"We Would Have Been Huge In Japan In The '80s"

The last few years have provided an incredible reversal of fortunes for one of the truly great outfits of Australian rock’n’roll, the Sunnyboys. After a sadly short original tenure the band split suddenly in mid-1984 after just three albums, and — despite a couple of sporadic reformations in the interim, mostly of which occurred minus several key players — had pretty much lain dormant ever since, even as their music echoed down the generations.

In 2012, however, the Sunnyboys were coaxed back into the limelight at the behest of the Hoodoo Gurus to play their Dig It Up! shindig in Sydney — where they were billed under old pseudonym Kids In Dust to relieve performance anxiety — and that incredible return prompted an almost unbelievable outpouring of support and emotion, proving such an unmitigated success that the supposedly one-off performance resulted in one of the greatest Lazarus-like comebacks of all time.

Frontman and chief songwriter Jeremy Oxley had been fighting the debilitating mental illness schizophrenia for decades — it was this affliction being left undiagnosed which was the major reason for the band’s demise in the first place — but was now being treated properly and in the right headspace to tread the boards once more, so the band fired back into action once more.

With the unrelenting support of his original bandmates — brother Peter Oxley (bass), Richard Burgman (guitar) and Bil Bilson (drums) — Jeremy and the Sunnyboys once more became a welcome fixture on the live circuit, touring regularly and playing some special performances such as Meredith Music Festival and a show at the iconic Sydney Opera House. The Sunnyboys were back, to the delight of both the band and their ravenous fanbase.

Of course, underpinning this unlikely resurgence was the timeless music they created during their original stint together. The Sunnyboys’ eponymous 1981 debut is considered one of the most important albums in the rich tapestry of Oz rock history — driven by its cavalcade of great tunes such as Alone With You, Happy Man, Trouble In My Brain and Tunnel Of My Love — so accordingly that album was reissued in deluxe format (remastered and with substantial bonus material) in early 2014.

Those rough mixes were a revelation for us all – we were jumping around going, ‘See! See! We did make a good record!’

Now it’s the turn of the rest of the band’s catalogue from that early period — namely 1982’s Individuals and 1984’s Get Some Fun — to get this enhanced treatment and be pushed out into the world once more.

In the case of Individuals, however, the overhaul goes ever further than that — it’s actually a predominantly different mix altogether, comprising the rough mixes that producer Lobby Loyde had compiled during the album’s recording in New Zealand, ultimately a far more accurate representation of the album that the band had set out to record than has ever been available to the public before.

“The reissue that’s coming out are rough mixes that we found a couple of years ago — we re-mastered those because we didn’t like the mix of the Individuals album when it came out,” Peter Oxley explains of the change. “We didn’t find the rough mixes — when Lobby Loyde passed away, he left all of his stuff to a chap who owns Aztec Records, and he found this tape, I think it was a half-inch master, that just said ‘Sunnyboys Rough Mixes’. So he contacted Warner Music and they contacted us and said, ‘This guy’s got this tape of yours,’ and it turned out to be rough mixes of Individuals. And they sound great!

“We were going, ‘Oh man, that’s how the record should have sounded!’ We were really glad to get those so that we could prove to ourselves that we hadn’t made a bad-sounding record. When Individuals came out, we were still young, and we realised soon after that that we didn’t really have much control over what happened in the big world because when we heard that original mix we went, ‘Oh no, that sounds awful! Please can we remix it?’ Essentially we weren’t allowed to, so those rough mixes were a revelation for us all – we were jumping around going, ‘See! See! We did make a good record!’”

Even though this travesty is in the process of being rectified, the emergence of these fresher mixes must have left the band with mixed feelings?

“It did make us angry at the time, and I think it really knocked the steam out of us,” Oxley reflects. “At the time, it sort of stopped us in our tracks basically — because we weren’t happy with how it sounded, we had great difficulty in playing those songs live; we sort of just avoided it, which is really unfortunate because I think that there’s some really fantastic songs on that Individuals record. We’re just happy that we’ve got the opportunity to put out these mixes and say, ‘Here’s what we almost would have been able to make.’

“What we think happened is that Lobby did some rough mixes while we were in New Zealand — just the rough mixes you do when you make a record — and then he just put them away. He just put them in a box and that was it. Because to mix the album [for release] he took the record to America — we weren’t quite sure why that happened, but it’s what happened. These versions are so clear — you can hear all of the instruments and you can hear our vocals — it sounds really fresh, actually; we were, like, ‘Yes, thank goodness.’ When Individuals came out it was really an awful muddy mess basically, with that horrible snare drum sound — now it seems like real drums.”

Individuals’ genesis had been a tough time for the band anyway, their huge live workload and then the expectation to deliver a new album so soon after their debut's release resulted in a lot of collective pressure.

“There was a lot of pressure. And in hindsight it wasn’t necessary, especially that pressure from the record company, but we sort of just did what we were told basically,” Oxley chuckles. “That’s just what we did.”

Get Some Fun is also an underrated affair, with Jeremy Oxley’s songwriting undergoing a quite fascinating evolution.

“It’s been great revisiting that as well — it’s a pretty good record,” Oxley enthuses. “There’s some fantastic guitar that Jeremy plays on it, like that guitar part from Lovers (On Another Planet’s Hell) — that’s not a loop, that’s him playing it all the way through the song. It’s wild. He was getting heavier [in his songwriting], in both the sound and the chord structure. He was sort of moving slightly away from that pure pop that he’d been writing so well. At the time he was really influenced by Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew [of UK prog rockers King Crimson], they were the guitar players that he really loved so he was trying to get that sort of texture happening in the songs. On [1977 David Bowie single] Heroes Robert Fripp plays on that, and all that textural guitar stuff was what Jeremy was really into.”

To record Get Some Fun, the four mates decamped to London, which in turn resulted in some good times as they wrote and then hit the studio, although their best intentions were thwarted by some questionable label and management decisions.

“It was great to be in another land — or on another land — but of course Jeremy was struggling slightly with his demons there, so it was pretty intense,” Oxley remembers. “We never actually toured anywhere overseas, but when we were in London we played a couple of nights at the Marquee Club, which were really good and we played really well, and we played at the 100 Club just for fun — it’s a tiny little room, a funny place. But we were just hoping that we could get a record out somewhere.

We would have been huge in Japan in the ‘80s, don’t you reckon? I could see us when we were in our twenties … going crazy in Japan!

"It was a very funny period — looking back, Mushroom Records wanted to sign us with some big-name record deal but no one really wanted to know about it, so that was the end of it — there was no, ‘Oh c’mon, let’s just put the record out on a little independent label,’ so then at least we could have played some shows. That’s how bands like The Triffids and Died Pretty and The Birthday Party and The Go-Betweens did it — all of those bands who started hanging out in Europe, they got their records out on smaller labels and just played. But for some reason that was not in our record company’s mindset to do that sort of thing. I think we did have a release in France on Closer Records — they put out our albums — but that was about it. We would have been huge in Japan in the ‘80s, don’t you reckon? I could see us when we were in our twenties — those spunky little Sunnyboys guys — going crazy in Japan! They should have sent us there.”

And despite their Marquee show in London being anecdotally awesome, it also resulted in some strange misconceptions about the Aussie larrikins.

“We were a really tight band and we played really well, and we could be quite heavy sometimes too, but back then we all had really short hair and the feedback from all the record companies that were in attendance was all about our haircuts!” Oxley marvels. “They all said, ‘Are these guys a skinhead band?’ Which was really strange because we were all just little surfers from Australia with short hair.”

Once they returned to their homeland things sadly ground to a halt during Get Some Fun’s touring cycle, Jeremy’s illness meaning that he could no longer suffer the intense demands of life on the road.

“It was sad, but it was also becoming extremely difficult to play and Jeremy just didn’t want to play anymore,” his brother muses. “We didn’t know why or for what reasons, but it was sort of, like, ‘Oh well, that’s the end’, because it was becoming very uncomfortable for everybody. Of course, years later, we finally put two and two together and went, ‘Ohhh, that’s why!’, but at the time we were just like, ‘Oh well, Jeremy’s sick to hell of doing this and he wants to play some music with different people.’ We kind of took it in our stride really, but now knowing — even five or six years after we did split — the state of Jeremy’s health and how much he was probably suffering at the time as well, it all makes total sense how it went down.”

We never did think that we would have the opportunity to play together again, and, even if we did, whether we had any fans or how the response to us playing would be.

Which must make this incredible second phase of the Sunnyboys existence even more special for those involved.

“It’s quite surreal,” Oxley admits. “I still can’t quite believe that it’s happening, that we’re back and playing. Even though we’re playing in March and it’s mostly sold out everywhere — it’s like, ‘Wow! That’s incredible!’ It’s something that’s really treasured by the four of us in the band, because we never did think that we would have the opportunity to play together again, and, even if we did, whether we had any fans or how the response to us playing would be. The response has been just fantastic — everybody’s just really enjoying themselves, which is a great thing.”

The response has been so overwhelming from the Sunnyboys’ fans both new and old that you couldn’t really imagine their return having fared much better.

“I know!” Oxley thunders. “It’s pretty strange actually. It was pretty scary before Kids In Dust — before we played that first Enmore show — because we didn’t know what was going to happen, and if Jeremy was going to feel good and pull it off, but he’s just been the ultimate professional. He knew all the songs, had it all down, and all of us — as soon as we started rehearsing, which was just a couple of days before that show — after two songs we went, ‘Yes, we can do it!’ We all knew we could still play, but we didn’t know whether it was going to be a forced Sunnyboys sound or completely natural Sunnyboys sound just like where we left off, and it ended up being like the latter. I think that’s a great thing.”