INTERVIEW: John Brewster of The Angels talks Symphony Shows

The Angels are closing in on an incredible 50th anniversary, as well readying the start of yet another chapter in their historic journey as one of Australia’s longest running bands. The countdown is on for current frontman Dave Gleeson to hand the microphone over to Angels drummer Nick Norton, but not before a handful of festival appearances as well as two more iconic symphony shows.

The Rockpit had the pleasure of seeing one of these outstanding performances at the tail end of last year, as The Angels played Perth Concert Hall along with a thirty-piece symphony orchestra and forty-piece choir. The evening was one of the highlights of my live show experiences, not only for 2022 but of all time, as I was blown away by just how well their classic rock sounds moulded and melted effortlessly into the orchestral & choral accompaniments.

When the chance arose to chat to John Brewster about the next two Symphony shows, as well as to discuss just what the next phase for the band holds with Dave Gleeson’s imminent departure recently announced, I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to talk to one of our country’s true rock legends.

Sean: Hi John, hope your well.

John: I’m good thanks Sean. Great to talk to you again.

Sean: Well it’s been another wonderful summer for The Angels. It’s always great to see you out there on the festival stages around the country. You seem busier than ever.

John: It’s been amazing. It really has. Ever since the covid restrictions have gotten lifted we’ve had an amazing time. The band is going great and very interesting audiences we are pulling too. A lot of younger people are coming to our shows…

Sean: I noticed that the last time you visited us at The Charles. And also a wide demographic of fans; older, younger, rockers in their denim and leather, smarter dressed people in shirts and pants…the magic this music has created is that is a back catalogue for everyone.

John: Yes, I think we’ve reached a stage in the band… when you form a rock band you try to find your angle, you know… that’s all it is. No of us try to reinvent music – we don’t reinvent rock n roll but we came up with our own brand of it if you like. Back in the old days, when Doc went to his former drama teacher Professor Wal Cherry and talked about his shows, at the same time he was doing that I was writing ‘I Ain’t The One’ and musically we were starting to find our sound and that all happened to start around the same time. We got this guy, Ray Hawkins who was an amazing lighting guy and he stated to do a light show with us which was sort of borrowing from the theatre expressionism Bertolt Brecht did where you use a lot of black and white, darkness and shadows. Back in those days that’s how you created something that was really cutting edge – we would drive around the city’s and it was all written up on the walls so it was all fresh & new then you get to the stage we are at now and you suddenly realise you have written a lot of songs that people love. You’ve created a name in The Angels and that means a lot to us. So now we don’t have to rely on the theatre expressionism or our lead singer wearing an ascot tie, you know it was all totally brilliant and we were so totally into it but things have changed and what we have got now is a great band playing, if I do say so, a bunch of songs that are bloody good and that people love.

Sean: Definitely. It’s been incredible for me, especially as I have got to know you a bit through the interviews we have had and have been lucky to catch The Angels at this stage of the journey, especially with Dave (Gleeson) up front and centre. I have always been a Screaming Jets fan since finding them in Kerrang back in the day in the UK, so to have seen the band in this guise has been wonderful for me. And to be out there standing amongst fans who sing each and every word to every single song, at sold out venues is just magnificent to witness… even when you throw the odd lesser known song into the set, still every one knows every work. It really is magical to see.

John: And it’s certainly magical for us too. We never take it for granted. We love our audiences, they are just amazing. The last time we played The Gov in Adelaide there was a group of people at the front and I reckon the oldest of them would have been nineteen. There were girls & guys and we were doing the ‘Darkroom – Recharged’ show and they sung along to every song on the ‘Darkroom’ album. For us that is really exciting and something we never necessarily expect. These symphony shows that were are doing, and have done… I think we have done about seven so far, is just an amazing experience. To marry our songs to a symphony orchestra and choir, for Rick and me its like we have come full circle especially because our grandfather started the first ever symphony orchestra in South Australia.

Sean: That is such an incredible connection to that show.

John: Yes, well we walk out on stage to a piece of his symphony. He wrote a symphony called ‘Australia Felix’ and Rob John who composed the orchestral and choral parts went to the Barr Smith Library in Adelaide and was leafing through all this wonderful stuff – I mean Rick & my grandfather wrote over six hundred works and John is leafing through the stuff before he said I think we could use this as an overture, which I thought was a great idea so we now play that at our pub & club shows too. We walk onstage to my grandfathers piece.

Sean: The symphony show at Perth Concert Hall at the end of last year was absolutely breath-taking. I can honestly say I haven’t seen anything like it before. I was completely blown away. I’ve been lucky to see some amazing artists at incredible venues but that show will sit in my top three of all time for a very long time. I was lucky to grab a couple of tickets up in the balcony right at the front overlooking the stage.

John: Oh wow. Thanks Sean.

Sean: I bumped into Dave (Gleeson) after the show and even he said he had goosebumps from that one, saying there was something a bit special that night.

John: Yes, we loved the Perth one. They are all great but that was a real standout show. That was particularly special – its a wonderful venue for one. Sometimes you just raise the bar that little bit more and that was one of those nights.

Sean: I very good friend of mine was in the choir that night and he was extremely excited to be involved. Well two more symphony shows to go with Dave at the helm and I’ve just been online to see how much flights are to Adelaide [laughs] to see the very last show, that’s how magical it was.

John: Well let me know if your coming and we’ll catch up. We love doing them. Rick & I realised, once we started these symphony shows that this was very much brought about by our upbringing. We were surrounded by classical music. Our dad was a director of music for the ABC and he used to have visiting famous musicians and they used to come round to our place and have parties, as you do when your on the road [laughs]. I was just a little baby back then but I remember them – I don’t remember the people but I remember the gatherings and I remember dad taking us to Adelaide Town Hall and seeing the orchestra rehearsing, at that stage he was playing lead cello, that was before he became the direct of music at the ABC. So we were sort of surrounded by all of these influences; wonderful musicians like Jack Peters who was the Adelaide City organist who dad rated as one of the top half a dozen organists in the world. They would come round, open a few bottles of wine and dad would get his cello out, Jack would be on the piano and I remember just sitting in the chair and listening to them play. I would have tears rolling down my face. Somehow or another as life went on I wanted to be in a rock n roll band [laughs]. Fortunately Rick went along with it and so did Doc Neeson and that is how we formed The Angels. When we marry those songs that we wrote with a symphony orchestra and those orchestra parts, it is quite a goosebump thing for us too. So if your sitting in the front row balcony getting goosebumps I can assure you we are doing the same up on the stage [laughs].

Sean: I noticed a couple of times during the show when you turn round and just take a moment to take in the view of the choir and orchestra. You just give them a nod of approval and an short applause because you just take that all in for that moment.

John: Absolutely and that’s not show business us doing that – that is just how much we love it and we appreciate what they are doing.

Sean: So who’s idea was it for these symphony shows to evolve back at the start?

John: I’ll kind of put my hand up for that. Kind of me [laughs] then I went to Rick as we sort of took it from there really. I remember when we were recording the ‘No Exit’ album, ‘Face to Face’ had gone through the roof and was still riding high in the charts so we were recording the ‘No Exit’ album and Rick had come up with the basis of ‘Mr Damage’, I added the chorus and Doc added the “Trying hard just to keep a candle lit…” part. It was a really good example of Brewster/Neeson/Brewster working together as a song writing partnership and when we recorded it Rick and I were probably effected by some other stuff at the time, we were singing violin parts and I remember saying to Rick, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could do ‘Mr Damage’ with violins” and that was way back in 1979 and eventually that kind of dream came true. I’m not quite sure of all the ins and outs of it but I think the genesis of the idea was mine, basically. And one of the reasons for that is a lot of our songs go through quite a lot of key changes and minor chords and stuff and Rick’s solos… my brothers solos are just extraordinary. You could walk down the street and sing most of his solos. They are melodic. Rick is also a fantastic pianist – he won the Eisteddfod in South Australia at the age of sixteen. Just incredible. It’s my fault he went in to rock n roll [laughs].

Sean: [laughs]

John: [laughs] I was always the black sheep of the family. They were all classical but me. Our grandmother was an opera singer, our grandfather a concert pianist and whatever else…

Sean: It goes to show these symphony shows were always meant to be.

John: I think so and I think one of the reasons they work so well, and we realised this when Rob John wrote those magnificent parts for our songs that quite a lot of our songs are influenced by our classical musical upbringing that we had. One classic example to me is ‘Take the Long Line’. It’s basically a three chord song but it’s not because when it gets to the solo, and this happened in the studio about four o’clock in the morning, I started playing these other chords – ‘Take the Long Line’ is Rick’s song but my input to the song was when we got to the solo and I went to C through C, C Minor, G, B Minor, Esus4, E, which doesn’t mean anything to your readers maybe [laughs] but that gave us the basis and then we put that down and Rick and I started singing (John starts singing the solo), Rick then worked it out on the guitar and that has become one of his classic guitar solos, but it’s in a different key to the song so we were in to stuff like that even back then. There was a lot of light and shade, transitioning to soft parts – lots of darkness and lighter stuff and when you start putting violins and cellos and brass to that it’s just a marriage made in heaven.

Sean: Incredible. Before I let you go we must touch very briefly on Dave (Gleeson), who has earnt his long-service leave after twelve years fronting the band. It’s hard to believe its been twelve years.

John: There was a newspaper, and I won’t name them, but when the news broke they used a photo of an angry looking Dave doing a high kick with the headline “Dave Gleeson Quits The Angels”, and when you read the article it’s really well balanced and really well written so you begin to wonder why did they need to do that. It’s because they like sensationalism. But let me tell you, the parting of the ways, which is going to happen between us and Dave is nothing but love associated. Dave has just become really busy and we love him dearly. Something has to give. The Screaming Jets are his band and have always been his band and we have always respected that. Now he has this TripleM career and he is brilliant on radio, absolutely bloody brilliant. He’s born to do radio that guy. So what happens? He comes on the road with The Angels, goes home for a week before having to go back out on the road again with The Screaming Jets, meantime the TripleM thing has gone ballistic. You also need to remember he has a family. I remember when we were growing up and we were having kids and out on the road, none of our marriages survived because we were out on the road all the time. We don’t tour like that anymore but still there is a lot of demand and Dave gets a week break and he’s backout on the road again. There is a lot involved in that with all the flying and the like.

Sean: He’s been a wonderful servant and always been great to hear him singing those songs.

John: He has. We got talking one day – we care about Dave and we love Dave – he’s got a lovely family with two wonderful kids and we don’t want him to have the pressures on him that we had. We got talking and Dave just felt maybe the time was right to move on. We embraced it, we have nothing but love for what he has done for the band for the last twelve years but we have had a genius on the drums for all these years and we’ve know about it for all these years, in the form of Nick Norton. The first time I saw Nick he was fronting his own band called GangAwry and they were great – I was so struck by how charismatic he was and how much of a great singer he was. He’s been hidden at the back on the drums – I shouldn’t say that because he is a great drummer – but there are other great drummers. My son Tom is a great drummer. So Nick is going to front the band and play guitar as well and I think that is going to be a really good thing and we just need to work out his parts so he doesn’t step on what I do or what Rick does. So we are really excited about it.

Sean: It’s the start of another chapter for a band that has had so many wonderful stories to tell over nearly fifty years, and you touched briefly on the song-writing attributes of Brewster/Neeson/Brewster so are we now going to be looking forward to getting songs penned by Brewster/Brewster/Norton/Brewster/Brewster? [laughs]

John: [laughs] That’s a good question. Certainly there are Brewster/Norton songs already written that are really great. I wrote a song with Nick called ‘Escape’ and I really love that song. He’s written a song called ‘Heartbeat’ which is fantastic so there will be another album and Nick will be the singer of that album. We did some shows as Brewster Brothers Electric recently and we didn’t want to badge it as The Angels because it wasn’t The Angels but what we did was we did Angels rarities that we just never got to play with Dave and Nick fronted that and we blew everyone away. There wasn’t as big a crowd as The Angels pull but it was still a very healthy turn out. If you like it was us tipping our toe in the water and Nick was just amazing. He wasn’t playing guitar in those shows. Its funny how things go sometimes… I’d been unwell so I went to Adelaide airport and I did all the check in and what not, got into the Virgin lounge and my son Sam asked me if I wanted a coffee. I said no because I wasn’t feeling that great and he took one look at me and said, “You’re going home!” I said, “What about the show tonight?” He said, “I’m ringing Norton and telling him to learn the guitar parts!” [laughs] So he played that night and knocked everybody out. He really is that good and his voice is fabulous too.

Sean: Well, it’s exciting to hear the next stage of The Angels.

John: Like you said it is a new chapter for the band and we are getting such a good response. I don’t usually follow Facebook and stuff but because of the announcement I have been watching it a little bit and what we are seem to be seeing is an overall feeling that people are kind of saying, “Hey Dave, thanks a lot for the last twelve years. You’ve been fantastic.” We are also seeing a lot of fans saying, “Welcome Nick, we are looking forward to you fronting it.” And we are also getting, “Thanks to The Angels for continuing.” That means a lot to us.

Sean: John it’s always an absolute pleasure to talk to you. I could chat to you forever because I love hearing the stories from the early years and I have so many things I could ask you. We’ll save it all for next time. Looking forward to seeing the new line-up once you get the new tour locked in and look forward to sharing a glass or two of red when your next in Perth.

John: That sounds like a good plan Sean. Really enjoyed the chat as always.