{"id":71012,"date":"2025-10-11T00:21:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T00:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/71012\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T00:21:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T00:21:06","slug":"why-harry-vanda-is-coming-out-of-retirement-at-79-the-world-is-going-to-rack-and-ruin-i-couldnt-help-myself-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/71012\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Harry Vanda is coming out of retirement at 79: \u2018The world is going to rack and ruin. I couldn\u2019t help myself!\u2019 | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

What would make Harry Vanda \u2013 the last surviving Easybeat, the man who co-wrote Friday on My Mind<\/a>, the original architect of what we came to know as Oz rock \u2013 come out of retirement at the age of 79 to release his first solo single?<\/p>\n

To any Australian music<\/a> enthusiast, the very thought is unlikely enough. But here comes Devil Loose: three minutes of stomping, sneering garage rock that could have been released in 1966.<\/p>\n

Vanda\u2019s familiar grin beams back at me from his studio on our Zoom call. He\u2019s not one to waste words. \u201cActually, the state of the world gave me a bit of a shock. It was so bloody awful. The place is going to rack and ruin! So, I couldn\u2019t help myself! I had to make a comment!\u201d<\/p>\n

And who is this devil we\u2019re talking about? \u201cJust the devil,\u201d he answers. Does that devil happen to be in the White House? \u201cI don\u2019t get involved in politics,\u201d he says, still grinning. \u201cToo dangerous!\u201d<\/p>\n

Vanda looks well, which is a relief. Snowy Fleet, the Easybeats\u2019 drummer, died earlier this year. Singer Stevie Wright died in 2015<\/a>, having lived longer than anyone expected. George Young<\/a> \u2013 Vanda\u2019s songwriting and production partner \u2013 followed a couple of years later.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2007, Australian Musician magazine nominated the meeting of Harry Vanda and George Young at Villawood Migrant Hostel in 1964 as the single most significant event in Australian music history. The rest of the Easybeats were there, too.<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s a detention centre, a place of untold misery \u2013 but Vanda quickly reminds me it was no bed of roses in 1964, either. \u201cIt really wasn\u2019t the sort of place where you want to live, you know? It was a roof out of the rain.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was bass player Dick Diamonde (who died in 2024) who introduced Vanda to George Young, older brother of Malcolm and Angus. Later, George\u2019s strident rhythm guitar playing would provide the blueprint for Malcolm\u2019s colossal stop-start riffs in AC\/DC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

George also provided the tricky bridge in Friday on My Mind, a global hit in 1967, which was voted Australia\u2019s best song of all time by an industry panel in 2001. But Vanda isn\u2019t interested in the song\u2019s cultural standing. Instead, he reduces it to a simple musical equation: \u201cIt was bloody almost impossible to get back to the chorus,\u201d he says; it was George\u2019s choppy chord progression that brought the song back into the key of A.<\/p>\n

The song became immortal, covered by David Bowie on his album Pin Ups among many other artists, but the Easybeats fizzled within a few years. Wright went solo, scoring a huge hit with the Vanda & Young-penned epic Evie<\/a> in 1973.<\/p>\n

The Easybeats circa 1968 \u2013 with Vanda second from right. Photograph: GAB Archive\/Redferns<\/p>\n

As house producers for Albert Productions, Vanda & Young were unstoppable, writing and producing almost the entire career of John Paul Young<\/a> (no relation) and producing all the early recordings by AC\/DC, as well as the Angels, Rose Tattoo, and too many more to mention.<\/p>\n

They also formed a studio project called Flash and the Pan \u2013 Vanda was Flash \u2013 who recorded six albums somewhere between disco and new wave. One song, Walking in the Rain, ended up as the lead track on Grace Jones\u2019s legendary album Nightclubbing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up to Saved for Later<\/p>\n

Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia’s culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

There have been hundreds of other covers: Suzi Quatro shredded Evie, Rod Stewart tackled Stevie Wright\u2019s Hard Road, and the Bay City Rollers did John Paul Young\u2019s Yesterday\u2019s Hero. But Vanda\u2019s favourite, he says, is Good Times by Jimmy Barnes and Keith Urban<\/a> \u2013 not, to my surprise, the earlier cover by Barnsey and INXS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve got quite a few tunes\u2019: Vanda on the future of his solo career. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

He becomes more animated talking about AC\/DC. Years ago, in an interview with Rolling Stone, Vanda declared It\u2019s a Long Way to the Top as his favourite Australian song, but he\u2019s not a fan of the group\u2019s current iteration, led by Angus Young and new boy Brian Johnson, who replaced Bon Scott in 1980. \u201cWhen Malcolm was with them, they were unbelievably good. When Malcolm died, it got very difficult; they had to get other people in and just lost it. They really lost their togetherness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark McEntee, lead guitarist of Divinyls, calls Vanda the father of Australian music. He recorded Devil Loose with Vanda (the two have known each other for decades). Divinyls once covered another Easybeats hit, I\u2019ll Make You Happy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved that song, that sound,\u201d McEntee tells the Guardian. \u201cI loved everything about the inventiveness of it. They were a great rock band, the Easybeats. There ain\u2019t many that come in that calibre. You can count \u2019em on two hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Will there be more new material? \u201cI\u2019ve got quite a few tunes, but I have not been beavering away, no,\u201d Vanda says. \u201cThey either come or they don\u2019t. And they generally haven\u2019t for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, who knows? \u201cThere\u2019s no shortage of material \u2026 maybe, with Mark. He\u2019s got some good ideas that fit my type of thinking. I\u2019m just looking for exciting songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Devil Loose is out now, accompanied by a three-part podcast called Devil Loose: The Life and Music of Harry Vanda. The final episode is out 13 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What would make Harry Vanda \u2013 the last surviving Easybeat, the man who co-wrote Friday on My Mind,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-71012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}