Never Gonna Die

'm in the middle of a shopping centre mate, it's going off!” No question about it, Mark Gable is loving life. Even the small stuff... wait, especially the small stuff, with the Choirboys frontman becoming a father for the sixth time last year. He also keeps himself honest through the week hosting 'The Awesome '80s' on NSW Central Coast radio station 2GO, while his infamous band of Aussie rock brothers continues to kick strong, 30 years since the release of their eponymous debut. What's the trick, one wonders? Gable affably fills in the blanks.

“The secret is: you're not going to die,” says the frontman, channelling the mantra he spruiked on the band's first single. “As much as you try and kill yourself, you're not going to die so you have to persist. And in that you go, 'Oh, man, I'm going to be around for another thirty, forty years, I might as well make myself happy.' It's really as simple as that.”

Don't let the band name fool you though; Gable ain't no saint. He's danced with the devil plenty in the past, suffering bouts of depression because of his excesses: “[I thought about] shutting the door on the band, shutting the door on myself; there's just been so many ups and downs.” 

But after a light bulb moment that he concedes was like “a smash on the side of the head with a cricket bat” he's played it straight down the line and never looked back. “It's seven years ago that I gave up drinking and drugs and all that crap, and since I decided to do that life has just been getting better and better.”

Part of the '80s domestic pub rock pack that also featured the likes of Chisel, the Oils and The Angels, Choirboys were in the midst of what Gable refers to as “halcyon days for Australian music”. 

“We, without a doubt, had the best live bands in the world happening at that time,” he enthuses. The quartet experienced success with their first record, the debut reaching #26 in the charts. However, it was with their 1987 single, Run To Paradise, cowritten with former guitarist Brad Carr, that the lads hit pay dirt. Nothing was the same after that.

“[We] created a song, almost by accident, that's become part of Australian culture, and definitely a part of Australian pop rock culture which still exists today. Everybody in this country... well, except for Julia Gillard because she didn't put it on the iPod she gave to Barack Obama, but almost everybody in this country's heard that song. It's taken on a life of its own and I'd like to say I'm proud of that, but I think it had very little to do with me or the band after the song was released. It just did something for the Australian public which still exists now. Young people love that song and older people love that song – it created some sort of history.”

Gable puts Choirboys' success, and indeed that of their contemporaries and rock's trailblazers before them, down to the songs. Not image, not attitude, not headlines – just the music. He laments that nowadays the importance of songwriting has diminished, though he's not about to dwell on the fact. The people still want the hits, and indeed Gable and the boys are happy to line them up and knock them down, again and again. “The quality of the songs and the intent behind the songs are so strong that it [just] keeps drawing people back.”

Choirboys will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 6 April - Surfers Paradise Festival, Gold Coast QLD
Saturday 20 April - Stone Music Festival, Sydney NSW