BY ALEC SMART
April 02, 2019
Veteran hard-rockers Rose Tattoo performed a double-headliner with punk-metallers Hard-Ons at the Metro Theatre, Sydney, on March 29, the first date of an Australian tour, with support from Chinese Burns Unit.
Formed in Sydney in 1976, Rose Tattoo are one of Australia’s most popular hard-rock bands, releasing seven studio albums over a 40-year career with an ever-changing line-up centred around the raspy vocals of 71-year-old tattooed front man Gary ‘Angry’ Anderson.
Spring chickens by comparison, Hard-Ons formed in 1981 – the trio at the heart of the quartet were fellow students at Punchbowl Boys High School – and have released 11 studio albums, featuring an incredible run of 17 consecutive number one songs on the Australian alternative music charts.
In what was interpreted by dissenters as a controversial move, in January this year, multi-racial punk rockers Hard-Ons announced they’d accepted an invitation from Rose Tattoo to co-headline a national tour.
Bassist Ray Ahn endured a lot of criticism on his Facebook page, with some objectors accusing him and the band of abandoning their multicultural principles, ironic considering he lives with the ever-present threat of racism, unlike many of the Hard-Ons’ white-skinned fans.
Ahn hails from Korea, singer Keish DeSilva is Sri Lankan, whereas Rose Tattoo are perceived by some to endorse anti-immigration policies, perhaps undeservedly.
Ahn responded angrily on his Facebook page: “I had to delete the fucken post about the Rose Tattoo Hard-Ons tour. Not one word against the Hard-Ons on the Rose Tattoo fan forums… Hard-Ons? I got a guy unfriending me after sending me a message saying he is gonna boycott all Hard-Ons gigs..”
And yet Angry Anderson himself has courted controversy with some of his ‘ultra-conservative’ opinions, including blaming immigrants for the rise in weapons-related crime. “Aussies use their fists […] weapons were introduced by other cultures,” he told a Federal Parliamentary Committee in March 2010, forgetting that one of his band’s better-known songs, The Butcher and Fast Eddie, features a gang fight by Australian youths that ends with one of the two combatants dying of a switchblade knife buried in his chest.
When standing as a senator for the Australian Liberty Alliance – a political party founded to challenge a perceived Islamicisation of Australia – he supported its central policy of a Donald Trump-style ban on Moslem immigration and halting halal certification of food.
However, he modified his opinion of Moslems after participating in the 2012 SBS TV program Go Back To Where You Came From.
Initially strongly supporting the Tony Abbot federal government’s policy of forcibly turning away refugees who arrive via illegal boats, after visiting war-torn Kabul in Afghanistan and learning about the persecuted Hazara people, Anderson softened his stance. He elaborated, “I don’t want to turn away refugees, I don’t want to turn away people who need to be reunited with their families […] we can give them somewhere safe to be.”
The Metro Theatre concert in Sydney was opened by Chinese Burns Unit, a melodic hardcore four-piece that features Jay Whalley, the resplendently dreadlocked frontman of Frenzal Rhomb, on bass guitar and backing vocals.
There are parallels between CBU and Jay’s (in)famous other band, including catchy singalong choruses and bitingly witty lyrics covering topics like footy players glassing each other in fights and Charles Manson’s mum.
Hard-Ons’ hyperactive guitarist Peter ‘Blackie’ Black revealed to Gong Scene prior to going on stage that despite co-headlining with Rose Tattoo on this tour, they deferred to the Tatts’ senior status and gifted them all headlining spots for their joint shows across Australia.
Blackie also revealed that several new songs from Hard-Ons’ forthcoming album would feature in the Metro gig’s set, one of which, Harder And Harder, he declared among the best the band had written. This reviewer, preferring the more melodic material of their pre-metal early years, concurs.
Other, well-known songs that featured in the 15-song set included, Stop Crying, I Do I Do and Peel Me Like An Egg.
Rose Tattoo re-launched in August 2017 with another revised line-up, performing their first gigs as the Angry Anderson Band until some rumoured ‘political’ discussions with ex-members were resolved.
This line-up features rock & roll pedigree, from former early-era ACDC bassist Mark Evans, to former Angels’ guitarist Bob Spencer, to slide guitar maestro Dai Pritchard, who’s been with the band for 12 years, plus recently-joined drummer Jackie Barnes, 32-year-old son of legendary Cold Chisel vocalist Jimmy Barnes.
On stage their chemistry and clowning around is heart-warming; they obviously love playing music together.
Rose Tattoo’s set list was dominated by old classics that the band would never get away with not playing, including the timeless murder ballad, Bad Boy For Love, written by late bassist and bad boy himself, Ian Rilen; their signature song Rock ‘N’ Roll Outlaw; Anderson’s biographic Scarred For Life; and crowd favourites, Nice Boys (Don’t Play Rock ‘N’ Roll) and We Can’t Be Beaten.
The Tatts also performed a relatively new number, Once In A Lifetime from 2006 album Blood Brothers, Anderson’s tribute to deceased guitarist Peter Wells, who formulated the band’s signature sound of slide guitar boogie-blues with a punky edge.
Rose Tattoo has persevered through tragedy, from the loss through multiple cancers of five former members to the November 2018 trauma for Angry Anderson when his 26-year-old son Liam was allegedly kicked to death by his best friend, whom he tried to assist during an episode of drug-induced psychosis. Initial gigs for the revised Rose Tattoo were suspended during this tragic period of mourning.
Ray Ahn of Hard-Ons was also noticeably subdued before going onstage at The Metro, grief-stricken from the passing of his beloved father just a week before. Ahn announced later that playing live helped him focus and come to terms with his bereavement, and he even told a joke onstage about the funeral service where he noticed the undertaker resembled one of the comedians from the old TV series, Three Stooges.
Although the disappointingly undersold Metro crowd consisted primarily of Hard-Ons’ fans, at one stage a few Rose Tattoo regulars objected to attempts to dance by some of the younger, more boisterous fans, and soon a square-off took place in the moshpit, with a few peacemakers holding the antagonists apart.
This elicited an angry response from Angry, warning them he’d come down to sort them out if they dared: “No one causes shit at our shows!”
Beyond that it was a meeting of the tribes where politics were set aside as people from a variety of political backgrounds and skin shades enjoyed quality music.
