It’s hard to believe that The Angels turn fifty this year and the band show now signs of slowing down, as they close in on the release of a brand new studio album this week. ‘Ninety Nine’ will be released Friday 28th June through Bloodlines Music and is the first with former Angel’s drummer Nick Norton taking vocal duties. The Rockpit has had a sneaky early listen and can confidently say that fans will not be disappointed. It’s an album that captures the classic sound of the rock legends but with the younger members lending a large part of their creativity to John & Rick’s foundations.
We caught up with Nick to talk about his new role in the band, how the song writing dynamic works within the group, as well as talk about his first schoolboy encounters with John Brewster, forming a friendship that crossed paths over many years before Norton finally joined the iconic Australian rockers.
Sean: G’day. Hi Nick, how are you?
Nick: Not so bad Sean. How are you going?
Sean: Doing great. Thanks so much for your time. Exciting times ahead not only for you but for The Angels too. Moving from as far back as possible on the drum riser to front and centre on lead vocals and guitar.
Nick: That’s true, yeah, drums to front man. It certainly is. We can’t wait to get back out to play some new music.
Sean: I’ve had the album on for the last couple of days. I’ve got to say it is absolutely fantastic.
Nick: Oh, brilliant, cheers, really appreciate it. It’s always nice to hear feedback after sitting on something for a while.
Sean: Well, the new single and title track ‘Ninety-Nine’ certainly has that Angels sound but there’s also a few little different surprises on the album, which I thought are great but ‘Ninety-Nine’… well, what a great track to kick off with.
Nick: Oh yeah, we just thought that was good for the title track to be the first single and it’s got a nice sort of punk tempo and Sam and I co-wrote that one, it’s just sort of a punchy tune and got lots of attitude so a good title track and good opener for the album too.
Sean: What also is amazing is that you’ve just said you and Sam have co-written the single and absolutely nailed it, so it’s great to see that the ‘young blood’ so to speak have captured the Angels sound that John & Rich have carved out for so many years.
Nick: Yeah, well there’s a lot of song writing going on with all of us now. Rick’s still writing a lot, John’s done about three tunes in there and Sam and I have done some co-writes and so we’re all pitching in and it keeps it sort of fresh and I think, you know, Sam and I probably know how to kind of write in the style of The Angels but then we’re still bringing our own thing, which is just natural because we’re, you know, sort of a generation younger so, or even potentially a couple of generations younger, you know, so we’re, yeah, in the sense that we’re not really children of the 70s – Sam and I, we’re more children of the 80s so we’re kind of maybe bringing a little bit more of the Guns N’ Roses to the song writing process rather than Led Zeppelin or something, you know, but then that works because, you know, the Gunners were massively influenced by The Angels anyway.
Sean: Yeah, it’s such an iconic sound. As you can tell from my accent, UK born and bred but The Angels have left an imprint on my musical life as well so to finally get to talk to Rick and John over the last few years has been a really honour & privilege and now, with Dave stepping away you now get to hold the flame aloft.
Nick: Yeah, well I sort of grew up with the band because they were already an iconic band but then I had a lot of older siblings and even a cousin who was a huge Angels fan. Some of my older sisters were listening to kind of the new wave of the early 80s and all that kind of thing. Bands like The Police but the Angels were just always there and then when I met John around the time I left high school it was just all kind of just this ongoing thing that we kind of did collaborations I guess you’d say and then years later it ended up playing drums in the band amazingly and then, yeah, now here we are singing and playing guitar and writing songs with them.
Sean: Well of course, as I mentioned I’m lucky to have the album at the moment to listen to, to my heart’s content but June the 28th is the official release date, I can see on the website there’s pre-sales and signed copies and red vinyl and all kinds of goodies for fans to grab hold of. That’s one thing about the band – they always make sure there’s something special there for the fans if they want to grab it, which is great.
Nick: Yeah, we’ve just put out a… well, Rick’s organised a black denim jacket with the big Mr Damage on the back and the logos and stuff on the front which is cool. I got mine the other day so I’ll be proudly sporting that. That’s the 50-year jacket actually because we got 40-year jackets made up back in 2014, which I can’t believe that’s 10 years ago, that’s bizarre… but yeah we decided and they were, actually they were leather jackets but I think they ended up being a band only thing maybe with a few others that leaked out there but this one’s for the masses.
Sean: Well, to coincide with the album launch you also kick off the ’50 Not out Tour’ and there’s tour dates across the board for that as well. We get to see you in July here in WA which is always great because The Angels always come to WA and with it being such a huge country we really do appreciate it. How’s it feel to actually be out there front and centre now because with all due respect there’s some big shoes to fill?
Nick: Yeah, well it’s kind of natural in a way because I’ve played guitar and sang my whole life and played up front in a lot of bands and original bands as well so I kind of knew the role but yeah I mean initially it’s a bit intimidating obviously just because The Angels has its own 50-year fan base so it’s not like I was sort of that worried what people thought because they’re such great songs and that’ll carry it across the line anyway but it’s just unusual initially where they’re probably like, “Hang on! Aren’t you the… this bloke’s the drummer isn’t he?” but yeah I always was singing backing vocals for 11 or 12 years there which was probably my attempt to kind of make myself useful you know. I mean on the last two albums – we’ve put out three original albums now, albums of new music since 2011 and I wrote stuff on those, four tracks each on both albums so I kind of was always a bit involved with John and Rick and Dave and Sam in kind of the role writing and singing and that aspect of things but yeah I mean, as you say you’re back on the drums you know at a big festival and you’ve got one job which is just to absolutely nail it to the floor behind the kit you know and everything else falls away.
Sean: Well of course you’ve just said you are a guitarist as well, which of course adds a new dimension to the band with that third guitar up on stage. I missed your show when you came to WA which was your first run out up front and with the guitar but I think John was having a few things going on and was having to sit out a few shows which meant to had to cover there too.
Nick: I think Rick just knows my guitar playing and kind of knows that rhythm thing I do which is not unlike John and so he’s just like ah a lot of big people first saw me doing that and he’s like I think that’s what you should be doing because that’s kind of who you are with a mic in front of you anyway which he’s right. I mean, on the last tour because we were playing those big festival crowds, I was dropping the guitar for ‘Marseille’ at the end and running around like a madman and that was actually really great and kind of liberating and I was having a lot of fun with that but yeah if you’re doing a two-hour pub show or two and a half hour sort of thing, obviously the front man thing is a specific role and obviously you’ve got the ultimate shoes to fill there with Doc and then also Dave who is a career front man and who just has that persona – it’s very unique to him and he kind of nails that you know, that thing. He’s Australia’s preeminent career front man you know, so in a way I’m not trying to be either of them which is good so with the guitar I can just kind of play. John had some medical issues last year and I just said to myself, “Oh well, there you go. You’re up son!” I was already playing the parts and then it’s like well now there’s no choice in the matter and so I said, “Rick, come meet me in my motel room at 4.30 p.m and we’re gonna run both sets together” because i just wanted to make sure that I was playing the parts well. At that point I had to play them exactly like John because it was a lot more naked without three guitars and John’s got such a great rhythm field and his chord voicings are kind of unique to how he plays with The Angels and in the same way that Angus and Malcolm have unique chord voicings on those open chords so yeah it’s like I want to get this right you know so that helped a lot and then we just didn’t stop gigging for seven months.
Sean: I’m just looking at the list of dates now and I see you kick off at Prince Band Room in St Kilda – what a great room to kick it all off at.
Nick: Well, funnily enough I haven’t actually played in there we’ve i mean over the last 13 years I’ve played it almost every room in Australia with The Angels, big and small but that will be new for me so that’s exciting.
Sean: We’ve got you at two venues in July – the wonderful Freo.Social, which I love and also the iconic Astor Theatre, which has such a great sound system in there – just perfect for you guy. I’ve seen you in there before with The Baby Animals.
Nick: I love that room with it’s beautiful old art deco. We’ve played there a few times and you know, we love all the rooms in Perth, there’s only about three or four places that we usually play and they’re just always great. It’s just one of those towns that because it’s isolated it’s got its own community you know and they’ve still got that old school rock thing all the way so it’s just exciting every time we fly over.
Sean: Well let’s talk about the construction of the album and the writing because you said that you’ve been in with the boys obviously since 2011, and working from inside the engine room, how easy was that for you and Sam just to drop in with your songwriting experiences from other influences you may have picked up over the years? So as a collective, how did that work?
Nick: I’m probably just used to song writing for the last sort of 20 odd years and Sam’s riffs and things and I’m obviously kind of the lyric writer being a vocalist. I just have always written lyrics, that comes naturally to me so that was pretty useful because Rick had a lot of music and only a certain number of sets of lyrics that he’d written so I was kind of grabbing songs of Rick’s and putting lyrics and melody to them and I was grabbing songs of riffs and links and stuff from demos that Sam had done and putting vocal melodies to those. I mean the last three or four, well it’s probably about two or three songs even in that last two months before we started mixing which weren’t even close to finished but I sort of took demos that Rick and Sam had made that I knew were good sort of riffs and then just slammed down lyrics and melody and kind of knowing that they would work and pick the best the strongest stuff but we were recording right up till we did some recording.
We recorded at a place in Melbourne called Lighthill Sound Recording which is up in Riddells Creek, which north of the city and in a rural area with an engineer we love, Ricki Rae and we smashed out a sort of day of stuff with him in December and then I think we did another day in January because we were so busy gigging – it was like we just couldn’t stop. We were just going a million miles an hour but that kind of helped in the end because we were creatively in that space already and anyway we just pulled out some gold on those those recording sessions and then what hadn’t already been turned into songs, I kind of went away and fashioned into songs with my lyrics and when we finished the tour I was doing some vocal takes up here at my friend Dave Bleus’s Studio in Windsor and then suddenly by early April we just had this album – it’s like already here so the record company were leaning on us to sort it. We started later and we got it mixed in April and then here we are in June like ready to release.
Sean: Well, of course you mentioned the wonderful Ricki Rae who’s worked with so many incredible bands and I always bump into him when he comes over on the Red Hot Summer shows doing the sound for Baby Animals when they comes to Sandalfords. We did a Rockpit 10th anniversary gig over in Melbourne a few years ago and Ricki did the desk for us that night.
Nick: He’s definitely man about town and he has definitely become kind of the go-to engineer for all the studio stuff for a lot of the Aussie Heritage Rock is probably one way to put it but all the classic rock bands from that era and since and obviously the live guy as well and then he goes on the road with the with the BAs as well and so we just sort of got to know him more and more because he does a lot of our Festival stuff and quite often we’re on the bill with Baby Animals anyway so yeah he’s awesome and he just knows that rock thing – he’s a drummer himself so that’s my theory – all the best engineers are drummers, I’ve always said that and I stand by it [laughs] best sound engineers for whatever reason… well I can think of a few but they’re the best drummers are the best engineers!
Sean: Going back to the early days, and I spoke to John about you before and he’d said that the first time he saw you it was no surprise that you were a natural successor to do this role one day. As a kid what were the early influences on music in your life?
Nick: I guess I was singing since about seven years of age just in the school choir and just always singing around home and singing to all my older sibling’s vinyls and then I started playing guitar at 10. My sister said I wanted to play an instrument and she said, “do guitar, do guitar!” Cool okay, whatever [laughs] but she was right and then I was kind of playing. I just loved all music because I sort of had this diverse range of it from my five siblings and parents and then I kind of discovered the rock thing at about 10 or 11 years of age and that was sort of the era of bands like ACDC and Guns N’ Roses were charting at the time and playing massive world tours – I mean ACDC still do and actually Gunners are back but that was kind of the rock thing and I discovered Hendrix because I play guitar and my older brother went off before like, “check this guy out.” Then I just got more and more into that kind of rock world and in my early teens got into kind of the heavy rock stuff and and then branched off into bands like Helmet who were kind of a heavy groove band from New York and they were kind of almost a metal groove thing that predated all that new metal stuff that came out years later.
So I was always playing in rock bands through high school and then John saw my band at high school – Gang Array, we were a Sydney band, we were kind of a progressive almost melodic progressive rock sort of band – prog rock and he saw us at the North Point Tavern in North Sydney back in 1989 I think it was. It just turned out that he had moved at that point but his young family at the time were a Castle Hill family, a very suburban family and that’s where I grew up so it was all this kind of connection where… okay and Sam was a few years below me at my high school and then you know I met… oh yeah I’m sorry, let me back track. I did meet John when I was in Year 11 at a music performance night because he was there watching his 13-year old son play in a rock band doing something like Metallica and Status Quo covers or something and then I was playing in my I think I was singing with a little Jazz Trio made up of school teachers. I was in year 11 at the time when John came up after and he’s like. “I like what you’re doing. What’s your name?” and as John always does it’s always waving the flag he’s like, “Oh I’m John Brewster from The Angels.” and I was a 16 year old kid so I’m like “oh this is amazing” and we always kind of remembered each other and he saw the band years later, you know three years later I guess it was and he was like “I met you before. Your band’s amazing. I want to take you into Albert’s to demo” and so he took us in to meet Harry and George. That was exciting obviously because it’s like here we were hanging around with the ultimate rock guys of the classic era and in the esteemed hallowed halls of Albert’s. Albert’s studio at that time had moved to Neutral Bay, Rangers Road at Neutral Bay and so we were always demoing there – I was a mad keen 20-year old kid we were just in there constantly demoing and doing stuff with John and then we ended up signing a deal with Harry but like some of the other young bands that kind of got shelved and then delayed and then in the end the band sort of fell apart in the mid 2000s but I always kept doing stuff with John and Rick.
Later in 2010 I got the gig in the Brewster Brothers playing as a sideman where I was kind of doing drums and backing vocals but also some acoustic guitar and things like that as well and so that was really great because that’s sort of bluesy Bob Dylan influence and Rick’s got his kind of lyrical bluesy stuff and so that was exciting. Sam got the gig and we became a four-piece as a rhythm section with Sam and I, and then 2011 John sort of said “you know, we’ve offered the tour to Buzz but we’re pretty sure he’s gonna say no” because they were having some issues with Buzz at the time and he’s like “would you be interested in playing drums?” So I kind of had to strap my rock and roll drumming boots on because I was obsessed with drums but it’s a big step up becoming kind of like an arena rock drummer because some of the gigs were in arenas. It’s an art form to play like that and they could have got any old veteran who would have just been all power from the word go but I think John and Rick, they have got an eye for things and I think they were like “this young guy, he writes songs and he sings and he’s kind of passionate and he’d be a good fit.” When you’re young, you’re not bringing the ego that a 45-year old will bring. They would have been in their 50s already by that time, so 50s 60s whatever they were, 60s probably but they’re never ending… they’re immortal. John’s punching into his mid-70s now and he still straps on the Les Paul and goes for it.
Sean: Time has eluded us and I’m so sorry for running over Nick. If I could finish with asking my restaurant question.
Nick: Sure.
Sean: You can invite three musicians, dead or alive to join you for dinner, who would you choose?
Nick: Probably Page Hamilton from the band Helmet who I have met but only very briefly. He’d be an interesting guy to chat to for sure. I was going to say Adrian Belew from King Crimson, amongst other things the famous guitar player/sideman singer but we toured with him back in the day so I guess I’ve kind of had the chance to pick his brain a little bit so I’d have to probably have to scratch him. Oddly enough I’m probably gonna say the original drummer from Helmet John Stanier as well just because he’s the biggest early drum influence on me and Page is probably the biggest early guitar influence on me and for a third, I mean would have to go for someone to bring in the intellectual jazz rock element John McLaughlin, the original great jazz rock guitar player of all time. hat a wonderful table nick thank you so so much for your time um we wish you all the best with the album we can’t wait uh i can’t
Sean: What a wonderful diverse table Nick. Thank you so so much for your time. We wish you all the best with the album and I can’t wait for the world to hear it.
Nick: Thank you Sean. I can’t wait for it to come out. I think I’m surprising the guys in the band because I keep talking about how much I am looking forward to just have it… well I finally do have a copy but looking forward to just physically having a vinyl in my hands because I’m actually for the first time in about 10 years super excited to be on a recording.
Sean: Wonderful. Well please send our regards to the guys and good luck for the tour. See you in July when you get over to see us here in Perth.
Nick: Thanks Sean. See you over there mate. Take care.
