“Stand up for rock ‘n’ rooooool!!!” screams Airbourne vocalist/guitarist Joel O’Keefe in the opening track of the band’s debut album Runnin’ Wild. Many might think of this line as more a means of inciting youthful frenzy than a literal mission statement (something along the lines of ‘You’ve got to fight for your right to party’). But if you ask Joel, or his master-of-the-sticks brother Ryan, rock ‘n’ roll – or at least, the anthemic, alpha-male pub rock that Airbourne espouse – is in danger of drowning in a sea of mild-mannered mediocrity.
“You’ve got to stand up for it,” Joel says earnestly. “It’s just getting to the point where bands are going around saying: ‘Oh, we’re rock’. And you listen to them, and it just sounds shit. You wanna say: Rose Tattoo is rock ‘n’ roll, you’re not.”
“It’s funny,” Ryan adds, “because we’ve been classified a lot lately as ‘metal’, and not rock, in some press. So it makes you want to ask ‘What’s going on?’ and more importantly, ‘How far has it gone?’, now that we’re being classified as metal.”
They might not be metal, but when these kids from Warnambool built their band on a foundation of mutual appreciation for AC/DC, Rose Tattoo and Cold Chisel, they didn’t suspect they would have been any closer to the mainstream of the day. Asked if they had any inkling during their formative years that so many people would want to hear a return to the glory days of pub rock, Joel and Ryan reply in unison: “That’s what WE wanted to hear!”
“And that’s the most important thing,” Ryan continues. “One of the things that made an impression on this band is that we grew up in the 90s, which had shit. I mean, it had nothing. It was all hair and tattoos. It didn’t have what we wanted to listen to at the time. So it’s kind of like we grew up without real rock, we’re pissed off about it, and now we don’t want anyone else to have to grow up without it.”
“It’s a shame that some people had to grow up without it,” Joel laments, again with absolute sincerity. “But after the first couple shows of playing this stuff, and seeing that other people loved it too, it was kind of like: ‘Maybe other people want this as much as we do? We want it so much, and obviously that guy over there wants it, and she fuckin’ wants it…’”
And just as Airbourne’s musical pedigree would be immediately recognisable for any listener over 15, their musical arch nemesis can be just as easily identified as the modern crop of ‘emotive’ rockers. Indeed, if preferring mixed cocktails to hard liquor, and singing about emotions that originate anywhere above the waist, is considered okay for the rock frontman of the noughties… well, then, someone forgot to tell the brothers O’Keefe.
“Ooh, my Daddy hurt me!” Joel says in a sneering parody of the Fall Out Boys and Hawthorne Heights of the world. “They’ve got no go about them, they’ve got no guts. It’s like, what are you crying about? Stop whingeing, take a chill pill…”
“I’m not going to pay money to go and see a band unless they’re going to entertain,” Ryan says, elaborating on Airbourne’s grievances. “If you walk into a place where someone’s staring at their shoes and whinging into a microphone, then you should throw something at them. It’s not Australian,” Ryan adds emphatically.
“Not at all,” Joel agrees. “It doesn’t have any Australian aspect whatsoever.”
In Airbourne’s view of the world, in fact, the divide between prosaic modern rock and their own testosterone-saturated attitude seems to have a distinctive America vs Australia vibe to it. It’s a viewpoint that is affirmed for them every time they play Stateside; though their brand of raucous Aussie pub rock has been devoured eagerly enough by local audiences, Joel has found Americans to be absolutely starved for it.
“It just doesn’t happen over there, and they love it,” Joel says, grinning. “At first they go: ‘Woah… ‘ like a deer in headlights. And then they just get into it. Afterwards, they say that they’ve never seen anything like it. Over there, you’d just have a couple combo amps, and a few little lights. But we’re taking this Aussie pub show, with our whole fucking team, and putting it in this club over there. Bang!”
The idea of being ambassadors for a particularly Australian rock attitude carried over into the band’s recording sessions in LA with Bob Marlette (Ozzy Osborne, Alice Cooper) who produced Runnin’ Wild.
“We were chucking Australian flags and Ned Kelly stuff up everywhere,” Joel relates. “And we were always taking the piss out of each other, in terms of ‘Americans versus Australians’. Just every day, giving each other shit. It was a good experience to be able to do that, to take the piss out of them, and have them take the piss out of us too. Because from day one, it just set that vibe of easy working and having fun.”
Joel continues: “What he (Bob) actually said the first day was: ‘All right guys, you go for it. I’ll tell you if you go down the wrong track, but otherwise, I’m here to press record, and get your stuff sounding big.’ And that’s what he did.”
“But we wanted to make sure that what we did on the album can be pulled off live,” Ryan adds. “‘Cos with a band like us, you’d be able to pick it if it couldn’t. We hate going to concerts and stuff, and saying: ‘Hey, what happened to that bit?’”
“Like when you go to see Def Leppard, and there’s about 3000 vocal parts missing,” Joel surmises, making his brother erupt into laughter.
Airbourne have been playing for long enough now that – in this city, at least – it is not so much a case of their live shows measuring up to their album as vice versa. Their most recent tour was evidence enough that many of Runnin’ Wild’s songs are already acknowledged live anthems.
“Well, our last Corner show was…” Joel trails off. “Fuck, I don’t know how you’d describe it. The security guards were saying it’s the wildest it’s ever been, and the loudest. I mean, for people to come over the rail at the first song… I’d be scared if a crowd were to get any wilder than that, because somebody would get killed!”
This Corner Hotel gig also saw Joel, in line with the philosophy he lays out in Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast, scull an entire bottle of Jack Daniels, save for a portion he poured obligingly into the mouths of nearby punters. Though conscious of what it has done to some of his predecessors (ie Bon Scott), Joel still regards alcohol as an intrinsic part – in fact, as inseparable from – his music.
“That’s the funny thing about rock ‘n’ roll,” he muses. “It’s like a parallel universe. Like, you sit here sober, and that’s alright. But when you get out on the road, there’s always lots of alcohol around. It doesn’t really occur to you, until you come off the road and think: ‘Woah… I feel fucked.’ I don’t think you need it, but it makes it fucking great when you’re running on that sort of stuff. It’s like fuel to rock ‘n’ roll.”
Another regular feature of Joel’s onstage excess has been to climb the band’s amplifier stack, or a nearby bar, for his solos. If possible, he will go ever higher: At Pyramid Rock ‘05, Joel was seen shredding up the top of the stage scaffolding. Reminded of such spectacles, Ryan laughs off any suggestion that he may fear for his brother’s safety.
“You know, in a show, things don’t usually go wrong as much as in regular life,” he says. “Shows seem to have this kind of magic about them, where shit like that can be pulled off, usually without anyone getting hurt.”
There has been one way, though, in which the physical forces that Airbourne set themselves against for every show have finally had their way. I remember the band’s appearance at the Beat Christmas party of 2005, and the looks of resignation on my colleagues' faces as they realised their attempts to carry on a conversation – even to the point of screaming directly into each other’s ears – were all in vain. Nothing could overcome Airbourne’s wall of sound. After five years of this, I have to wonder, how are Joel and Ryan’s ears holding up?
“Oh, we’ve both got tinnitus,” Joel says matter-of-factly.
“If we stopped talking right now, we would be hearing this high-pitched ring,” Ryan adds. “It’s pretty shit to go to sleep to, actually, but that’s the way it is.”
“It’s just part of the job,” Joel quips, “but not the kind of thing you could go to Workcover for.”
It should come as no surprise that Runnin’ Wild is being tipped for big things, with international distribution lined up through Roadrunner and the title single getting a spin, much to Joel and Ryan’s surprise, on plenty of commercial rock stations. But no matter how big things get, the brothers O’Keefe assure the fans that, for the time being, all profits will be put right back into making the Airbourne spectacle even bigger.
“If you think you’re gonna make money out of rock ‘n’ roll, it’s just not gonna happen,” Joel says, apparently not convinced yet of his rockstar destiny. “There’s the trucks, the crew, the amps, the guitars, the flights, the accommodation. But any income that’s left goes straight into production.”
“We don’t do it for the money anyway,” Ryan concurs. “But if there is any, it just goes back into making our show bigger. We had 16 blinders at The Corner, which are those really bright lights you see at concerts. A lot of people have to wear sunglasses to our concerts now... So great,” he adds dryly, “soon we’ll be deaf and blind!’”
Quelle
“You’ve got to stand up for it,” Joel says earnestly. “It’s just getting to the point where bands are going around saying: ‘Oh, we’re rock’. And you listen to them, and it just sounds shit. You wanna say: Rose Tattoo is rock ‘n’ roll, you’re not.”
“It’s funny,” Ryan adds, “because we’ve been classified a lot lately as ‘metal’, and not rock, in some press. So it makes you want to ask ‘What’s going on?’ and more importantly, ‘How far has it gone?’, now that we’re being classified as metal.”
They might not be metal, but when these kids from Warnambool built their band on a foundation of mutual appreciation for AC/DC, Rose Tattoo and Cold Chisel, they didn’t suspect they would have been any closer to the mainstream of the day. Asked if they had any inkling during their formative years that so many people would want to hear a return to the glory days of pub rock, Joel and Ryan reply in unison: “That’s what WE wanted to hear!”
“And that’s the most important thing,” Ryan continues. “One of the things that made an impression on this band is that we grew up in the 90s, which had shit. I mean, it had nothing. It was all hair and tattoos. It didn’t have what we wanted to listen to at the time. So it’s kind of like we grew up without real rock, we’re pissed off about it, and now we don’t want anyone else to have to grow up without it.”
“It’s a shame that some people had to grow up without it,” Joel laments, again with absolute sincerity. “But after the first couple shows of playing this stuff, and seeing that other people loved it too, it was kind of like: ‘Maybe other people want this as much as we do? We want it so much, and obviously that guy over there wants it, and she fuckin’ wants it…’”
And just as Airbourne’s musical pedigree would be immediately recognisable for any listener over 15, their musical arch nemesis can be just as easily identified as the modern crop of ‘emotive’ rockers. Indeed, if preferring mixed cocktails to hard liquor, and singing about emotions that originate anywhere above the waist, is considered okay for the rock frontman of the noughties… well, then, someone forgot to tell the brothers O’Keefe.
“Ooh, my Daddy hurt me!” Joel says in a sneering parody of the Fall Out Boys and Hawthorne Heights of the world. “They’ve got no go about them, they’ve got no guts. It’s like, what are you crying about? Stop whingeing, take a chill pill…”
“I’m not going to pay money to go and see a band unless they’re going to entertain,” Ryan says, elaborating on Airbourne’s grievances. “If you walk into a place where someone’s staring at their shoes and whinging into a microphone, then you should throw something at them. It’s not Australian,” Ryan adds emphatically.
“Not at all,” Joel agrees. “It doesn’t have any Australian aspect whatsoever.”
In Airbourne’s view of the world, in fact, the divide between prosaic modern rock and their own testosterone-saturated attitude seems to have a distinctive America vs Australia vibe to it. It’s a viewpoint that is affirmed for them every time they play Stateside; though their brand of raucous Aussie pub rock has been devoured eagerly enough by local audiences, Joel has found Americans to be absolutely starved for it.
“It just doesn’t happen over there, and they love it,” Joel says, grinning. “At first they go: ‘Woah… ‘ like a deer in headlights. And then they just get into it. Afterwards, they say that they’ve never seen anything like it. Over there, you’d just have a couple combo amps, and a few little lights. But we’re taking this Aussie pub show, with our whole fucking team, and putting it in this club over there. Bang!”
The idea of being ambassadors for a particularly Australian rock attitude carried over into the band’s recording sessions in LA with Bob Marlette (Ozzy Osborne, Alice Cooper) who produced Runnin’ Wild.
“We were chucking Australian flags and Ned Kelly stuff up everywhere,” Joel relates. “And we were always taking the piss out of each other, in terms of ‘Americans versus Australians’. Just every day, giving each other shit. It was a good experience to be able to do that, to take the piss out of them, and have them take the piss out of us too. Because from day one, it just set that vibe of easy working and having fun.”
Joel continues: “What he (Bob) actually said the first day was: ‘All right guys, you go for it. I’ll tell you if you go down the wrong track, but otherwise, I’m here to press record, and get your stuff sounding big.’ And that’s what he did.”
“But we wanted to make sure that what we did on the album can be pulled off live,” Ryan adds. “‘Cos with a band like us, you’d be able to pick it if it couldn’t. We hate going to concerts and stuff, and saying: ‘Hey, what happened to that bit?’”
“Like when you go to see Def Leppard, and there’s about 3000 vocal parts missing,” Joel surmises, making his brother erupt into laughter.
Airbourne have been playing for long enough now that – in this city, at least – it is not so much a case of their live shows measuring up to their album as vice versa. Their most recent tour was evidence enough that many of Runnin’ Wild’s songs are already acknowledged live anthems.
“Well, our last Corner show was…” Joel trails off. “Fuck, I don’t know how you’d describe it. The security guards were saying it’s the wildest it’s ever been, and the loudest. I mean, for people to come over the rail at the first song… I’d be scared if a crowd were to get any wilder than that, because somebody would get killed!”
This Corner Hotel gig also saw Joel, in line with the philosophy he lays out in Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast, scull an entire bottle of Jack Daniels, save for a portion he poured obligingly into the mouths of nearby punters. Though conscious of what it has done to some of his predecessors (ie Bon Scott), Joel still regards alcohol as an intrinsic part – in fact, as inseparable from – his music.
“That’s the funny thing about rock ‘n’ roll,” he muses. “It’s like a parallel universe. Like, you sit here sober, and that’s alright. But when you get out on the road, there’s always lots of alcohol around. It doesn’t really occur to you, until you come off the road and think: ‘Woah… I feel fucked.’ I don’t think you need it, but it makes it fucking great when you’re running on that sort of stuff. It’s like fuel to rock ‘n’ roll.”
Another regular feature of Joel’s onstage excess has been to climb the band’s amplifier stack, or a nearby bar, for his solos. If possible, he will go ever higher: At Pyramid Rock ‘05, Joel was seen shredding up the top of the stage scaffolding. Reminded of such spectacles, Ryan laughs off any suggestion that he may fear for his brother’s safety.
“You know, in a show, things don’t usually go wrong as much as in regular life,” he says. “Shows seem to have this kind of magic about them, where shit like that can be pulled off, usually without anyone getting hurt.”
There has been one way, though, in which the physical forces that Airbourne set themselves against for every show have finally had their way. I remember the band’s appearance at the Beat Christmas party of 2005, and the looks of resignation on my colleagues' faces as they realised their attempts to carry on a conversation – even to the point of screaming directly into each other’s ears – were all in vain. Nothing could overcome Airbourne’s wall of sound. After five years of this, I have to wonder, how are Joel and Ryan’s ears holding up?
“Oh, we’ve both got tinnitus,” Joel says matter-of-factly.
“If we stopped talking right now, we would be hearing this high-pitched ring,” Ryan adds. “It’s pretty shit to go to sleep to, actually, but that’s the way it is.”
“It’s just part of the job,” Joel quips, “but not the kind of thing you could go to Workcover for.”
It should come as no surprise that Runnin’ Wild is being tipped for big things, with international distribution lined up through Roadrunner and the title single getting a spin, much to Joel and Ryan’s surprise, on plenty of commercial rock stations. But no matter how big things get, the brothers O’Keefe assure the fans that, for the time being, all profits will be put right back into making the Airbourne spectacle even bigger.
“If you think you’re gonna make money out of rock ‘n’ roll, it’s just not gonna happen,” Joel says, apparently not convinced yet of his rockstar destiny. “There’s the trucks, the crew, the amps, the guitars, the flights, the accommodation. But any income that’s left goes straight into production.”
“We don’t do it for the money anyway,” Ryan concurs. “But if there is any, it just goes back into making our show bigger. We had 16 blinders at The Corner, which are those really bright lights you see at concerts. A lot of people have to wear sunglasses to our concerts now... So great,” he adds dryly, “soon we’ll be deaf and blind!’”
Quelle