The Establishment Wasn't Kind To Radio Birdman 'So Why Start Now?'

Even given their indubitable stature as one of Australia’s finest and most important ever rock bands, it still seems somewhat incongruous that in 2018, Radio Birdman are soaring as high worldwide as at any time since they burst into life in the seedy pubs of inner-city Sydney back in the mid-'70s.

The fascinating, tempestuous story of the firebrand rockers and counter-cultural standard-bearers has been brilliantly captured by producer Jonathan Sequeira in the documentary Descent Into The Maelstrom – The Radio Birdman Story, which premiered in Australia in mid-2017 and has been gradually rolling out globally, territory by territory, ever since.

Rock’n’roll aficionados all over the world are relishing this opportunity to revisit the unpredictable career of this groundbreaking Australian band, whose influence on our national scene and history vastly transcends their own explosive tenure and catalogue, having influenced generations of guitar bands to follow from both musical and ideological perspectives. Yet closer to home the ABC recently caused a stir by passing on the acquisition of the documentary, so that it could be broadcast free-to-air and the story shared with everyday Australians.

This refusal by our national broadcaster flies in the face of the undeniable importance of Radio Birdman’s narrative and music to Australia’s rich rock’n’roll heritage, and the fact that they could have picked it up at a heavily discounted price - significantly less than the Descent Into The Maelstrom production team paid the ABC for access to the archival footage that in part makes the film such an incredible snapshot into a pivotal time in our country’s cultural history.

Even Labor MP Anthony “Albo” Albanese weighed in on the matter recently in an attempt to sway the ABC’s ruling, offering that “through the cunning use of archival and present-day footage spliced together, Jonathan Sequeira has managed to capture the band's journey and outlaw reputation on film - a journey that was integral to the development of the independent music scene in Australia”.

While Radio Birdman themselves don’t have any stake in the production other than being the subject matter, band co-founder and guitarist Deniz Tek – who with frontman Rob Younger was the chief architect of the inimitable Birdman sound, having worshipped at temple of The Stooges, MC5 and their ilk as a youngster in his native Michigan before relocating to Sydney in 1972 – has been following the ABC saga closely, not that he has any choice in the matter.

“Anytime anything comes out about that someone sends it to me in an email,” he smiles. “It’s been interesting. It doesn’t surprise me that the ABC doesn’t want to show it, we’ve always been sort of outside the mainstream and the establishment hasn’t been very friendly to our band before, so why should they start now?

“And it’s not a big deal for us but it’s kind of a big deal for Jonathan since he used to work there and as far as I know he has good relationships with his mates at the ABC, and he offered them a very generous discount on the thing. Plus he paid the ABC a lot of money to licence the footage from them that’s in the film, so it can’t really be a money thing, it’s got to be something else. I’m not sure what it really is.”

From a purely cultural and aesthetic vantage, it’s difficult to understand how showing this well-rendered telling of a pivotal story in Australian music history on free-to-air TV isn’t in the national interest.

“Well they aired The Saints documentary [2015’s Stranded],” Tek reflects. “I don’t think that was done very well, and I don’t think it was really worthy of the band, but that they still aired that – and they aired The Go-Betweens documentary [2017’s The Go-Betweens: Right Here], which I watched on the ABC, and there’s a lot of other stuff that they’re happy to do but not this. It’s a bit of a mystery and if you read the correspondence between the ABC and Jonathan – the film producer – it’s really unclear why, so I don’t know.

“It’s interesting that Albo put his two cents in. For better or worse we’re in the Parliamentary Archives now, so that’s something.”

Descent Into The Maelstrom’s honest portrayal of Radio Birdman’s somewhat dysfunctional interpersonal dynamic and the lingering acrimony harboured by some band members made watching the documentary challenging for Tek, but he was mainly concerned with how the band’s music came across.

“Yeah, they focused a lot on the music, which I think is the right thing to do,” the guitarist reflects. “There’s a lot of music in the film and that’s what we’re about, the music. I love the way they presented the music, which is great.

“Personally I took a beating in that movie. Every time I watch it there’s a significant cringe factor for me because some of the guys in their interviews really unload on me, so for me personally it’s a bit weird. You see some of this criticism and it’s the first time I’ve heard it from these guys, it’s like something that happened 40 years ago and I’m hearing it now?

“But no, I think the band was portrayed well and it was fair and it’s good that he gave everybody a chance to say their piece, and the music was front and centre and that’s the main thing.”

As an outsider it was fascinating seeing lower-profile band members like Ron Keeley (founding drummer), Warwick Gilbert (bass) and Chris Masuak (guitar) speak publicly about their tenures in the band, although Tek admits that some of the criticisms they levelled at him still hurt even with the passage of time.

“Yeah, it was hard,” he tells. “And some of the stuff that was said was actually not true – I mean it was inaccurate. Not that they intentionally miscommunicated, they just didn’t understand what had happened. That stuff could have been sorted out really easily if we were the sort of people in those days who communicated with each other properly, but we weren’t. We were young and didn’t really understand how to work within a team, and I think that could have been better if we’d communicated and if anybody had a problem they could have put it on the table and sorted it out.

“But you can see these things in retrospect – with hindsight – but at the time we were just young cats that were trying to play music and just sort of high on everything. You don’t tend to look at the big picture or you don’t want to bother with details when you’re on a roll like that, you just want to go with it.”

The film also hammers home some of the sliding doors moments that came to define the band’s first phase, such as the financial collapse of their US label Sire Records – whose owner Seymour Stein had charged into Sydney like a white knight and signed them to a worldwide deal – just as their 1978 tour of the punk-obsessed UK kicked off. This not only denied them crucial tour support but also scuppered the proposed American tour supporting the Ramones that was planned to follow, and eventually helped usher the band’s demise later that year.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of, I guess you could say, crossroads that the band came to that where the optimum way forward was closed off to us and we had to go another way,” Tek shrugs. “But that’s life, stuff happens. It would have been great to tour America with the Ramones, I think we probably at that time were more suited to American audiences than British ones. I think we would have gone over better in America, things would have gone better for us.

“In 1978 in England it was very fashion-conscious about punk – you had to have the look and you had to have the right clothes and you had to have the right hair. Punk was more about fashion than music, and we didn’t really fit into that mould. It would have been better if we’d gone elsewhere.”

Ironically, these days there are pockets of Europe in countries such as France and Spain who seem to respect Australian rock and honour bands like Birdman more than people in the band’s homeland do.

“Oh they do, totally they do,” Tek agrees. “After we do this run of Australian shows coming up we’re going to do 20 concerts in Europe, and the band always goes over well there. And we went to America on the [2006 album] Zeno Beach tour and that was great too, even though they’d never seen the band and had really only heard about the band in the music press. I was amazed at how well we did in America in 2006.”

Crucially after all this time at the rock’n’roll coalface, Tek attests that the current iteration of Birdman – who reformed in 1996 and have been touring intermittently ever since – are in great nick, and that he himself is still in love with hitting the stage to drive and harness the band’s irrepressible life force and energy.

“Oh yeah, I sit here and practice to try and play the guitar better,” he laughs. “I’ve been playing guitar for more than 50 years but I’m just keen on playing and I love to play and I want to play better.

“And I don’t want to let up on the intensity, I want it to be as hard and as passionate as ever – if it stops being that, then we’re going to have to quit. You don’t want to drift away into some sort of geriatric pasture, it’s got to stay hard.”