By Michael Dwyer
Copyright smh
The latter is here in measured doses: sneaky side-stage joints, a briefly troublesome cocaine habit, guarded tales of philandering bandmates, tour bus hilarity and backroom standoffs. But for reasons that become painfully clear, it’s the business of music, and how to make it pay, that dominates his tale.
The canny ’50s kid came of age among bona fide rock royalty. Bon Scott was a mate; Easybeats Harry Vanda and George Young were studio mentors. At 14, he met the Rolling Stones on their 1965 tour. “Keep practising, and I’m sure you’ll get there,” Charlie Watts told him.
But “modern music history is littered with [friends who] … end up as mortal enemies”, he reflects much later in a story that spans six decades and umpteen bands, not least GANGgajang, the Party Boys and Jimmy Barnes. “It can be ego-driven, but, more often than not, it’s because one or more people make most of the money.”
It’s the reason he quit the Angels in ’81, having naively signed away his rights in a “pissed and stoned” haze years earlier. Things only got worse when the confusion of factions briefly reunited in 2001: an open wound to this day. In between, his trail of fleeting encounters and collaborations — Bowie and Talking Heads; Mondo Rock and Cold Chisel — is balanced by the merciless mathematics of recording and touring.
