Aussie Legends The Angels are currently on their 50 Years In The Making tour, celebrating an often fractious half century in which their biggest songs have become much-loved Aussie standards. In 2014 Classic Rock spoke with three of the band’s most famous members to get their story: brothers Rick and John Brewster, who remain with The Angels until this day, and much-loved former singer Doc Neeson, who died just a month after the interview. 
The Angels were no strangers to unruly audiences, but the 100,000 revellers who’d gathered on the steps of the Sydney Opera House on December 31, 1979 was a beast that even they couldn’t tame. The first indication of the crowd’s mood came when the city’s Lord Mayor was bottled off before he could complete his New Year’s Eve address. Then Rolf Harris, if you can believe it, received the same treatment – perhaps showing some foresight on the part of the crowd.
As The Angels – who were huge in Australia – started playing their live-wire yet cerebral boogie, a crowd surge sent dozens of people scampering onto the stage to avoid being crushed. Rather than usher the frightened punters into the wings, security tossed them back like undersized fish into a furious sea.
They went: ‘Oh well, that was New Year’s Eve. All the best for the New Year,’” Brewster says with a laugh, speaking today from his home in Adelaide. “It was quite possible that Chris and Doc being hit shocked the audience, cos there was this eerie lull and people quietly walked away. But it could have escalated into something really serious – I’m talking death.”
Forty years after they formed and 35 years since that New Year’s Eve debacle, the spectre of chaos, controversy and, sadly, death still hovers around The Angels. At the time of the Opera House show, The Angels were arguably the biggest rock band in Australia, more popular even than AC/DC. Their influence spread as far as the scenes that would later emerge from the Sunset Strip and Seattle.
The past 15 years, however, have seen infighting, lawsuits and ill health as factions have fought for ownership of the band and its music. Even now, with the founding members in their sixties, and Doc Neeson so ill that he was only able to contribute to this story by sporadic email, old grudges die hard.
John Brewster calls himself “the black sheep” of the family. While his grandfather founded the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, his dad conducted it and his younger brother, Rick, won an under-21 piano eisteddfod at the age of 16, John was seduced by rock’n’roll. It was he who lured Rick away from Adelaide’s prestigious concert halls by convincing him to join the Moonshine Jug & String Band in 1970. An acoustic group using instruments such as washboard, harmonica and banjo, the line-up featured Bernard ‘Doc’ Neeson, an Irish immigrant and former soldier who was taking the same English And Drama course as John Brewster.
By 1974 the elder Brewster realised that if they were to make a career of it, they’d need to electrify their instruments and change their name. Dubbing themselves the Keystone Angels, and featuring the Brewster brothers on guitar (with John on vocals), Neeson on bass and drummer Charlie King, they hit the road. Support slots followed with such international stars as Tina Turner, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. But it was the three South Australian dates they played with AC/DC in early 1975 that shaped their fate.
Malcolm and Angus Young were sufficiently impressed with the Keystone Angels to recommend them to their elder brother, George, and his production partner Harry Vanda. The next time the Brewsters and Neeson rolled through Sydney, there were some special guests in the audience. 
“We were playing [notorious Sydney sweatbox] Chequers, and down the stairs came Angus, Malcolm, Bon Scott, Harry Vanda and George Young,” recalls John. “I get goosebumps telling you that. George said: ‘Come to the studio tomorrow and sing a few of your songs.’”
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