Blood + Thunder: The Sound Of Alberts - Part One Steve Bell

Writer/director Paul Clarke’s two-part documentary looks at how a small cabal of families and associates came together in the ‘60s and ‘70s and took Australia’s primal rock’n’roll to the world.

Unassuming businessman Ted Albert has visions of forging a national musical identity using the platform of his family’s publishing business, while at Villawood Migrant Hostel a group of teenage European immigrants – notably the Scottish Young family, English kid Stevie Wright and Dutchman Johannes van den Berg (soon to be known as Harry Vanda) – are using music to escape the drudgery of their new life. When these disparate worlds collide, the teen migrants now The Easybeats, the results are immediate and seismic. Despite the Albert family soon expanding to include names such as Ted Mulry, John Paul Young, Rose Tattoo, The Angels and of course their international flag bearers AC/DC, the real hero of this story is Ted Albert himself, the man equally at home in the boardroom and recording studio but who was driven by a passion for music, and the patronage he afforded to the incredible Harry Vanda/George Young songwriting team. With interviewees including Tim Rogers and Peter Garrett, the first part of Blood & Thunder documents the Albert’s crew taking the Aussie scene by the scruff of the neck – next stop the world.