For the first time in history, we have a genuine rock fan in the Lodge.
Sure, Scott Morrison loved Tina Arena – he said his interest in her music was “bordering on unhealthy”. And ScoMo loved to strum Dragon’s April Sun In Cuba on his ukulele, which can never be unseen.
Then there was John Howard, who claimed to be a Bob Dylan fan – but for his music and not his lyrics. Which is a curious thing to say.
And before entering the federal parliament, Paul Keating managed a ’60s garage rock group called The Ramrods, saying he took them “from nowhere to obscurity”.
By the time he became PM, Keating preferred classical to rock. But he genuinely loves music, saying it sets his mood for the day.
“Music, for a mind, is like an electric current for an electric motor,” Keating believes. “Once the current comes and the magnetic impulses turn it … it’s like that when the music comes into your mind and you start thinking about other things. Suddenly you think, ‘We can do this, we can do that’, if you let the music carry you along.”
But Anthony Albanese is the real deal when it comes to rock. He goes to gigs and has record players at the Lodge, Kirribilli House, and in his office at Parliament House.
Albo’s collection of rock ’n’ roll T-shirts occasionally gets him into trouble, and he will sometimes drop lyrics into his speeches. At the start of the 2022 election campaign, for example, Albo declared: “Hey Ho, Let’s Go!”
The Prime Minister has programmed Rage, with his selections including The Triffids’ Wide Open Road, Hunters & Collectors’ The Slab, and Midnight Oil’s Lucky Country.
He has also worked as DJ Albo and been an ambassador for Record Store Day.
“We all know independent record stores are important in our communities as small businesses, generating economic activity and providing jobs, but the importance of independent record stores extends well beyond economics,” Albo explained. “It goes to our culture, our lived experience and the way we understand and engage with the world.”
Albo even quoted Nick Cave’s Grinderman in parliament:
“Do yourself a tremendous favour and go to a record store today. The relatively mild exertion of getting off your fat, computer-shackled arse and venturing out to find the object of your desire, the thrill of moving through actual space and time, through row upon row of records and the tactile ecstasy of fondling the freshly discovered treasure – all this will augment and enrich the mental associations the music invokes in you for the rest of your life.”
And Albo has kindly provided cover quotes for local music books, including Stuart Coupe’s Shake Some Action (“Stuart’s passion and love for music is infectious”) and Murray Engleheart’s Radio Birdman biography (“Radio Birdman live brought loyalty as strong and powerful as their music. Yeah hup!”).
Albo’s neighbours took him to his first gig – AC/DC at Paddy’s Market in Sydney. He was 12. “They just blew me away, it was fantastic.”
A few years later, Albo loved seeing Midnight Oil at Selina’s. He would sleep on the beach at Coogee if he missed the last bus home.
As the Oils were becoming one of the biggest bands in the land, John Kennedy scored his first radio hit, with JFK And The Cuban Crisis’ The Texan Thing placed on high rotation on 2JJJ in 1983.
Around that time, the band played a party at a house in Enmore, in Sydney’s inner west.
“It was someone’s birthday,” Kennedy recalls in his forthcoming memoir, Have Songs, Will Travel.
“I had no idea whose. I was just there to play a gig so the band could pick up some cash to go towards rehearsal costs and future recordings.”
Fast forward nearly 40 years and Kennedy was doing a gig at the Marrickville Town Hall to celebrate the election of the Albanese Labor Government.
“It was well known that Albo was a big fan of local indie music,” the singer notes.
“And after the speeches, while he worked the room shaking hands with the Labor faithful, we provided some of that local indie music. We were finishing our second-last song when Albo returned to the stage, stood in front of the band and took a selfie of himself, as is usually the case with a selfie, with us in the background.
“He then turned to me and said, ‘You played at my 20th birthday party in Enmore.’”
The following day, Kennedy contacted Albo’s PA and asked if he could get a copy of the photo. The picture soon landed in his inbox, and later that day he got a “lovely text from Albo himself, thanking us for doing the gig”.
The singer replied, saying that his band would be available to play at Albo’s next birthday party.
“It just goes to show,” Kennedy concludes. “Always be kind to the people you meet on the way up because when you meet them again on the way down, they could be the Prime Minister of Australia.”
John Kennedy – whose musical journey started in Brisbane – now lives in Spain. He’s coming home to promote his memoir as well as his new album, The Berlin Trilogy (And Other Collaborations).
John Kennedy’s Have Songs, Will Travel will be published by AndAlso Books in November, with pre-orders available now.
