Living End live in town, on tour

Author: Luke Voogt

Australian rock legends The Living End will hit Geelong next Thursday for their long-awaited regional tour.

“We haven’t done a regional tour for five or six years,” the band’s Andy Strachan said Monday after a Byron Bay show the night before.

The Geelong gig is a short drive down for the drummer, who moved to Barwon Heads a decade ago.

“I used to go surfing at 13th beach a lot,” Strachan said.

“I found myself getting in the car and not wanting to go home.”

Strachan landed the dream gig in 2002 after years going from one band to another” and “working sh_t jobs” in Melbourne.

He remembered the fateful call from The Living End double bassist Scott Owen after mutual friends introduced them.

“I was cooking a chicken risotto – as you do and he rang,” he said. “I thought he was just one of my mates taking the piss.”

Strachan had just returned from a tour with alternative rock band Pollyanna and was about to move back to his home city Adelaide “to get a proper job”.

“I moved to Melbourne with stars in my eyes looking to follow my rock and roll dream,” he said.

“We’d actually packed the house up. But I got the call and the rest is history.”

Strachan started playing as a teen with the 50s and 60s in Adelaide cover band The Runaways.

Remarkably, his future comrades Chris Cheney and Scott Owen played in their own 50s and 60s cover band in Melbourne during 1992 titled The Runaway Boys.

“It’s just hilarious – we didn’t even know that until we got chatting one day,” Strachan said.

“Although I’m sure their band was cooler than mine – I was just a 14-year-old kid and my band mates were all in their 50s.”

There’s a lot of “love” in The Living End despite Owen moving to Byron Bay and Cheney spending most of his time recording in America, Strachan said.

“Once we’re all in a room together, there’s so much energy. There’s a lot of bands that have relationship issues, but we all give each other enough space.

The band has played in front of huge crowds, including the 2016 AFL Grand Final, but “even last night (at Byron) was a highlight,” Strachan said.

“We’re so bloody lucky – to do what we do and watch people’s minds being blown it’s just a such beautiful thing.”

He never gets tired of Owen thrilling crowds by straddling and spinning his double bass.

“He’s quite an acrobat – he’s going to kill him- self one day,” he said.

The boys will belt out some “meaty riffs” at the Wool Exchange on 30 March like Strachan’s favourite How Do We Know.

And, of course, they’ll play the songs that started it all – like Prisoner of Society, he said.

“I don’t like beer cans being thrown at my head, so I think it’s pretty safe to say we’ll play that.”

The Living End And Ash Grunwald

Author: Unknown

TO DATE ASH GRUNWALD IS A BLOKE WHO’S MADE MUSIC ON HIS OWN AND ON HIS OWN TERMS. BUT THERE’S BEEN A THOUGHT TAPPING ON THE CREATIVE MIND OF MR GRUNWALD WHO THOUGHT PERHAPS THAT TWO-THIRDS OF THE LIVING END COULD BE HIS BAND ON MORE THAN JUST A SINGLE. WELL THE PLANETS ALIGNED AND THE GUYS BASHED OUT AN ALBUM. AND HEREIN LIES THE STORY OF GARGANTUA!

’The whole thing of being the king of your own musical fiefdom is that you can do what you want. It’s been part of my schtick. I have always rolled onto stage and not known what I was going to play first. I’ve taken that approach to who I’m going to play with. I think the stronger sense of musical self you have the more you can do that. This time I’ve gone electric. It’s rocky. I wasn’t expecting that.’

Creating Gargantua was a lot of fun for Grunwald.

’I am playing with a character drummer. Andy (Strachan) is the biggest drummer in the biggest band in the country. I don’t have to tell him what to do. I am into it because I have asked for their flavour. It’s not a session with paid musicians – we are in each others band, and it’s gone really well. We did a cover of Crazy to promote the tour and it got picked up on commercial radio and I’ve never had that before. We basically went straight to a recording studio and recorded this album!’

’I am really proud of it.’ Grunwald admits that it’s not in his usual style, that he’d always opted for restraint, and the less-is-more approach.

’I really loved the old black blues players and I loved Albert King, BB King, and I have been concentrating on playing fewer notes for my solo show for a decade so I played without bass players. If I did impro, it would be short, or using rhythmic patterns. So doing this album was like getting back to mega younger and playing with little three pieces and doing guitar riffage…’

Ash Grunwald proves in this punchy new offering that you don’t need a huge line up to get a big sound.

’The words they used to use were power trio, Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn. I guess it all went wrong after that. There were guys riffing for far too long. I have always been restrained. I am not going to go for the 10-minute solo and subsequently that part of me atrophied, whereas that was the nature of what happened, so I have allowed myself to indulge a little! I don’t think I have over-indulged!’

One of Grunwald’s most powerful tracks is Last Stand, a song about what he has witnessed first hand in the outskirts of Tara in Southwestern QLD, where CSG mining has given rise to health problems, and environmental impacts.

Ash believes that not enough people are getting behind the message, neither do they really understand the longterm impacts of CSG on communities.

’I have really good friends who are intelligent nice people – very compassionate, who tick all the boxes but they are not really interested in the CSG issue at all. People, I guess as humans we are pretty selfish, and just interested in ourselves. In my last album I wrote a song with a chorus like that, asking where are people when you need them, but I’ve been as guilty as anyone. I have always paid lip-service, I have done charity gigs and all those things that have cleansed my conscience, but I am going out on the campaign trail. I am making a film so I can show people what is happening first hand.’

Grunwald is joined by Scott Owen and Andy Strachan of the Living End at the Hotel Great Northern on Thursday.
Tickets $25 + bf from thenorthern.oztix.com.au. Doors 8.30pm.