Your new album ‘Pain’ is an amazing comeback - how did you manage to re-capture that classic Rose Tattoo sound? 
Well, I have to say that when we were doing ‘Pain’ we weren’t sure how producing an album in that old groove as you mention would be taken. But the fact that the fans had been so loyal to us over the years and their belief in us gave the band confidence and that’s what’s driven us to do this. Its always risky when you try something like this but as I said to Pete (Wells - slide guitarist) when you look at our previous albums they’ve always never been what the record labels wanted: ‘Assault and Battery’ wasn’t what the label was ‘particularly interested in’; when we were doing ‘Scarred For Life’, Atlantic suggested we listen to Aerosmith and we should consider an acoustic track and how about some keyboards blah blah - and we were like ‘fuck it!’ ha ha! Suffice to say we weren’t gonna be another Def Leppard and so we missed out on the 10 million
album sales....but we’re better for it!

How easy has it been for you to get back together after so long?
It’s one of these things that’s hard to explain.....but looking back....lets see...we went away from the band in 1984 and didn’t get back together again until the late 80’s when we were initially offered a support slot with Guns & Roses. Although that failed to materialise it did get us back together again as people. We started drinking together, seeing each others bands play and that got us thinking about playing together as a band
which we did for a coupla one off shows and these went down well. So Rose Tattoo became a kind of on/off band where every now and then we’d get offered a support tour for 3 weeks and then we’d play and maybe not do anything for the rest of the year. This took us up to 1993 when Guns came back and again offered us the support slots for the two shows they were doing. We did those plus we’d booked our own six week tour around Australia and that was enough to satisfy our thirsts - in more ways than one ha ha! So....we didn’t come back together until a few years later when in 1997 we were asked to go and do a guest appearance for this German band Boehse Onkelz. We also did a couple of farewell tours for our good friends The Angels whom we used to tour with back in the old days. Basically we just wanted to play and were contented with that rather than bothering with the label bit ha ha! But the second Angels tour it became pretty apparent that there was a fan base for us which people who run various Rose Tattoo websites had been telling us for years. At Wacken 2000 we got a huge reception as you know and then in 2001 when we played Bang Your Head we decided to also book some club gigs - and the punters came out in droves ha ha! SPV released our double live CD - 25 ta Life - and
it did far better than even they thought it would so the next logical step had to be a studio album. When we did ‘Pain’ we were all living together for the album so its been a case of ‘leading a horse to water but ya can’t make it drink’....somehow the signals were there and we followed them until were are here today as a reformed part time Rose Tattoo.

So what’s the current status of the band - you mentioned part time…? 
We can’t and wouldn’t wanna be a full time band again. It’s too difficult given our family commitments and hell, I’m fifty years old mate! The full time years are when you’re young and you don’t have responsibilities - its both a selfish and self-indulgent existence. And we were particularly good at the self-indulgence ha ha! We toured 10 months of the year on the road and just didn’t fuckin care for 6 or 7 years. We drank everything and took everything and ultimately that undid the band cos there’s only so much you can take.

Do you guys still have an outlaw image?
We still do mate. Australia tries too hard to be a microcosm of America and so much money is spent on promoting overseas music. Do you know that every major label passed on INXS?! Same deal with Savage Garden. I’m not saying that Rose Tattoo might have enjoyed the same commercial success as these bands but things might have still been different for us. Then and again we might not be having this conversation ha ha!
And you can agonise on this but its such a waste of time. To me and a lot of other Australian musicians the music industry there is not just mentally but emotionally retarded. They don’t have any love for the home grown product. And they certainly don’t have any love for us. 

So is it business or just personal?
These guys are basically old hacks in the industry - who incidentally when they were young were hacks at the time who still didn’t like us! They think we should just face our so called ‘reality’ and fade away. But the reality that they should’ve faced up to is that we’ve always been relevant and the fact that we come over to different shores after so many years and play to all these people says it all. 

Has it always been this way?
Rose Tattoo started in the pre-punk era and by the time we started to make a name for ourselves the labels would send their A&R people along to see our show but they didn’t know where to place us! So that’s how we ended up on Alberts, who at one stage had the 3 top rock acts in Australia - AC/DC, The Angels and us. They also had the 3 biggest pop acts too. I guess Rose Tattoo were the ugly cousins, the embarrassments, the people who nobody took any notice of at parties until they puked all over the table.

But isn’t that what rock stars are supposed to do?!
Well yeah, but I guess what they wanted was someone who was acceptably embarrassing and someone whom they could control. You’ve had a number of interesting careers in between playing for Rose Tattoo - can you

please tell about the Gary Anderson ‘ballad’ years?
That was my first attempt to convince the new record company that I was a solo artist and I did ‘Beats From A Single Drum’ and they released it. They wanted a heavy rock album and it wasn’t anything like that. They sent it out to the rock press and no one wanted to play it or interview me cos they didn’t know what to make of it. They then made the huge mistake of putting it out as a Rose Tattoo album! But luckily good ol Kylie Minogue came along and rescued the situation by saying ‘I like this song, I wanna get married to it’ thus making the album an identifiable Angry Anderson product so the label repackaged the product yet again to be Angry Anderson and not Rose Tattoo which is the way it should’ve been in the first place.

My cousin in Melbourne told me you were a TV reporter for a while...
All in all I did about 8 years of legitimate TV. In the 90s I was on a TV programme called ‘Challenge’ which was a documentary highlighting the anachronisms in our society. Initially though I started in TV around 1985 largely as an advocate for youth culture. In particular I reported on the life of streetkids, child prostitution and
abuse, the problems of drugs and homelessness - basically areas that were largely ignored and misunderstood by the mainstream press and public. 

Did you have a personal interest in these areas? 
I’m was an abused kid myself. I came from a dysfunctional family and at one time was an alcoholic so I could immediately identify with all of this and I wanted to do something for these people. They are the people that we write about in our songs - their stories are there in our lyrics. 

How did you get the role of playing Iron Bar Bassey in Mad Max 3 (Thunderdome)?
Well, I was actually gonna be in the second movie but because we had to go on tour that couldn’t happen so when the 3rd movie began I rang Kennedy / Miller (the producers) and said ‘do you remember me?’ and they said ‘sure, we’d love to have you’ - of course I was more famous by then ha ha - but they didn’t know what to do with me. They had an idea for a character with a small part - don’t you fuckin laugh ha ha - but when I got there I just wouldn’t leave so that’s how the character of Ironbar evolved. 

How easy was it to work alongside big stars like Tina Turner and Mel Gibson?
Easy. Piss easy actually. Tina’s a lovely lady though I think she never quite got used to how informal we were in relation to her celebrity status. I guess when you’re on set with someone for 6 weeks you have to accept people belching and farting in your presence or asking you if you got laid last night ha ha! As for Mel, well he’s an Aussie and I think in his heart he still is today. 

I think what really made those films was the amazing landscapes filmed in the Outback.. 
Yeah, there’s something about the desert that appeals to people. I think the British actor Peter O’Toole in the film ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ summed it up when he said that the desert was clean, it tidies itself up and nothing is wasted. It’s pristine and many people don’t realise that it’s an ecosystem in itself.

Actually, its hard to imagine how much of a contrasting landscape it is especially when compared to its neighbour New Zealand.
Angry: I hope that your readers realise the differences between Australia and New Zealand - its we Australians who own Tasmania ha ha! Actually, I don’t know if its still the case but many Americans think that New Zealand IS Australia so when they come over to New Zealand they assume that firstly Australia is just a short hop away when its in fact a 3 hour flight. Secondly they think the landscapes are the same so they go off to New Zealand and see glaciers and such then either don’t bother coming over or they just go to Sydney thinking that its all the same. Well, you know from your own travels that Australia is a totally different place! Still, despite all the stereotyping a lot of people don’t realise how close Australia and New Zealand are. In 2001 we celebrated the centenary of our federation which in 1901 actually had a movement to have New Zealand become our seventh and eighth states which although it didn’t happen, would’ve been cool.

I’ve always wanted to ask you about your tattoos and their place in relation to the attitude of Rose Tattoo.
There are a lotta tattooists that are Maori or like our Aboriginal people who are now going into their culture to use that as a inspiration for their designs. I might get one although I personally favour celtic designs cos of my roots.To me it’s always been about tribal identification and a modern representation of the outlaw image. Many people have them to look chic but 10 years on they’ll have them lazered off. I think you should think about it - but not too hard - before you get one. Just realise you’ve gotta back it up and you’re in it for the long haul - at least that’s how it was when I got one. It was for life, no such thing as removing it, so it was a commitment, not to the tattoo but more towards a way of life declaring who you are and taking a stand for what you represent. Everyone who joins the band has to get a Rose Tattoo tat. To me this album is just like that, circumstances came together and we got caught up in it. All of a sudden we’re back onstage again and its like time has said ‘declare who you are’ and ‘Pain’ is who we are.