Rose Tattoo are back and they don’t look like they are going anywhere just yet. When The Rockpit last spoke to Angry Anderson back in 2018, he told us of a five-year plan that the band had set in place, with a view to wind things down a bit. But eighteen months is a long time in rock n’ roll and with the line-up now well & truly settled, it seemed the right time for Rose Tattoo to go into lockdown in a Sydney studio last year to re-record the band’s 1978 debut album and it has come out an absolute treat. Backed by Dai Pritchard (slide guitar), Bob Spencer (guitar), Mark Evans (bass) & Jackie Barnes (drums), ‘Outlaws’ sees Rose Tattoo revisit & rearrange some of their biggest & best hits, having also added three tracks that were previously just laid down as demos, giving fans something new but still written at the time the band were at their rawest. Add to that the band’s return to Europe as well as touring the US for the first time in over thirty-eight years and you can see that the world’s love for one of Australia’s most iconic bands is far from diminishing… if anything it’s growing stronger all the time.
With the youth of the world seemingly embracing rock n’ roll once more (there’s still hope folks) and newly discovering some of the bands that went on to become the building blocks for Australia’s legendary rock scene, I fear that Rose Tattoo may have to reset the timer on their five-year plan and just let it roll on indefinitely. The Rockpit caught up with Angry as he relaxed at home during a Sydney summer evening to discuss why they selected ‘Outlaws’, more tales of Harry Vanda & George Young, the nerves of returning to the US and some sound advice for bands who are starting out on the road of rock n’ roll…
Having tried to call a first time but getting no answer, I immediately re-dialled and let the phone ring once more…
Angry: God, you’re persistent!
Sean: [laughs] Sorry Angry but I didn’t want to eat up too much of your evening.
Angry: Yeah right, like you care [laughs]
Sean: [laughs] How are you? Hope you’re keeping well?
Angry: I’m good mate, I’m good.
Sean: Well, last time we spoke we talked about you guys eventually getting back in the studio and it’s finally happened and the results are quite fantastic. What made you choose the debut album though?
Angry: It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I wanted to do it as it was coming up to the fortieth anniversary of the Tatts, like accurately date-wise but that wasn’t physically possible because we were busy touring the ‘Blood Brothers’ album then. Mick & I talked long and hard about it back then because one of the things that motivated it, apart from acknowledging the original recording of the album, one of the other things I thought we could do was to put anything up to five tracks that we had demoed that I thought were interesting enough or good enough to go on to a re-record and we eventually got three of them on here – two Ian Rilen songs which are ‘Snow Queen’ & ‘Sweet Love’ and one of his & my earliest collaborations, apart from sort of crazy shit like ‘Astra Wally’, they were collaborations too because he would come to me with an idea and in all fairness to Ian he would usually have a chorus and it would just be a straight out rocker so we would sit around and jam because Mick & I were living with Ian and his wife & kids when we first came to Sydney.
The thing about the re-record is that it wasn’t only the motivation, it was more about the music really. The other thing too which is obvious to the devotee is that most of the songs are written by Mick & I, as they were on the following one ‘Assault & Battery’ and also again on ‘Blood Brothers’, which was our last album. On the first album there was a band accreditation, where-by all titles were by everybody in the band, which was just a way of cementing the relationship really so that if the album did eventually make some money then everyone would share it – it was sort of a good will thing really. On ‘Rock n’ Roll Outlaw’, and most people don’t know this but that was Geordie (Leach) & I that wrote that one and that came out of a jam and Geordie came up with the riff and just started playing it and that developed… well, we were looking for music to go with a lyric so that we had a song on the album that identified as the band’s theme song so to speak. Even though ‘Bad Boy for Love’ was our first and a big hit for us it was ‘Rock n’ Roll Outlaw’ that we really identified with, you know and that’s why the original album was going to be called ‘Rock n’ Roll Outlaws’ and now this album has been shortened to just ‘Outlaws’. So, the motivation was to acknowledge the forty years… we missed it by a couple [laughs] but what’s a couple of years between friends… it may be a bit self-indulgent too but one of the things we didn’t get to do with the original recording was to feature parts of the songs where the band would jam, which is something the early band did a lot of in the early days.
We did a lot of on-stage jamming of the songs – probably three, four, five or maybe six of the songs at one time or another the band would just free fall or jam and this line-up has come back to do that so we’ve kind of gone back round full circle. This band is very, very prone to exploring what one can do on any given night. Sometimes they only last three or four minutes and other nights they can go on for eight, ten or even twelve minutes – it’s just a way of keeping it fresh for ourselves and it adds to the romantic notion that every night is just as special as any other night… somethings happen on some nights that never happens on others. It’s one of those really, really precious moments that you get to share with your audience because if you weren’t there that night, you didn’t get to hear or see it happen – It’s true to the spirit of rock n’ roll.
Sean: One of the highlights for me when we spoke last was hearing the incredible story of how ‘Stuck on You’ came to be and the way it was kind of recorded off the cuff by George (Young) late one night while you were all sat about in the studio.
Angry: Well, that’s a great segway into the other song we’ve added. Apart from ‘Snow Queen’ & ‘Sweet Love’, the other song was the one that Ian & I collaborated on in the early days and like I said he had already created a chorus and riff so I was just the meat around the bones so to speak with the verses and that song was ‘Rosetta’. It was one of our earliest collaborations and it was the song I really wanted to go on the album if there was going to be a ballad/love song but it was deemed, “Really? Rose Tattoo? Love songs? Maybe not!” And then of course, Mick came up with that little lick… I wouldn’t call it a riff, it was a lick. He had bought himself a National Steel Dobro and I just loved the jangly sound of it – he was playing and I was humming along and we came up with ‘Stuck on You’. Sadly the song that was only partially written at the time was ‘Rosetta’ and Ian had left by this time as he was only involved in the very early sessions… that’s when Geordie came in and being in Buster he was the obvious choice.
I don’t know if I told you this part of the story but Roses have been in my life… and this will show you how we are guided by an unseen hand… My mother’s name is Rose DeMay in Creole-French because she’s Mauritian. It means Rose of May, when it’s translated from French. When she first came to Australia she spoke very little English and my Nana asked her name and was told it was Rose DeMay… well, the closest to English was Rosemay, which is a very English name. Mum’s name was Rose DeMay because she was born in May so my Nana named her ‘My little Rose of May’… so, in short she was Rose and my first two tattoos were roses and I end up in a band called Rose Tattoo. ‘Rosetta’ has turned up on a couple of bootlegs – I just can’t work out how people get this stuff. I’m really glad we have finally recorded it properly – we played it live back in the day though when Rilen was in the band, that’s how far back that song goes.
Sean: I was listening back to our previous interview the other night and there’s one section which is incredibly moving for me and its hearing your voice waver with emotion when we discussed Harry (Vanda) & George. It is something that has made that interview extremely special to me so going back into the studio to re-record these tracks did you get many emotional flashbacks & memories from when you created the original?
Angry: Well, something that is quite personal (Angry’s voice wavers)… ah Jesus, you’ve done it to me again… we did this recording in Harry’s studio in Sunhill. Typical Harry, he owns the building but he rents some of the floors out to advertising people, graphic designers & people like that but he’s got this whole floor which is like a rabbit warren in this old converted warehouse – it’s an ideal studio situation. It’s got a couple of big rooms like the one we worked in, which is like the USS Enterprise deck and then there are all these different rooms that are down the ends and off the sides of corridors and then a room for a four piece band to fit in very snuggly then there are a couple of vocals booths and so on… so built by a muso for musos. We were in there for about two days and Mark Opitz, who was producing… and that was another nostalgic thing – Mark was a newly hired cadet when we first entered the old Alberts Studios to do the first record – we were actually Mark Opitz first official gig. George & Harry told us there was a man coming in to put down a whole load of tracks and we did a bunch of covers back in those days… there’s a great story where we were pressing the buzzer to Albert’s down on King Street, where the old studios were and he looked out the window and saw us and he rang up George and told him there was a bunch of bikers trying to break in to the studios and that he was going to ring the cops. George asked him if one of them was a little bald guy and Mark said yes. George said, “You idiot, that’s the fucking band! Let them in.”
Poor old Opitz was only eighteen or nineteen at the time and it was his first job so it was really nostalgic to have him there again this time too. So we were there for two days putting down the bedding tracks and Mark tells us he has a big surprise for us around about lunchtime. So we broke for lunch and Harry arrives with his wife and he walks in with this huge grin on his face – the Harry Vanda grin – and he just sat down on the couch that was always his position… a couch facing the desk. George always sat at the desk with his back to Harry and whenever he wanted approval or comment or an appraisal he’d just swivel in the chair and look at Harry and Harry would just say “I liked that bit” or “No, that sounds like shit”… and there he was forty something years later doing the same thing [laughs]. He was just sat there talking to Mark… I got some beautiful photos. I remember talking to George a year before he died. He was in Sydney on a visit and we caught up and he said to me, “We never did finish The Tatts story.” You see they both had great hopes for us because they thought we were a band that could cross over all sorts of areas – we could play soul music & gospel music, the blues, we could play punk or that Rose tattoo blues sound which George & Harry of course helped us produce & create. When the band broke up after our first trip to England I remember George saying to me, “I don’t know what you’ll do or what you want to do, but you can’t possibly not go on. You’ve got a future and this band can do really great things.”
So we got back together and did the Assault & Battery Tour and then we got Robin (Riley) in the line-up and then produced ‘Scarred for Life’ and at that stage George & Harry were very optimistic that we would go to America, we would find the appreciation that we weren’t finding here in Australia at that time and they hoped that would encourage us to write more and to explore more of our roots. George & Harry didn’t see The Tatts as a one-dimensional band and they saw us as a band who could cross over different areas of music – and that appreciation of our quirk & eccentricity brings us back to ‘Stuck on You’. I’ve thought about it for many years and wondered why didn’t they pick ‘Rosetta’? Why did they choose ‘Stuck on You’? I think it was to show people not to write us off as only a loud blues band… it’s a song that sticks out like a dick on a cow [laughs]
Sean: It’s because of these wonderful stories that I’ve been almost on an unofficial quest to find out more about Alberts and George & Harry. I’ve spoken to both Rick & John Brewster and heard their version of events from The Angels point of view of that time and also managed to speak to Russell Morris to get his perspective from outside the studios, with him being signed to EMI with Molly Meldrum. Do you think the diversity that George & Harry saw in you guys may have come from The Marcus Hook Roll Band album they released back in 1973 where they tinkered & played with lots of different sounds & genres?
Angry: Yes, actually that’s not a bad observation. I remember being in there with George where we were doing one of our piano sessions and playing with melodies and so forth… not that there are many melodies in Tatts songs but enough to make it work and as George always said, “There’s got to be hooks”. They were responsible for writing some really diverse stuff… and when I say diverse I mean stuff people didn’t realise they had written like some of the early stuff they worked on with Ted (Mulry) and with John Paul Young and of course they were working on this Flash in the Pan project… some of the things they played me was like “Fuck Me!” It was so clever because one track would be a Tamla Motown sort of feel and the next very different… they wrote very eccentric lyrics too. They had a huge hit here in Australia with ‘Down Among the Dead Men’ and a couple of other monster hits too as Flash in the Pan but as The Easybeats they were known for a writing a certain sort of song, which they did and did it very well.
One of the reasons and it’s a lesson that Malcolm & Angus (Young), particularly Malcolm learnt early on was that if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it. AC/DC were accused, until the formula was proven over & over again, that they could write the same sort of song over & over again but it was the hooks & the chorus’s that reeled you in. I remember when we first toured America with ZZ Top and Billy Gibbons was using a line then which he still uses today – they play about three or four songs without a breath, songs as diverse as ‘Jesus Just Left Chicago’ or ‘My Blue Jeans’ then a couple of rockers and then they have a break. Then they play three or four other songs without a breath and then they have another break and then about halfway through the show Billy say, “How’s things goin?” and the crowd goes nuts and then he says, “Yeah, same three guys playin’ the same three chords” and it’s a kind of a way of saying it’s all rock n’ roll and as long as you bring newness to it you can play the same song for the rest of your career so to speak but you still need to give it a new identity each time because it’s a new lyric, a new hook, a new melody in the chorus and a new chorus.
Sean: I suppose the best British example of that would be Status Quo.
Angry: Abso-fucki-lutely. With those guys it was always the boogie. I still say it to the crowd every night “It’s just the boogie”. And you can play the boogie a dozen different ways but it’s got to be the boogie and that’s the real deal and it touches people. Getting back to the early days, I remember having a conversation that I could hear keyboards on the first album and George said to me, “yeah I know what you mean but that leaves us somewhere to go” so he didn’t rule out that keyboards would never work with the Tatts, he foresaw a day that it would and he understood what I was talking about. When we went in to that first ever session with Mark Opitz we put down songs like ‘Stand By Me’ and other Tamla Motown classic songs and George said to us the first thing you do is to establish yourselves and get a foothold, then you can build on that but you need to have focus that this is what we do & this is how we do it better than anyone else and then we have more license to branch out…when I said I could hear keyboards he said he knew what I meant but we were establishing the Tatts in the minds of people who didn’t know who we were yet but you can do other things later – you have to look at it as a long term situation.
I remember the next time that came about, we were in America and we were on a label out of Atlantic under a guy called Gerry Greenberg – he had a couple of soul bands and some blues artists he was working with. Well, Jerry wanted to leave and Ahmet Ertegun, who was President of Atlantic at the time, wanted to keep him because he was this bright young genius and Ahmet asked what would keep him there. Jerry said he wanted his own label so he could develop some artists on his own. Ahmet said, “Done” and one of the artists he saw potential in was us. We were sitting around talking about the influences of bands like The Faces and mentioned my favourite American band was Mountain and that kind of thing and told him that my love of keyboards went right back to the early blues stuff and I said that there was so much you can do with a keyboard player in a band and he said, “I can see it but it’s probably a bit early because people are so fascinated with this two guitars, bass, drums & singer thing going on, so we’d only confuse them” so there were the two times I remember keyboards being talked about in relation to Rose Tattoo but it never came to fruition. I know there is still time so let’s see how the next album shapes up but I think there’s a chance there might be keyboards on the next one.
Sean: Well, your old mate Genghis (Jackie Barnes) who sits at the back behind the drum kit has been doing a bit with a rather talented keyboard player, the incredible Lachy Doley.
Angry: He is a very talented keyboard player.
Sean: I’ll keep an ear to the ground to see what happens with that then [laughs]. When we last spoke it was the 11th of October 2018 and I’ll quote you here, “The Tatts have got a five year plan”. I’m hoping that five year plan starts this year and not back in 2018… I’m trying to get a few more years out of the Tatts [laughs]. But on a more serious note, with the life changing things that have happened to you and the incredible line-up of the current band as well as the release of this fantastic ‘Outlaws’ album, does that give you a fresh outlook to keep going with Rose Tattoo rather than give yourself a limited time frame?
Angry: Yes, yes and yes to all that. The other thing too is that now that we know that we all work well together we know we have a future. All of a sudden, particularly on my part, I’ve dug out tapes I’ve had laying around for years because I’ve always had dictaphones and I even found my old iPhone and it’s audio part is just chock full. My current phone, which I’ve only had since last year I think, is chock too. So what I’m trying to say is that I’m already excited about creating new material for a brand new album, which will see us work on these songs later this year. We will be touring March, April, May and then after that we are pretty much going to go away and work. The boys are supplying me with tunes and I’ve got a whole new approach lyrically – I’m getting very philosophical and getting very reflective… and I’m quite within my right to be reflective at my age.
Tatts lyrics have always been very personalized anyway – written by the individual, for the individual and there are so many young blokes out there that can relate and women too, for which I’m very grateful. What I want to be able to formulate into classically good rock n’ roll songs is the broader outlook that I have on life now and the deeper understanding I have found and the sort of things that have happened over the last few years; the resurrection of the band, the monumental loss, the grieving process, the looking back at your own belief system & your own values and questioning everything – I want to be able to write that, not too long winded or heavy handed… I don’t want to be too serious about it. Jesus Christ, I don’t want to turn into another Leonard Cohen and depress people [laughs}. I want people who take home the next album, which is yet to be recorded… it will be a thoughtful process… They’ll be able to listen to it and say, “You know what? I get what he means.”
Sean: You referenced in our last chat about the drinking & drugs in the early years so I suppose this is a chance to write and create new Rose Tattoo material with a clear mind, which will be another different experience too.
Angry: Absolutely, yeah. It really will.
Sean: One request I have is that you reprise ‘Stuck on You’ so we can find out what happened to the goldfish [laughs]
Angry: [laughs] Well, unfortunately he ended up being broiled because as the lyric goes “I heated up the water so he wouldn’t get cold” but there was a throw-away line in the original “And now he’s gone” which didn’t appear it the re-recorded version.
Sean: [laughs] that’s cleared that up for me. Another important chapter in 2020 for you all is that you also have your first shows in the US since 1982 when you head there in May.
Angry: Yes, we last toured there over in 1982/83 and we spent Christmas in America. We were going to take a break because my daughter was born on the 2nd of January 1983 but she was two weeks old before I finally got to see her. We were only going to have a break of a couple of weeks before we were going to go back and join another tour. But when we came back Peter decided for some reason, which I still don’t understand to this day, that he didn’t want to go back and then spend the next four or five years on the road. I don’t know why because it was such a load of fun and were making an impression. Someone very close to him said to me years later that he was afraid of his own talent. On that first tour, Billy Gibbons told me one day that his two favourite slide players were Greg Allman & Ry Cooder and I told him that I had some early Cooder albums but he said that Pete was an innovator and that he was taking it to another dimension – Billy himself is no slouch as a slide player, not that he plays too much of it but when he does he’s tasty as all fuck, you know. Billy Gibbons has always been one of my favourite guitar players anyway but what he chooses to play is just fucking magical. He heard a lot of Pete’s playing and thought Pete had a great future.
Sean: So, going back after all this time must be a real exciting experience once more?
Angry: It’s really, really exciting for us all but you’re shitting bricks at the same time because from ’83 until now is a very long time but then we think what we do is what we do and people are going to see it & feel it. So, yes it’s exciting but at the same time it’s terrifying but it also feels dangerous and you can’t live your life with what ifs, you just got to do what you do and if it’s true and real, people will know.
Sean: The first three shows are sell outs at the legendary Whiskey in West Hollywood…
Angry: Yes, yes. That was a terrific confidence booster because we were only supposed to do one night and then the second night sold out so they asked if we could do a third and we said yes and that sold out as well so we are starting off with a bang.
Sean: What a wonderful start to the tour. So looking back at what you’ve learnt over the years & the experiences you’ve had, what one bit of advice would you offer a band starting out now a days?
Angry: Just remember the reason your there. Forget about the money because if it doesn’t come you’re going to be grossly disappointed. Just remember the reason you picked up that guitar or you sang along with a record in the first place. You can’t get that feeling any other way. Every time we walk on stage it could be our last, you never know. You never know when you beat your last heart beat or what the next day will bring in your life. Live every moment like it’s your last and as far as music goes always keep in your heart the first reason that you opened your mouth to sing or pick up that guitar to play – it’s not money, it’s not fame, it’s not even getting your dick sucked, it’s something far, far greater than that.
Sean: What wonderful advice. There’s only one question left and the only way to finish this interview, Angry. I need to know what is currently in the ‘Angry Anderson Three Stacker of Mystery’ that resides in your office [laughs]. Last time we had John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Albert King and Memories of Fleetwood Mac. What CDs have you got in there this time?
Angry: [laughs] Oh wow, you remembered. Let’s see… Mahilia Jackson and I can’t think what the album is called but they are all gospel songs… the second one is Little Feat and ‘Feat Don’t Fail Me Now’ and I can’t think what the third one is… oh, yes the other one is ‘The Healer’ by John Lee Hooker [laughs]
Sean: You do know that will now be a regular question for you when we next talk [laughs]
Angry: [laughs] I’ll be ready.
Sean: Angry, thank you once again for an amazing chat. It’s always an absolute honour & a pleasure. We wish you and the guys all the best for ‘Outlaws’ as well as safe passage on your various travels across the globe and I hope to catch up when you’re back in Australia.
Angry: Me too. Thank you brother, thank you. You’re a good man.
