Happy Men

Young Sydney outfit The Sunnyboys took the Australian rock world by storm almost from the moment they played their first gig in 1980, winning over all and sundry with their high-energy show and seemingly endless supply of catchy, sincere and evocative songs. Looking back it seems incongruous that the original version of the band survived only a little over four years, given the lasting impression that they stamped on the local scene. When this 'classic' line-up pulled up stumps at the end of 1984 – largely due to the tragic onset of schizophrenia which afflicted their brilliant frontman and songwriter Jeremy Oxley, exacerbated by the band's gruelling schedule – they left behind three albums and a string of timeless singles, and that was that.

While Oxley revived the band name a couple of times in the intervening years with different players, and the original line-up toured once in 1991 behind the Plays The Best compilation, few pundits expected to see the classic Sunnyboys incarnation play live ever again, especially as Oxley's health deteriorated even further as time passed. Then, in mid-2012, rumours began to circulate that The Sunnyboys were going to play the Hoodoo Gurus-curated Dig It Up! shindig in Sydney, and sure enough that event's line-up was soon bolstered by the addition of an act billed as Kids In Dust – the name they occasionally used in the '80s when testing new material – and The Sunnyboys were back. On the day in question their return was not merely successful – it was a complete and utter triumph, a packed Enmore Theatre crowd well-and-truly blown away by this incredible resurgence.

“Oh yeah, it was a huge buzz – it was massive!” marvels guitarist Richard Burgman of the Enmore gig. “There were people bawling their eyes out, people singing every word and people with rapturous looks on their faces – the whole place was jumping up and down, it was wonderful. It was a much better response than we hoped for, and everything we could have wanted.”

According to Burgman the timing was spot on to reform the original line-up – rounded out by Jeremy's brother Peter on bass and Bil Bilson on drums – given recent turns of events.

“In a manner of speaking it was easy, because [promoter and label head] Tim Pittman's been chasing us to do a reunion for years, but Jeremy's not been in a good place for years – years and years in fact. But lately that's turned around; he got married about a year ago and his wife is a nurse and she's just exactly the right person for him – she's got the right temperament, she's got the right lifestyle, she lives in the right place, she's got the experience, she's got a calm, steady hand and she loves him. It's great! He's a lucky guy!

“So Pete was thinking, 'Well, Jeremy's in pretty good condition,' and when Tim Pittman asked Pete [about playing at Dig It Up!], Pete asked Jeremy, thinking that maybe they could do an acoustic set with just the two of them in one of the smaller rooms, maybe just half a dozen Sunnyboys songs on acoustic guitar. That would be fun, right? Just as an experiment, just to see if Jeremy wanted to do something. But Jeremy said, 'Nah, that doesn't sound like fun at all. But I'll do electric!' And Pete went, 'Oh, okay!' and it was on!”

Jeremy Oxley in particular was in incredible form at the reunion (and subsequent shows since), and according to Burgman this was in part due to being surrounded by familiar faces.

“Bil is a monster of a drummer, he really is – he's gotten better and better and better – and he's the bedrock of the whole thing. He's totally in command of what he's doing, so the rest of us can just play the song – we don't need to worry about anything else. And that's the lynchpin, because if I'm good and Pete's good – because we know that Bil's good – then Jeremy's good, because he's got the triangle behind him to keep him comfortable and safe, and that's why it works so well.”

The Sunnyboys' music still sounds incredibly fresh, presumably because Oxley's muse wasn't tied exclusively to the present, their sound certainly different to what was happening around them in the then-thriving Sydney scene.

“I think we did play different music to everyone else, ever so slightly,” Burgman suggests. “We were 'of our time', but I also think that we were doing things in a way that was unique to us. It wasn't like anybody else, but if you looked closely you could see things in there where the influences were – you could see The Doors and The Stooges and The MC5, and Elvis Costello's in there and The Animals and The Yardbirds, all sorts of stuff from our childhoods. Even The Allman Brothers if you look hard enough.

“But one of the things I noticed when we played last time is that at the end of the day the band sounds like it does because it's the four of us that are in it. The band sounds the way that it does because there's a certain sound that we get when we play. You can find another guitar player to replace me and another bass player to replace Pete and another drummer to replace Bil – you can find people to do the jobs – but it really wouldn't be the same. It wasn't like anybody else, because the only thing we knew how to do was play like ourselves. Except for Jeremy of course – he could do anything – but the rest of us mere mortals who backed him up, we sound the way we sound because that's the way we sound.”

After setting the scene alight with their self-titled debut album in '81, things began getting tougher for the band – under immense pressure to deliver from labels and management – and amidst Oxley's illness and diminishing musical returns they decided to call it quits, but in a way befitting the band's already considerable legacy.

“[Jeremy] was getting ill – we didn't know what it was but we knew something was amiss, certainly,” Burgman reflects. “It was pretty obvious. Near the end especially it was pretty obvious, but we decided that the best thing to do was to do the best we could. We made sure that we went out of there not owing anybody any money when we finished – we did that last tour to pay all the bills. Everything got paid off and we walked away clean. We did that because we wanted to maintain our integrity – we wanted to make sure nobody had anything negative to say about us, because we'd tried as hard as we could to make it work. If Jeremy's ill, he's ill – that's beyond our control – but those things that we did have control over, we did our utmost to make sure it worked as best we could.”

Sunnyboys will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 26 January - Rochford Wines, Coldstream VIC
Sunday 27 January - Leconfield Wines, McLaren Vale SA
Saturday 2 February - Bimbadgen Winery, Pokolbin NSW
Sunday 3 February - Sirromet Wines, Mount Cotton QLD
Wednesday 6 February - Kings Park, Perth WA