In the early days, rock music in Australia was much like rock music in the rest of the world. That means the Australian rock in the 1960s was mostly copying the sounds that were popular in the USA and the UK.
Given their historical and cultural ties to the UK, that is where the primary influence is derived. And so you had the Easybeats echoing the Beatles while the Missing Links could sound like the Who.
Eventually, Aussie music began developing its own unique sound and specific lyrical concerns. Bands sprang up all over the country. Melbourne led the way, but the biggest of them all came from Sydney.
Who were the great Australian bands of the 1970s, not named AC/DC?
AC/DC was the first Australian band to score big on the world stage, paving the way for many of their countrymen to follow in their footsteps. By the 1980s, bands as diverse as INXS, Men at Work, and Midnight Oil were scoring major hits in the USA.
But to assume that AC/DC was the one and only link between the fledgling groups of the ‘60s and those successful mainstream bands of the ‘80s ignores a lot of sensational Aussie rock and roll that was developing alongside the Young brothers. Growing up in the States like I did, I never heard of most of these bands until much later. But now, I find myself seeking them out more and more.
Most of these bands did not find much success outside their native country, but had they come along a decade later, they probably would have. There simply wasn’t the mechanism for launching an Australian band onto the world stage until AC/DC proved it could be done. Geographical isolation made any attempts at touring in Europe or America a dicey proposition.
That same isolation allowed for a uniquely Australian sound to emerge. It was typically rooted in the R&B that came out of England, but it found its own quirks.
Here are six of the best bands from that era. They may not have taken the world by storm, but in their native land, they were beloved.
Daddy Cool (1970)
They formed in Melbourne in 1970 with a singer who sounded more like Mick Jagger than Jagger often did. Ross Wilson teamed up with childhood friend Ross Hannaford when they were 13 years old. As the Pink Finks, they did their own standard cover of “Louie Louie.”
Wilson tried his luck in the UK in the mid ‘60s, but returned to Australia and eventually settled into a new partnership with Hannaford. Daddy Cool was a slimmed-down, tighter version of their bigger enterprise, Sons of the Vegetal Mother.
They kept all the blues that had been part of the larger band, but eliminated some of the excess. The songs were crisp, and Wilson sang the hell out of them. His song “Eagle Rock” dominated the airwaves in Australia and New Zealand in the early ‘70s.
It came to represent early Aussie rock despite the fact that Wilson had written it in England, inspired by a photo of 1920s-era black Americans. Elton John would draw inspiration for his own major hit “Crocodile Rock” a few years later.
Daddy Cool came and went throughout the decade but always managed to score hits when they were together.
The Saints (1973)
They formed in Brisbane in ’73, and by the time they released their first album in 1977, the type of music they had been playing from the beginning was becoming a worldwide force. Simple chord progressions, a punishing rhythm, and a messy, catchy melodic sensibility made them one of Australia’s first punk rock bands.
Their first hit – “(I’m) Stranded” - stands between early Ramones and New York Dolls. They followed it up with a raucous punk treatment of Elvis Presley’s “Kissin’ Cousins.” Later, other covers of songs like “River Deep, Mountain High” and Connie Francis’ “Lipstick on My Collar” further revealed their debt to classic forms of American pop, as well as their fantastic ability to turn anything into a punk anthem.
Cold Chisel (1973)
If any band is going to challenge AC/DC for the hearts and souls of Australian rock fans, it is the spectacular on-again-off-again Cold Chisel, who came out of Adelaide in 1973. The original quintet featured the dynamic vocalist Jimmy Barnes alongside guitarist-singer Ian Moss, bassist Phil Small, drummer Steve Prestwick, and keyboardist Don Walker.
Early on, Walker, who was a few years older and a tad more serious than his mates, wrote most of the music, and there is a fabulous tension between his professionalism and the rest of the band's youthful anarchy.
Even as they developed, through splits and reunions, and even as all members began sharing in the songwriting, that tension always remained. It led to one of the hottest live bands on the continent throughout the 1970s and beyond.
On the band’s self-titled debut in 1978, there was a Walker song called “Khe Sanh” that became one of the most significant Australian rockers ever recorded. Walker wrote it about Aussie troops serving in Vietnam, and it dwells in the same space that Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” occupies in the States.
They followed it up with dozens of outstanding rock and roll songs that still resonate throughout Australia.
Radio Birdman (1974)
The Sydney-based Radio Birdman paired with The Saints to provide Australia with its earliest and most authentic punk music. They brought a different vibe, directly from American bands like the Stooges. That was largely due to Detroit native Deniz Tek, who played guitar and wrote many of RB’s songs.
They were too new and too raw to achieve mainstream success and thus broke up not long after their debut album, Radios Appear, in 1977.
Songs like “Anglo Girl Desire” and “Descent into the Maelstrom” show a grungier edge than the Saints, but other songs like “Murder City Nights” were Rancid with guitar solos. All the members of the band continued in other projects throughout the ‘80s, and when the rest of the world finally caught up with what they were doing, Radio Birdman got together again in the mid-'90s.
Mental as Anything (1976)
Mental as Anything began playing a poppier brand of rock and roll than their punk colleagues. On their first album, 1979’s Get Wet, frontman Martin Plaza sounds a bit like an Aussie Michael Stipe. On songs like “Talk to Baby Jesus,” they show their skill at blending old-school dance boogie with emerging sounds that would soon be labelled as new wave.
By the early ‘80s, they had moved more completely into new wave pop and achieved their greatest success, releasing three straight top ten albums in Australia. The synths become a bigger part of their sound, but the rock roots remain visible.
Australian Crawl (1978)
Another Melbourne band that began playing old-fashioned garage rock but quickly found its footing in the emerging new wave. Their debut album, The Boys Light Up, didn’t arrive until 1980, but by that point, they had already launched a popular single, “Beautiful People,” which had an infectious, jangly pulse.
That album was among the most popular in all of Australia in the early ‘80s, jam-packed with earworm hits. Their next two follow-ups hit number one and yielded five top twenty singles. Their 1983 single – the moody “Reckless (Don’t Be So)” – made it all the way to number one.
But almost as fast as they hit the peak, they fell off in the second half of the decade. By 1990, Australian Crawl was no more, never having cracked the charts outside of Australia/New Zealand.