Reviewed by Richard Tutin
I had a couple of questions as I approached this offering from Glen Humphries. The first was when does a good rock song become a rock anthem? The second question was how do the forty top songs that he has chosen from the Australian songbook became acknowledged as rock anthems when other equally deserving songs missed out? I raise these questions because I have a number of CDs in my collection that all bear the title Australian Rock Anthems.
As Humphries says in the introduction of the book, any list that is drawn up is arbitrary. It is this subjectiveness that allows him to make the list his own and as he focuses on the background stories that form the chapters of the book. A song though does need to stand the test of time. That is why Humphries is careful to point out that the youngest song on the list dates from 2011. The others are much older and cover a good slice of twentieth century Australian rock and popular music. Most would be familiar to readers who have probably heard them hundreds of times over the years.
To assist the reader Glen Humphries compiled an audio version of the list of songs that has been uploaded to the Spotify App. While it is easily found, Spotify does prefer to play the songs in a random order rather than the order as found in the book.
For those who are music aficionados, the book is a rich treasure trove of information. A lot of time and effort has gone into each chapter as Humphries uncovers, via published interviews and other source material, the story not just of the song but where it fits into the career of the group or single artist.
For instance, the Easybeats hit “Friday on My Mind” was not really written by an Australian though it was a No 1 hit in this country and we regarded the Easybeats as an Australian group. The members of the band came to Australia from the Netherlands and the United Kingdom when their families emigrated some years before the group’s success. “Friday on My Mind” was written in England as the group searched for international success after their rise to the top of the Australian pop music scene.
It’s stories like this that make the book a fascinating read. You can dip into it time and time again. Humphries brings together information that would take the rest of us a long time to find even if we knew where to look.
Aussie Rock Anthems is a celebration of great Australian music that we have loved, enjoyed and grown up with. We treasure the recordings we have of them even though technology for listening to them has changed beyond our wildest dreams since we first heard them. This collection is a snapshot of the music that has shaped the Australian pop and rock scene to the point where many of our homegrown musicians and songwriters are just as well known internationally as they are in their home country.
Glen Humphries is a journalist with the Illawarra Mercury, a chunk of that time as a music writer. He has written several books on the Wollongong music scene and one on Midnight Oil’s albums 10-1 and Red Sails in the Sunset. His previous books include Biff: Rugby League’s Infamous Fights, Jack Gibson’s Fur Coat and Sticky Wickets: Australian Cricket’s Controversies and Curiosities.
Aussie Rock Anthems: The Stories Behind Our Biggest Hit Songs
by Glen Humphries
(2024)
Gelding Street Press
ISBN 978 1 9226 6205 7
$39.99; 229pp