ninety-nine per cent of people around the world
are all the same, really – they just want to get on
with their lives. Unfortunately the news never
really shows that.”L
ater we find the drummer on a sofa
backstage, taping up his fingers before
slumping back and falling asleep instantly.
The crashing sound-check of the support band
below doesn’t wake him. Nor does Brian Johnson
howling Thunderstruck in the room next door (okay,
it’s Joel doing vocal warm-ups, but honestly...). It’s
one of the things that reminds
us that they’ve spent most of
their lives doing this. Their
longest stint on the road was
11 months straight. That’s how
they like it. It’s what they know.
“It’s great to be home in
Melbourne [after a tour], but
there’s a little thing that starts
to itch, where you need to play
a show,” Joel says. “You do
things like drink more than
you’ve ever drunk in your life to
try and get that vibe back.”
“You get addicted to the rush,
and having it taken away is
difficult,” Ryan adds. “It’s hard
to figure out what to do.”
What do you do?
“Well you look at footage of
other bands that you’re mates
with,” Joel replies, “and you see
them playing and you’re like:
‘Ahhh, I really wanna get over
there and play.’”
Before Airbourne became
their full-time job, they worked
in a pub. By Year 10 Ryan was
going into school with
hangovers, missing the first three
classes and rocking up at recess.“But it did help me decide that this
life makes way more sense than other
lives,” he says, “this is the only way we
know how to live.”
Neither of the O’Keeffe brothers have
set foot in an office, so it’s strange to think that Joel
originally wanted to be an investigative journalist.
“I’ve said that to my missus,” he says of his fiancée,
who works in fraud prevention. “‘Can I come to
work with you? Can I just hang out there and see
all the shit you’ve got there?’ It’s the Channel Nine
building in Melbourne. The journalists and
newsreaders are there, 60 Minutes is in there and
I’m a fan of all this.”
Still, their propensity for band life didn’t happen
by accident. Growing up in a family of Irish
Catholics, the O’Keeffes’ world was one of folkfestivals, pubs and sleeping under the kitchen table
while their parents and their friends blasted Van
Morrison records and jammed over Guinness.
Their father, Dennis O’Keeffe, ran an optometry
business, but his real love was folk music, and he
became a respected music researcher and writer
in Australia.
“I was doing backing vocals on one of his tapes
when I was six,” Ryan
remembers, “so I think
subconsciously there’s a lot of
things [in life as a band] that
for us... We do feel at home
here, because we were at
festivals when we were in
school, backstage areas and
stuff like that. We’ve known
about it for so long.”O
ut front, the venue is
a heaving smoke pit of
classic-rock band
T-shirts and beer. The crowd is
relatively young, with a healthy
contingent of under-30s and
a mix of genders.
Within the first two songs- a full-pelt Raise The Flag and
Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast - the room is chanting
“Airbourne!”, unprompted.
Joel shouts “Spasiba!” (‘thank
you’ in Russian). He’s giving it
everything. They all are. Even
bassist Justin Street, a silent
guy off stage, makes like
a bona fide rock god up there.
So far, so Airbourne.
And then something
“NINETY-NINE PER CENT OF PEOPLE AROUND
THE WORLD ARE THE SAME, REALLY – THEY
JUST WANT TO HAVE A GOOD TIME AND
GET ON WITH THEIR LIVES.”
Ryan O’KeeffeCLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 41AIRBOURNE
The write (^) stuff: Joel
doing signing backstage.
“Can someone^ tell^
me^ which^ way^ to^ the^
stage, please?!”
A fan presents^ the^
band^ with^ a^ metal^
and^ leather^
trinket^ (right).