ROSE TATTOO Frontman Says AIRBOURNE Is Carrying On The Australian Rock Tradition

Dirty Rock Magazine recently conducted an interview with legendary ROSE TATTOO frontman Angry Anderson. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On the glory days of Australian pub rock: What was it about those days?

"Philosophically and at my age I can be philosophic, I think was those days. I've heard rock writers and I love to plagiarize rock writers, a lot of them aren't much good for anything else, but they come up with some great phrases. Those 'heady years,' I love that. What was looming, and I think we all smelt something foul on the wind, particularly in the early '80s and by the mid-'80s, we knew the stench was the forbearer of bad news. But I think in the mid-'70s to the mid-'80s, that decade produced some remarkable music because it was the last of that great era. There's been a really successful era in Australia in recent years. The same thing that was created in the '70s and '80s was the excitement of live music, the excitement of being able to go and see live music. I've lost count of the amount of times someone has said to me, 'You could spend $20 and go and see four of the best bands in the world.' And that's true, you'd go to one pub, spend $10 and you'd see MIDNIGHT OIL, THE SUNNY BOYS or JIMMY AND THE BOYS or THE DIVINYLS. The next night, or even the same night, but the next night you'd see COLD CHISEL or THE ANGELS and the TATTS. So it really was an amazing era. It was the era of the Aussie band. I remember in the early to mid-'70s being in BUSTER BROWN and that was the first time we saw AC/DC. Sometime after that we hung around a little bit in Melbourne and became pals and they were very, very supportive of BUSTER. Then BUSTER BROWN had some problems and they were closer enough to know that so that's when they asked Phil to join the band. So the end of BUSTER, I was looking for a band and Mick and I went to Sydney over a couple of years and met Pete and Ian and formed the TATTS. It was the days, that was the simple explanation, it was the right time with all the right ingredients. We all wanted to know that there was this thing coming in the mid-'70s with the punk thing. But rock n roll was alive and well in Australia then, there was a lot of amazingly good bands around. The whole level of musicianship or how good the players were. I don't think there was a better period, some of the players were just outstanding.

Any bands these days that carry on the Aussie rock traditions?

"AIRBOURNE. They're carving it up. The last couple of years, after last year we toured most of the year because we were trying to break our latest album and after last year I said I don't want to do it anymore I'll give it away. But we did a summer run with them last year and it was a lot of fun then they went to America and we came home. I said, OK, we'll go back and do the summer run of festivals this year. So we went back and they were back in Europe for the summer run too and they were creamin' it. And they're just going from strength to strength which is really good. It's a good thing that in the last days, I mean, we've done 32 years as a band and you know, you'd like to think you could hand the flag to someone that's worthy of carrying it. One of my favourite bands is THE LIVING END and they're still crankin' it out and there's a few other bands around, GRINSPOON and few others that take their music seriously but not themselves too seriously, which is part of the secret. But they take the music seriously and they're great rock bands. Australia will always produce better than most and as good as any because that's just the nature of the beast."

Read the full article in the first digital issue of Dirty Rock Magazine at this location

Planet-Loud.com conducted an interview with ROSE TATTOO at this year's Download festival, which was held June 13-15 at Donington Park, Leicestershire, UK. Watch the chat in two parts below.

Wacken Records/SPV recently released a "special edition" of "Blood Brothers", the latest album from ROSE TATTOO. Besides the regular album, the "special edition" features a DVD containing the Wacken Open Air show from 2006 plus the Tatts TV interviews.

Part 1:

Part 2: