Streets of our town: Brisbane’s music landmarks
Forty-five years since the most important record to come out of Brisbane, is the city finally embracing its rich musical history? We follow one musician’s quest to get that heritage on the tourist trail.
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Ed Kuepper wants the park that bears his name to become a tourist attraction.
“The park is still not known by everyone in the world, so we need to promote it,” says the 65-year-old rocker, who in 1973 founded seminal Brisbane band The Saints with school friends Chris Bailey and Ivor Hay.
The park, named for him in 2017, is at Oxley in the city’s southwest, not far from where he grew up as a German immigrant. He’s now based just a couple of suburbs away. “(It’s) a magnificent beast actually, I’ve gotta say. I’m chuffed by the park. It’s a lot bigger than it looks when you just drive past it on the main road, cos it goes the whole block all the way down to the creek. All I need do now is annex that old golf course that’s next to it and it’ll be its own little state,” he jokes.
It’s 45 years since Kuepper began his recording career with The Saints. Their debut album and single (I’m) Strandedcatapulted the band – and their hometown – to global recognition at the vanguard of the punk movement.
But he says that when he founded The Saints, launching a whole new genre was the furthest thing from his mind. “My goal wasn’t to be part of the birth of punk, I didn’t even think of that, I just wanted to form a really great rock ’n’ roll band that was really unique to itself – that was my motivation,” he says. “All the music that I liked was kind of individual, it was unique to itself, and so I tried to take that from the people that influenced me – not to be like them particularly, but to create my own thing.”
And while The Saints were formed in the middle of the National Party’s infamous three-decade reign, it’s a misconception that they were motivated by the politics of the era.
“When The Saints started, the Bjelke-Petersen era wasn’t as oppressive as it became after we left town. So my experiences of that time are not quite what some people think they were,” Kuepper says. “Brisbane was a big country town, no doubt about it, and that has its positives and its negatives. We operated as a unique entity in that environment, and we would have been a unique entity in whatever environment we were in.”
Ed Kuepper Park is one of a number of public spaces named in honour of Brisbane musicians over the past few years, which is seen as an encouraging trend by John Willsteed, a QUT music lecturer who briefly played in another band you might have heard of, The Go-Betweens (who happen to have a bridge named after them).
“I think the more we do this, the better we understand our city,” he says. “Brisbane’s not really a place which grasps its own cultural history. We have a tendency to look forward, not back, and we’ve always had that.”
In 2016, Willsteed was supported by state government funding to commission a mural on Upper Roma St commemorating the 40th anniversary of (I’m) Stranded, near the Club ’76 building where The Saints rehearsed back in the day. And he’s seeking public and private-sector support for a digital cultural trail (Streets of Your Town) to honour Brisbane’s important music landmarks.
“The people are important, but it’s also about sites of significance. As well as a park named after somebody it’s about putting a marker on a building, or having a geolocated digital story that tells you how important this place was in the growth of Brisbane’s culture,” he says.
These might include venues such as Festival Hall or The Zoo, important gathering places like the Elizabeth Arcade; the Toowong and Spring Hill houses and flats where bands from The Go-Betweens to Custard lived and made music, or the Finger Factory at Breakfast Creek where members of Powderfinger crafted their sound.
Asked which other local talent still deserves to be recognised, Willsteed nominates himself (jokingly) along with Go-Betweens bandmates Robert Forster and the late Grant McLennan, and the late Carol Lloyd, though the latter two have an annual fellowship and award named after them, respectively. Others include Mark C. Halstead, “Evil” Graham Lee, Mick Hadley and Lobby Lloyde.
The moves to highlight and celebrate Brisbane’s music credentials comes amid fierce debate over perceived favouritism of sport over the arts. Southeast Queensland musicians from Powderfinger’s Bernard Fanning to Amy Shark and Casey Barnes have protested at Covid-19 restrictions that appear to benefit sporting events but not live music venues.
Kuepper says: “I think the arts – music in particular – always gets hard done by. It just doesn’t seem to really factor. It’s reasonably well documented that music, the arts, those kind of activities, not just for the practitioners, but even the people that love music or love the arts – there are a lot of them – those people are never really accommodated very well by politicians.
“Sports fans just seem to have it all, and why I don’t know. It’s something about the culture of our politicians across party lines, probably.”
Willsteed recalls a recent music event at The Triffid in Brisbane that was limited to 50 per cent capacity. Meanwhile, tens of thousands were attending football matches. “So for musicians, performers and venue owners that is an absolute slap in the face,” he says. “More people in Australia go to live performances than attend all sporting venues combined, and yet we treat culture it like it’s an elitist activity.” Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath says: “Our live music venues can operate at 100 per cent capacity when there’s ticketed, allocated seating. We know there is an increased risk of transmission in indoor venues such as music halls, which is why these arrangements remain in place.”
Queensland Arts Minister Leeanne Enoch says the state’s arts and cultural sectors contribute $8.5 billion annually to the economy and support more than 92,000 jobs. “At the start of the pandemic, Queensland moved faster than other jurisdictions, including the federal government, to provide support for the arts sector… As part of our long-term commitment to the sector, we have also released a 10-year road map, Creative Together 2020-2030,” she says.
■ Ed Kuepper is marking his 45th anniversary as a recording artist with three releases from his post-Saints career: Ed Kuepper: The Singles ’86-’96, Laughing Clowns: Golden Days/When Giants Walked the Earth and The Aints: Live at the Marrickville Bowlo. He is touring nationally with Jim White (The Dirty Three) and plays the Citadel (Murwillumbah) Saturday night, The Triffid (Brisbane) June 17, Imperial Hotel (Eumundi) June 19, Tanks Art Centre (Cairns) August 13, Gold Coast TBA.
MUSICAL MYSTERY TOUR
● Ed Kuepper Park, corner Oxley Rd & Lawson St, Oxley: Lawson Street Park was renamed in 2017 to honour the founder of The Saints, Laughing Clowns and The Aints, who also has an extensive solo career.
● The Saints mural, Upper Roma St: Unveiled in 2016, the mural marks the 40th anniversary of the release of The Saints’ first single, (I’m) Stranded, and is close to the building (Club 76) on the corner of Milton Rd and Petrie Tce where the band rehearsed.
● Go Between Bridge: Opened in 2010, this $340 million toll bridge is named both for iconic band The Go-Betweens and the fact it links Milton with South Brisbane across the river.
● Robert Vickers Place, California Rd, Oxley: Named in 2019 for the Go-Betweens bassist, based in New York since the mid-’80s.
● Rollo Park, Scott St, Norman Park: Scott Street Park was renamed in 2020 in honour of Blowhard frontman Brentyn “Rollo” Rollason, who died of a heart attack before a gig the previous year.
● Valley Walk of Fame: Some of the biggest acts in Brisbane music history are immortalised on plaques in the Brunswick Street Mall, along with winners of the annual QMusic Awards.
● Fortitude Valley Station, Brunswick St: Refurbished in 2008, the train station features wall art paying tribute to bands such as Powderfinger, Regurgitator and Custard, with quotes from Andrew Stafford’s book Pig City.
● Hero Wall, The Triffid, Stratton St, Newstead: The live music venue established by Powderfinger’s John “J.C.” Collins has a wall paying tribute to Queensland artists and records.
● Bee Gees Way, Redcliffe Parade, Redcliffe: A laneway pays tribute to British brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb who grew up in the area in the ’60s and became one of the world’s biggest acts.
● City of Logan Wall, Democracy Way: Among local luminaries acknowledged here are Darren Hayes and Daniel Jones, who found global fame as Savage Garden from 1994-2001.
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