Interview: John Brewster (The Angels)
Interview by Erica Lorimer and Angela Frodsham
50 Not Out Tour details: https://theangels.com.au/gigs/
Ninety Nine album and merchandise: https://theangels.com.au/shop/
Click here for Ninety Nine album stream
Foreword by Sheldon Ang
Guns N Roses, Cheap Trick, Pearl Jam and ACDC – some of rock’s legends citing The Angels as their main influence, with many more channelling their zests in pubs across Australia as Ian McFarlane, the author of The Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop, noted: “The Angels helped re-define the Australian pub rock tradition.” Jimmy Barnes added, “The Angels are a band that changed Australian music forever”.
1974 was the dawn of a new era in Aussie rock. Within 5 years, they were the kings of the Australian music scene, performing to 100,000 revellers on new years eve of ’79 at the Sydney Opera House.
50 years on, fans would have forgiven the band’s founding members had they set anchor into retirement along the coast of Tropicana Langkawi. But “passion” has driven the ARIA Hall of Fame Inductee into a new chapter of their illustrious career; the Angels are on tour again in South Australia, New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania, celebrating the golden anniversary milestone through their 50 Not Out Tour.
Coinciding with the tour is the release of their first studio album in 10 years. Ninety Nine is a classic Angels album, with riffs and musical trajectory wrapped in menace, mystery, and outright shenanigans. Nick Norton, the former drummer of The Angels has taken a couple of steps to the front-centre stage as the lead vocalists following the departure of Dave Gleeson. With two super subs in two youthful Brewsters, the 70’s energy is revitalised and boosted. In a parallel universe of the golden rock era, the 14th album would have propelled to the top of the charts.
This is a benchmark album for the Angels. We’ve had that trilogy of Face to Face. No Exit, Dark Room, which are pretty amazing. And I look back on all of that with great pride, and I think this album Ninety Nine is right up there with them – John Brewster
Long time fans and sisters Erica Lorimer and Angela Frodsham sat with the rhythm guitarist, backing vocalist and the co-founder of The Angels, John Brewster, reminiscing on the golden era, Doc Neeson, the origins of the “No Way…” chants in “Face”, regrets and sliding doors, and the legend’s perpetual passion through the works of the Ninety Nine album and the 50 Not Out tour.
Erica: John Brewster. Thanks for joining us today. Honestly, it’s such an honour to speak with you. The co-founder of the band, they have been so successful in the music scene for 50 years.
John: It’s amazing isn’t it. Thank you very much Erica.
Erica: So, The Angels in 2024 – that’s amazing. 50 years on. The band are still touring with a new album out Ninety Nine, and you’re going to have a big party to celebrate that fantastic milestone with the 50 Not Out Australian Tour.
Everyone is aware of The Angels’ legacy with 8 top ten albums, 17 top 40 singles, and John, I was watching some of your other interviews and you mentioned you had an old Holden EH station wagon to go to your first gig with Cheech and Chong, and we had an EH as well…
The Early Years
John: Well how great were they! Well, it was our first gig first gig. We used to be a jug band called Moonshine Jug & String Band. And we did really well in Adelaide. We never really did it to be anything other than a fun thing to do while we were at university while I was doing film making and drama, and as it turned out, Doc Neeson also did filmmaking but were at the same university, but we were in different years.
We met up when he joined the jug band and Moonshine Jack & String Band had this huge following. We used to play on a Tuesday night at the Modbury Hotel – which is way out of Adelaide. The reason being way out of Adelaide is, I stopped at every pub on my way to the north east side to see if any pub would want us, they would tell me to go away and, till we got to Modbury and it just so happened, it worked out.
We played Tuesday nights. We had 400 people in the room every night, basically giving you a background to the whole thing. It was a fantastic fun. And I wrote a song called Keep You On The Move, which we recorded with the jug band. But it was a rock song and the jug band played a lot of the stuff from the 1920s. So, we had this kind of big hit with it. And in Adelaide only – but I said to people, ‘I think it’s because mum bought most of the records’
Reflection: Doc Neeson and the late 70s to the mid 80s
Angela: So it has been been a long journey since those days with Cheech and Chong. And, you’ve had such a remarkable journey over that time and we’ve been with you. So part of that, not directly, but indirectly. It’s been a long time. And in fact, we’ve got a little bit of memorabilia for you here, John (Angela showing The Angels ticket from Perth Entertainment Centre – Friday, the 8th of January, 1982).
John Brewster: Oh, my God. I do remember, I mean the tours, and Perth has always been a very special place for us to visit. We love it. It’s a great town. We still play at the Charles Hotel, which we love. And of course, on this particular tour at the Astor Theatre, which is sensational and The Freo Social too.
Perth has always been filled with great memories. From 1974 and of course where we are now – 50 years of the band. And so you can’t help but to be reflecting, it’s like, looking back on those days and looking back on those first four years before the band sort of hit the big time and driving around Australia and, the old EH wagon with the bass speaker on the roof.
And, so you do tend to look back on all that and look back to those days when Doc Neeson was amazing. From around the end of 77 through to maybe the mid 1980s – I think maybe you could say that Doc Neeson was right up as one the greatest front men in the world.
So those are great memories and there are obviously some bad memories too because Doc succumbed to addictions and stuff, which is sad. But it’s all in the movie that we just made recently called Kicking Down the Door so that, that, of course, we love Doc, and we love the memories of Doc and those wonderful days.
When the band first took off, it was like, huge. It was all cutting edge. But I can tell you that, in my opinion, for what it’s worth, I think the band is on a cutting edge again. Since day one. And now we’ve got two of my sons in the band.
They’re amazing – Sam and Tom. They just play great. They’re not there because they’re my sons. I just think it’s a bit of a bonus. Thomas is hard work – because he says, Dad, why are you eating that for? I think that’s okay, because I’ve had a couple of health issues. But anyway, to get back to the music – those guys played just brilliantly.
My brother, of course, has always been brilliant. He’s an amazing guitar player. I’m the rhythm guitar player, and I, I said to people, ‘Rick is really good. Yeah, he’s really good.’ But it’s all about the rhythm guitar (cheekily chuckles)- which is bullshit.
Bob Dylan, vs the Beatles and The Rolling Stones
Erica: I’ve heard you talk about how you just love that, that being able to just sit back with your instruments, your specific guitars.
John Brewster: Yeah, that I love it. For me, rhythm guitar was all about playing guitar and singing a song. When I was growing up, the major influence in my life was Bob Dylan and Bob Dylan, still to this day, is incredibly, a huge part of my life. And so I started, I taught myself to play the guitar, and I would go to parties and I’d sing Bob Dylan songs, rather than The Beatles and Rolling Stone songs,
I loved The Beatles; I love Rolling Stones. And of course, I was lucky to grow up as a teenager in the 60’s. I’m proud to say that I’m about to be 75 and I don’t care anymore. But to get to my mid-seventies and still playing at a rock band is pretty sensational.
The Angels Live in 2024, Ninety Nine
Erica: Angela saw you at the Red Hot Summer Tour a few years ago. And I saw you recently at Freo Prison, along with Cheap Trick and opening for Suzi Quatro. I was fortunate to photograph for Sheldon Ang Media. When the Angels were playing, it was electric. And people were stopping me and saying this was amazing. People wanted photos with The Angels playing behind. It was the energy and the involvement from the other generations were so powerful. John, how do you feel when you’re on stage and you see all of the generations, all together, mums and dads with their kids?
John Brewster: I’m really happy to see that. That’s the feeling that I have. It’s quite unbelievable. I’m still loving this at my advanced stage in my life and having had a couple of pretty major health issues, I couldn’t play in the first few months of this year, because I had a big heart attack.
I’m just so proud of the guys in the band. I still play hopefully an important role. What they did to complete Ninety Nine I think, is just incredible.
This is a benchmark album for the Angels. All these years later, we’ve had that trilogy of Face to Face. No Exit, Dark Room, which are pretty amazing. And I look back on all of that with great pride and I think this album Ninety Nine is right up there with them.
Regrets? Sliding Doors
We could look back on all that and God, no regrets. I mean, there are things I wish hadn’t happened, like the band leaving Alberts (record label that launched ACDC) at the end of 1979. But it’s really exciting signing up with Epic Records in America.
And they were great, and we were with the best agency in the world with the William Morris Agency. But we left Alberts – which was a family that had ACDC, who are great friends of ours, and we used to hang out together, swap instruments, have jam sessions. And were lucky to have those experience with those people, Bon Scott and Angus and Malcolm and Phil Rudd and, Mark Evans, etcetera, and, so to be with Albert, with Harry Vanda and George Young, probably the greatest producers Australia has ever had.
I think one of the great tragedies of our career is that we were convinced by. or not convinced, but we always kind of talked into leaving them (Alberts), it was a management decision that I think probably the manager would say it was a bad decision, too, because, we would have been playing with ACDC all around the country….around the world, I should say. But you know, we had had a successful career overseas. But it just got harder and harder…
…but sure, like any band, it’s a weird business to be, but I don’t see it as a business. I see it as a passion. I love what I do and I love the people I’m doing it with…that’s it. And then we rock. We rock harder. Yes!
Am I Going to See You Face Again – and the origins of that chant.
Erica: We were saying to our kids, we don’t remember the origins of the famous chant, of “No way (get f*cked, f*ck off.)“ we can’t say it (chuckles). So we were saying we don’t remember that chant at a concert we were at, in 1982. I heard you were saying you may have first heard it in 1983 or mid 80s…at Mount Isa?
John: Mount Isa – It’s a good song, it was our first single, but it was not a successful single. And we had “You’re a lady now”, we put out “Coming down on Me”, which became one of our biggest songs. But nothing worked for “When Will I See Your Face Again” in terms of radio play and so when we did the Face to Face album, the whole thing went through the roof.
I mean, like a rocket ship that had taken off. The whole thing happened right across the country and the band just became huge, but we kind of still played, “Am I Going to See Face Again” for a while. And then we went, ‘We don’t need that song anymore. It was our first single and wasn’t big, so we didn’t do it for a couple of years.
Well, 2 or 3 years later, we played at Mount Isa and they kept calling for more at the end of the show, and we had never played there before. And it was an isolated community, so we sort of started running out of songs. So one of us suggested, ‘Let’s play Face again’. So we did it, and 3500 people in the town hall chanted ‘No way (get f*cked, f*ck off) ‘.
And then it just kind of blew us away. We just said, “Well, what the hell was that about?” And, you know, me being the expert, I said, that’s probably just something that happens here in Mount Isa. And man, it was an isolated community. Let’s put the song in the shows. So we put the song in the show…we worked all the way down the East Coast. We went across to Perth – where you are – and we went into Adelaide. We went to Melbourne, Sydney…Brisbane…everywhere we played. They did that chant and I think it’s really quite remarkable. I mean, it’s not related to the song in a sense, but I think it’s just great larrikin – an Australian sense of humour. Yeah, I love it. And god, if we didn’t do that song now, I think they’d probably lynch us.
I think the remarkable thing about that is that this happened in the early 1980s. There were no mobile phones, no internet. Yeah. Back in those days, if we want to call home, we’d queue at the phone boxes. So how did that spread around the country? I don’t know, I have no idea. There are people with theories. I just know the first time we heard it.
Angela: We’ve got it from the horse’s mouth. So that’s nice. Thank you.
John: And I see that you got the No Exit album behind you…I gotta tell you that if anything, it’s great as an album as Face to Face, maybe even greater, as that period for us it was quite a remarkable.
Erica/Angela: Wow.
John Brewster: Yeah. Absolutely. And you know what? On the Never So Live album there, the late and great Chris Bailey sang a song. When I say Chris Bailey, people think of The Saints, but no, our Chris, it was our bass player here, and, he used to be the lead singer of a band called Head Band – that were fantastic.
Erica: Thank you for chatting with us, we will see you at Freo Social on Friday July 26th . The Angels will also be playing on July 27th at the Astor.
John Brewster: I’ll see you in Perth and please come and say hello.
The Angels are on Tour across Australia, including performances at Freo Social and The Astor Theatre on the 26th and 27th of July respectively. Tickets and Ninety Nine album are available from https://theangels.com.au/
About the Interviewers
Angela Frodsham
Angela is a music lover who has enjoyed live concerts with sister Erica and friends since the early 1980’s, including raving in the pit during The Angels performances at Perth Entertainment Centre in 1981. A career in Government economic development and transport policy followed a Bachelor of Economics majoring in the Japanese language. More recently, Angela’s love of writing and history has led her back to UWA to study Classics and Ancient History, including the Latin language and ancient Greek.
Erica Lorimer
Erica is a freelance photographer who loves capturing images of live music and travel photography. She enjoys shooting film with vintage cameras and making prints in a home darkroom. She has lived in Japan, the UK and Nigeria. Erica holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) from the University of Western Australia (UWA), majoring in English Literature and Economics, and a Certificate IV in Design.
About Sheldon Ang Media
Perth based Sheldon Ang Media (est. May 2022) have been accredited to almost 100 of the hottest acts including Taylor Swift (ERAS Tour in Sydney), KNOTFEST (Melbourne), Coldplay (Perth), KISS, P!NK, Tom Jones, Robbie Williams and Rod Stewart with reviews shared by the likes of UB40, Delta Goodrem, The Wiggles and Toni Childs on social media. The founder Sheldon has interviewed rockers Suzi Quatro (that’s her below), Ace Frehley (KISS), John Steel (The Animals), Frank Ferrer (Guns N Roses), Phil X (Bon Jovi), Andrew Farris (INXS) plus over 50 artists. He’s also a contributor as a music journalist on Triple M Radio.
