Angels and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra breathe life into rock classics

A concert with rock band the Angels and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is a match made in heaven, celebrating the Brewster family’s long involvement in music.

At the 2018 Symphony of Angels concert, from left, Rick Brewster, John Brewster and Sam Brewster. Picture: Russell Millard

When the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra joins forces with local rock band the Angels, it’s like a match made in heaven. The five-piece band turns out hits such as No Secrets and Take a Long Line, while the ­orchestra surrounds it all with a halo of symphonic sound.

The Angels and the ASO will come together again next Friday for the Festival of Orchestra series at the Adelaide Showground. But what happens when the set list gets to Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again – and the well-known refrain that has been chanted from pubs to stadiums around the country for 40 years?

Maybe the answer is best left as a surprise, but John Brewster, guitarist, songwriter and founding member of the Angels, says the ­effect is fantastic.

The story of Face Again, and its profane refrain, is worth repeating. It was the Angels’ debut single in 1976 and didn’t much bother the charts. By the early 1980s, as Brewster recalls, the band had dropped the song from its live shows because it didn’t really represent their music by that time.

Then they played a gig at the town hall in Mt Isa, in 1982 or 83, and were called back for an encore.

“We went back on stage and somebody said, ‘Let’s do Face Again as an encore’ – and 3500 people chanted ‘No way, get f..ked, f..k off!’ ” he says.

“The whole story is quite funny, and charming – the Australian larrikin sense of humour.”

Brewster, 72, is delighted that the ASO is again presenting the Symphony of Angels concert – it was last performed in 2018 – because his family has strong connections with classical music in the city.

His grandfather, Hooper Brewster-Jones, was a remarkable musician who came of age in the years after Federation. Born in Black Rock Plains, and at first tutored in music by his father, he won a scholarship to the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide, and then to the Royal College of Music in London where his composition teacher, Charles Villiers Stanford, threw the young colonial upstart out of his class.

Brewster-Jones returned to ­Adelaide where he was a prominent pianist, composer, newspaper music critic and teacher. He wrote some 600 pieces of music, including an opera, The Nightingale and the Rose, based on Oscar Wilde’s story, and a symphonic poem, ­Australia Felix. Part of that piece will be performed at the Symphony of Angels concert.

His son, Arthur Brewster-Jones, John’s father, also was a ­professional musician. In 1949, he conducted a concert with the Adelaide Stringster Orchestra, in which his father, Hooper, was the soloist in Mozart’s D-minor piano concerto.

John Brewster’s grandfather, Hooper Brewster-Jones (at the piano) and father Arthur Brewster-Jones

John Brewster’s mother was pregnant with him when she attended the concert at Adelaide Town Hall, which unfortunately was a tragic event for the family.

“Hooper performed the Mozart concerto with my dad conducting him, and he went on to watch the second half of the program,” he recalls. “Sadly, my grandfather died on the stairs of the Town Hall. That was 1949, I was born four months later.”

Brewster’s own journey was not to be in classical music, but rock ’n’ roll. Growing up in the 60s, he gravitated to the Everly Brothers, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and especially to Bob Dylan. He taught himself harmonica. At university, and inspired by old-time jug bands, he and his brother Rick formed the Moonshine Jug and String Band, a ragtag ensemble of fiddle, guitar, and washtub bass that played ­venues around Adelaide. The group was later joined by a university friend, Bernard “Doc” Neeson.

When they started performing their own songs they decided to go electric, becoming first the Keystone Angels, and then the Angels. Brewster knew AC/DC’s frontman Bon Scott from Adelaide, and the Keystone Angels, as they were still known, were invited to be the ­support act for AC/DC gigs in Port Pirie, Whyalla and Port Augusta.

Publicity handout with the original Angels line-up, from left, Buzz Bidstrup, Rick Brewster, Doc Neeson, John Brewster and Chris Bailey.

It was probably the most decisive moment in the Angels’ career. AC/DC introduced Brewster and his band to Harry Vanda and George Young at Albert Productions, who produced the Angel’s first album and the single, Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again. That single and the next one flopped.

Brewster says Young urged the band to work on developing its own style; there were enough bands in the Albert stable with the Vanda and Young sound.

“We were influenced by AC/DC, we didn’t want to copy them,” Brewster says. “But we also discovered punk, the Sex Pistols. I wrote a song called I Ain’t the One. We ­recorded it, and we had found our sound, our own angle.

“It was exciting, using nick-nicks in the guitar. You’d button down in the verses and open up in the choruses – it’s a bit of an Angels trait. And I think about two weeks later, Rick wrote Take a Long Line with some assistance from me. What a great song – and that was our first hit.”

The Angels’ line-up was now complete, with Chris Bailey on bass, Buzz Bidstrup on drums, the Brewster brothers John and Rick on guitars, and Neeson the lead singer. A distinctive aspect of the Angels’ act was its theatricality, ­especially Neeson’s performance as frontman, and the stark lighting design of its live shows and videos.

Brewster and Neeson had studied at Flinders University with theatre director and influential Brechtian, Wal Cherry. They absorbed some of Brecht’s techniques of alienation and stylised performance.

Guitarist and founding member of the Angels, John Brewster, at home. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

“Doc went and got a suit with an ascot tie and became this aristocrat who dishevelled in front of the audience,” Brewster says. “We weren’t a punk band but we leaned a bit that way. All these things came together.

“Doc and I studied Bertolt Brecht and we started to talk about employing those kind of things in his performance. Doc turned into this absolutely brilliant front man. A lot of people described him as being scary – because he was full on, it was dramatic.”

The Angels became a legendary band in Australian music when the nation had a vibrant pub rock scene. Its best-known singles retain their vitality and distinctive sound. Singles such as Shadow Boxer, No Secrets and Face Again have etched themselves into the collective memory, although the band’s highest-charting song was a cover of the Animals’ We Gotta Get Out of This Place.

The band held together through to the millennium, and disbanded after Neeson was involved in a traffic accident that led to a long and painful recovery. There were various regroupings, and separate tours using the Angels name, led by either Neeson or the Brewsters, who recruited the Screaming Jets’ Dave Gleeson as their alternative frontman. The classic Angels line-up embarked on a reunion tour in 2008 but relations with Neeson were strained. He was diagnosed with a brain ­tumour in 2013 and died the next year. Bailey also was diagnosed with cancer and died in 2013.

The Angels were an electrifying live act.

Brewster plays down the acrimony with Neeson but says they had become estranged.

“We didn’t really understand what he was trying to do,” he says. “He was trying to go out on his own, he was saying he wasn’t going to do Angels songs – but basically that’s what he did.

“I don’t want to be judgmental. But I can say that the end of our relationship was quite sad, really. It was sad, because we were like a brotherhood. The three of us started the band together – we got into my station wagon and travelled the country. Doc was part of that. I’d rather remember those wonderful days than the more difficult days at the end of his life.”

The Symphony of Angels concert with the ASO promises to capture the band’s past glories. The show is part of the ASO’s Festival of Orchestra, a six-concert series that opened on Wednesday. Other concerts explore orch­estral arr­ange­­ments of Ministry of Sound dance tracks, Broadway show tunes, Carmina Burana, and Blue Planet II, with ocean footage from David Attenborough’s TV series.

On stage with the Angels will be Rick and John Brewster on guitars, John’s son Sam Brewster on bass, drummer Nick Norton, and Gleeson on vocals. The orchestral arrangements have been prepared by Jamie Messenger and Rob John, who will also conduct the concert.

Footage from the previous shows gives an idea of what fans can expect. After the Rain begins with the Angels’ nick-nick guitars, which are picked up by a punchy brass section and then quicksilver strings, building a crescendo into the first verse.

“I can’t talk about it without gushing, it’s amazing,” Brewster says of the orchestral arrangements. “At the time, when we were recording these albums, Rick and I were in the studio singing orchestral parts to songs like Mr Damage – ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we had violins playing here?’ Now we do.

“I think it’s due to our classical upbringing, the music that was in our family.”

Brewster is proud that his son Sam is part of the band, and that four generations of his family have been involved in music in Adelaide. The Angels are keeping him busy for the foreseeable future, with about 50 gigs booked next year including the Red Hot Summer circuit and Byron Bay Bluesfest.

It’s keeping Brewster away from the golf course, but as the ­Angels approach their 50th anniversary, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Symphony of Angels, with the Angels and Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, is at Adelaide Showground on December 3.