Since 1974 The Angels have wowed audiences at pubs, clubs, festivals and concerts with their high energy brand of Australian rock riffs.

The band's sound has become legendary across the country. Their unique approach to pumping up an audience is synonomous with rocking out while holding a drink in your hand after a hard days work.

There are few, if any, groups in the world who can hold up an ongoing reputation for live performances like the status acheived by The Angels over the course of their constant and relentless evolution.

The Greatest 'Live' Hits album contains a special selection of 40 recordings from gigs across their career and who knows... maybe you were there!

22 - Dogs Are Talking - Beyond Salvation Live, 1990
The funniest thing we remember about this is playing it at Cessnock Jail. We were worried about playing it because snitches in Australian prisons are called 'dogs'. But the inmates all loved it and sang along.

23 - Shadow Boxer - La Trobe Uni, 1979
This song was notable for the way Doc used to perform it. He'd be manic. He'd choose a guy in the front row and start by gently smacking him on the face and do the full boxing routine and they'd have a shadow-boxing bout between them during the solo.

24 - Can't Shake It - La Trobe Uni, 1979
Again Doc's performance while singing 'got a monkey on my back' was stunning. The way he used to perform that line was like there was a real live monkey on his back. He was very cool. It was a great opportunity for the band to stretch out in the instrumental where Chris would play some lovely bass, while John and Rick would play with the riff.

25 - Live It Up - St Leonard's Park, 1977
This was from the Double J concert in St Leonard's park and was mixed by Keith Walker. This one began as a Bo Diddley jam with blues harmonica, a great song to play.

26 - Mr Damage - Bombay Rock, 1983
This was initially written after Rick met a bikie called 'Damage' at the Comb and Cutter pub in Blacktown. The venue had exposed beams in the ceiling and guys would hang off the beams. The place was jammed like sardines. Rick went home and sat up all night writing 'Mr Damage'. It became a huge song for us live.

27 - Marseilles - Bombay Rock, 1983
We almost always finish our live set with Marseilles. Written by John in desperate times. This live take is a great example of Doc working the audience. He would often get a girl up on stage during the break down.

28 - Eat City - Narara, 1983
Jim Hilbun played sax on this. Rick basically wrote it, piecing together lyrics from Doc's notebooks.

29 - Take A Long Line - La Trobe Uni, 1979
This is the famous song where Doc would hold the towel above his head at the beginning. It was Rick's song and always got a huge response live. We used to rehearse in a basement in Balmain. It'd get so hot in there that we'd strip down to singlets and we'd work day after day. We would write new songs during the day and would often play the song that night. Fame hadn't come along in those days.

30 - Comin' Down - Elizabethan Theatre, 1987
After The Rain was the single and we included a few live tracks on it. The photography from that EP was from the Tivoli in Adelaide. It had a mezzanine and it was wall to wall people wherever you looked. Back in those days we had a fantastic, dedicated road crew, Ashley Swinfield, Bob Daniels and Ray Hawkins. We used to play this song in the 'run home' when we were closing our set.

31 - City Out Of Control - Bombay Rock, 1983
Back in those days it was a chance for John to get out the back for a cigarette (normal or 'funny'). Rick would do a long intro with his whammy bar imitating cars and the sounds of the city. It'd build to a crescendo…it was a wonderful stage moment.

32 - Fashion And Fame - Bombay Rock, 1983
One of our roadies was thrown out by the bouncers before we played. But we got him back in…crazy days. It was a popular song with the fans. It was written in John's place at Concord on a 4 track cassette recorder.

33 - Easy Prey - Hordern Pavilion, 1983
This was recorded at the Hordern Pavilion, it was a fantastic gig. The band at this stage was Doc, the Brewster brothers, Jim Hilbun and Brent Eccles. The song was a piano piece Rick used to play a lot called 'The Chaplain's Drum'. It's very dark…and about homeless people.

34 - Into The Heat - Sylvania Hotel, 1981
This is from the Sylvania Hotel; this is real pub rock. We were fresh from the Back In Black tour with AC/DC. Buzz left at the end of 1980 and Brent joined in 1981. It's a really good song…we've hardly ever played it.

35 - No Sleep In Hell - Hordern Pavilion, 1983
We recorded this initially in the studio for the Watch The Red album, John sang it. We wrote the song and it was too high a key for Doc to sing. We didn't play it live for very long…it was a chance for Doc to take a break. He was such a dynamic front man, it gave him a chance to get his breath back. It sounded great in the key of 'D' and John belted his lungs out.

36 - Waiting For The Sun - Bridge Hotel, 2014
We recorded this live a week before the Talk The Talk album came out. We had to lock the song into the memory banks quickly. Waiting For The Sun was when Dave joined the band and we wanted to write songs that belonged to this line-up. When Dave joined, the spirit in the band was fantastic. Written in John's kitchen. It was the first single for The 'new' Angels.

37 - Talk The Talk - Bridge Hotel, 2014
From the moment we started playing it at the Espy, St Kilda, we were blown away by the response we got. It was like the early days when we'd play a new song live and if we got a good reaction, we'd record it. It was getting the same response as the biggies. It was instant.

38 - Nations Are Falling - Bridge Hotel, 2014
That was written, lyrically, by our drummer Nick Norton. We played the entire Talk The Talk album two nights running and this one leapt out of the speakers.

39 - I Come In Peace - Bridge Hotel, 2014
Rick wrote this with Ross Wilson years ago. It rose to the surface again when Joe Cocker recorded it and had a hit with it in Germany. Young Harry Brewster jammed on this one…we had four Brewsters on stage.

40 - No Rhyme No Reason - Bridge Hotel, 2014
We really wanted to finish the album with this song. It was a wonderful way to close the set. The song means a tremendous amount to us because Rick wrote it about Chris. At the end of the track Dave says 'God bless you Chris' and it's a special tribute to him. He was a wonderful human being.

After morphing from The Moonshine Jug & String Band in 1974 the group embarked on a new path under the name The Keystone Angels. In a decision that would change the face of Australian music forever they were signed to Alberts Music from a meeting with legendary producers Vanda & Young.

Stripping their name back to simply The Angels the band started a recording career that spawned dozens of studio releases with enormous radio and chart success.

The Greatest 'Studio' Hits release brings forward 40 of the band's best album recordings. Each and every track has been carefully chosen to reward listeners with a valuable insight into the unarguable influence The Angels music has exercised over the course of this country's modern rock history.

21 - Wasted Sleepless Nights / Dark Room
Rick pulled this one from two or three songs he'd been working on. He was into piecing together obscure lyrics at the time, plucking lines from his notebook and creating prose that had even him scratching his head! This was called 'Staring Voices' at one stage. The eventual title was probably a more accurate reflection of where it came from.

22 - Face The Day
The band recorded the music for this (by John) and then Doc and John went upstairs to a small room (at Paradise Studios, Sydney) and wrote the lyrics. The film clip with Doc in pyjamas and the band in trench coats walking up George Street Sydney in the early hours is amazing. During this time at Paradise, the news came through that Bon Scott had died. The band were shattered. It had been Bon and the Young brothers who'd brought The Angels to Alberts Productions attention.

23 - Devil's Gate
Written and recorded at Paradise Studio with American John Boylan producing and Mark Opitz engineering. The band were looking for a fast song - Rick began riffing around on the guitar and came up with the syncopated feel and then John, Doc and he came through with the lyrics. A rare 2/4 groove for the band and a chance for John to play some blues harmonica. Doc's "fuck you spook!" got the song banned in America because of the word 'spook'.

24 - Fashion And Fame
Recorded at EMI's Sydney 301 studio. John and Brent had just mic'd up a snare drum in the toilet of Studio A for the recording sessions of the Night Attack album. They walked into the corridor and there was Stevie Wonder. John - "We were introduced to him and we had a chat - you don't forget something like that."

25 - Night Attack
Rick spent many nights hanging out in Sydney's seedy Kings Cross. Often pumping coins into 'Asteroids' game machines for hours. At break of dawn a girl was coughing her guts out - he asked if she was ok. She pulled out bottles of cough syrup from her bag…she was hooked on the stuff. Somehow he wound up in a junkie's kitchen where prostitutes came in after earning enough for heroin, injected right there, threw up and passed out. This one came from the darkness of those Kings Cross nights.

26 - Eat City
The band's new bass player American Jim Hilbun played sax on this one and the band were filmed at Brent's house, the garage mostly, on a warm Sydney evening. Most of the lyrics came via the treasure trove of snippets, prose and two line couplets in one of Doc's notebooks.

27 - Watch The Red
Rick was in the crowd as a New York street gypsy played Three Card Monte. "Watch The Red" she chanted, moving the cards across an upturned cardboard box. Rick watched a rabbi play $20. He followed the shuffled cards - when the gypsy turned up the red queen, it was where he picked it to be. The rabbi won $40 and Rick laid his $20 down. "Black - you lose!" Damn! After blowing another $140, she jumped up…"Police coming!" and scarpered with the rest of the crowd and Rick realised he'd been royally suckered. All captured on his new Walkman and heard at the start of the song.

28 - Stand Up
Another song from the Watch The Red album that Jim Hilbun wrote. It received substantial airplay and was a big single for The Angels. Doc painted his face white for the film clip.

29 - Small Price
This song by Rick, Brent and John was among those presented to MCA Records in the USA by The Angels' management. MCA loved it's great groove and consequently signed the band. The Two Minute Warning album, recorded in LA at a huge cost but recorded in legendary studios (the Record Plant, A&M Studios where 'We Are The World' was filmed), put the band deep into the red and created much dissension. This song was performed on the Australian 'Live Aid For Africa' concert - broadcast on Channel 7 in Oz and MTV in the USA.

30 - We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
It was Jim Hilbun's idea for The Angels to record this Barry Mann / Cynthia Weil classic. They all knew it and spontaneously went "Yeah!". They reversed the way the riff went on The Animals' version and sent it down the scale. There was also the brilliant addition of keyboards by Eddie Rayner (of Split Enz) that made this cover so unique. The Angels' highest charting song at #6 nationally.

31 - Don't Waste My Time
Written by Rick and Bob Spencer (who'd replaced John Brewster after he left the band). A difficult song to play live with it's odd vocal phrasing but a band favourite from The Howling album, produced by Steve Brown. Vocals: Doc on verses, Jim on choruses to handle the higher notes.

32 - Let The Night Roll On
Written by Rick, recorded in Memphis, produced by Terry Manning who'd worked with Led Zeppelin. Terry told the story of Jimmy Page recording with a tiny Fender Champ guitar amp and getting the biggest recording sound from it. That was good enough for Rick and Bob Spencer to go out and buy little single speaker amps to record the whole of Beyond Salvation with!

33 - Back Street Pick Up
Off the Beyond Salvation album, Bob's riffs, Doc's lyrics. Terry (producer) and James Morley (who had just joined the band to replace Jim) helped finish it. The Angels went on a concert tour around Australia to promote this album, supported by Cheap Trick. The clip for Back Street Pick Up was filmed on tour the day the guys were told that Beyond Salvation had gone #1 nationally - and it shows in their performance on the clip.

34 - Dogs Are Talking
One of the five successful singles lifted from Beyond Salvation. Bob and Rick composed the bulk of the music and then Brent and Jim helped finish it. With the backing track recorded and ready for the vocals, Doc went missing for a few days…the tour manager Bicci Henderson was dispatched to track him down and found him floating in a jelly bath contemplating the lyrics to this song and others on the album.

35 - Turn It On
A beautiful song written by Rick, Bob and Doc and released on the Hard Evidence EP to coincide with the Barbed Wire Ball tour, a national tour that also featured The Screaming Jets. John and Jim had rejoined The Angels at this stage, and sixteen years later The Screaming Jets' Dave Gleeson would become The Angels lead singer (in 2011).

36 - Call That Living?
This song, off Skin And Bone, was inspired by sweatshop factory conditions. It was a band effort (Brent, Jim, John, Doc and Rick) composed as they drove along the highway. The backing tracks were recorded at a rehearsal studio in Sydney and the rest was recorded at Rick's house on his new-fangled digital Roland 16 track desk (now a museum piece). The promo clip for this song was one of the best ever made for The Angels.

37 - My Light Will Shine
Another one from Skin And Bone. This is a beautiful ballad written by Rick, Doc and John and harks back to the poetry and feel of much earlier collaborations, such as To Be With You.

38 - Waiting For The Sun
2010 - Dave Gleeson and Nick Norton had joined the band and the Brewsters were keen to produce a new album featuring Dave's fabulous vocals. The lyrics of this song were written by Joe Burnam (of 70's band Supernaut). Rick had a riff he'd been working on and the brothers completed the music for it in John's kitchen. It was recorded at Alberts studios in Neutral Bay for the Waiting For The Sun EP and later included on the Take It To The Streets album.

39 - Talk The Talk
Rick, John and their friend Marcus Ahern collaborated on this, the title track of their most recent album. Chris Bailey, despite being unwell, made it into Alberts for the first three day session that set the wheels of this album into motion. He played on this track and four others. He passed away on the 4th of April 2013. He was a wonderful musician, a great friend and is sorely missed.

40 - Broken Windows
This blues riff had been floating around John's head for years. During the recording sessions for Talk The Talk, the band (now with Dave Gleeson, Nick Norton on drums and Sam Brewster on bass) was plugged in and ready - but with no idea what to record. Rick asked for suggestions - John started playing his riff and the rest kicked in. It just fell together and within twenty minutes they'd recorded it. Soon after, Dave revealed what a fine wordsmith and songster he is when he presented the band with the lyrics and melody for this great song.

- JB HiFi -

Order the new albums on line from JB HiFi.

Live Album

Studio Album