on 31 July 1978 that they took the country by the very sweaty throat.
Fired by Neeson’s explosive stage character, John Brewster’s Dylanesque writing and Rick Brewster’s stuttering guitar template, Face To Face felt like a ground zero exercise despite the band’s eight year history.
“I think that’s how the public did perceive us,” says Neeson, “that we suddenly almost came from nowhere and we had this huge record and that record did make a big impact on the Australian music scene. It set a record for being either 78 or 79 weeks on the charts which was only eclipsed by Pink Floyd at the time. I think it was a marker not just for The Angels but for the Australian music industry that new things were possible.”
Energy and power
That year The Angels hit like a large dose of amphetamine had been dumped into the country’s water supply. Neeson's theatrical training was suddenly in sharp relief. Flanking him were The Brewster Brothers, flat out guitar warriors with the same instinctive skills as Malcolm and Angus Young and a guitar tone that was as deadly as anything AC/DC had every come up with. The songs curiously were about the horrors of The Third Reich (you thought 'After The Rain' was something of a celebration didn't you?), learning French, social alienation and paranoia. Punks loved their energy and beer fuelled suburban types got off on the pure purging power of it all. The Angels were a sold out Nuremburg rally at every local every night.
The classic lineup of the band that recorded Face To Face - Neeson, the Brewsters and the swinging rhythm section of Chris Bailey and Graham ‘Buzz’ Bidstrup on bass and drums respectively - have reformed for the first time in more than 25 years to mark the 30th anniversary of the album’s release.
The Face To Face album has been repackaged and includes incendiary live recordings from Melbourne’s LaTrobe University in 1978. Also reissued is that year’s tour EP now titled The Tour EP 2008 with added tracks including the previously unreleased and surprisingly piano driven 'Open That Door' which features George Young on additional guitar.
“It was a fantastic night,” Neeson says of the legendary LaTrobe show. “One of the reasons we went was that LaTrobe at the time was probably Melbourne’s most radical university. That night the band were peaking. We had put the Face To Face album out and so most of the material on that set is from Face to Face and there’s a bit of new stuff which eventually made it into No Exit. Uni audiences, if they’re into a band, tend to give a lot and the band was feeling very powerful so it was just a great amount of energy in the room.”
By November 1978 when David Bowie toured Australia, Face To Face was fast becoming THE album to take to parties. Ten of thousands paid to see Bowie but came away gobsmacked by The Angels’ performance. The band themselves were just as stunned by Bowie’s attitude towards them.
“Bowie was fantastic!” says Neeson, “He insisted that we weren’t called the support act that we were special guests. And he treated us as his guests. He came down to our very first soundcheck and he offered us everything on stage in terms of lighting except for one special one that he wanted to keep and he said I’ve spoken to my guitarists who were Adrian Belew (King Crimson) and Carlos Alomar at the time and they’re happy to lend their guitars to the guys if they want.”
Awe and curiosity
At the core of The Angels’ live experience was Neeson’s utterly unique stage persona. With his piercing eyes on high beam, he had boundless, oxygen tank requiring energy and would pour out strange stream of consciousness rants between songs as if he was a towering receptor for a multitude of scrambled thoughts and messages. He magnetised all before him in a mix of awe and curiosity.
“I made that character up really from the idea that I had from German Expressionism, German Expressionist film. And one of the things about German Expressionism was that you reveal the inner character of a person or, to some extent I believe, the song by exaggerating the experience. Also the dinner suit look that was the tie and tuxedo, the idea was that I would come on looking very together, very shish. Then during the course of the show I would become…I would fall apart. It was a good metaphor for what some of the songs were about.”
Some fans ingested his rantings and his character on a far deeper level than others as the occasional, more than slightly disturbing letter proved.
“One went on for about six or seven pages and really finely written and it went into biblical references and Arthur Crowley. It was a very interesting letter but it was just kinda of really mixed up and I thought they probably should be seeing a doctor or a shrink not talking to me. A real doctor. I’ll just be Doc!”
The Angels touring with Whiskey Go Gos at Caloundra RSL Club Thursday 24 July, Southport RSL Friday 25 July, Norths Leagues and Service Club Saturday 26 July 2008. See the gig guide for details.
Face to Face and Tour EP 2008 are out now through Albert Music/Sony BMG.
