Tim Rogers Reckons He's The 'Least Accomplished Singer' In The 'Easy Fever' Troupe

Between their formation in 1964 and eventual split in 1969, Sydney five-piece The Easybeats took on all-comers, punching above their weight and proving that Australian acts could thrive on the world stage, in the process providing inspiration for generations of Aussie guitar bands to follow.

All five band members were sons of migrants who'd joined the European influx to Australia in the early '60s, meeting and bonding over music at Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre, before making their first tentative steps and honing their sound amid that city's quietly bustling music scene.

Initially inspired by the British Invasion, The Easybeats were soon rivalling that movement's spearhead The Beatles for popularity Down Under, in turn becoming the first local rock'n'rollers to score an international hit with their groundbreaking 1966 single Friday On My Mind.

Riding that global wave for six months, the band then decamped to London to consolidate this success, but sadly struggled to maintain the momentum as the psychedelic-era flourished in the late '60s, eventually pulling up stumps before that decadent decade had even stumbled to a close.

Nonetheless, the impact of the various members of The Easybeats reverberated through the musical scene for years to come, with frontman Stevie Wright embarking on a successful solo career in the '70s and the band's production/songwriting partnership of Harry Vanda and George Young - who penned Wright's 1973 solo smash Evie - helping to shepherd a fledgling AC/DC (whose line-up included George's younger brothers Angus and Malcolm) towards eventual world domination.

Now, some four decades later, the cream of Australia's rock crop are uniting to pay homage to their pioneering forebears in new production Easy Fever (the title given the local equivalent of Beatle Mania when The Easybeats sent their fans into meltdown), with a slew of esteemed contemporary artists such as Chris Cheney (The Living End), Phil Jamieson (Grisnpoon), Kram (Spiderbait), Tex Perkins (The Cruel Sea, Beasts Of Bourbon) and Tim Rogers (You Am I) joining forces to tackle The Easybeats' and Stevie Wright's timeless catalogues.

"I got asked to do it and then my first thought was 'no'," Rogers admits when The Music asks whether he's looking forward to inhabiting this music that he loves so much. "I'd maybe done a lot of shows of a similar type in the last couple of years, and I was thinking that I'd be more interested in writing and doing something else, but then I put down the phone and I thought, 'Hang on, I may get to sing and perform these songs I love with other performers that I love, and with players in the band that I love. You'd have to be a tool bag to say 'no'!'

"Just being offered something that's a bit like a job - it's not my volition and it's someone else's songs, and songs made by people that I love - so you've got to treat it like a job, and I like that. And after knowing these songs for so long - having to know them back to front for your own enjoyment, to enjoy it fully, and for an audience as well - it should be quite workmanlike.

"There's fun to be had, but you've got to put in the study and the hours - although it sure is more fun to study these songs than it is in that biochemistry degree I was looking at."

Rogers goes way back with the music of The Easybeats, having cut his teeth on their songs as a youngster, but the fascinating morality play that is the band's narrative also stoked Rogers' early infatuation.

"As well as the songs, the story of them I was pretty aware of from pretty early on," he continues. "This friend of my mum's used to work at Villawood and knew Stevie from there - I don't know the extent of the relationship or the minutiae of the situation - so I think where they started and how the band got together was prescient in hearing the music even when I was a kid.

"They were something very special for me back then, and that only increased over time getting to know all the records and then the full story of them going over to England and the States, and I guess having done a little bit of that ourselves [in You Am I] in different circumstances and being thrown around quite willingly - being the big fish and then being thrown into the big ocean and you're a very small tadpole again - has only just increased my affection for [The Easybeats] and their songs."

Despite the great music they left behind and their cavalcade of hits - especially in their homeland - The Easybeats' tale is quite a sad one, the band effectively ripped asunder internally in their quest to replicate former glories.

"In many ways it was," Rogers concurs. "By the time I got to know Stevie and spend a little bit of time with Harry, I never felt that it was quite right to talk about something that happened so long ago for them: we'd talk about far more contemporary and relevant concerns than the past.

"But it is very much a tale of mixed fortunes, with the highs and lows coming often within a couple of weeks' span, and hearing Harry and George and Stevie trying to flex their muscles songwriting-wise in a really short space of time. And they were kids, or very young men, so there is pathos there for sure.

"I guess being a nerd about this kind of thing, the different eras of the band really interest me. Early on, it's just really corny rock'n'roll and I love that kind of era. Then comes '65-'66 and obviously the big songs Friday... and [1967 single] Heaven And Hell and stuff like that and you can really hear them stretching out, and it's very interesting chordally and melodically and harmonically - they're complex songs; deceptively complex, I think.

"And then being flung around after Friday... became such a big hit, you can feel that pressure upon them - can you write a song in this style and in that style, which I guess they did a little bit of, but also just trying to flex their muscles as songwriters.

"The performances were always great, and the production was always great - the guitar sounds and drum sounds can match it with anything from that era for excitement - and Stevie always gave everything: all cheek, all affection, all humour, all horniness - the whole deal. He was a really captivating performer and singer."

Now, as Rogers looks forward to tackling The Easybeats music himself in Easy Fever alongside some of his nearest and dearest musical mates it's that live spirit and intensity that he's hoping to channel.

"If you don't feel that red hot poker being shoved up you when those songs start then you shouldn't be there," he chuckles. "At Stevie's funeral - which I spoke at and played at, and I was there with a lot of his family, his son Nick was a good friend of mine - we were at this pub and I remember having a chat with Angry Anderson - about nothing political, but I hadn't seen him in a couple of years - and then someone put on some of The Easybeats' records and just this bolt of energy went up everybody, even with Gail his first wife, and everyone just started dancing and being energised.

"It's one thing to write energetically but the performances were always full of vim and vigour and, again, cheek, which was maybe in the songs as much as Stevie as a singer and performer, and it came through and it was impossible not to feel that. So you don't have to wind yourself up, as soon as you hear those opening riffs or opening drum shuffles you're in.

"That being said, being the least accomplished singer in the troupe that's singing, I have to bring something from somewhere. With the other singers being my friends, and the whole thing feeling very much like family, I feel a responsibility to bring something else: maybe just enthusiasm or conjuring some sort of spirit. Possibly there are even people who come to see the shows who saw the band back when they were performing, and I'm not that much of an egotist to ignore that I want to respect that."