Andrew Stafford Blog

The news that Stevie Wright – solo artist, singer for the Easybeats and, thanks to that band’s immortal single Friday On My Mind, arguably Australia’s first international pop star – has died at the age of 68 will not be

Potty-mouthed. Wilfully contrary. Ironically self-aware. Genre-hopping. These are all some of the obvious things that come to mind when thinking about Regurgitator. Describing the music, though, is harder: after more than 20 years, the Brisbane band formed by Quan Yeomans,

Every artist needs a few demons to get by, right? You Am I’s Tim Rogers knows he’s got ’em; he just doesn’t call them out by name: “They’re just some pushy friends, they’re on my couch, they’re on my knee.”

Martin Phillipps still has his leather jacket. It was bequeathed to him by his friend and band-mate Martyn Bull, who died of leukaemia in 1983, just as his group the Chills – arguably the pick of the many groups to

Years ago, a journalist asked the late Bon Scott whether he was the AC (alternate current) or DC (direct current) in his band. Scott’s response was as quick-witted and accurate as any of his best double entendres. “Neither,” he grinned.

Josh Ritter – American songwriter, novelist, near-neuroscientist – likes to run. “It’s the perfect exercise for me,” he says. For one thing, it’s portable: all you need is a pair of sneakers and you can run anywhere; especially to get

There’s an old joke, well known among music fans, about what happens when you play a country song backwards. There are a few variations, but generally, you get your wife back, your dog back, and you quit drinking. Less well

A new album by Robert Forster is almost always a challenge before it becomes a pleasure. For a start, there’s that voice, which hits fewer notes than Lou Reed on a less than perfect day. So there isn’t a great

The biggest problem one faces when writing a profile about Robert Forster is the knowledge that he could quite easily write it himself, and would probably prefer to. The lauded singer-songwriter – co-founder of Brisbane’s revered Go-Betweens; creator of six

I used to hate Cold Chisel. As a teenager in the 1980s, it was hard to avoid them. FM radio couldn’t get enough of them, and Khe Sanh was especially ubiquitous, pumped out of every muscle-car stereo at the beach

It’s tough to be critical of Polly Jean (PJ) Harvey. As an artist, her place in history is secure: hailed as the world’s best songwriter by Rolling Stone upon the release of her first album, Dry, in 1992, Harvey is

The recent re-emergence of the Sunnyboys on stages around the country has been a genuine feel-good story. Between roughly 1980 and 1984, the band – singer and guitarist Jeremy Oxley, his brother Peter on bass, Bil Bilson on drums and

Halfway through her gig at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image’s David Bowie exhibition, Melbourne singer-songwriter Jen Cloher introduces her own Bowie moment: her song David Bowie Eyes is an obvious nod to partner Courtney Barnett, standing on her

NB: This is a really old piece, from 1999. It was originally written for Rolling Stone (Australia) but never got published. I found it when I was going through some old papers at home – and thought I may as

People often talk about the fickle nature of the music business. Mark Callaghan, the former GANGgajang leader who has spent a long career in music publishing, knows it better than most. “It seems like everyone’s career is supercharged,” he says. “It

Chrissy Amphlett was a beautiful woman who was unafraid to be ugly. That was what I loved most about her: it was what made her such a riveting performer, as well as a genuinely intriguing personality. Fully aware of her

Sable Starr was punk’s Lolita. She was barely a teenager when she began attending shows in the early 1970s, quickly making her reputation as one of the leading groupies on Sunset Boulevarde. “Every rock star who came to Los Angeles

One for my French readers, on one of the great unsung Australian songwriters, Peter Milton Walsh, of the Apartments. Peter Milton Walsh was on a roll. It was 1996, and the singer-songwriter behind the Apartments – who had emerged from the