ANGEL CITY

ANGEL CITY


Doc Neeson’s Quiet Return

By Martin Popoff



One of the classic hard rock front men of all time, Doc Neeson of Angels fame (Angel City in North America) is with us again. For those not familiar with the band, their big years in North America corresponded with their classic albums for Epic back in the low ‘80s, namely Face To Face, Darkroom, and Night Attack, the first two superlative, the last, a slight falter, even if ‘Fashion & Fame’ became quite a hit for the boys on these shores. As Max Webster is to Rush, Angel City were essentially the baby AC/DC, a Vanda and Young property with a similar sound to the Australian juggernaut, although slightly smarter of arrangement and more literary.

But things had turned very bad for this Australian treasure - a 1999 car accident, in which Doc was rear-ended by a large truck while jockeying for position at a toll booth, nearly killed the athletic front man. It certainly ended his tenure leading The Angels, and it also certainly caused Neeson a painful recuperation period – punctuated with depression, drink and drugs – of fully seven years, an event that Doc now calls his “Bob Dylan motorcycle accident.”

Fortunately, however, a comeback is in the works, featuring an innovative collection of live shows, and eventually, a new electric studio album under the moniker of Doc Neeson’s Angels. But for now, a new acoustic album of Angels classics called The Acoustic Sessions is on the launch pad.

“I won’t dwell on it,” says Doc, asked about that fateful day as well as what he’s going to do to erase the memory of it. “But it took me quite a time to recover. I had whiplash injuries and some residual spinal damage. Spinal tap, isn’t it? And I’ve still been recovering from that. Things have really improved a lot lately, and we’re about to go out on tour in several weeks time.”

“In the meantime, yes, I’ve been very pleasantly busy with doing an acoustic album of Angels classic songs. There’s a record company over here called Liberation, which you may know is a spin-off of Mushroom Records here in Australia. And they invited me… they’re doing a whole series with various Australian artists, doing songs from the catalogue, in an acoustic way. So I heard some of the albums of some of the artists, and they took it, it seems to me, very literally, like acoustic means they picked up an acoustic guitar and sort of strummed the songs. I’ve tried to use a broader idea of what acoustic meant; we’ve got pianos, violins, cellos - I know that all sounds very grand (laughs). But we’ve also got very weird instruments like a Buddhist meditation ball, that makes this weird sound that you’re supposed to focus on while you’re meditating. And we’ve just gone as far away from being electric as we could. And that’s been going on for about the last month. And as a matter of fact, I just got my very first copy of that record today. So it’s a very timely interview where having. But yes, although the songs are so changed, it’s wonderful. I love the new beauty that is in those songs.”

Prompted to name a few of the tracks worked up, Doc says there are 13 in all, including, “‘Take A Long Line’, ‘Marseille’, ‘Be With You’, ‘Shadow Boxer’, ‘I Ain’t The One’. One that came out really well was ‘Out Of The Blue’. There’s ‘Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again’, ‘Face The Day’, ‘No Secrets’, a new song called ‘Big Star’. It’s a very listenable album - quite rich in textures. We changed the keys so it wasn’t just sort of strident rock ‘n’ roll. What I wanted was something that reinterpreted the songs in a way where you might actually listen to them, rather than just put them on for… you know, in Australia, you probably put our albums on for a barbecue, or when you want to get off your face.”

Further plans, as stated, include a second album. “Yes, that’s right. I’ve got a collection of other songs which might come out this year, or might come out early next year. So really, I’ve got two albums ready to go. And my band is called Doc Neeson’s Angels, which very nicely becomes DNA, the DNA of rock. Although I’m actually not calling it DNA. But it’s suggested. Then, here in Australia, for a long time there has been a show called Countdown, which might be like Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. So what they’ve done for this Countdown is they’ve gathered artists together for live shows which are touring the country. And we’re having Martha from The Motels coming over, Plastic Bertrand, Rick Springfield, an ex-Aussie, who is coming over. I can’t remember all the artists, but it’s going to be a huge show from the era. I guess you could say it’s a show aimed at the baby boomers. And last time they did one of these, it just absolutely stormed the theaters. They couldn’t print enough tickets. And I’m going out on that this year, which will be happening September, early October. And then I’m actually taking the band to the Middle East, to play. We’ll be going to Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, to play to Australian and American troops over there. I don’t know what they call it, but it’s like the Bob Hope tour.”

That’s a physical challenge to yourself right there!

“Absolutely. And I’m not really very good in hot weather. So I hope I don’t go into meltdown (laughs). But I’m looking forward to doing it. I’m not really interested in the politics of what’s going on. My own personal view is that it was a mistake all along, but I won’t be pushing any political line. I’m just going there to give support to young men and women who have just been thrown into the battlefield. My father was in the British army for 22 years. I was also called up for National Service here, during the Vietnam War. I didn’t go there. I did all the infantry training, but I ended up in New Guinea as a sergeant in the Army. So I’ve got some understanding of what it’s like to be away from home, and of course, being in the military. So I’m just going to support those sailors and soldiers and airmen-type people. So that should be a pretty exciting time, and a challenge. It’s like… they have doctors without frontiers. My idea is that there is music without frontiers.”

Continued rehabilitation is key to making all of this happen. “I go to the gym four days a week now,” explains Neeson. “It’s mostly light weights and stretching, and just building up stamina. For a long time after the accident I was hardly able to move. So I lost quite a bit of mobility. In terms of just walking around normally I’m fine. But in terms of getting back into concert performance level, I figured, yeah, I should just go and do some gym regularly. I tell you, that trainer must have x-ray vision, because she showed me muscles I didn’t even know I had. It’s good.”

I asked Doc what the elements were within his live presentation that earned him his reputation as a front man to be feared.

“I've always been a very athletic person. I've been, in Australia, the South Australian high jump champion. I've been the South Pacific high jump champion. My running times were comparable to people in the Commonwealth, in the Olympic Games, let's say, in the 1940s or ‘50s, and that's without any training. I did have a trainer that wanted to pick up on that and make me take it seriously, but I wanted to play the guitar more. So I ended up not following up that athletic side of me. But I took it on the stage, and at one point I was described as Mick Jagger on speed. So I was a very energetic performer. I used to see bands on TV doing their hit songs, and they just stood there and did the song; there was no performance. I used to feel shortchanged when people did that. And a lot of people found it quite okay and gave a big cheer when it finished, but I wasn’t just motivated internally. It was just that… I didn't actually have an aspiration to be in a rock band. I was more interested in becoming a film director in my early years. But I just thought that the public deserves a bit more on stage. So that's where I based a lot of my performance ideas around, expressing the song, not just singing it.”

It’s been notes that the Cheap Trick guys and Meat Loaf went out of their way to be nice to the guys. Not so with The Kinks…

“The Kinks. That was such a disappointment. I was a real fan of The Kinks. Ray Davies’ songwriting to me is one of the best in the world. And all the way through the tour, Ray Davies was really very aloof to us. The rest of the band were great, by the way, including his brother. But he just sort of kept himself aloof and away from us. The situation seemed to be… I think this was about ‘83 or ’84. The Kinks had had somewhat of revival, and Ray was looking to make the utmost of that opportunity with the band. I think he always felt that The Kinks were always underappreciated in North America. And he's got this band onstage from Australia, and I'm sure he probably thought, right, some colonials. England has always thought that they were the key to it all, the center of the universe. So I think he actually thought we would be fairly ineffective. But what happened instead was that we had half an hour before The Kinks came on and we just went for it. And I had a radio mic, which meant I could run all around the stage, and before long I was jumping into the audience and singing to people in the audience. And he got really upset about that. Because we were actually getting encores. Which is fairly unusual for a support band, to have to do encores. And then he started getting his crew to put strips of tape on each side of my microphone stand, about five yards or so on either side of me, suggesting this was only how far I could go on stage. And that didn't stop me. What's a piece of tape? It's not the Berlin Wall. So I kept using the whole of the stage. Then he told his lighting people to cut down on our lighting, and they only gave us half the lighting that we normally got. And still we got encores. And that was OK; we were just happy to be going down well. For Ray Davies, it was a threat. And on the night before the whole thing was to come to a peak, really, at Madison Square Garden in New York, he kicked us off the tour. That was his paranoia, but for us, actually, it was a bummer, because we had a lot of record company people lined up, media people. You know the way it goes - it was a showcase for us. And he kicked us off. And it was really bad timing for us. It meant that where we had thought we would catch the next way in North America, because of his actions we missed the wave, and it really slowed things down for us a lot.”

With the rest of the Angels also touring and recording as we speak - as, in fact, The Angels - the obvious question is whether a reunion of the two camps could be in the cards. Seems doubtful, given that there was indeed tension building between the guys even before Doc’s car accident.

“Well, yes there was baggage,” muses Doc tentatively. “I should think it’s the kind of baggage that a relationship of 20 years or more builds up. We were in each other’s pockets for ages and ages. I had the feeling that we were all, in our own personal growth, moving in different directions, but we were staying together for the sake of the band. And probably, in a more basic way, the band was bringing us all an income and we all had food to put on the table. And things were happening internally. We had grown a bit irritated by some of the behavioral ways of each of us - we were all bugging each other. There was a bit of a feeling that (laughs)… we’re all in this spaceship together, so we can’t really afford to have a big bust-up. But when the bust-up came, which was the accident, that was a bit of a relief valve for everyone.”

“But they were pretty resentful, it seems to me, that I was no longer available to sing in the band. I’d been told by my doctor, if I continued to perform, I would end up in a wheelchair. I had bad whiplash and nerve damage to my back and the like. So it seemed to me they were more resentful because the goose couldn’t lay the golden egg anymore. And I felt very disappointed by that. You know, I think, we had all at one stage been as close as brothers. But then with time, and maybe the frustration and the lack of success in North America - even though we were a very successful band here in Australia - that kind of lack of world success, maybe with some of the guys, that got put back on me when I couldn’t be the lead singer anymore. What do you call it when someone gets the blame for a situation? Fall guy – I was the fall guy. Now, I’m being told by my doctor, if I don’t stop now, and he actually said, ‘Consider yourself retired.’ It was a huge shock to me. And they were saying to me, ‘Get your act together and get back on the road with us.’ And there’s very little support in that. But to them, it meant that I wasn’t there to help generate the income. And I’m thinking, ‘Gee, I thought you guys would be a lot more supportive than you are.’ And a few other things came out after that, and I just now feel… I respect them as musicians, but I don’t really want to spend time around them. I’ll leave it at that. I just think that... I don’t like their energy.”

Fair enough, but is the voice strong?

“Oh yeah, it’s good. I’ve had lots of compliments about, you know, ‘Oh, Doc you’ve still got it,’ that kind of rave. Which is… I’m not going out looking for pats on the back, but on the other hand, it’s encouraging that people are still excited by what I have to offer. I’m very excited by future prospects now. I’ve got a lot on, and there’s a lot of support in Australia for me. You know, the doctor is back in the house (laughs).”

See www.liberation.com.au for more, although at press time, there’s nothing up there yet about Doc’s contribution to the series.