Being in a rock band isn’t easy, according to rhythm guitarist John Brewster, and he was quoting The Angels’ lead singer, Doc Neeson. It sounds a bit trite, but after seeing this film you take their point.
Directed by Madeleine Parry, the young talent behind the Emmy-award-winning Hannah Gadsby documentary Nanette, The Angels – Kickin’ Down the Door starts on safe ground with the story of how the band came about, on the inspired whim of Adelaide’s Brewster who convinced his brother Rick and their Irish friend Doc to give it a try.
Their early evolution was conventional: from a jug band at the Sussex Hotel, they transitioned to electric and lost their fans, only to win over a new pub crowd as The Keystone Angels and then The Angels. Through the 1970s they slowly tightened their sound into The Angels’ hallmark frenzied, thrumming wall of hard rock that fed off a beer-can crowd and was somehow very Australian.
They were a band who had a lot of luck, and a lot of bad luck. After a shaky start and with the bills mounting, they took off almost overnight and by the late 1970s were packing pubs whose owners didn’t care if the furniture was smashed. They sacked the drummer and brought in Chris Bailey on bass, which freed Neeson to develop his frontman persona, inspired stylistically by his love of German expressionism but increasingly fed by his own demons.
Parry and producer Peter Hanlon, a lover of punk music, accessed archival material, much of it from the band’s own records and most never seen before. We hear their music grow tighter and more powerful; guitars perfectly tuned and Neeson out front shredding himself as he channels possessed energy into the night.
All that was expected, and presented engagingly with animation breaking up the talking heads and sometimes-degraded music footage.
What was a surprise was the drama. From the start, tensions were in play between John Brewster, the good-looking older brother and control freak who took care of things and did the accounts, and Rick, who was quieter and probably nicer. Then there was Doc.
Tensions simmered as the band lived in each other’s pockets, working to pay off a huge debt run up when they recorded in America. Doc was drinking and threatened to leave eight times, marriages were crumbling, they were on the verge of breaking into the US market but were kicked off a major tour with The Kinks, apparently because Ray Davies was jealous.
They came home without capitalising on their growing American fan base, which was a mistake. In doing so, they encouraged other bands like INXS to break into the US, but they were left feeling their potential was never reached. Then everyone ganged up on John Brewster and kicked him out; at one point there were two bands touring, each with a Brewster in the line-up.
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The story is messy but what makes the film gripping, and a little sad, is seeing it through the eyes of the surviving members (Neeson and Bailey are dead) and glimpsing the raw hurt.
Parry has brought fresh, unbiased eyes to a story that unfolded largely before she was born, and it feels surprisingly intimate and revealing to watch a history we thought we knew, told from the inside.
The Angels: Kickin’ Down the Door opened the Adelaide Film Festival, which runs from October 19-30. It will screen again at the Odeon Star Semaphore on October 29.
Read our interview with Madeleine Parry and John Brewster here, and see more 2022 Adelaide Film Festival stories and reviews here.
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