Back in 1980, Jeremy Oxley, Peter Oxley, Bill Bilson and Richard Burgman were in a Sydney rehearsal room trying out some of Jeremy’s new songs. Also in the room was Rob Younger, former lead singer of Radio Birdman and a friend of Burgman’s since Birdman’s halcyon days in the mid-’70s. Younger, whose current band The New Christs will be supporting Sunnyboys on their upcoming national tour, had been enlisted as the fledgling group’s lead singer; it didn’t take long for Younger to realise his services wouldn’t be required.
“Rob was actually our lead singer when we first got together,” Burgman recalls. “We had a few practices with him – we learnt a bunch of songs, some Stooges songs, some of Jeremy’s songs. Rob would ask Jeremy how his songs went, and Jeremy would sing them. And Rob said, ‘I don’t think you need me – you seem to have a perfectly good singer already,’ and we agreed.” Sadly for the fanatical collector fraternity, none of those original rehearsals ever found their way to tape. “It was a different era back then,” Burgman says. “It was all analogue; nobody had a little digital recorder or phone they could just hold up and record it.”
Younger’s assessment proved correct: by 1981, Sunnyboys, with Jeremy Oxley on vocals, were arguably the hottest new rock’n’roll band in town. The band’s debut album went gangbusters; the first single from the record, the now classic ‘Alone With You’, captured perfectly Sunnyboys’ blend of surf rock licks and adolescent spirit.
The recording and subsequent release of Sunnyboys’ second album, Individuals, wasn’t as enjoyable. Under commercial pressure to release an equally successful follow-up, Sunnyboys’ record company dispatched the band to New Zealand – apparently for tax reasons – to record the album with producer Lobby Loyde. While Burgman says the band had enough material left over from the first album to put together a new record, Oxley’s songwriting had already moved on.
“Jeremy was writing a lot of new stuff that wasn’t like the first album,” Burgman says. “The songs were different, and we treated it differently – they weren’t as ‘up’, they weren’t as pop as the first record, but we really enjoyed learning and recording the songs. But it didn’t have a hit song the record company could get behind.” While the band members were happy with what they recorded, when they listened to the final product that Loyde had mixed in LA, it wasn’t what they were expecting.
Still young, and relatively green about the ways of the music industry, the group was reluctant to criticise Loyde’s production. “At the time we just went with it. Lobby was our mentor and leader, and a bit of an all-round guru,” Burgman says. “We were immediately disappointed, but we didn’t know what the consequences would be. We didn’t know if the album would sell or not. The first one was all youth and brashness; we were straight out of the box. But the second one was more thoughtful and deliberate, more considered. So we went with what we got, and the consequences were what they were.”
33 years later, and Burgman’s assessment is that Loyde’s efforts to make Individuals a commercial success had drained the songs of much of their original character. “It was like Lobby had taken them to Los Angeles and mixed them in a studio with an engineer while trying to shape the songs, sound-wise, into something that might appeal to the American pop market at the time,” Burgman says. “New wave, poppy, rock’n’roll, something for the American market – but I don’t really know. But that’s what changed it – the songs we recorded are actually very good.”
To record their third studio album, Get Some Fun, Sunnyboys headed across to the UK. Burgman looks back on that time fondly. “It was a big adventure going to England. It was our first time outside of Australia. We needed to have a focus, and being there gave us that focus.”
While special moments such as playing the legendary Marquee Club in London took the edge off Oxley’s increasingly erratic behaviour, Burgman says Sunnyboys were still unsure of their next artistic and professional step. While Get Some Fun – which included the hit single ‘Show Me Some Discipline’ – was heralded as something of a return to form, by the end of 1984 Sunnyboys were a spent force.
Sunnyboys’ renaissance as a live band in the last few years, facilitated by Oxley’s return to mental health, has brought with it the opportunity to revisit both Individuals and Get Some Fun and re-release both albums, complete with bonus material. The discovery of some original demos done for the Individuals recordings has allowed the band to finally present the songs as they were originally intended, while the re-release of Get Some Fun includes tracks taken from Sunnyboys’ appearance at the rain-swept Narara Music Festival in 1983.
“What I remember about Narara was the headliners – Midnight Oil and Split Enz,” Burgman says. “We played at about six o’clock, and then we hung around to watch the Oils play. And they were such an awesome live band. So that’s what I remember most about that festival,” he laughs.
Individuals and Get Some Fun reissuesout now through Feel/Inertia, and Sunnyboys are on at Enmore Theatre withRiptides and The New Christs onSaturday March 14.
