To celebrate their 40th Anniversary legendary Aussie rock band The Angels have released two greatest hits albums (one live and one stdio tracks) and are touring the country. TOM Magazine’s Brendan Dousi caught up with The Angel’s lead guitarist Rick Brewster to talk about their recent albums and on-going tour. (This interview was conducted prior to Doc Neeson passing away).
TOM Magazine: 40 Years. That’s mind-bogglingly impressive. Would you be able to tell us your secret? What’s the trick for making a life-long career out of music?
Rick Brewster: New Material. I think that’s the biggest thing of all. We just have never stopped writing songs and recording them, putting them out and getting out on stage and playing them. So, this 40th Anniversary Tour is just business as usual for us. It’s all we’ve ever done. We released ‘Talk The Talk’ this year, a brand new album with new songs and another one last year, ‘Take It To The Streets’, both albums recorded with David Gleeson singing. More recently we released two 40 Year Anniversary Collections which span the entire career of the band, right back to ’74-’75.
TOM Magazine: What would you say your greatest challenges have been over the years? It’s a tough business, what’s kept you from throwing in the towel?
Rick Brewster: Well, we had a pretty tough time around 1983/1984 when we were touring America and it was costing us a fortune to stay there. We were sort of in the habit of staying over there, spending a lot of money we didn’t have, and coming back to Australia and touring just to pay back the record company. That wasn’t much fun and it created a lot of tension in the band which resulted in John leaving the band for 6 years. We somehow kept going and we reached a point in the 90s when John re-joined the band. We did a few massive tours in the late 90s and it was another tough time at the end of 99 when Doc (Neeson) left. He didn’t’ re-connect with us until 2008 and we reunited for two years, the original band, and then Doc left again three years ago to start a solo project. While he’s doing that, we got Dave Gleeson on board and continued as The Angels. It keeps the life blood, the creative juices flowing. The very first thing we did when we got Dave on board is go straight into the studio and record. At that point it had been 15 years since we had done an Angels album. John and I were just starved for it. We’d done plenty of recordings as ‘The Brewster Brothers’, but an Angels album was different, we went at that with a vengeance and we’ve never looked back. Dave is amazing, we’ve got Nick Norton on drums and now, sadly, since Chris Bailey departed a year ago, we’ve got a new bass player in John’s son, Sam.
TOM Magazine: What’s it like keeping it in the family? Is that something you were aiming for in bringing Sam in?
Rick Brewster: Sam is not there because he’s family; he’s there because he’s a great musician. It’s an added bonus that he’s John’s son and my nephew. We all get on great, in fact the whole band does, everyone in the band is creative. We actually haven’t been this creative since the 70’s when we were writing all those songs for ‘Face to Face’ and ‘No Exit’.
TOM Magazine: What would you say is the best thing about your job at the moment? What do you enjoy most about being a musician right now?
Rick Brewster: There are a few aspects. Getting up on stage and playing is possibly the best thing about it. Recording, I also love, and I love song-writing. The writing is a bit more different, you have to say, you know, “I’m going to write a song today” but the satisfaction from doing it is immense.
TOM Magazine: Your ‘Greatest Hits’ albums have been released recently, would you be able to tell us a bit about them?
Rick Brewster: One of them is all songs from the studio, it’s got tracks from every album we’ve ever recorded. It goes through all the albums right to this year, the ‘Talk the Talk’ album. The other is a ‘Live’ album is 40 songs chosen from every live recording we’ve ever done.
TOM Magazine: How did you choose the songs you put on the albums, how did you narrow that down?
Rick Brewster: It was very hard. A lot of listening. Of course, with the live album you’re dealing with the same song again and again and again. A song like ‘Take a Long Line’ or ‘Marseilles’ are on every live recording we’ve ever done. So, it’s a harder job than the studio album where there’s usually only one recording of each title. But, we found a few gems. There’s a show we did in America in 1980, the venue was called ‘The Thirsty Bar’, John and I don’t even remember how it was recorded, but it was obviously well recorded. It was a bootleg recording given to me by a fan many years ago and we only listened to it a few months ago when we were looking for tracks and found this medley we had done. It’s the only time, I think, in our history that we’d ever done a medley and John and I don’t even remember doing it. It turned out great and was well recorded, so we put that on the Live album.
TOM Magazine: It must have been great going through all your history and finding gems like that.
Rick Brewster: Yeah, absolutely.
TOM Magazine: So, you’re going on the 40th Anniversary Tour from May through to August, what can audiences expect from you this time around?
Rick Brewster: Something old, something new, something a little blue. Haha. It’s a bit like that, like a wedding. There are certain songs we will always do or we’ll be crucified and then we’ll pick a few more obscure, or less known, songs and throw them in and then add in a few new ones.
TOM Magazine: It must be an interesting alchemy to get right, choosing the right number of older and newer material?
Rick Brewster: Yeah. Of course, it gets harder every year because you keep adding new songs to the repertoire. You’ve only got a certain amount of time on stage, so it’s difficult.
TOM Magazine: Do you ever mix it up from show to show? Or do you usually keep the same set-list for the entire tour?
Rick Brewster: We do. We mix it up a bit. We just have more songs than we need ready to go, some nights before the show we’ll decide on having a different one here and a different one there.
TOM Magazine: Do you have a favourite song that you like to perform in your shows?
Rick Brewster: That’s hard. At the moment, I’ve got to say I love doing ‘Talk the Talk’ the opening track of the new album. It’s just turned into a killer song live, so I’m really enjoying that. I always enjoy playing ‘Take a Long Line’, ‘Marseilles’ and ‘No Secrets’.
TOM Magazine: You mentioned ‘Talk the Talk’, the new album that came out this year, would you be able to tell us a bit about that? What was the process like putting together that album?
Rick Brewster: It’s a collection of twelve songs, everyone in the band contributed writing them. Sam wrote some great music. Nick, our drummer, who’s also a really good guitar player and singer and song-writer, he wrote one song completely and wrote lyrics for a number of others. Dave, who hasn’t done a lot of song-writing in his life, but he’s turned out to be an exceptionally good lyricist and came up with some great melodies for some of the tracks. I wrote a couple of songs, they’re a bit more personal. One in particular was very inspired by what was happening to Chris Bailey when he got sick. It’s called “No Rhyme or Reason”. John did what he always does, he wrote a lot of good riffs. As for the process of recording, it was very very fast. A lot of spontaneity, no one got stuck on arrangements or chord progressions, it was just “see how it goes, let’s give it a go, bang it down” then put some vocals on top. It just came together. It was one of those magic sessions where everything seems to fall in place.
TOM Magazine: Did you have any goals going in? Anything in particular you wanted to say with the album?
Rick Brewster: I just recommend people listen to it. We keep hearing from fans and friends that it’s a real step back to the ‘Face to Face’, ‘No Exit’ days for them and I can understand why they say that. It’s very raw; two guitars, bass, drums. There’s actually one song on it, ‘I Come In Peace’, which I wrote with Ross Wilson probably 15 years ago now. It’s been kicking around all that time, we always wanted to do it but Doc didn’t want to do it. When Dave joined we started talking about it again and in the meantime Ross Wilson recorded it then, more recently last year, Joe Cocker recorded it. It’s on Joe’s last album, fantastic version, so we decided to do that song and it’s on the ‘Talk the Talk’ album.
TOM Magazine: I assume one of your personal favourites from the album is ‘No Rhyme or Reason” because it comes from such a personal place. Would you say it’s your favourite song from the album?
Rick Brewster: No, but its right up there. There’s also ‘Talk the Talk’ and another one I particularly love is a song called ‘Every Man’ which is one that John wrote with Nick, our drummer. There’s one song on there that Sam and Nick wrote, and Nick actually sings it, it’s called ‘Book of Law’ and it’s a fantastic song. It’s great.
TOM Magazine: You’re also launching a website this year. Would you be able to tell us about that? What kind of content will be on there?
Rick Brewster: It will be an evolving site. There’s a lot of work been done on it, we’ve been working on it for the last couple of years, getting material ready for it. It’s a comprehensive history of the band going right back to when we first met Doc around 1971 playing in a joke band in Adelaide. We’ll have a separate page for each member, past and present, with something about them. A lot of photos, we’ll be inviting fans to send in archival material that might go on there. Just interesting stuff about the band. It will evolve as we go, once it’s up we’ll just keep adding to it.
TOM Magazine: Do you know when it will be available?
Rick Brewster: Very soon. We’re hoping that it will be up within a couple of weeks. Ideally around the time our tour begins.
TOM Magazine: You’ve got a very long tour ahead of you over the next couple of months. How do you personally find the touring lifestyle?
Rick Brewster: In the old days we’d use to go out 15 months at a time and never see home in that time. That was pretty difficult, pretty trying on the family life. Like being in the navy, I guess. We haven’t done in a long time. This tour will involve going out to do shows, wherever they are, then coming back home for the rest of the week. It’s week by week, mostly on weekends.
TOM Magazine: What’s next for The Angels? Do you have any future plans in motion at the moment?
Rick Brewster: We’ve already started writing for the next album. That’s the life and blood of the band; it’s what keeps us going. Apart from that just more recording and more touring.
TOM Magazine: I’ve got a few questions I like to ask at the end of each interview. The first; what would you say is one of your favourite song of all time?
Rick Brewster: Wow, so many of them. There’s an amazing song called ‘Something in the Air’ by Thunderclap Newman. Fantastic song. From more well-known songs, ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ (by Procol Harum) is right up there for me. Joe Cocker’s version of ‘Little Help From My Friends’. There’s just countless songs.
TOM Magazine: Do you have any favourite artists right now? Who are you listening to?
Rick Brewster: I don’t listen to a lot of new stuff unless other people put it on. I never really have. But, I will always love The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Hendricks, Bob Dylan, Credence, anything that David Gilmore does, all of Pink Floyd. It’s all old, I know, but it’s just great. Great music.
TOM Magazine: Finally, I’m a huge movie buff, so I just need to ask; what’s your favourite film?
Rick Brewster: Raising Arizona, it’s a really great movie. In fact, just about any movie that the Coen Brothers have done.
TOM Magazine: Thank you so much for talking to me today, Rick.
Rick Brewster: Pleasure! Thanks very much.
The Angels Vol 1. (Forty greatest studio hits) and Vol 2. (Forty greatest live hits) are out now through Liberation.
