The Angels of course need no introduction, considered Downunder to be Australian Rock royalty, over the years they’ve treated us to some great albums and timeless classics. But 2020 was a hard year for The Angels as it was for a lot of bands who were unable to tour due to covid. The great news though is that they’re back and lookout for ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’. We caught up with John to find out all about the return to live shows, and to ask him a question I’ve always wanted to but somehow never have over the years.
Mark: Hi John it’s the Rockpit calling. How are you?
John: I’m good Mark how are you?
Mark: It seems like forever since we last spoke but it’s only been just over a year and I just read the great news that ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ is about to kick off in Melbourne?
John: Yes, well to us it is the greatest show on earth because we’re playing again (laughs)
Mark: (laughs)
John: It’s a little bit tongue in cheek, but it’s Mr. Damage that called it that not me! It’s really us just tipping our hat to a circus expression. It’s just nice to be back out there again and be part of the Circus again, if you like. We haven’t been able to play for so long this is a celebration of theh fact that we can go out and play again, and I think a lot of musicians would say the same thing.
Mark: You’re right John we’ve been starved of live music, and for me getting out to se a live band is ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ and what better live band than The Angels! There’s a few Angels Anniversaries this year and Covid has made celebrating those pretty impossible. I know that the ‘Dark Room’ Anniversary Tour has been rearranged to 2022…
John: That’s right.
Mark: But how will you cope with the 40th Anniversary of ‘Night Attack’ this year and also the 30th Anniversary of ‘Readback Fever’? Those Anniversaries are stacking up!
John: (laughs) Well for me I’m not particularly worried about celebrating ‘Redback Fever’ because I don’t really rate that, but maybe I shouldn’t say that! I wasn’t in the band at the time, but it’s certainly not one of my favourite Angels albums. But ‘Night Attack’ is a fantastic album and I think I may even like it more now than I did at the time and it’s for a silly reason really – I used a Fender Strat on it instead of my usual Les Paul and I really love the guitar sound! It’s definitely worth another listen. But yeah, we’ve had to reschedule ‘Dark Room’ actually for two years now but that’s what Covid’s done for us you know, and I guess there’s no complete guarantee that the next round of gigs will happen either but I think we’ll be fine. But we still do want to celebrate that next year. So this tour we’ve decided to make a Greatest Hits show. It’s always interesting when you talk about what we might call our Greatest Hits because we had hit albums, so you could pretty much call any song from ‘Face to Face’ or ‘No Exit’ or ‘Dark Room’ – they’re all hits, you know because radio played all the songs. Like for example the song ‘Marseille’ which I wrote – it was never a single here in Australia but it was one of our biggest songs. So it will be great to focus on the big songs for fans.
Mark: It’s a great legacy, I must admit my first Angels show was many years ago now in Europe but over the years I’ve seen you many a time. The great thing is it’s getting generational now, I have a friend whose Grandson has just starting listening to The Angels at the tender age of seven – so your music is getting passed down the generations.
John: Oh I love him! It’s great to see how many young people get into the band, I think that’s the power of Rock and Roll. You know, it’s not always fashionable, but it’s always there and to me a great Rock and Roll band like Z.Z. Top they’ll always sound fresh and rather cutting edge somehow, you know?
Mark: I think your right, rock is timeless and I love what your band is doing with theh re-releases and re-recordings giving them a new lease of life and a little extra, so long may they continue. Which was the most interesting album for you to revisit so far?
John: Ummm… all of them to some extent but I really enjoyed revisiting ‘Dark Room’ I think the thing is with those albums there was never any intent on replacing those albums with a new version. It was to share those albums with Dave Gleeson for example and my son Sam and Nick (Norton). And there’s another Anniversary for you – this year is the tenth Anniversary of Dave and Nick joining the band. Boy those years have flown by!
Mark: (laughs) that’s funny Dave didn’t mention that on Monday when I spoke to him!
John: No I thinks sometimes you’ve got to sit back and think of these things. That’s a significant anniversary! (laughs)
Mark: And the older we all get the more anniversaries keep piling up too! The lack of touring of course has really hit hard – what’s the best way fans can support a band like The Angels until things do get back to normal? I see there’s some great stuff up in the webstore.
John: Well you know there are these albums that we’ve revisited – every time we’ve revisited an album we’ve also filmed it live so there’s some great footage of this band playing those songs including I might say the Symphony of Angels recording which is with an orchestra. I’m really proud of that it was an amazing experience – we’ve done four of those shows and I think there’ll be more too coming by the way!
Mark: Now that would be something to see!
John: But we have stayed active, not as active as normal but we’ve released an EP this year, and released film clips for a couple of songs – one that Rick wrote called ‘Under The Stone’ and another that I wrote with our drummer Nick Norton who sings it, he’s a great singer by the way, and that’s called ‘Escape’ and we did a video of that as well which I think is a fantastic film clip. So we keep chipping away at things and staying active and then aside from that in my own personal life I do a lot of walking and a bit of golf to keep me moving because you know what – playing on stage is actually quite a work out – it’s a little bit aerobic! So I don’t want to go back on the road and not be fit.
Mark: It’s hot under those lights as well!
John: It is.
Mark: There’s another interesting anniversary this year for The Angels – it’s the 45th Anniversary of the release of your first single ‘Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again’
John: Is it 45?
Mark: It says so on the press release!
John: (laughs) I better read the press release! But you’re right it was released in ’76.
Mark: For a lot of people that is one of their favourite Angels songs and of course part of that comes from the call and response portion of it where the audience get to sing a response to the title (“No Way, Get Fucked, Fuck Off”) It’s always intrigued me how that first happened and spread in those pre-internet days.
John: I can remember the first time I heard it but I don’t know whether it started there because in actual fact we’d stopped playing the song. It was our first single but it wasn’t a massive single for us ‘Take a Long Line’ was actually our first massive single, but we thought that song was maybe a little ‘old hat’ because we were into something at the time that was a bit more ‘Punky’ and that song was a bit more of a Boogie song. So we’d kind of left it out for a while and then we were playing up at Mount Isa, and I’m pretty sure it was about 1983 and we’d never played Mount Isa before and as you know it’s pretty isolated. There were three and half thousand people in the town hall and we played our show and they kept on hollering for encores, so we did a couple and they wouldn’t stop so somebody said “Why don’t we play ‘Face Again’?” And those three and a half thousand people chanted what is now that famous chant and we came off stage and it just blew us away, thinking “What was that all about?”
Mark: (laughs)
John: I think I stupidly said “Oh it’s probably just something they do here in Mount Isa” (laughs) So we put the song back in the show from there on and we worked all the way down the East Coast from Cairns to Sydney, flew across to Perth, then Perth to Adelaide, Adelaide to Melbourne then back to Sydney and we did the song every night and every night we played they chanted that same thing!
Mark: That’s incredible.
John: So we realised that something had taken off and I think it was quite an extraordinary thing because like you said there were no mobile phones, no internet back then yet it spread around the country like a wild fire. So I don’t know how it happened but I think it’s a great example of the Australian larrikin sense or humour! (laughs)
Mark: That’s a great tale and we have to thank someone in Mount Isa for giving that to us all. Fantastic song and it will be great to hear it as part of ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ over in Melbourne. Might be one for us in the West to head over for otherwise we have to wait for the reworked ‘Dark Room’ tour next year in June. It must be a great feeling to be able to finally pop over the border to play those Melbourne dates?
John: Yeah its great to be playing The Palms at Crown Casino which has to be one of the best venues in the Country. But we’ve got other outdoor shows happening this year so it’s actually going to end up being quite a big year for us.
Mark: Thank you so much John, I think I’m going to book my tickets now for a quick jaunt over the Melbourne for ‘The Greatest Show on Earth.’
John: Stay in touch mate and we’ll see you there!
Mark: Stay safe,
John: You too Mark thanks a lot.
