Punk pioneers Radio Birdman on eating brains, Nick Cave and band bust-ups in new documentary

LONG before Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat, Australia’s Radio Birdman were shocking with their on-stage antics. So why did Nick Cave dismiss them as lightweights?

Radio Birdman on tour in 2017.

IT didn’t get more punk rock than Radio Birdman clearing out a Sydney pub in the 1970s after chucking chewed-up sheep’s brains into the crowd.

The rise and fall of the ferocious Sydney rock band who blazed brightly on the underground scene in the 1970s is captured in the documentary Descent Into the Maelstrom which premieres on Monday.

Deniz Tek, the co-founder, guitarist, trauma surgeon and the man squarely blamed by ex-members for the tensions which would split the band in 1978 (and reignite during their reunions in recent decades) said the brains “performance art” episode was just one gig which was shut down during their incendiary early days.

With few venues available in Sydney in the early 1970s for unknown rock bands to attract an audience, Radio Birdman would set up their own, including the legendary Oxford Funhouse.

Police would regularly shut down their gigs because of the loud racket or raucous behaviour of their loyal fanbase.

And long before Ozzy Osbourne would bite into the head of a bat, Birdman frontman Rob Younger scooped offal from a skull and spat it into the audience.

Radio Birdman were Australia’s punk pioneers. Picture: Supplied

“In the early days of the band we were into performance art at the gigs, we would read poetry, pieces by Jim Morrison and the Last Poets,” Tek said.

“The way I remember the brains incident was we cooked up the idea over lunch that day, I think it was in 1975 and our band sidekick Mark Sisto decided to present this skull to Rob and had put a sheep’s brain in it.

“What no one expected was Rob would actually take a bite out of it and send everyone running for the door.

“That was the end of the performance art side of things.”

While Birdman were renowned for the ferocity of their live performance, the doco reveals they were dismissed by their Melbourne counterparts Nick Cave and his first band The Boys Next Door for not being “committed” because they didn’t indulge in the harder drugs of the era.

“Yeah we were criticised for lacking commitment, those were the words used, for being fairly straight edged people,” Tek said.

“We did drink quite a bit and some of us smoked pot and experimented with hallucinogens in the 60s like everybody but we didn’t do any hard drugs.

“We were studying to be doctors and animators and weren’t sitting around on the couch shooting heroin.”

Band co-founder Deniz Tek is also a trauma surgeon and pilot. Picture: Supplied

Along with Brisbane band and occasional rivals The Saints, Birdman have been cited as the pioneers of the Australian punk movement.

Forming in 1974, they broke up in the middle of recording their second album in the UK in 1978.

In the doco, the band members including Tek, Younger, Pip Hoyle, Warwick Gilbert, Ron Keeley and Chris Masuak are brutally honest about the volatile chemistry which made them a great band but not particularly good communicators.

A volatile chemistry would fracture the band as they were recording their second album in 1978. Picture: Supplied

Tek wrote the lion’s share of the songs and while there were band meetings to decide their affairs, he took on the responsibility for getting things done.

He is resigned to the fact former band mates, particularly drummer Keeley and guitarist Masuak, point the finger at him for their respective dismissals from Birdman during the early days and later when they reunited.

“I am used to it,” he said.

“You hear these things in the movie for the first time because no one says this stuff when it could make a difference.

“For the first four years he was in the band Chris didn’t come to band meetings and deliberately excluded himself from the decision-making process; I remember him waiting in the car.

“You say these things after the fact and some of it is annoying but I don’t think too much about it.”

The band have continued on and off since 1996 when the Big Day Out festival enticed them to reunite with a “big suitcase of cash” which would have been in the tens of thousands of dollars.

“It was big; I can’t remember the exact amount but it was the biggest amount we had ever been paid in our lives,” Tek said.

“That was what tipped the scales when we weren’t sure we wanted to do it and from 1996, it has been pretty much a continuation except for sevens between 2007 and 2014.”

The documentary arrives as the band pair with Died Pretty for a co-headlining national tour which kicks off on Friday at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre and heads to Perth’s Capitol on June 17, the Tivoli, Brisbane, on June 23, The Gov., Adelaide, on June 25 and the Croxton, Melbourne, on June 30 and July 1.

There will be a special preview screening and Q & A with band members and director Jonathan Sequeira at the Event Cinema in George St, Sydney, on Monday

Descent Into The Maelstrom will screen nationally on July 20 and 21 with screening details via http://www.umbrellaentfilms.com.au/movie/descent-into-the-maelstrom-radio-birdman/

Originally published as Punk pioneers Radio Birdman on eating brains, Nick Cave and band bust-ups in new documentary