The Hard Beat of the Easybeats
The following first appeared in the GRAND JUNCTION FREE PRESS:
In the world of popular music, Australia means more than kangaroos, koalas and Crocodile Dundee. Since the mid-1960s, literally dozens of acts have emerged from the land down under to dominate global pop charts. From the soft rolling pop of the Little River Band to the hard riffing rock of AC/DC… from the easy-listening ballads of Olivia Newton-John to the aggressive grunge of Silverchair… from the psychedelic introspection of the Church to the seductive rhythms of INXS… Australian performers and bands have cut a wide swath through every significant musical movement of the past few decades.
But Australia’s place on the world’s pop music stage was first staked by a band that got their start just over 40 years ago — a band that was the launchpad for a partnership that would hold for nearly half a century, and change the face of rock music in the process. That band was the Easybeats.
The Easybeats are primarily known in the U.S. for just one song — their undisputed classic, the 1966 working class anthem, “Friday on my Mind” — but they were superstars in their native Australia, and their hard-driving rock n’ roll was influential on American and European artists to an extent belied by their lack of stateside hits. Bruce Springsteen and David Bowie are only two of the rock legends who have included Easybeats songs in their repertoires since the 1970s, and the Aussie band’s native hits, like 1966’s scorching “Sorry,” can often be heard in the soundtracks of present-day commercials, TV shows and films.
Although the band broke up 35 years ago, Dutch-born guitarist Henry Vanda (nee Hendrickus Vandenburg) and Glasgow native George Young have continued to work together to this very day — as both a duo recording under the name of Flash and the Pan in the 1980s (scoring minor hits like “Hey! St. Peter” and “Walking in the Rain”), and as one of the most successful production teams in the history of hard rock.
It was Vanda and Young who produced John Paul Young’s romantic 1978 hit, “Love is in the Air,” and they have also helmed popular albums by heavy rock acts like Rose Tattoo and the Angels. But their best-known production work was for the band led by Young’s little brothers, Angus and Malcolm… the hard-working and harder-rocking AC/DC, whose high voltage power chords and T.N.T.-loud rhythm section have established them as bona-fide rock gods in the decades since their 1975 debut.