by BRIAN GIFFIN
2024 has already seen some significant milestones in Australian music. Cold Chisel is about to kick off their 50th anniversary tour; Radio Birdman did theirs earlier in the year. The Saints will go out in November to mark the half-century since their seminal punk track “I’m Stranded” was written.
The Hard-Ons are marking a crucial date in their history this year also. 2024 is the 40th year since they played their first official live show, at Sydney’s Vulcan Hotel. While they’d already frightened people at parties and high school performances, it was the first time they were all old enough to play in a licensed venue. It was June 20, 1984.
“We had absolutely no idea what we were doing,” admits bass player Ray Ahn. “The whole idea when we were growing up it just seemed a hell of a fun thing to do, playing in a band. We saw a lot of music on TV, and then when we were old enough to sneak into pubs and start seeing a lot of live bands, it was like being electrocuted. The music scene at the time was completely electrifying, and you thought about it 24 hours a day.”
The Hard-Ons formed at a time when Australian culture was dominated by live music. Pubs and clubs in their thousands echoed to the sound of rock music every night of the week. For kids like Ray, it was an all-consuming passion.
“We just worshipped that scene. I was talking to my friend Stuart who I went to school with from kindergarten right up until we graduated, about Year 11 and 12, and all the bands we were seeing. We were about to sneak in to see bands like the Scientists, and X… we saw the Dead Kennedys and the Birthday Party, all these bands that were incredibly influential. If we saw the Dead Kennedys, the whole week back at school you’d be thinking about that gig all week.”
By 1982, Ray was a member of the Hard-Ons and, apart from a three-year period in the 90s when they split up, has been ever since.
“I was in the Hard-ons for my entire year 11 and 12 in high school,” Ahn says. “I was 16 in Year 11, and then the whole time I was in university, and for those four years in university I was touring, as well. I took it really seriously. When I say seriously, there was nothing more serious than academia, but the only thing that was competing with that was playing in a band.”
A new documentary film from the Living Eyes production company highlights plenty of those early times. The Most Australian Band Ever tells the story of The Hard-Ons through vintage clips and interviews with the band members and others that include Dave Faulkner, Ross Knight of the Cosmic Psychos, Poison Idea’s Jerry A and Rob Younger from Radio Birdman. The movie will premiere at SXSW in Sydney on 16 October before a series of limited screenings at other locations.
“We’re the subjects of that movie, but the story that is being told is as told by the film maker, Jonathan Sequeira. He made that Radio Birdman documentary [Descent Into the Maelstrom] that was so fascinating. He was a fan of that band, and found the story of those six people really fascinating and what they were about, and the relationship of the people and why that band worked or didn’t work, and he applied the same principle with the Hard-Ons.”
“He wanted to know the genesis of the Hard-Ons,” he continues. “How we came to be the Hard-Ons, and what we were doing, because, on paper, the band never should have succeeded. But it did, so it was… I think Jonathan saw it as a story about underdogs, about people from underprivileged backgrounds. We all grew up – the three original members – grew up in working class suburbs like Punchbowl and Lakemba, and none of us looked like rock stars, that’s for sure. We looked like kids! So we shouldn’t have become successful, and we did everything we could to stay unpopular.”
Instead, the Hard-Ons became far more popular than they could have ever realised, particularly for a band of their nature with a name like theirs. They dominated the indie singles charts during the 80s, toured Australia and Europe constantly, and broke into the ARIA chart in 1991 with a version of “Let There Be Rock” that featured Henry Rollins on vocals. They appeared at the first Big Day Out, split for four years and came back as if they’d never been away. The band’s last two albums went to #4 and #28 on the national sales chart. That’s not bad for a group that has never courted the mainstream or had any attachment to major labels.
The Hard-Ons’ 15th album, I Like You a Lot Getting Older, was released last week as the band is on tour in Europe. It’s their third in four years. Since 2019, they’ve averaged an album every 18 months. Ray puts much of that down to their ridiculously prolific guitarist Blackie, who once released a new song every day for the entirety of 2016.
“We’re pretty lucky that we’ve got someone that motivated and very prolific. He spends a lot of time writing songs and he throws them at us constantly.”
They also rehearse a lot, getting down new songs so they can be recorded as soon and as quickly as possible.
“We kind of have to, in this day and age,” he says, “just because we need a stockpile of songs in case, if we need to put out an album, we can quickly put something out. […] it used to be that bands were putting out an album a year, and then they were putting one out every two or three or four years. As putting out records became less profitable compared to touring becoming more profitable, what a lot of bands were doing was putting out one record and then touring on that for three or four years. That works for a lot of bands, just really working that album out over and over again. But to do that, you have to be able to tour the world constantly, and that’s not possible for the Hard-Ons, unfortunately, on our level.”
Instead, they tend to get in and out of the studio as fast as they can. They already have another album almost done. It’s just waiting for vocals and some guitar parts.
“We just can’t spend too long in the studio. We can’t go into the studio and be there for three weeks, or a month. We’re not that kind of band. We’re there for two days, doing basic tracks and by halfway through day two we’ve done all basic tracks and then we overdub everything and then mix it.”
If that’s a formula, it seems to be working well for them, and now the record is out, it’s time to hit the road. The Hard-Ons have been fairly quiet on the live front this year, although the shows they have played were big ones: four dates on The Damned’s Australian tour and three in Sydney with Radio Birdman – both huge influences on them.
“It was very meaningful for us to play those gigs,” Ray says.
Their 40th anniversary tour takes in thirteen dates around Australia, finishing up at Adelaide’s Froth and Fury Festival. In Sydney, they will be returning to the Paddington RSL, a venue where they have played some of their biggest shows, a fitting place for an anniversary tour.
“That’s a pretty legendary venue,” says Ray. We’ve played there many, many times. We played there with Henry Rollins’ band, we headlined there a few times ourselves. We played there with the Descendents. It’s a legendary venue. It’s purpose built for a loud band. It’s a fantastic place and I’m glad we’re going back there, actually.”
THE HARD ONS 40TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR
October 18th – Soapbox, Brisbane
October 24th – Sussex Inlet Tavern, Sussex Inlet
October 25th – La La La’s, Wollongong
October 26th – Paddo RSL, Sydney
October 27th – Hamilton Station Hotel, Newcastle
October 31st – Altar, Hobart
November 1st – The Tote, Melbourne
November 2nd – Singing Bird Studios, Frankston
November 3rd – Red Hill Hotel, Castlemaine
November 4th – Barwon Club, Geelong
November 7th – Amplifier, Perth
November 8th – Indian Ocean Hotel, Scarborough
November 9th – Froth & Fury, Adelaide
