Gang stick together for 35 years, but is this the end of the road?

GANGgajang sign off for an extended break with their last show at the Hamilton Hotel next weekend.

GANGgajang (from left) Geoffrey Stapleton, Graham ‘Buzz’ Bidstrup, Robbie James, Mark ‘Cal’ Callaghan and Peter Willersdorf play their last show for some time at the Hamilton Hotel.

AFTER 35 years on the tour bus together GANGgajang are taking an extended break, with their last show planned for Brisbane’s Hamilton Hotel next weekend.

It will be an emotional show for Brisbane pop rock pioneer Mark “Cal” Callaghan who created his first band The Riptides’ sound in makeshift rehearsal rooms underneath a few Queenslander homes nearby.

With GANGgajang he penned Sounds of Then and the band became part of Australia’s cultural fabric for over 30 years.

“It was my call actually (to take a break),” Cal says.

“I said to the guys I just want a break. We’ve been gigging for 35 years. It’s not like we do a lot of gigs now but they all happen to be summer, Christmas, holidays. I’d like to have a holiday in January for the first time in my life.”

But the band vows to be back on the road in early 2021.

“That’s always been our vibe,” Cal says. “That’s the reason that we called ourselves GANGgajang. We were always supposed to be a gang as opposed to a band when you get in the back of a Tarago and tour endlessly for years.

“Because we’d all been in bands ¬ me in The Riptides, Buzz (Graham Bidstrup) in The Angels and all the guys had been in bands, we knew that that was the first thing that destroys bands. You share a room and live in each other’s pockets and after a couple of years you go completely mental in a pressure cooker environment. We thought, no we’re not going to do that; we’re in it for the long haul and 35 years later it’s the same guys, except for poor old Chris (Bailey - GANGgajang and The Angels bass player) who passed away (in 2013).

“We’ve had this long-term view, go and do other things, this is just part of your life, it’s not your whole life.

“It’s not the end of anything forever but it’s the end of something for a while.”

An early publicity shot of the band.

It was the mid 1980s surf scene that first adopted GANGgajang when songs from their debut self-titled album became the entire soundtrack to Quiksilver’s surf movie Mad Wax.

In 1986 and ’87 the Association of Surfing Professionals, the World Surf League, voted

GANGgajang “World’s Best Band”.

A decade later the ensuing worldwide following, the result of the movie, caught up with the band when they toured Brazil for the first time in 1995.

“We get a call from this promoter who said ‘I want to bring you to Brazil’ and we said, ‘Yeah, sure mate,” Cal recalls. “We said we’d do it if we had our return airfares in our hands.

“We land in Rio and go to the sound check for the first gig and there was this collective gasp. It was a 10,000 seater venue. We thought, ‘s\Someone is going to lose their shirt tonight, the promoters are going to do their dough’. We come back to do the gig, the place was full. They knew all the words to the songs. It blew us away.

“It was just so magical. We did 10 shows. We had so much fun that by the end of the tour we were having the after show party before the show.

“It was all because of Mad Wax. It was such an indie cultural artefact because it was one of the first surf videos ever made and it was very rare to find a video with just one band and it had a plot with all the famous surfers of the day acting really badly. It just became this cult film and all the pro surfers loved it and they took it with them everywhere.”

Cal says the stadium shows were the most memorable highlights of the band's 35 years of touring.

“Because they are so special when they come along. Some of the festivals at stadiums with 20-40,000 people. We toured with Jimmy Barnes and our record was number one, his wasn’t.

“But without a doubt, anyone in the band would say one, two and three would be the three tours we did of Brazil.”

In 2001, together with Yothu Yindi, they played to over 20,000 people at a concert on Copacabana Beach in Brazil.

For the latest tour of the country the band has dug a bit deeper into the repertoire, also playing a song from each of the band members’ other bands including The Riptides, The Angels and Yothu Yindi.

And for those who might have missed it first time ’round, Mad Wax will be screened before the show.

■ GANGgajang, 8pm, January 25, $34.70, The Hamilton Hotel, Hamilton. ganggajang.com/tours