The Angels’ guardians
Co-founders have survived the infighting and are still going strong
NO AUSTRALIAN band has been forced to have more name changes than The Angels. Co-founders John and Rick Brewster, along with many of the men and women who worked with the band over their 40-year history, have documented its indelible contribution to the Australian songbook and the internal conflicts which became headlines in recent years in The Angels, a new book by Bob Yates out now.
After a stint as the Moonshine Jug and String Band, they relaunched their rock career as the Keystone Angels in Adelaide in 1974.
While they achieved stratospheric success in Australia as The Angels throughout the second half of the 1970s, they had to change their name to Angel City when launching their career in the US in 1980 to avoid legal conflict with an American glam rock band called Angel.
But the ultimate confusion for fans of the much-loved band came when frontman Doc Neeson quit in 2000 and the band splintered into competing versions variously called Members Of The Angels, The Original Angels Band, Angels 100% and The Angels with Dave Gleeson.
It was the same dilemma which had faced AC/DC, INXS, Dragon and other bands who wanted to continue despite the absence of a celebrated frontman.
“At the end of the day we stopped and asked ‘Why can’t we continue our band?’ If other people don’t want to be in it, that’s fine, that’s their choice,” John said.
“Doc wanted to do his own thing. We had our songs and the name of the band, which is obviously incredibly important.
“The struggle for the name was way less than you think. It never went to court. It was a lot of stirring up by others.”
The pair clearly miss Neeson and their late bassist Chris Bailey, whose lives have been claimed by cancer in recent years.
John’s son Sam now plays bass and the band remains wildly popular as a live act with Screaming Jets singer Dave Gleeson serving as its singer for the past six years.
But the book is as much a history lesson about the dramatic influence of pub rock on Australian culture as it is an attempt to set the record straight about the band’s infighting.
They reveal champions like David Bowie, who took the band on his Australian tour in 1978 when The Angels’ second album, Face To Face, and its hits Marseilles, After The Rain, Take A Long Line and I Ain’t The One dominated the rock airwaves.
John said he knew the band was big when he could hear the album being played at backyard barbecues all over his inner western Sydney neighbourhood.
“It was just coming up to summer and you could walk out your front yard on a clear night with no wind and hear Face To Face blaring out of almost every house or backyard barbecue,” he said.
“No one ever recognised me in a supermarket anyway, without the dark glasses.
“We loved that. Doc would get a bit more accosted than we would.”