Australian rock legend Angry Anderson dies, aged 79

Rock singer, actor, youth advocate and charity ambassador Angry Anderson has died.

Anderson’s family and band mates announced in a statement today that the 79-year-old had died on Monday, surrounded by loved ones in Australia.

“Angry was a devoted father, and much-loved bandmate, friend, and member of the wider music and entertainment community,” the statement said.

It comes after Anderson suffered a cardiac arrest in August while on tour with his band.

Anderson was admitted to a German hospital during the European leg of Rose Tattoo’s 50th anniversary tour, prompting the band to cancel a concert on August 9.

The next day, it announced it could not go ahead with the rest of the European tour. 

Rose Tattoo was due to return for another Australian leg of the tour in September.

As well as achieving international acclaim with the band, Anderson had a successful solo career, with his hit Suddenly finding chart success in Australia, the UK, Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands.

He had multiple television and movie roles, was well known for his charity work and later courted controversy for anti-Islam views.

Painful childhood reflected in music

Gary Anderson was born in Melbourne on August 5, 1947, and grew up in what was then the working class suburb of Coburg.

His mother had moved to Australia from Mauritius when she was 19 and pregnant with him.

Anderson told a 2009 episode of the ABC’s Talking Heads that when he got his first tattoo, his mother tried to scrub it off his skin.

“She looked at me, tears brimming in her eyes, that look that no man wants to see in his mother’s eyes because you realise you’ve broken her heart,” he said.

Anderson said he had a difficult relationship with his father.

“I can’t remember his touch, I can’t remember his smell, I don’t remember him touching me apart from when he hit me.

“He had many demons to fight and I inherited a lot of those from him.”

Anderson said he struggled to fit in at tech school.

He said it was expected that he would become a fitter and turner but, instead, he loved English and reading books.

And as the other teenagers shot up in height, Anderson remained 156 centimetres tall, making him a target for bullies.

He revealed he struggled with the idea that he may have been a “bad seed” and was destined for a life of crime and dysfunction. 

He said music became the outlet for his angst and aggression, which had earned him the nickname Angry Ant.

Anderson’s first band Buster Brown formed in 1973 and released one album through Mushroom Records.

It disbanded in 1975.

The banned blues band

Anderson has been with Rose Tattoo since it formed in 1976.

They described themselves as standing out “from the mass of bands in satin pants like a raw steak in a vegetarian restaurant”.

After spending two years on the pub circuit, they released their first album in 1987.

In a 2001 interview for the ABC’s Australian rock history series Long Way to the Top, Anderson said Rose Tattoo was initially miscategorised as a punk band. 

He also said they did not initially aim for the rock ‘n’ roll genre.

“We were a blues band,” Anderson said. 

“We just liked to play some things really, really fast and very loud.”

He described their style as “totally aggressive, take no prisoners, spare no one, have no mercy-type music”. 

“The more out of control we became, the bigger crowds we’d pull, and that feeds the beast,” he said.

Over the decades, Rose Tattoo released eight albums with hits including Bad Boy for Love, Rock ‘n’ Roll Outlaw, Nice Boys and We Can’t Be Beaten.

It was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame in 2006.

ARIA described the band as redefining hard rock with “a gritty, slide guitar-heavy sound” and outlaw image that made them icons of the pub rock era.

But the success was not without early controversy.

In its early days, Rose Tattoo was banned from ABC’s Countdown for life after Anderson and guitarist Mick Cocks swapped chewing gum — hands free — mid-performance.

An ABC executive thought the two men were kissing. 

Anderson said several radio networks then refused to play their songs.

“We just rolled around on the floor in hysterics because we thought it was the funniest thing going,” he said.

From rock ‘n’ roll to fatherhood

In 1982, Anderson met Lindy Michael who gave birth to their first child, Roxanne, a year later while Rose Tattoo was on tour with Aerosmith.

Anderson said his daughter was two weeks old before he met her.

“The first time I actually looked into those eyes, that was it,” he said. 

The couple also had three sons before they separated.

Anderson said he made sure all his children received hugs and affection from him.

He became emotional while telling Talking Heads host Peter Thompson about his 18-year-old son getting out the car and, in front of his workmates, leaning in through the window to tell his father he loved him and to kiss him goodbye.

Tragically, in 2018, one of the couple’s sons, Liam, was killed by a friend during a drug-fuelled hallucination in Sydney.

Matthew Flame was found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter and was sentenced to eight years in jail.

Anderson told Flame’s trial that Liam’s death had left him “condemned to a life of sadness”.

Suddenly a writer of love songs

In 1986, while Rose Tattoo was on a break, Anderson turned his attention to writing a solo album.

One of the songs he came up with, along with co-writers Andy Cichon and Kevin Beamish, was Suddenly, which became one of his biggest hits.

He said he had never written a love song before.

“Why shouldn’t anyone know how I feel about not just my daughter but the women in my life,” he told Talking Heads.

It featured as the wedding song on the Neighbours episode where Scott and Charlene, played by Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue, get married.

The 1987 episode is described by the Australian Film and Sound Archive as “the royal wedding of Australian soap, an event almost as important in the 1980s as the Charles and Di nuptials”. 

The organisation said the episode was watched by more than 20 million people across Australia and Britain.

Other solo hits followed for Anderson, including Bound for Glory, which earned him a pre-game performance at the 1991 AFL Grand Final.

From stage to screen

Becoming a family man started to tame Anderson and he found his fame taking him in a new direction.

He had roles in a number of Australian television comedy shows and a part in the Mad Max film Beyond Thunderdome, which starred Tina Turner.

He had already begun social outreach work when he landed a regular youth affairs segment on Ray Martin’s Midday program on the Nine Network.

“I didn’t act or look like a typical reporter on a TV show,” Anderson said. 

“I just let it roll.”

One of his first stories was about child sexual abuse, where he not only talked to survivors but went inside a prison and spoke to convicted paedophiles about their rehabilitation.

Anderson was not afraid to allow a segment to go to air showing him crying while listening to a prisoner talking about the harm he had caused to his victim.

Anderson later revealed on the program that he had been abused as a child.

When Ray Martin left Midday for A Current Affair, he took Anderson with him.

They created a new series which involved him completing challenges for charities, such as building respite accommodation for people affected by HIV/AIDS, creating a playground for children with disabilities and helping drought-stricken farmers.

Anderson also took several tilts at politics, unsuccessfully running for the National Party in the 2013 federal and 2015 NSW state elections, expressing controversial views about Islamic immigration during the federal campaign.

During an appearance on the SBS documentary series Go Back To Where You Came From in 2012, Anderson was critical of Australia’s refugee policy and advocated sending back asylum seekers who arrived by boat.

After the show, however, he admitted that his perspective had softened.

In 2016 he ran for the NSW senate with the Australian Liberty Alliance, an anti-Islam minor party.

Anderson has also been connected to numerous children’s hospitals, the Starlight Children’s Foundation, youth cancer support services Canteen and Camp Quality and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

He has worked with drug rehabilitation programs, the Salvation Army’s youth homelessness service and was the face of a national campaign to raise awareness about prostate cancer after the death of Rose Tattoo guitarist Peter Wells.

He was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his role as a youth advocate in 1993.

“I wear the medal proudly,” he said, becoming emotional during the segment on Talking Heads.