(Photo by David Corio/Redferns/Getty Images)
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the release of an iconic Australian album. One that never made the charts and which was pretty much condemned upon release, but which has grown into a much-loved icon and stands as a genuine landmark in Australian music history.
The compilation Lethal Weapons was the only LP released on Michael Gudinski’s short-lived punk label Suicide Records. It featured a cast of predominantly Melbourne bands, including the Boys Next Door, featuring Nick Cave, and Teenage Radio Stars, featuring James Freud and Sean Kelly. The featured tracks by these bands were the first tracks released by these individuals. In the Boys Next Door’s case, these tracks would not appear on subsequent releases; in Teenage Radio Stars’ case, these would be the only tracks they released.
The album was originally released under a cloud of controversy. Suicide Records was seen as a cash-in by Gudinski and his partner Barry Earle; an attempt by the ‘establishment’ to co-opt and exploit those who opposed it, and many on the scene refused to have anything to do with it. Others, perhaps more hungry for success (or, in the case of the Survivors from Brisbane and Wasted Daze from Sydney, old enough to know that, punk or no punk, the business probably wasn’t going to change) were happy to sign up. It didn’t help that some of the producers who were sent into work with the bands – namely Skyhooks’ Greg Macainsh and Ariel’s Mike Rudd – were viewed as old school themselves. When the album did come out, it sold a decent enough number of copies but there was enough ill-will around it to ensure it never got an unbiased review. And of course, the mainstream ignored it anyway – as a cash-in it was a failure.
Truth be told Lethal Weapons was actually a bit of a clunker. The Boys Next Door’s tracks, including a plodding cover of “These Boots Are Made For Working” and the energetic but laughable “Masturbation Generation”, didn’t even hit at the sophistication they show once Rowland S Howard joined the band; and Teenage Radio Stars’ “I Wanna Be your Baby” (which, together with ‘Boots’ and the Survivors tracks, was released as a single off the album) was a thinly disguised rewrite of “Baby Baby” by London punks the Vibrators. Jab, an Adelaide band who’d moved to Melbourne, contributed a couple of dire numbers that reveal nothing of the innovation or lightness of touch that synth player Ash Wednesday and drummer Johnny Crash would soon show as members of the Models.
The lesser known entities faired a bit better. The Survivors, at their best a high energy ’60s covers band (they formed in Brisbane in the wake of the Saints and bass player Jim Dickson would soon become entrenched in the Sydney scene – these days he plays in Radio Birdman) were let down by poor singing but at least sound meaty and beat-y. Sydney’s Wasted Daze were represented bizarrely by two Bo Diddley covers but were good pub/R&B in a Count Bishops/Dr Feelgood vein. Adelaide ex-pats X-Ray-Z – the most musical of the bunch – had a Split Enzy oddness that sat well with the punk energy. The Negatives, who, as the Reals, had basically been Melbourne’s first punk band (singer Garry Gray would later front the Sacred Cowboys, and bass player would later joining Dave Graney’s influential band the Moodists) contribute a fascinating six-minute number called “Planet On The Prowl” that is only let down by lack of a memorable tune or riff.
Within months of the album’s release, all the featured bands, other than the Boys Next Door, would have split up. James Freud would be the first of the associated artists to have a hit single with “Modern Girl”. Suicide boss Barry Earle was his manager at the time. The Models would obviously have even greater success, especially once Freud joined Sean Kelly in the frontline, over the next decade. The Boys Next Door remained with Michael Gudinski for their classic first album Door Door and single “Shivers” before changing tack and eventually heading into parts unknown with the hugely influential Birthday Party. Of course, Nick Cave went onto even bigger and better things from there.
Bad vibes notwithstanding, Lethal Weapons was enjoyed by those on the scene who were just happy to have their favourite bands on wax, and interest grew with the success of the Models, the Birthday Party and Sacred Cowboys. By 1983, only a handful of years after it was originally released, demand for it was enough that new Mushroom subsidiary White would reissue it. In 2007, it was finally released on CD by reissue specialists Aztec.
If you dig Lethal Weapons, you’ll dig out the following ILYOS playlists on Spotify:
- David Laing
